Humming a soft tune under his breath, Elias stepped through the shattered doorway and into the courtyard, a large travel bag slung over his shoulder.
After finally getting that long-overdue bath and changing into something comfortable, he felt like he could breathe again.
Unfortunately… there hadn't been a mirror anywhere.
Which meant he'd been robbed of the chance to admire his own devastating handsomeness.
Elias clicked his tongue in mild disappointment.
His gaze drifted across the courtyard—and his mood immediately soured.
The place was barely recognizable.
The lawn was gone. What remained was nothing but churned mud and sand, littered with patches of torn grass and debris. The small garden his mother had carefully tended to for years had vanished completely, the flowers and plants swallowed by the chaos that had torn through the yard.
But what really stood out were the footprints.
Dozens of them.
Deep, misshapen impressions stamped across the muddy ground, stretching in crooked paths across the courtyard. Some were too large. Others were twisted in ways that made his skin crawl.
They formed a grotesque pattern across the yard—unnatural and deeply unsettling.
Elias felt a faint chill crawl up his spine.
With a small frown, he looked away.
Instead, his eyes landed on the house.
Or… what was left of it.
The familiar building he had grown up in no longer felt familiar at all.
Every window was shattered. Parts of the walls had been ripped open like paper, exposing the interior. The entire structure leaned slightly to one side, as if a strong gust of wind might finally finish the job and bring the whole thing crashing down.
Elias sighed quietly.
He did feel bad.
He really did.
After all, nearly all of his childhood memories were tied to this place.
And soon enough… it would probably be demolished once the Florian Excavation crew arrived.
However…
"Such a pity," Elias muttered under his breath. "I'm too weak to bring the whole thing down myself."
There was a faint trace of regret in his voice.
After all… what was a lifetime of good memories compared to a single bad one?
One traumatic moment that had nearly destroyed everything he cared about.
Elias stiffened suddenly.
Something had just landed on his shoulders.
Slowly, he turned his head—and found the little gremlin sitting there like she owned the place.
Elyndra lounged comfortably across his shoulders, chewing a piece of bubble gum while lazily blowing a pink bubble.
Pop.
Elias felt a deep wave of resentment.
His poor shoulders were clearly being abused.
Still… he resisted the powerful urge to grab her and fling her into the mud.
After all, he definitely didn't want to get beaten up.
…Wait.
No.
That wasn't it.
He was simply feeling generous today. Yes. That had to be it.
There was absolutely no way a tiny gremlin like her could scare him. Not even a little.
Elyndra turned her head away from the ruined house and looked at him instead.
The corner of her lips curled slightly—almost imperceptibly—into a smug little smile.
Elias's eye twitched.
Ugh.
The urge to fling her away just increased by ten times.
"Fifty Mission Points have been assigned to you for completing the mission," she said casually, chewing another piece of gum.
Elias blinked.
His eyebrow twitched again.
Where the hell did she even get that from?
"So? Is the System Store unlocked now?" Elias asked, excitement creeping into his voice at the thought of all the ridiculous things he might be able to buy with his points.
After all, an all-powerful being like the Silent god had to be loaded, right?
Unfortunately, the same irritating voice quickly shattered that hopeful fantasy.
"No. You're still too poor," Elyndra said with a sigh.
For some reason, the sigh sounded… suspiciously sarcastic.
Almost happy.
A vein throbbed on Elias's forehead.
"You enjoy this, don't you?" he muttered. "Any chance to piss me off and your tiny little toes probably start wriggling in excitement, you little—"
"Humph."
Elyndra rolled her eyes with an exaggerated scoff. "Who told you to have such an infuriating face?"
Elias ground his teeth.
"That's it. I've figured it out. You're a virus. A sarcastic, irritating, uncontrollable virus that hijacked my system. There's no way something created to help me could hate me this much."
"Hey!" she snapped, sitting up slightly on his shoulders.
"That's not true, okay? This queen doesn't hate you."
She blew another bubble.
Pop.
"She merely disdains your existence… there's a difference."
The sharp sound popped right beside Elias's ear, making him flinch slightly. Having her perched on his shoulders was suddenly starting to feel like torture.
However his eyebrow couldn't help but shoot upwards slightly.
He honestly couldn't remember doing anything that would make the little gremlin hate him this much.
Thinking about it…
She had been like this ever since she popped straight out of his interface.
Was there actually a reason for her attitude… or was this just the legendary hate at first sight?
Elias didn't care that much.
But if this tiny gremlin was going to be stuck with him for a very long time, then it was probably better for them to settle things early.
There was no way he could survive every single day with this little devil pushing him to the edge like this.
