Chapter 190: Visions
Hide sat alone on the slanted, dark-tiled roof of the main estate building. His knees were drawn up, his arms resting casually over them as he stared up at the night sky. The heavy, industrial smog of Area 17 usually choked out the stars entirely, but tonight, a few faint points of silver light managed to pierce through the thick, bruised clouds. It was incredibly quiet up here.
He let out a long, slow exhale, his breath misting slightly in the freezing air.
What had he done? Hide thought, his blue eyes narrowing as the sheer magnitude of the night’s events finally caught up to his adrenaline-fueled mind.
He had actually done it. He had finally cured Risa. They had spent the last hour down in her guest room, painstakingly explaining what had happened to her. She had been completely oblivious to the passage of time. To her, the horrific day of the gate break felt like it had happened only yesterday. She claimed that she had merely gone to sleep for a single night, not knowing that five agonizing months had slipped by while her body rotted from the inside out.
But there was one specific detail that kept picking at Hide’s razor-sharp mind. She had said she saw dreams.
And that made the entire situation infinitely more confusing. Risa had been an unawakened human—someone whose biological framework was supposed to be completely incapable of processing mana.
Yet, her newly formed core pulsed with a serene, profound silver light. There could only be two logical explanations for this phenomenon. Either she had forcefully awakened after contracting the severe mana poisoning, her body’s desperate survival mechanism forcefully breaking the genetic lock to keep her alive, or she had awakened because of the Mana Purification Catalyst he had injected into her bloodstream. An A-Rank consumable was known to perform absolute miracles, and forcibly opening a dormant core wasn’t entirely out of the realm of possibility.
However, judging from the vivid, terrifying vision she had just shared about her father—Ren Sihue drowning in an endless ocean beneath a colossal shadow—it had to be the former. She said it was something she saw moments before waking up.
That meant she was now an Awakened. And not just any standard combat class. She was an Awakened with abilities akin to the Doom Overseer.
An Oracle. A Seer.
Hide didn’t know what to make of that. In the Exterminator underworld, Oracles were practically mythological.
If anyone knew about her... She would be locked in a gilded cage for the rest of her life, used as a human compass for their interests.
Hide was suddenly pulled from his grim calculations by a frantic scratching sound. He paused, his enhanced perception picking up the distinct noise of someone struggling nearby. He leaned forward, bending over the edge of the slanted roof to peer down into the shadows of the courtyard.
He blinked in disbelief.
It was Risa. She was dressed in a new, comfortable set of traditional clothes, freshly bathed and looking remarkably well despite her five-month coma. Her newly milk-white hair fluttered in the wind as she desperately tried to drag a heavy wooden maintenance ladder against the side of the manor. She was clumsily attempting to climb up to the roof.
Hide let out a heavy sigh, rubbing the back of his neck. She had always been a little too active for her own good. Even after a near-death experience, she couldn’t just stay in bed.
"Do you want to fall?" Hide asked quietly, his voice drifting down from the roof.
The sudden, voice from above violently startled her. Risa gasped, her head snapping up. In doing so, her footing on the narrow wooden rung slipped. Waking up after five months of absolute muscular atrophy did not help with her body’s balance and normal motor functions. The heavy wooden ladder tipped backward, her center of gravity crumbling entirely.
"Ah—!" She shrieked in genuine terror as she fell backward into the dark, empty air.
But she never hit the cobblestone.
Something massive and impossibly fast intercepted her mid-fall. A thick, dark-plated arm caught her gently, absorbing her momentum with the ease of catching a falling leaf. Risa stopped screaming, her chest heaving as she realized she wasn’t broken on the ground. She slowly opened her eyes to see who had caught her.
She found herself staring directly into the towering, featureless dark helm and the burning, cross-shaped violet visor of Zenith.
Risa shrieked once again, this time significantly louder, the sound echoing off the stone walls of the estate.
The piercing scream instantly triggered the estate’s perimeter defenses. Within two seconds, the courtyard was flooded with almost ten heavily armed Sihue guards, weapons drawn and aimed directly at the demonic executioner holding their young lady. Enji sprinted into the courtyard a second later, a dagger pulsing with lethal purple mana gripped tightly in his hands.
"Intruder! Drop her!" Enji roared, his eyes wide as he looked at the massive phantom.
Hide leaned over the roof, resting his chin on his palm. "Hey... calm down everyone," Hide called down, flashing an uneasy smile that honestly did absolutely no good in diffusing the tension. "He won’t do anything. Just saving the lady from the fall."
