The brief, idyllic peace of their "date" was shattered the next morning at the guild. A crier stood on a central podium, his face pale as he read from a royal scroll.
"By order of the Crown! All gates of Astraea are sealed! No one in or out! The investigation into the tragic death of the young prince demands it! Furthermore, all adventurers of B-rank and above are summoned to the royal castle immediately for a mandatory briefing!"
A wave of murmurs and worried curses rippled through the hall. Sarah and Kenta exchanged a grim look. The prince's death. The name Nox, whispered by the guards in the alley, now hung over the city like a shroud. Their path out was blocked, and they were being pulled directly into the heart of the storm.
The throne room of Astraea's castle was a cavern of marble and grief. King Theron, a man whose regal bearing was crumbling under the weight of a father's agony, paced before his throne. His face was a mask of fury and despair.
"He was a child!" the King roared, his voice echoing off the high ceilings, making the assembled adventurers flinch. "Murdered in my own city! Under your very noses! You, who claim to be the strongest, the most vigilant! And you have nothing!? I want this monster found! I want its head! I will burn this continent to the ground if I have to!"
His tirade was a raw, unfiltered torrent of pain. The adventurers, a mix of grizzled veterans and proud elites, stood in uncomfortable silence, absorbing the royal wrath.
It was in this moment of heightened tension, as the King turned to gesture wildly at a map of the city, that a flicker of wrongness occurred. Two of the royal guards flanking the dais, their eyes glazed over with a faint purple sheen, moved with unnatural synchronization. They leveled their ceremonial spears, not at an intruder, but at the King's exposed back.
The action was too fast for most to register. But for Kenta, his perception honed to a razor's edge, the world slowed to a crawl. He didn't draw his swords. There was no time. He became a blur of motion, crossing the distance between the ranks of adventurers and the dais in the space of a single, stolen heartbeat. As the spear tips were a mere inch from the King's spine, Kenta's hands shot out, seizing the wooden shafts. With a sickening crack that echoed louder than the King's shouts, he snapped them barehanded, the corrupted guards stumbling back from the force.
Chaos erupted.
The purple sheen spread through the throne room like a plague. Guards turned on each other, their faces slack, their attacks mindless and brutal. Even a handful of adventurers, their eyes glazing over, drew their weapons on their comrades. The throne room became a slaughterhouse of the mind-controlled.
"Sarah!" Kenta yelled, drawing his blades, a whirlwind of silver and dark energy as he began to disarm and disable the controlled guards without killing them.
Sarah was already moving. Her hands wove through the air, and a shimmering, barely visible dome of compressed wind erupted around the small cluster of uncorrupted nobles and adventurers near the entrance. "Get inside!" she commanded. Arrows and spells from the controlled attackers slammed into the barrier, rippling its surface but failing to break through. She stood at its edge, a bastion of calm control, her focus absolute as she maintained the life-saving dome.
And then, the day turned to night.
It wasn't a natural sunset. The light from the high windows was snuffed out in an instant, plunging the chaotic throne room into an oppressive, starless gloom. From the deepest shadows in the corner of the hall, a figure stepped forth. It was the woman from the alley, Nox. She moved with an unhurried, sensual grace, her starlit eyes scanning the carnage with detached amusement.
"Oh, I do so love being a woman," she purred, her voice a silken thread through the cacophony of battle. "The forms are so much more… expressive." Her gaze drifted across the room, landing on Kenta as he fluidly disarmed two more guards. A slow, appreciative smile graced her lips. "And you, my dear boy, are quite the handsome little storm. So fierce. Under different circumstances, I might be tempted to play. But alas," she sighed theatrically, "business before pleasure."
She held up the moonstone pendant she had stolen. With a whisper of ancient words, she crushed it in her palm. Instead of turning to dust, the fragments swirled in a vortex of purple energy and reformed in her hand, not as a pendant, but as a jagged, obsidian key that pulsed with malevolent power.
She ignored the ongoing battle and glided towards the Queen, who was huddled and sobbing beside the stunned King. Nox placed a gentle, chilling hand under the Queen's chin, forcing her to look up.
"Now, Your Majesty," Nox cooed, her voice hypnotic. "Let's have a little chat. Where is the container for the God's Key? The lock that only this," she held up the obsidian key, "can open? Where is the Sanctum of Eternity?"
Terrified and broken, the Queen stammered a location, a secret known only to the royal line.
Nox's smile widened. "Thank you for your cooperation."
She released the Queen's chin and made a casual, flicking gesture with her wrist.
A wave of absolute, silent obliteration erupted from her. It was not fire or force. It was pure, conceptual erasure. The controlled guards, the loyal guards, the nobles, the King, the Queen—every living soul in the throne room, save for two, simply dissolved into motes of fading light, their existances wiped away without a sound. The sudden, absolute silence was more deafening than the preceding battle.
Nox blinked, looking slightly surprised as she looked at Kenta and Sarah, the only two left standing amidst the eerie calm. "Oh? You two survived? How… interesting."
The sight of the utter, effortless annihilation, the vaporization of hundreds of people, triggered something primal in Sarah. A scream of pure, unadulterated rage tore from her throat. Her body erupted with ki, the stone floor cracking beneath her feet. She became a blur of terrifying speed and power, her fist aimed directly at Nox's face, fueled by a grief and fury she had never known.
Nox didn't move. She didn't even flinch. She simply raised a single, delicate finger.
THOOM.
Sarah's world-ending punch met that single fingertip. The impact was not a sound, but a vacuum of force that shattered the remaining windows. Sarah felt every ounce of her UR-ranked power negated, her arm going numb to the shoulder. She was thrown back, skidding across the floor, her body screaming in protest.
As she lay there, gasping, the System's cold, clinical text flashed in her vision, a verdict of absolute, terrifying finality.
[ANALYSIS: Target Designation - 'Nox'.]
[ENERGY SIGNATURE: LR-RANK.]
[THREAT LEVEL: CATASTROPHIC.]
[RECOMMENDATION: IMMEDIATE AND TOTAL DISENGAGEMENT. VICTORY IS STATISTICALLY IMPOSSIBLE.]
Nox looked down at her, a flicker of amusement in her starlit eyes. "Such spirit. A pity." She then turned, the shadows coalescing around her. "Until we meet again, my handsome storm, and you, my fiery little spark. Do try to stay alive. The game is just getting interesting."
With that, she dissolved into the darkness, leaving Kenta and Sarah alone in the throne room of a dead kingdom, surrounded by the ghostly silence of a massacre, the weight of an LR-ranked enemy pressing down on them for the first time. The storm they had chosen to walk into had just revealed itself to be a hurricane.