Chapter 193: What is real? What is not?
Ren Sihue’s left the barrier behind as he broke into a dead sprint.
He moved like a ghost. His boots barely grazed the scarce, uneven earth as he navigated through the sparse forest. The twisted, unyielding trees cast long, skeletal shadows that had grown more ghostly now that the sun was gone, leading directly toward the colossal, hyper-futuristic watchtowers looming in the distance.
He was completely focused, his eyes tracking the microscopic shifts in the environment.
Suddenly, the silence of the place shattered.
The ground directly beneath Ren’s boots ruptured. A geyser of pulverized rock and dark earth exploded upward as a massive, grotesque monstrosity burst from the subterranean depths. It was a Calamity Beast—a colossal, crab-like abomination possessing four heavily armored, scythe-like limbs and a pair of jagged, membranous wings tucked against its carapace.
Before the dust could even settle, the beast let out a guttural screech. It snapped its massive, serrated right claw forward with the speed of a guillotine, aiming to completely sever Ren’s torso in half.
Ren’s expression remained perfectly flat.
Relying purely on the terrifying peak of his physical strength, he effortlessly leaped backward. The massive claw snapped shut on empty air, the force of its momentum creating a sonic crack.
Ren landed softly against the thick trunk of a nearby tree. Using his feet as a coiled spring against the bark, he instantly dashed forward, launching himself at the beast like a fired bullet. Mid-dash, he reached into his spatial inventory provided by the ring he wore. A sleek, pitch-black katana materialized flawlessly into his grip.
As he closed the gap, Ren violently spun his body. The kinetic momentum of his superhuman dash transferred flawlessly into the blade. He became a blur of dark fabric and steel.
SHHHHK.
The spinning sword sheared directly through the hardened chitin of the crab-like beast, effortlessly slicing straight through the center of its core. The massive beast froze mid-screech. Its violet eyes dimmed, and it collapsed into the dirt with a heavy, lifeless thud.
Ren landed gracefully a few feet away, smoothly flicking the dark blood from his blade before it vanished back into his inventory. His dark cloak fluttered gently as he straightened his posture. An ordinary observer might have thought his attire was just for show, but Ren’s cloak possessed special, high-tier features that activated the moment mana was applied to it.
An assassin of the Sihue Clan never took useless stuff with him. Every single part of his arsenal, the fabric of his clothes, and even the very bones in his body were meticulously designed to act as lethal weapons if necessary.
"Whoa! If it isn’t Hiken’s kid."
A cheerful, remarkably casual voice suddenly echoed from the trees.
Ren stiffened, his hand instinctively dropping toward the hidden dagger at his waist. A cold spike of genuine shock hit his brain. He hadn’t been able to sense a single trace of an entity before the person spoke. For a peak S-Rank master assassin, failing to detect someone’s presence was a terrifying reality.
He turned slowly, his eyes narrowing into defensive slits.
Stepping out from behind a large boulder was a young man. Ren blinked, momentarily thrown off by the absurdity of the sight. It was James Maddox, the Third Commander of the National Exterminator Agency. But the S-Rank legend looked entirely out of place.
Maddox was dressed lazily in a pair of summer shorts and a light vest, completely inappropriate for the circumstances. More disturbingly, the Commander was absolutely drenched from head to toe in thick, reeking dark beast blood. In his hands, he casually carried two massive, severed limbs from some unknown Calamity Beast.
Seeing him, Ren’s muscles coiled for a fraction of a second, but then he let out a slow, controlled sigh. He had definitely not expected to run into Maddox as the very first thing inside the barrier.
Ren relaxed his posture and bowed slightly, offering the respect demanded by the man’s title. "Glad to meet you, Commander," he greeted, his voice steady.
"Cut out the formalities," Maddox laughed cheerfully, tossing the massive, bloody beast limbs onto the ground as if they were useless trash. "What are you doing here? And you are very dangerous like the old man said... killing a D-Rank beast without even using a bit of mana. Impressive."
"Thank you. Your words move me," Ren accepted flatly, refusing to take the bait. He locked his eyes onto the Commander. "I am here for an investigation."
"Oh!" Maddox asked, raising an eyebrow in feigned curiosity. He casually sat down on the nearby rock, wiping a smear of dark blood from his cheek. "What kind of investigation?"
"You surely know," Ren said seriously, immediately cutting to the chase. The assassin had no time for political dances. "My father was here. What happened to him?"
