King Theron's trust was a thin, pragmatic thread. He did not know what Kaito was—only that he alone could fix the corruption. The King's spies knew a terrifying, continent-shaking power resided in the Deadly Frost Continent, a "slime thing" whose aura was the suspected source of the blight mutating the land. They did not, and could not, connect that primal horror to the quiet young man before them. To do so would unravel everything.
"The enemy is refining their weapons," the King said, pointing to the purple pins. "The early mutations were crude. The Heart of the Abyss was a strategic leap. They are learning. The next attack will be more potent, more targeted."
He turned to Kaito. "You are the only counter-weapon we have that can keep pace. But using you is a risk. Every time you cleanse a site, you may be giving them more data."
"Then we don't wait for their next attack," Kaito said, the logic clear. "We find where they are building them."
The King nodded slowly. "The corruption must have a primary source, a forge. We believe it is within the Blightscar, a corrupted zone in the Deadly Frost Continent that has festered for centuries. Long before your… arrival." He carefully avoided any implication. "It is where our 'slime thing' is theorized to dwell. Reconnaissance parties do not return. But you… your nature might allow you to penetrate it."
He was proposing a direct assault on the very heart of the corruption, the place everyone believed birthed the plague. The place they thought housed the true monster. Kaito would be hunting his own shadow, in the den of the beast everyone feared was him.
"It is the most dangerous assignment I could give," the King said, his eyes grave. "You may be walking into a fortress designed to exploit the very power you wield. But if you can find the forge, find the intelligence behind this… you could end the shadow war in a single stroke."
It was a monumental gamble. The King was sending his one cure directly into the heart of the disease, hoping the cure was stronger than the poison. He was betting Kaito's mysterious power against an enemy that had been patiently crafting weapons for a century.
"I'll go," Kaito said. There was no hesitation. The path was clear. To stop reacting, he had to find the source. Even if the source was a phantom built in his own image.
"Iris will guide you to the edge of the Blightscar," the King said. "Beyond that, no one can help you." He finally voiced the unspoken core of his gamble. "Prove you are the solution, Warden. Not merely a more sophisticated part of the problem."
The mission was set. Kaito would venture into the one place in the world everyone believed was the root of all the sickness—the Blightscar, the lair of the legendary "slime thing." He would hunt for an enemy architect, all while knowing that in the eyes of the kingdom, he was volunteering to walk into the mouth of the very monster he was suspected to be.
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CH78.5 Into the Mirror
The plan was set with a chilling, surgical simplicity. Kaito would go to the one place no sane force would ever penetrate: the Blightscar, the festering heart of the Deadly Frost Continent, the presumed lair of the primordial "slime thing" blamed for all the world's sickness.
Iris was uncharacteristically quiet as they left the map room and descended into the Citadel's preparation levels. The King's final words—Prove you are the solution—had stripped the adventure from the mission, leaving only its stark, terrifying geometry.
They entered an armory, not of weapons, but of survival. An older quartermaster with a face like wrinkled leather laid out gear on a table: a cloak woven from the silk of phase-spiders, designed to diffuse magical signatures; boots enchanted for silent movement across any terrain; and a small, crystalline orb that was a one-time telepathic flare to signal Iris at the Blightscar's edge.
"Standard infiltration kit for suicidal missions," the quartermaster grunted, his voice like grinding stones. He looked at Kaito with the professional disdain of a man who had outfitted many who never returned. "Won't help you in there, but it makes the accountants feel better."
Iris finally spoke, her voice soft, devoid of its usual music. "The Blightscar isn't just a place. It's an... idea given form. The mana there doesn't flow; it gnaws. It will try to read you, to find what you are and make a copy of it that hates itself." Her heterochromatic eyes held his, deadly serious. "Your power... it might be the only thing that can walk in there without being instantly twisted. Or it might be the one thing it's been waiting for."
She was warning him that he might not be invading an enemy fortress, but stepping into a distorted mirror. The "slime thing" the Kingdom feared was a phantom, a story they told to explain the corruption. But in the Blightscar, that story might have taken on a life of its own, shaped by a century of fear and malignant magic into something that mirrored the very power he contained.
He took the gear, the materials feeling flimsy against the scale of what he was. The mission was no longer a hunt. It was a test of identity. He was to walk into the heart of the world's nightmare, a nightmare built on a distorted reflection of himself, and determine which of them was real.
As they left the armory to begin the long journey north, back towards the continent of his birth, Kaito understood the King's true calculation. This was not just about finding an enemy architect. It was the ultimate verification. If Kaito could walk into the Blightscar—the source of the story of the world-ending slime—and return unchanged, he would prove he was not the monster. He would prove he was something else entirely.
And if he couldn't... then the Kingdom would have sent the disease directly into its own heart.