Roars, screams, and dying wails—tonight, in Orario, those were the city's constant background noise.
For ordinary people, hearing that kind of sound for even a few minutes was enough to poison sleep with nightmares. For those who actually stepped onto the battlefield, it could carve trauma into the bones.
But for people who had lived inside violence for too long, the silence was worse. If they couldn't hear suffering, they couldn't fall asleep.
At the very least, that was how the dark faction justified itself. They launched this invasion to drown the world in those final, broken cries—so they could sleep well, sleep sweetly, wrapped in the music they loved.
By the look of things, however, the dark faction was providing more screams than it was receiving.
In a fight where life and death were on the line, very few died quietly.
Especially not when plenty of people couldn't keep their mouths shut even in a simple five-on-five brawl, let alone a war.
That was why the human world was filled with noise.
And yet, in this noisy Orario, there existed one place that felt utterly out of place.
A true ruin—unlike the other districts still locked in desperate stalemates.
And above all, it was quiet.
No adventurers dared approach. The dark faction didn't dare send anyone either.
Alfia stood there alone, waiting for Shadow to keep his appointment.
Even the two spells that had just shaken Orario to its foundations only made her tilt her head slightly.
This was the same ground where Shadow and Chaldo had fought.
It was also the place Shadow had named for her.
Time passed. The quiet held.
Then, at last, Alfia spoke—softly, as if she were continuing a conversation that had never started.
"You're always a step late. Are you the type who makes ladies wait on dates, too?"
In her eyes, the black figure seemed to fuse with the night itself.
He called himself Shadow.
It was an annoyingly accurate name.
"Or were you standing there the whole time, watching me without showing yourself? That's a truly vile hobby."
Alfia remembered their first encounter.
She and Chaldo had been together, and neither of them had sensed him approaching.
Maybe he had been there even before the war began—standing somewhere close, observing—only revealing himself when he chose.
Shadow's slime armor condensed into a sword. For once, his expression turned genuinely serious.
"I, Shadow, never wish to make anyone wait. But fate is detestable and twisted. I only just arrived."
He had guessed she was being crushed by a curse, unable to fight at full strength.
What he hadn't expected—what he truly hadn't expected—was how much her power surged once that curse was temporarily suppressed.
Since his rise to Level 4, even Orario's strongest had stopped being able to pressure him.
Now he was Level 6.
And this woman—this woman made him feel something he hadn't felt in a long time.
Not fear.
But pressure.
A thin edge of it. A real edge.
Alfia, meanwhile, felt something far more vivid.
That cold, suffocating dread—like death draping itself over her shoulders—was painfully familiar.
The last time she'd felt it was against the world-ending Black Dragon.
"If anyone should be in a bad mood," she snapped, "it's me—the one who's been waiting."
The quiet shattered.
Small talk ended.
"Gospel."
The chant was barely more than a breath.
And the attack was worse than silence: an invisible wave of sound, faster than thought.
It tore across the ruin and detonated on a distant structure, turning stone into dust in the blink of an eye.
Alfia's eyes narrowed.
"He vanished?"
Shadow's presence disappeared from her vision entirely.
A heartbeat later, she whipped around.
A hard metallic crack rang out.
She barely managed to block two slashes—barely—and then Shadow dissolved into darkness again.
This time she didn't hesitate.
She released her senses to the maximum.
Another crack.
Then another.
Then several in rapid succession.
Shadow reappeared behind her again.
And the longer the exchange continued, the more Alfia's spine chilled.
From her perspective, he moved from in front of her to behind her in a single instant.
It didn't resemble high-speed movement.
It resembled teleportation.
But there was no magic circle. No casting. No pattern of a spell.
And Alfia had never heard of any magic capable of instantaneous relocation like that.
Which left only one conclusion:
He was simply moving.
His speed was just so monstrous that her perception couldn't follow it.
That alone would earn him a title like "Shadowflash."
After three swift cuts, Shadow pulled back, blade raised loosely, voice calm.
"Your strength is a bit lacking," he said, almost casually, "but your technique is better than Chaldo's."
It wasn't an insult so much as a measured assessment.
Her close-quarters ability didn't match Chaldo's—much less his own.
But she was clearly a mage.
A mage enduring multiple direct slashes without losing her grip, without losing posture, without losing control—
That was worth praising.
Unfortunately, praise was the one thing Alfia had never lacked.
All she'd heard since childhood were variations of the same word:
Monster.
"Gospel."
She cast again.
The initial exchange had already proven it: the strike that could overwhelm Riveria and crush Gareth wasn't going to land on Shadow.
But that didn't make it useless.
And it wasn't because she was blindly predicting his position either.
"Detonation."
A second chant—short, sharp—and the sound attack, still traveling, exploded mid-flight.
This place was already a ruin. The blast didn't matter to the buildings.
But if any living body had been caught in that detonation, it would have been shredded.
Even a Level 5 built for defense would bleed from every opening.
Yet Shadow did something that made her eyes narrow.
He stopped.
Not slowed—stopped.
Then he changed direction with a motion so abrupt it looked like physics itself had been rewritten.
He slipped out of the blast radius as if he'd seen the future.
"You didn't think I can't control my own speed, did you?"
It was like a goalkeeper facing a penalty kick.
Some guessed and dove on instinct.
Others waited until they saw the shooter's motion, then reacted—late, but accurately.
Shadow was the second kind.
And he was fast enough to make "late" meaningless.
He wasn't a lumbering warship that needed a mile of ocean to turn.
Alfia had anticipated that too.
Because the moment he spoke—too confident, too close—he was exactly where she needed him.
Right in front of her.
"Soul's Stillness."
This time, it wasn't a damage spell.
It was a net.
A prediction aimed at the precise point he would occupy when he finished his movement.
"Oh?"
Shadow's tone shifted with genuine curiosity.
He stopped—deliberately.
It wasn't that he didn't understand danger.
It was that he wanted to see what she was doing.
Only then did the effect bloom.
The air around him thickened.
His magic circulation turned sluggish, sticky, as if his mana were being pulled through mud.
He raised a hand, studying the faint resistance, and his expression sharpened.
"My mana… won't flow properly?"
Throughout the night's fighting, Shadow hadn't used magic once in open combat.
So on paper, a mage-suppression field should have been unnecessary.
But Alfia had noticed something most people would miss:
Shadow had been using magic the entire time.
Just not in a way that looked like magic.
And shutting it down wouldn't necessarily win her the battle.
Still, she cast it for one reason that mattered more than advantage.
In her gaze, the slime armor began to dissolve.
First the trousers.
Then the upper body.
Finally, the mask that hid his face.
Alfia's voice was quiet, almost flat.
"Let me see your face."
....
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