Chapter 123: Two Stalkers...
Sector 14 was a mid-tier commercial district located just outside the Ares Academy grounds.
Normally, it was a bustling hub filled with student hunters, merchants peddling low-level mana crystals, and neon-lit cafes. But today, the streets were unnervingly quiet.
Zen walked down the pavement, his hands stuffed into the pockets of his jacket. The D-Rank suppression ring hummed quietly on his finger.
Beside him walked Maya. She was carrying a standard-issue academy scanning device, nervously clutching it to her chest like a shield. She kept glancing over her shoulder, her green eyes darting toward every shadow and alleyway.
"Zen," Maya whispered, her voice trembling slightly. "Do you feel that? It feels like... like someone is staring at the back of my neck."
Zen didn’t turn around. He didn’t need to.
His A-Rank spatial awareness had picked up the two massive, poorly concealed mana signatures the moment they had left the academy gates.
"It’s just the ambient mana from the anomaly," Zen lied smoothly, keeping his gaze fixed forward. "Stay close. We just need to scan the residual crystal deposits and get back."
They were supposed to be investigating a minor, E-Rank mana fluctuation in an abandoned warehouse. It was a standard freshman assignment... safe, boring, and utterly mundane.
But nothing in Zen’s life was mundane anymore.
Half a block behind them, sitting at the outdoor patio of an absurdly expensive, five-star artisanal coffee shop, were the stalkers.
Aurelia was sitting cross-legged in a designer chair, sipping a cup of imported tea from a porcelain cup. She was wearing a perfectly tailored crimson blazer and dark sunglasses.
Selene sat across from her, wearing a pristine white sundress and a wide-brimmed sun hat, nervously stirring her iced coffee with a silver spoon.
"She just looked back," Selene whispered, pulling the brim of her hat down further. "Do you think he saw us? Did the Emperor see us?"
"Don’t be ridiculous," Aurelia scoffed, taking a delicate sip of her tea. "Nyx scrambled our biometric signatures on the local network. And we are perfectly camouflaged. We look like completely normal, everyday civilians."
They did not look like normal civilians.
Aurelia had literally bought the entire coffee shop five minutes ago just so they could sit on the patio without any commoners breathing the same air as them. The original owner and all the customers had been evacuated by heavily armed Crown Domain guards.
Furthermore, Selene’s "disguise" was failing excellently. Her holy mana was leaking out in her nervousness, inadvertently turning the coffee shop into a miniature sanctuary.
The dead potted plants on the patio were currently glowing with divine light and rapidly growing into massive, blooming vines of pure holy energy.
"She is walking too close to him," Aurelia noted, her amber eyes narrowing behind her sunglasses. She placed her teacup down. The porcelain immediately cracked under the pressure of her aura. "Look at her. The parasite is leaning into his personal space. I won’t allow it."
Down the street, Maya shivered.
She took a step closer to Zen, reaching out to lightly grab the sleeve of his jacket. "Zen, it’s really cold all of a sudden. Maybe we should hurry."
Zen sighed internally.
He knew exactly what was happening. Every time Maya moved within six inches of him, the ambient temperature of the street dropped as a wave of concentrated, homicidal killing intent washed over the sector.
"Just focus on the scanner, Maya," Zen said quietly.
"I am trying, but the readings are going crazy!" Maya said, tapping the screen of the device. "It says there is a massive spike in localised magical pressure right behind us!"
Back at the coffee shop, Aurelia raised her hand and snapped her fingers.
Instantly, a localized burst of golden magic shot across the street, entirely invisible to the naked eye. It struck a nearby fire hydrant.
The hydrant violently exploded, sending a massive geyser of freezing water spraying directly toward Maya.
Zen reacted instinctively. He stepped in front of Maya, using his jacket to shield her from the blast of water. He didn’t use any mana; he just took the brunt of the icy spray, getting completely soaked in the process.
"Zen!" Maya gasped, horrified. "Are you okay?!"
Aurelia, watching from the patio, nearly crushed her own hand in a fit of rage.
’He shielded her!’ Aurelia screamed internally, her golden mana flaring so violently that the windows of the coffee shop shattered. ’I tried to wash the commoner away, and he shielded her with his own body! That filthy parasite!’
"Aurelia, calm down," Selene hissed, though she was also gripping her silver spoon so hard it had bent in half. "You are going to blow our cover! Look, they are going into the warehouse."
Zen shook the water out of his hair, shooting a subtle, lethal glare down the street toward the coffee shop, before ushering Maya into the abandoned building.
The warehouse was dark, smelling of dust and old machinery.
According to the academy briefing, there was supposed to be a small cluster of E-Rank Slimes feeding on a fractured mana crystal in the centre of the room.
"Stay behind me," Zen said, drawing one of his trench knives.
Maya nodded, activating the scanner. The screen glowed weakly in the dark.
