But as she led her party forward, her mind kept drifting back to the lone figure walking into the shadows. The rivalry she didn't even know she was in had already begun. She would crush him in the rankings and prove him wrong. She had to. Because the alternative...that his strange, illogical path was somehow superior to hers...was a thought she couldn't bear.
The silence of the DeathWood pressed down like a living thing. When Alvian stepped past the boundary, the noise from the wolves vanished...cut clean, as if swallowed. The air turned syrup-thick, damp, and sour with rot. It clung to him, seeped into his clothes. Trees loomed, warped and brittle, their branches crooked like bone fingers scratching at a bruised sky. Even the ground betrayed him, swallowing sound until his steps no longer existed.
This wasn't a forest. It was a corpse pretending to breathe.
He moved with that unnerving stillness again...more machine than man. Not courage, not instinct. Memory. He passed a thorn patch alive with whispering motion...Shadow Weavers. Level 8. A single tremor in the wrong patch of soil, and he'd be paralyzed before he could blink. He walked ten feet away, ghost-silent, his boots finding the safe earth like they'd done it a hundred times.
Farther ahead, a pool the color of burned oil glistened faintly. The Mirefiend slept beneath. Level 9. It hunted with eyes, not sound. He ducked behind the trunk of a petrified oak and moved through its blind spot, vanishing from its world entirely.
To anyone watching, his progress would look absurd...one impossible dodge after another, pure luck. To him, it was old choreography, rehearsed through death and repetition. He felt nothing but the steady hum of purpose.
Then, the trees broke apart.
A clearing—round, perfect, lifeless. The grass was ash-grey, the ring of silver-barked trees drooping as if weeping. At its heart stood a giant, an Ironwood, its bark gleaming like old armor, its branches raised toward the sky in some silent plea. It should have been eternal.
But it was dying.
Something black and sharp was buried in its chest...a crystal heart, pulsing faintly, veins of corruption snaking through its body like ink in water. The air shivered around it, heavy with pain that wasn't quite sound. The Heart of the Grove had become its own executioner.
This was the source of Andre's grief, the cancer that had killed his daughter and was now killing this forest. In his past life, entire guilds had thrown themselves at this entity. They had tried to shatter the crystalline heart with spells and swords, only for their attacks to be absorbed and their own life force to be drained. They were trying to fight a ghost with hammers.
Alvian knew the truth. The Heart was bound by an ancient, powerful seal. It could not attack. It could not move. But the seal was a double-edged sword. It also could not defend itself from the corruption that now infested it. It was a prisoner in its own body, a helpless god forced to watch its domain wither and die.
He walked to the edge of the clearing and stopped. He didn't draw a weapon. He didn't prepare a spell. He simply spoke, his voice cutting through the dead silence.
"A guardian, they called you. The soul of the Glimmerwood, a wellspring of life."
A blast of rage tore through his skull, a psychic roar so raw it made the air tremble. The sound wasn't heard—it was felt, gnawing at the edges of thought.
[WHO DARES TRESPASS UPON MY TORMENT? BEGONE, FILTH!]
Alvian stood still. Not a flinch. Not even a blink. His mind had already been shattered once before; there was little left for fear to cling to.
"I see no guardian here," he said, voice low and sharp. "Only a chained relic pretending to be divine. You swore to defend this grove, yet you've rotted with it. Every dying branch screams your name. Every beast twisted by the blight—your doing. Protector? No. You're the infection."
[SILENCE! YOU KNOW NOTHING OF MY PAIN! I AM BOUND! SEALED! THIS CORRUPTION IS A VILE PARASITE, AN AFFLICTION I CANNOT FIGHT!]
"An excuse," Alvian's tone was cold, clinical, like a surgeon dissecting a patient. "The pact gives you the authority to nurture life within these woods. And you do. You are nurturing the corruption. It feeds on your power, grows stronger with your energy. You have become a living battery for the very thing that is killing you. Tell me, great spirit, how does it feel to be a farm animal for the darkness?"
Another wave of mental force, stronger this time, crashed against him. It was filled with millennia of frustration and despair. Alvian stood his ground, an immovable object against a storm of emotion.
"Years ago," he continued, his voice dropping slightly, "a little girl used to pick Moon Petals at the edge of your woods. She sang to them. Her father, a knight, would watch from a distance. The blight that took her… it was just the first symptom of your disease. Her death was on your hands."