Enji stared up at Hide, then looked back at the towering dark knight holding his sister as if she weighed absolutely nothing. Recognizing the dark mana signature belonging to the boy who had just healed his hand, Enji let out a long, violently exasperated breath. He raised his hand, signaling the guards.
"Stand down," Enji commanded. The guards hesitated for a fraction of a second before lowering their weapons and rapidly dispersing back into the shadows, leaving only the young master in the courtyard.
Enji walked closer, looking up at his sister. "Risa, what in the world are you doing out here? You should be resting."
Risa, still trembling slightly in Zenith’s massive grasp, looked down at her brother. "I... I wanted to spend some time with Hide," she explained, her voice small but determined. "I was sitting in my room, thinking of him, and suddenly I just... I saw an image of him sitting on this exact roof."
Hide’s blue eyes narrowed sharply from above. That explained how she found him in a sprawling, multi-acre estate in the dead of night. It was absolute, undeniable confirmation. Her core wasn’t just active; her Oracle abilities were already subconsciously triggering.
Following Hide’s mental command, Zenith, who was already tall enough that his armored shoulders easily reached the edge of the second-story roof, simply hoisted Risa upward. He gently dropped her onto the slanted tiles right beside Hide. Once she was safely seated, the colossal phantom soldier dissolved instantly into a thick cloud of dark, violet mist, sinking seamlessly back into Hide’s shadow.
Risa scrambled slightly on the tiles, her eyes wide as she watched the monster vanish into nothingness. "What... what was that?" Risa asked, her voice a mixture of deep fright and insatiable curiosity.
Hide scratched his chin, genuinely struggling to find the right words to explain the Universal Adaptation System, the Phantom Court, and his S-Rank talent to someone who had been asleep for his entire rise to power. "That’s my... ugh, kind of a tamed beast, you can say," he offered weakly. "Well, that’s a part of how my talent works. I am strong now, you see." He smiled, hoping the simplicity of the explanation would suffice.
Risa stared at him for a long moment. She took in the sharp angles of his face, the confident, lethal posture he carried so effortlessly, and the silver hair that framed his glowing blue eyes.
"I knew you would be strong..." she said in a small, incredibly fragile voice. She pulled her knees tightly to her chest, wrapping her arms around her legs and burying her face against them. She felt a profound wave of guilt; he had clearly gone through hell to get that strong, to get the cure for her.
Wanting to shift away from the heavy emotional atmosphere, Risa tilted her head slightly, changing the topic entirely. "What is happening in school?" she asked.
Hide leaned back against the tiles, his expression shifting into a mask of plain indifference. "I haven’t been to school since that day," Hide replied flatly. "And school is closed right now anyways, because of the World Exterminator Ranking Tournament."
Risa blinked, looking up at the night sky. "It is happening this year as well?" she asked, her mind slowly catching up to the global timeline.
"Yes," Hide said smoothly. He raised his hand, pointing a finger out toward the horizon with a soft click of his thumb and middle finger. "And I am currently ranked thirteenth."
"Oh!" she exclaimed, her milky-white eyes widening in shock at the sheer absurdity of the statement. But the brief spark of amazement faded as quickly as it had appeared, doing absolutely nothing to lighten up her somber mood. She rested her chin back on her knees, her gaze drifting back to the dark courtyard below.
Hide observed her silence, his enhanced perception easily picking up the erratic, anxious rhythm of her heartbeat. He let out a soft, knowing sigh.
"I know what it is," Hide said quietly, his voice gentle but firm. "You have awakened, and you are now worried about your father."
Risa did not say anything for a long time. The wind rustled through her white hair. Finally, she gave a slow, heavy nod.
"I have been awakened since that day," Risa whispered, her voice trembling as the floodgates of her suppressed memories finally opened. "I am remembering it now. The dreams. While I was asleep... I dreamt a lot."
She lifted her head, her unseeing, milky-white eyes staring blankly into the distance, looking at things that hadn’t happened yet, or things happening far beyond the physical realm.
"I dreamt about my grandfather," she continued, her tone dropping into an eerie, prophetic cadence. "About you. About my brother, and Kai. I saw a lady with long blonde hair and red eyes. And..."
She swallowed hard, her fingers tightening their grip on her legs until her knuckles went pale.
"...and a dying old man, holding two beast skulls in his hands, with a massive beast with four arms lying dead in front of him."