He was far too young to be this angry all the time.
Elyndra must have read his thoughts, because she suddenly shook her head and spoke with surprising seriousness—like she was reciting some kind of personal motto.
"All cheating scums are despicable."
Elias frowned.
"Hey, that's not right. I'm the one who got cheated on, remember?" he protested. "Miya was the one who ran off with that bastard."
"Such a dunce," Elyndra replied flatly, rolling her eyes at him in quiet dismissal, the look alone somehow making him feel like the biggest idiot alive.
Elias opened his mouth to argue—
Then his ears caught something.
The faint, distant sound of a vehicle approaching along the road leading to the house.
Earlier that day, all the abandoned cars that had been clogging the roadside had been cleared away by the Florian Excavation Team—a group of excavators established by the Harmonic Council to handle cleanup after monster invasions.
Because of them, the road was finally clear again.
Which meant vehicles could pass through.
Elias turned away from the battered house and walked toward the sidewalk beside the road, ignoring the tiny gremlin still sitting on his shoulders like she owned the place—chewing and popping her irritating gum.
A few minutes earlier, he had contacted the Mechanics Car Transport Line, one of the most popular online ride services people used to get around the city.
Honestly, he hadn't expected it to work.
Considering everything that had happened, he assumed most of the drivers were probably… well, dead.
But surprisingly, someone had picked up.
An old man.
An extremely talkative old man.
Getting him to stop rambling long enough to confirm the booking had been a battle on its own.
Still, in the end, Elias managed to secure a ride to the train station at the outskirts of town.
From there, he would take the rail line heading toward Vertnar Moor.
Honestly, he was already starting to miss Lizzy, and it was getting harder to keep himself together.
But that wasn't even the worst part.
The ride had cost him fifty bucks.
Fifty!
For a trip that should have been fifteen Arvon Dollars at most. That was daylight robbery!
Of course, after trying several other transport lines and finding that none of them went through, Elias had no choice but to crawl back to the greedy old hoot who was apparently the only driver still alive.
That didn't mean he wasn't resentful.
After scraping together every bit of savings he could find at home—and the small amount of cash he had… ahem… picked up from a few other houses—Elias only had about one thousand five hundred Arvon Dollars left.
So fifty Dollars wasn't exactly the kind of money you wanted to throw away on a scam ride.
Elias was pulled out of his thoughts when a sleek blue car rolled to a stop right in front of him.
The front window slid down, revealing a grinning old man whose teeth were displayed far too proudly.
"Huh… you're quite a stunner, kid," the man said, squinting at him. "Even I'm getting a little mesmerized here, and I'm a man."
Elias rolled his eyes.
He also quietly noticed something else—the man didn't seem to see Elyndra at all, even though she was still sitting comfortably on his shoulders.
Interesting.
Shrugging it off, Elias walked to the other side of the car, opened the door, and slid into the seat.
"You talk too innocently for a thief, old man," Elias replied, glancing at the still-grinning bastard. "You might want to let people see a bit of your true nature—"
He suddenly stopped.
A dull throb pulsed through his head.
Elias sighed and turned away, staring out at the road ahead as the car slowly began to move.
"Hey now, stop slandering this old sack of bones," the driver protested, still smiling as he shifted the gear. "Didn't your parents teach you to respect your elders, huh kid?"
His grin widened.
"Back in my day, there were proper etiquettes every child learned while growing up. So I'll do you a favor and teach you a little about them."
He pointed a finger dramatically.
"So listen carefully, lad."
Elias felt his face slowly turning red.
Like hell he wanted to listen.
There was nothing in the world he wanted more right now than for this man to stop talking.
Unfortunately, there was nothing he could do except sit there and endure the torture of that infuriating voice.
"We call it the Three Diamond Rules," the old man declared proudly.
"When an elder farts, the young ones must clap their hands in applause. And when the old one—"
The car sped through the empty streets of Arvenelle, his voice continuing endlessly in the background.
Outside the window, the town passed by like the aftermath of a nightmare.
Collapsed buildings lined the roads. Walls had been torn apart, roofs caved in, and entire streets were littered with the remains of what used to be homes and shops. Here and there, the skeletal frames of overturned structures leaned dangerously against each other.
The whole town looked like it had been swallowed by destruction and then carelessly spat back out.
And yet…
The car kept moving forward.
Slowly leaving Arvenelle behind.
Elias leaned back in his seat, listening to the old man's ridiculous lecture while staring out at the ruined city fading into the distance.
Behind him was everything he had ever known.
Ahead of him…
Something new.
And just like that—
A new chapter in Elias's life had begun.