Chapter 53: A harsh reminder
"Master." Lilith’s voice had none of its usual warmth left in it. "I found the damned thing. It’s not far from here."
She caught his hand before he could ask anything further, wings snapping open behind her.
"Come on."
The world blurred the moment her illusion magic took hold, and then they were simply gone — no trail, no trace, nothing left behind to say either of them had ever stood in that clearing at all.
In the same instant, Malrik recalled the rest of his souls back into the Soul Space — the Spider Queen, Fenrir, every wolf and spider still tangled in the fight. By the time the Morveth realized their intruders had vanished, there was nothing left to confirm the intruders had ever existed in the first place.
Two minutes of flight later, Lilith set them down on the flat crown of a massive boulder, still holding the illusion steady around them like a second skin.
Then her voice arrived inside his skull, and Malrik nearly lost his footing.
[Relax, Master. I’m opening a mental channel — I don’t want anything nearby picking up on us talking.]
He didn’t relax. There was something deeply, fundamentally wrong about hearing someone’s voice originate from inside his own head rather than the air around him, and no amount of explaining the logic behind it made the sensation any less unwelcome.
He said nothing about it. There wasn’t a better option on offer.
[Master, there’s something hideous roughly five kilometers from here. It’s the reason all those Morveth went insane.]
[I don’t think killing it will be as straightforward as we’d hoped. It’s a Fallen-Rank creature—one of the strongest beings we’ve encountered so far. And it’s not alone. Several Awakened-Rank elites are guarding it, along with two other Fallen-Rank Morveths standing at its side.]
A pause, and something colder crept into her tone.
[I think it was playing with us. If it had truly wanted us dead, it wouldn’t have wasted time sending ordinary Morveths. It would’ve simply dispatched one of its stronger guards and ended the fight before it even began.]
Malrik’s mind was already working before she finished — running numbers, weighing odds, trying to find some angle where a direct strike made sense.
Lilith cut through it before he got anywhere.
[Master. Please tell me you’re not considering fighting him at your current Rank.]
He didn’t answer immediately, and she apparently decided that silence needed correcting.
[Everything changes once a Morveth reaches the Fallen Rank. It’s no longer just stronger than an Awakened-Rank Morveth—the gap is so vast that it feels like an entirely different species.]
[Once humans or Morveths advance beyond the Awakened Rank, they step into an entirely new realm of power known as the Realm of Laws.]
[At that point, they enter their own spiritual realm—a place that connects their existence to the universe itself. Every living being possesses such a connection; the spiritual realm is simply where that bond becomes tangible.]
[Within it lie countless spiritual seeds known as Law Seeds.]
[To ascend to the next Rank, one must nurture a Law Seed by studying it, comprehending the power it embodies, and ultimately merging that understanding with their own soul. Only then can they wield the corresponding Law.]
[That’s the real line between Awakened and Ascended. Very few people ever manage to choose a seed, understand it properly, and fold that understanding into their own skills.]
[This thing is already Fallen-Rank. It’s already crossed that line — and from the look of things, whatever Law it holds isn’t ordinary either. Something that can keep two other Fallen under its command isn’t something you dismiss. It’s strong. It’s patient. And it’s smart enough to know exactly how little effort it needed to spend on us.]
She let that settle for a moment before finishing.
[If you want it dead, Master, you’ll need to reach the Awakened Rank first. By then, one of my seals will have been broken, and I’ll have ascended to the Ascended Rank. When that day comes, leave that wretched insect to me. I’ll erase it from existence. You don’t need to dirty your hands... not yet.]
Lilith’s words hit him like a cold splash of reality.
A familiar frustration stirred deep within him. Not toward Lilith... but toward his own weakness.
That creature had possessed the power to kill him whenever it pleased. The battle hadn’t been a struggle for survival from its perspective. It had merely been playing with them, treating them like insignificant insects that could be crushed at any moment.
For the first time in weeks, Malrik was forced to face the gap between himself and the true monsters of this world.
Somewhere along the way, he had forgotten what that feeling was like.
Fighting alongside Lilith and the Spider Queen, watching them effortlessly slaughter enemies that should have been impossible for him to face, had slowly dulled his sense of reality. Their overwhelming strength had become his shield.
But this encounter shattered that illusion.
The feeling of weakness he thought he had left behind came rushing back, heavier than ever before.
His hand slowly clenched into a fist. His nails dug so deeply into his palm that blood began to trickle between his fingers, yet he didn’t seem to notice. His expression remained calm, but a cold fury burned behind his eyes.
When I reach that Rank... I’ll come back.
And when I do, I’ll make that thing pay for this humiliation.
"Lily. Let’s head back to camp."
She took his hand without a word, wings spreading again, the illusion flickering back into place around them as they rose into the sky.
They found the first Morveth corpse before they even reached the treeline near camp — then another, and another after that, scattered like someone had cleared a path and hadn’t bothered cleaning up after.
Eliza was waiting when they landed, standing perfectly still and impeccably composed, as though she’d known the precise moment of their return all along. Colin scrambled up the instant he spotted them, bowing so quickly he nearly overbalanced.
"Welcome back, young master. I hope you weren’t hurt."
"Welcome back, my lord."
Malrik crossed the last of the distance and looked at Eliza. "What happened here?"
"Some Morveth found us," she said, calm as ever. "I kept Colin safe and dealt with them, as you instructed."
Right...
I’d almost forgotten. Eliza is an Ascended-Rank powerhouse, someone who wields a Law.
She spends so much of her time preparing my meals and laying out my clothes that it’s easy to forget just how powerful she truly is.
"Don’t worry about me," he said. "I’m fine."
She nodded once, unbothered either way. "Dinner’s ready. We were waiting for you."
"Good," Lilith said, dropping onto the nearest log with the theatrical exhaustion of someone who’d spent the last hour doing something exceptionally taxing. "Killing those hideous things wore me out."
Malrik and Lilith took their seats and began eating. Eliza and Colin, however, remained standing behind them.
He noticed it before he’d even finished his first bite.
"Sit down," he said. "Both of you. Eat."
Eliza parted her lips to protest, but Malrik raised a hand, stopping her before she could speak.
"We’ll be moving at dawn. We don’t have time for unnecessary formalities. Everyone eats. Everyone gets enough rest. Then we continue our journey."
His gaze swept over the two of them.
"I’m not having either of you standing there like statues while the rest of us eat. That’s an order."
Neither of them argued further. Colin sat first, a little too fast; Eliza followed with rather more composure, though not without one last glance that suggested she’d be revisiting the subject the moment it was strategically convenient.
Malrik ate in silence for a while, watching Eliza out of the corner of his eye.
"Eliza."
She looked up.
"I still don’t actually know what your Class is."
Eliza didn’t answer immediately. After a brief pause, she met his eyes.
"I’m an Assassin, Young Master."
Malrik blinked.
Assassin?
Somehow...That wasn’t the answer he’d been expecting.