My gaze drifted down to September, who was still curled up beside me, her tiny hand clutching the edge of my blanket.
Carefully, I slipped my arms under her and lifted her off me. She mumbled something in her sleep and I froze for a moment, but then she quieted, resting her head against my chest. Gently, I set her down on the bed, pulled the blanket over her, and brushed a strand of hair away from her face.
"Sleep easy, Septi. Big brother's got work to do."
I straightened, stretching a bit as I stepped back from the bed. My whole body still felt stiff from what happened in Nairobi. Even with all the regeneration factor I have, I could still feel the dull throb under my skin and phantom ache of that overloaded Concept Flux tearing through me.
But that didn't matter. I had a plan now. Summer was coming and I couldn't waste another damn day.
The plan was simple. At least, on paper it was.
Step one, find the Azure Sword. Step two, gather the ingredients for the Fluve Syndrome cure. Step three, complete the Six Quests tied to the hidden Dominia progression. All that… in about a year or two.
Yeah, sure.
Finding the Azure Sword was the real start. It wasn't just some legendary blade. It was the artifact tied to the core focus of the first act of the University Arc: Azure Sword Shining in Moonlight. The damn thing wasn't even supposed to appear until the final days of Act I, and I had no idea how far the divergence from the original storyline had gone since my transmigration.
Still, I knew one thing. I had until the end of the first act to prepare everything. The University Arc has eight acts. Each one lasts about four and a half months, which meant the whole Arc spanned around three years in in-world time. The first act began on February 14th on Valentine's Day and when I transmigrated. That meant, by normal time flow, the first act would end around June 30th.
That gave me 22 days before the first act concluded, the narrative shifted, and the summer transition events began. By then, I have to be ready.
I walked toward the window, pulling the curtains aside. Somewhere deep within this estate, hidden beneath layers of enchantments, the Black Bleeding Rose grew. That flower was my ticket to rewriting fate.
No one else could make the cure without it. Not any Outer, not Radellei, not even the House of Germania with all their research. The Bleeding Rose was the catalyst that allowed the other ingredients to bind. The House of Argemenes had possessed it for centuries. They have been guarding the very cure to the world's deadliest Flux disease without ever knowing it.
The timeline clicked in my head like a puzzle assembling itself.
When summer begins, I'll make my move. I'd head to the Rameses estate, hand Radellei the Bleeding Rose myself, and give her the formula I already knew from the game. It would rewrite everything.
She wouldn't die. Her sisters wouldn't die and the tragedy of the Rameses wouldn't happen. And maybe my father could live to see the world healed from the thing that was killing him from the inside.
I rubbed the back of my neck and exhaled again. The cure, though… it wouldn't be easy.
The ingredients were a nightmare to find, literally. Most of them grew in Fluve Fields, areas completely warped by l corrupted Xana. Those were places where even a Concept Fluxer could die if they stayed too long. The environment was unstable, filled with ruptured flora that fed on energy instead of soil.
The Bleeding Rose was the only stable specimen among them. Everything else like the the Cyan Alabaster Bloom, the Netherine Fern, the Shardmoss, and the Aurelic Resin had to be harvested inside specific Fluve Fields. And even if I knew that, it still meant I'd have to venture into places that could melt my body from overexposure if I stayed too long.
I chuckled quietly to myself, dragging my fingers through my hair. It was getting long again, those streaks of deep red fading into black. My reflection in the window glass looked… tired. I stood in front of the full-body mirror for a good minute, just staring.
My fingers brushed over the bandages that wrapped around my torso, my arms and even parts of my neck.
"Alright, let's see what we're dealing with."
I began unwrapping the bandages one by one, the sound of the cloth unraveling in the silence. It felt… weird doing this. It's like hie protagonists do it in the movies. The last strip fell to the floor.
What I saw wasn't what I expected.
There were no open wounds or shattered skin or even crystal shards embedded in my flesh anymore. But the pain was still there, crawling under my skin. I rolled my shoulders, wincing.
"Great. Just great. Fixed body, broken soul."
But I didn't have time to complain. I had exactly three weeks until June 30th, and that date wasn't just a ticking clock. It was the day the Azure Sword's second and third clues appeared.
They were two locations in one day. They were in The Leaning Tower of Pisa and the Alps. And if the system still followed the game's rules, those two clues were mandatory. Miss one, and the Azure Sword would shift its timeline, disappearing until at an unknown time. Which meant I had to hit both in a single day.
That also meant I needed to start my move by June 29th, a full day ahead of schedule before the Outers started moving in droves.
Because they would.
Any Outer who played Masquerade of Dreams Shattered knew how big the Azure Sword event was. It wasn't just a quest. It was one of the biggest game-defining relic hunts in the early storyline. Players would camp, ambush, form alliances, backstab and even slaughter each other for a single hint of where the clues appeared. They would ambush Thales and I to get the first clue.
So, yeah. I needed a damn good plan.
I turned from the mirror and walked across my room or rather, my dressing room that was an entire section just for clothing. I pushed open the wardrobe and was greeted by rows of suits, uniforms, ceremonial garb, and combat gear. The Argemenes crest glimmered on all of them. But I didn't want any of that right now. I wasn't going to another high-class meeting or family trial.
I just needed to be me.
I grabbed a plain black T-shirt from one of the racks. It was the kind of thing Phasnovterich probably never wore in his life. It felt almost rebellious just to put it on. I paired it with baggy gray pants I found buried under a pile of coats.
When I caught my reflection again, I snorted.
"Look at that. The heir of the House of Argemenes is dressed like a broke high school dropout."
It felt… good. Grounding, even.
I slipped my hands into my pockets and walked toward the door. The moment I opened it, the faint hum of the estate's Flux field filled the air. It's a barrier woven through every hallway, every wall and every breath of this house. But as I walked down the hall, I realized something.
I had been in Altera Earth for months, lived through battles, fought Fluviums and trained and yet, there was one thing I had never done once since arriving in Altera Earth.
"Guess it's about time."
I was going to make a maid assassin group.
If I was in a game and people would see me, I could already imagine their reactions: "Phaser, what the hell is wrong with you? You just fought off crystal decay and you're making maids?"
But this wasn't about aesthetics — okay, maybe a little about aesthetics — but mostly strategy.
In the MoDS world, the Argemenes estate had some of the most talented Fluxers alive. Many were specialists in defensive and combat, and half of them worked as servants, attendants, or estate guards. The Argemenes had this weird philosophy about harmony between servitude and supremacy: "To serve is to know order," as my mother would say.
So yeah, they had plenty of maids but none of them were trained for the kind of world I was walking into.
That was going to change.
If I was going to hunt relics, protect the cure ingredients, and navigate Outers who would kill for a single advantage, I needed people who could fight silently. I needed people who could move through the night, kill in a blink, and vanish like ghosts. And who better to build such a force than the heir of Argemenes himself?
The thought made me grin as I walked down the vast hallways. The concept had come to me earlier, back when I was lying in bed, unable to sleep. I need to have a maid assassin corps, loyal only to me. They'll serve tea with one hand and slit throats with the other.
I even had a name for them.
The Null Handmaidens.