Chapter 206: Beginning (VI)
When consciousness slowly returned to Erin Volter, the suffocating, bone-chilling blizzard was gone.
Instead, a gentle, surprisingly warm breeze rustled against her skin, carrying a faint, metallic scent that smelled faintly of crushed pine needles. She groaned softly, her eyelids fluttering as she shifted her position. The ground beneath her back was no longer a frozen bed of soft snow, but a carpet of dark, damp moss.
Erin blinked her eyes open, her vision swimming in hazy circles before slowly adjusting to the dim, twilight environment. High above her, a colossal canopy of twisted, obsidian-barked trees blocked out the sky, their leaves glowing with a soft, ethereal violet hue. She was lying in the deep shadow of an ancient, massive trunk.
She pushed herself up on her elbows, her head throbbing with a dull, persistent ache. "Where...?"
Her words caught in her throat. Her eyes widened into sharp green circles as her gaze landed on the figure sitting less than three feet away from her.
Sitting cross-legged against the damp moss was a young man. He was bare-chested, his posture perfectly upright, his hands resting lightly on his knees with his eyes closed in deep meditation.
Erin stopped breathing entirely.
He was broad-shouldered and powerfully built, his physique carved with such precise perfection that he looked less like a living person and more like a stone sculpture of an ancient western deity. His chest rose and fell in a slow, rhythmic cadence. But what truly shattered Erin’s logical mind was his head and hair.
His hair was an unnatural pitch-black. Upon a closer look, it wasn’t hair at all—it was a dense, flowing mane of soft black smoke and wisps of dark mist that constantly drifted off his scalp, dissolving into the air before reforming. Even the contours of his jaw and forehead felt strangely fluid and ethereal, as if his physical form was merely a boundary holding back an infinite well of darkness.
As if sensing her intense, unblinking gaze, the man’s long eyelashes twitched. Slowly, his eyelids lifted, revealing a pair of piercing, luminous ocean-blue eyes that seemed to glow in the twilight shade. They locked directly onto Erin.
Erin’s heart gave a violent thump against her ribs. In all her years working at the highest echelons of the National Exterminator Agency, surrounding herself with elite Awakeners and high-society figures, she had never seen a human being so terrifyingly charming.
A soft, relaxed smile curved his lips.
"So you are awake, Human lady," the man said. His voice was deep, smooth, and carried a resonant timbre that vibrated right through Erin’s chest.
A sudden flare of heat flushed across Erin’s cheeks. Her whole body shuddered, a instinctual wave of embarrassment washing over her. But as she tried to pull her legs beneath her, she suddenly felt the cool touch of the open air against her bare skin.
She looked down and froze. Her eyes nearly bulged out of her head. She was completely naked. Her clothes had simply been folded and placed loosely over her abdomen and lap like a makeshift blanket.
"Ah—!" A sharp, high-pitched gasp escaped her throat.
Without thinking, Erin grabbed her clothes, clutched them tightly against her bare chest, and violently shoved herself backward. She scrambled across the moss on her hands and knees, bolting behind the thick, twisted trunk of a nearby tree. She pressed her back against the rough, dark bark, her chest heaving as her heart hammered violently against her ribs like a trapped bird.
Her mind raced at a hundred miles an hour, piecing together her memories.
The last thing she remembered was running from the Exterminator guards in Sector 4, jumping headfirst into the pitch-black void of the Reverse One-Way Gate, and then falling onto a freezing, snow-covered plain before blacking out from the dark mana.
’Did the guards catch me?’ Erin thought frantically, her hands trembling as she pulled her shirt over her head. ’Was I dragged back through the portal before I died? Is this an IEC medical outpost on the border?’
It was a completely logical assumption. If she had been found by the border patrols after committing a high-tier federal crime—breaching a classified, restricted zone after Commander James Maddox had explicitly warned her to stay away—the consequences would be catastrophic. She would lose her research license. She would be stripped of her position. She might spend the rest of her life in a prison.
She feared Maddox’s disappointment, but even more than Maddox, she terrified herself thinking of what the International Exterminator Corp and the Central Continent’s government would do to an unregistered civilian who had stumbled upon their deepest global secrets.
Erin gritted her teeth, hurriedly pulling her trousers on and stepping into her boots. Resting on the ground beside her was the lead-lined isolation suit she had worn into the forest. The rubber material had been shredded to ribbons by the brambles, its internal seal completely ruined. It was useless now. She gritted her teeth in frustration and kicked the ruined hazard dress deeper into the hollow of the tree, abandoning it.
"What are you doing, Human lady?"
The voice echoed from directly above her.
Erin jumped, her breath catching in her throat as a cold chill ran straight down her spinal cord. She spun around, stepping out from behind the trunk, her back hitting the bark as her eyes snapped upward.
The bare-chested man was standing just a few feet away, leaning against a protruding root. He tilted his head, his ethereal smoke-hair wavering gently in the breeze as his bright blue eyes tracked her movements with unbothered curiosity.
Erin swallowed hard, forcing her trembling vocal cords to work. She gripped the fabric of her jacket tightly, gathering every ounce of her courage.
"Why... why do you keep calling me ’Human lady’ again and again?!" Erin demanded, her voice shaking slightly despite her best efforts.
The man blinked, an expression of perplexed confusion washing over his handsome features. He tilted his head further to the side. "What else do I call you?" he asked simply.
Erin gasped, her green eyes narrowing into defensive slits. "Erin! My name is Erin!" She shot back, her breathing ragged. She stared at the ethereal smoke drifting from his head, the impossible density of the aura radiating from his skin, and the terrifying calm in his posture. She took a hesitant step back. "...And what about you? Are you not human?"
The man’s ocean-blue eyes visibly brightened, a spark of amusement lighting up his face.
"Oh, so your name is Erin," he chuckled softly, nodding to himself. "I see, I see. That is a strange, short name. But yes, you are a human." He paused, his smile widening slightly as he looked at her. "And who said I am a human? I am a Calamity Lord."