Maddox’s playful smile slowly faded, replaced by a grim, heavy seriousness. He looked down at the dirt and nodded slowly. "He died fighting," Maddox answered. "He was strong for his age... too strong. He took down two A-Rank beasts before succumbing to death."
Ren’s breath hitched. His eyes slightly widened in disbelief. "Two A-Rank beasts?!"
An A-Rank Calamity Beast wasn’t just a monster. It was a Supreme Calamity Lord—a world-ending anomaly capable of flattening entire nations. The fact that his father had faced two of them simultaneously and actually managed to kill them before falling was a testament to the terrifying monster Hiken Sihue had truly been. But it also begged a much more horrifying question.
"What in the world is happening here?" Ren asked with a deep frown, his gaze shifting toward the massive watchtowers in the distance.
Maddox sighed, dragging a blood-stained hand through his auburn hair. "Better than telling you... come follow me. I will show you."
Maddox stood up and immediately broke into a high-speed sprint toward the far edge of the artificial land. Ren frowned, his instincts practically screaming at him, but he followed anyway.
They moved like blurs across the barren landscape. As they got closer to the edge, Ren saw that they were approaching Watchtower Number 8. The colossal structure was situated precariously on the edge of a massive, jagged cliff that dropped hundreds of feet straight down into a violently churning sea.
Ren remembered the geographical briefings of Tarita. The coastline here was supposed to be an apocalyptic drop, where massive, razor-sharp rocks jutted out of the freezing, violent waters like the teeth of a dead god. The sky above the ocean was a bruised, swirling vortex of dark clouds and unnatural lightning.
Soon, they were standing right beside the metallic base of the watchtower. The freezing ocean spray lashed against Ren’s face. Maddox pointed silently out toward the horizon.
Ren stepped to the edge of the cliff and looked beyond the jagged rocks. His heart completely stopped.
Not too far away, a landmass so unfathomably large that it could easily be divided into two entire mega-cities was hovering in the violent waves, slowly floating directly toward them.
The colossal landmass was entirely engulfed in an unnatural darkness. The only thing clearly visible from the cliff was a terrifying, monolithic dark castle resting at the center of the floating island. The castle was so impossibly large that its jagged, gothic peaks were completely hidden inside the swirling dark clouds that moved along with the landmass, as if the apocalyptic storm itself was a living part of the fortress.
Ren stared at the nightmare for a long, heavy moment. Then, his expression hardened into a look of absolute, chilling disgust. He slowly turned around with a deep grimace and faced Maddox, who was still standing a few paces away.
"Where is the real commander," Ren said, his voice dropping into a deadly, deadpan whisper.
Maddox froze. The weary, grim expression on the S-Rank’s face instantly vanished. His brown eyes widened into massive, unhinged circles, and suddenly, he threw his head back and started to laugh.
It wasn’t a cheerful laugh, rather a broken, psychotic, and maniacal sound that violently grated against the ears.
"You truly are a fucking assassin, Ren Sihue," ’Maddox’ giggled, his voice beginning to distort and echo with a dual resonance. "What gave me away?"
"You surely don’t believe that I don’t recognize the mana fluctuations coming from the forest?" Ren scoffed, his hand finally resting on the hilt of his dagger. "If you thought I wouldn’t notice, you have truly made a grave mistake."
Ren had known for the past five minutes. The ’Maddox’ he was talking to was nothing more than a highly advanced, flawlessly projected illusion.
As Ren spoke, the grinning figure of James Maddox began to violently glitch. The edges of his body turned to static, and with a final, mocking smile, the illusion completely dissolved into thin air, leaving Ren completely alone on the edge of the cliff.
"You are very dangerous," a new voice echoed.
It came from all sides at the exact same time, vibrating directly into Ren’s skull with a sickening, ancient malice.
"Just like your father..." the voice hissed, oozing with sadistic glee. "Would you believe that bastard killed his own son? Hahahaha!"
Ren’s eyes widened in horror. But before Ren could even process the horrific implications of the taunt, the dark, bruised sky above him violently tore open. A massive, blinding pillar of pure black light descended from the heavens, striking the earth just a few hundred yards away in the forest.
The shockwave rattled the cliff. Ren snapped his head toward the impact zone, his cloak whipping violently in the gale. But just as he narrowed his eyes to peer into the trees, the exact same pillar of catastrophic black light descended directly over his head and completely engulfed him,.