[LIAR! I DID NOT… I COULD NOT…]
The spirit's voice wavered, its fury cracking under the weight of something older...grief, maybe. A thousand years of regret pressed through that trembling echo. Alvian heard it, and smiled faintly. The wound was open now. He wasn't mocking a guardian; he was twisting the knife of memory.
"You failed them once. You're failing still," he said, his tone calm, almost pitying. "A king of decay, ruling ghosts and ash. You feel every death, every cry, but you do nothing. The cage isn't around this grove...it's in you. Power turned to rust. Will turned to dust."
He moved forward, slow, unhurried, the dead grass whispering beneath his boots.
"So, I will offer you a choice. Continue to be a wellspring for this darkness, and I will leave you to your pathetic, slow death. Or, prove me wrong. Prove that you are more than a festering wound. The pact prevents you from harming intruders, but it does not prevent you from aiding one who seeks to cleanse the Grove. Withdraw your power. Relinquish your control. Let me face the source of this corruption for you."
A long, agonizing silence descended upon the clearing. The pulsating black crystal seemed to throb with indecision. Alvian had laid a perfect logical trap. To refuse him was to admit weakness and accept its fate as a tool of the corruption. To accept was to place its trust in a mortal insect, a desperate gamble.
Finally, after what felt like an eternity, the psychic voice returned, stripped of its rage, leaving only a bone-deep weariness.
[THE CORRUPTION… ITS SOURCE… LIES BEYOND THE SEAL. IT IS NOT OF ME, BUT UPON ME. I… I CANNOT DEFEAT IT. BUT PERHAPS… YOU ARE RIGHT. A GUARDIAN WHO CANNOT GUARD IS NOTHING.]
The black veins covering the Ironwood began to recede. The oppressive, deathly aura in the clearing lessened, replaced by a faint, clean scent of fresh earth. The spirit wasn't breaking the seal, but it was actively suppressing its corrupted energy, granting Alvian a window.
A series of golden notifications exploded in Alvian's vision.
[Ding! You have exploited a logical flaw in the 'Ancient Pact of the Grove Guardian'!]
[You have forced the [Heart of the Grove] to relent!]
[Quest Objective: [Investigate the source of the unnatural silence] - COMPLETE!]
[Calculating Performance… Result: PERFECT!]
[You have been awarded 50,000 Examination Points!]
[Your reputation with [Overlords Academy Faculty] has greatly increased!]
Before he could even register the flood of points filling his interface, space beside him warped. A figure stepped out of the shimmer...Andre. Gone was the ragged disguise of a groundskeeper; in its place gleamed polished armor, silver and solemn. His expression was caught between awe and disbelief.
"By the Founders…" he murmured, eyes fixed on the retreating haze. "All this time, we blamed the Heart. Thought it was the rot itself. But you… you spoke to it. No blade, no spell...just words. I've never witnessed anything like that."
He turned slowly, studying Alvian as though seeing him for the first time. "You didn't just pass my trial. You broke its shape. You revealed what the Academy has chased in the dark for ten long years. Points won't measure that."
Andre lifted his hand. The air around it rippled, pulling form from shadow...a tome stitched with silver, bound in whispering dark. Power leaked from it like cold breath.
"As per the reward, a high-grade skill tome. Your performance has earned you the absolute best I have to offer. May it serve you well, anomaly."
Alvian took the book. Its cover was cold to the touch.
┏━━━━━[ Skill Tome Acquired ]━━━━━┓
│ Name: [Shadow Weave]
│ Rank: Legendary
│ Type: Active Skill
│
│ Description: A forbidden art that weaves the user's presence into the fabric of the
│ shadows themselves. Grants the user a state of perfect invisibility. In this state, the
│ user is undetectable by sight, sound, or magical aura. The invisibility is not broken
│ by movement or spell-casting.
│
│ Duration: 30 Seconds
│ Cooldown: 10 Minutes
│
│ Requirement: Learn Now?
┗━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┛
A Legendary skill. The kind players spent lifetimes chasing, the kind that defined monsters in human form. This was the spine of what he would become...silent, unseen, absolute. More than luck. Almost unfair.
"Learn." The word left his mouth before thought caught up.