They walked deeper into the building. In the centre of the warehouse floor, resting on a pile of broken wooden pallets, was the crystal.
But there were no E-Rank Slimes.
Instead, a massive, hulking figure was crouched over the crystal. It was a D-Rank Stone Golem, its jagged, rocky body pulsing with unstable earth magic.
"That... that’s not a Slime!" Maya panicked, stumbling backward. "The scanner said this was an E-Rank anomaly! A D-Rank Golem is a mid-tier threat! We need a full party to take that down!"
Zen’s eyes narrowed.
A D-Rank Golem didn’t naturally mutate from an E-Rank Slime overnight.
He glanced at the ceiling and saw a faint, almost microscopic trace of golden mana dissolving into the air.
’Aurelia,’ Zen thought, his blood boiling with frustration. ’You pumped imperial mana into the anomaly just to escalate the threat level. Are you insane?’
The Golem roared, the sound echoing like a collapsing cave, and turned its glowing red eyes toward them. It raised two massive fists of solid granite and charged.
"Run, Maya!" Zen ordered, dropping his stance.
Maya didn’t run. She was an anchor, a healer in training, but she was terrified. She raised her staff, her hands shaking violently as she tried to cast a low-level barrier spell to protect Zen.
"Aegis Shield!" Maya cried.
A weak, translucent green barrier flickered to life in front of Zen, barely thick enough to stop a thrown rock, let alone a two-ton monster.
The Golem swung its massive fist.
Zen couldn’t dodge. If he dodged, the Golem would crush Maya.
He couldn’t use his A-Rank aura, or he would blow his cover entirely.
He had to rely purely on the D-Rank kinetic efficiency he had mastered.
Zen stepped into the strike. He didn’t block the fist; he deflected it.
Using the flat of his trench knife, Zen struck the exact joint where the Golem’s wrist connected to its arm. The hyper-focused kinetic impact redirected the momentum of the blow, forcing the massive fist to crash into the concrete floor just inches from Zen’s boots.
The concrete shattered, sending a shockwave through the warehouse.
Before the Golem could recover, Zen vaulted off the monster’s buried arm, launched himself into the air, and drove his trench knife directly into the glowing core located at the back of the Golem’s neck.
The core shattered. The Golem froze, then crumbled into a pile of lifeless, mundane rocks.
Zen landed softly on his feet, exhaling a long, steady breath.
He had protected his cover and also handled the threat at the same time.
"Zen!" Maya cried, rushing forward. Tears were streaming down her face. She dropped to her knees beside him, grabbing his arm. "Are you hurt? Let me heal you, please, let me..."
Before Maya could even finish her sentence, the entire warehouse began to tremble.
The temperature didn’t just drop; the very air inside the building became so incredibly dense that Maya was physically forced to her hands and knees, unable to breathe.
The rusty metal doors of the warehouse were violently blown off their hinges, flying across the room and embedding themselves into the far wall.
Two figures stepped through the dust and the debris.
Aurelia walked in first, her dark sunglasses gone. Her amber eyes were literally glowing with raw, untamed S-Rank coronation magic. Every step she took left a scorched, golden footprint on the concrete.
Selene walked right beside her, her white sundress glowing with a blinding, oppressive holy aura that felt less like salvation and more like divine judgment.
"Oh my," Aurelia said, her voice dripping with lethal, venomous sarcasm. "It seems you students ran into a bit of trouble. How fortunate that we were taking a casual stroll nearby."
Maya was completely paralyzed. She couldn’t even speak. The sheer pressure radiating from the two Goddesses was terrifying. It was the aura of apex predators cornering their prey.
Selene stepped forward, her silver eyes locked entirely on Maya’s hands, which were still gripping Zen’s arm.
"You are touching him," Selene whispered calmly, though the holy cross hovering behind her back was spinning wildly. "Your filthy, unrefined hands are touching my Emperor. Remove them. Now."
Maya let go of Zen as if she had been burned, scrambling backward across the concrete floor in sheer, unadulterated terror.
Zen stood up, stepping between Maya and the two Goddesses. His eyes were cold, flashing with the dangerous indigo light of his suppressed Emperor aura.
"Both of you," Zen said, his voice dangerously low. "Withdraw your auras. Right now."
Aurelia scoffed, crossing her arms, though she slightly reduced her magical output under his gaze. "We were just rescuing the poor commoner, Zen. She clearly can’t handle the pressures of academy life. Perhaps she should drop out."
Selene ignored Maya completely, stepping right up to Zen and reaching out to touch his face.
"You fought a Golem," Selene breathed, her eyes wide with obsession. "You exerted yourself. Let me heal you. Let me take the pain away."
Zen caught Selene’s wrist before she could touch him.
"We are going home," Zen said. He looked at Aurelia, then at Selene. "And when we get there, you two and I are going to have a very long conversation."
Aurelia smiled, a wicked, triumphant smirk spreading across her face. "I look forward to it," she purred.