The Noct Vale Highlands lay within the Western Domain.
One of the five Death Zones of the world.
A place where maps grew unreliable and time forgot how to behave.
And yes, I was going there for a "vacation".
The thought surfaced the moment the hovering train crossed the outer boundary of the Western Domain. The sky dulled first, its blue thinning into something pale and distant. Then the mountains rose, not dramatically, not majestically, but inevitably, like a decision already made.
The cabin was quiet.
Not the comforting kind of quiet.
The kind that made sound feel inappropriate.
I sat back in my seat, fingers tightening unconsciously against the armrest, and let out a breath that came out shallower than I intended.
"Well," I thought, dry humor scraping against fear,
"you guessed it right."
Was I insane?
The question did not feel rhetorical anymore.
Last night, sleep had refused to come. Every time I closed my eyes, the same things returned, not dreams, but numbers. Ranks. Time. Survival probabilities that never favored someone who started late and empty handed.
I had stripped away optimism. Forced myself to stop pretending.
And the conclusion had been brutal.
I was running out of time.
Three months.
That was all the world had given me.
Three months to awaken.
Three months to become something before the Academy swallowed me whole.
Even if I awakened tomorrow, I would begin at the bottom. F rank. Weak. Replaceable. The kind of existence people stepped around without noticing.
Calm words and controlled expressions could not change what my body already knew.
I was late.
Late to power.
Late to preparation.
Late to realizing that being born a Valcrest stopped meaning anything the moment monsters and gods began to care.
And worst of all,
I did not know what my future looked like.
Staying as I was meant death.
Not tragic death.
Not meaningful death.
Just death.
People were already watching me.
Some with concern sharpened by pity.
Others with interest sharpened by hunger.
I felt it now, like a pressure behind my eyes. I had stepped onto the board without knowing the rules, and the pieces had been moving long before I noticed.
The protagonist would enter the Academy as a solid D rank.
Amelia would be around early to mid C rank.
The rest of the main cast hovered comfortably around peak E rank.
And me?
What I lacked was not intelligence.
It was time.
That was why I was here.
The Noct Vale Highlands.
A place spoken of in lowered voices. A place people gestured at instead of naming. Somewhere the world bent just enough to make survival negotiable.
If I wanted to live, I had to gamble where the rules were already broken.
My goal was not glory.
It was not power for power's sake.
It was to not die.
And for that, I needed leverage.
An ancient Relic.
An unranked pearl shaped like a falling tear.
In the game, its rank was never revealed. It was discovered by an Extra, someone so insignificant most players forgot his name. That Extra later became an exceptional villain, one who lived far longer than he ever should have.
Even he never understood what he had truly found.
That was the nature of Death Zones.
Each one held relics capable of awakening cores: true awakenings, forced awakenings, awakenings that twisted people into something else entirely.
But they all obeyed the same unspoken rule.
The more valuable something was,
the less it wanted to be seen.
Not even Monarchs could force such things into existence. Power could erase armies and redraw borders, but it could not command fate.
Out of all five Death Zones, only two such artifacts were ever discovered in all the game routes. One here in the Noct Vale Highlands. One in the Sanctum Vein of the Eastern Domain.
I knew the location of both.
And I would never step into the Sanctum Vein.
Or rather, I could not even enter that particular Death Zone.
Light rejected those who did not belong.
Entering it without compatibility was not courage; it was arrogance dressed as faith.
Even reaching the Noct Vale Highlands was not enough.
Awakening required preparation. Timing. Precision.
I also would not force my core open.
That path led to fractures of the soul, of the future. My original core, if it even existed, was already late. Opening an accessory core first would delay it even further.
The thought made my chest tighten.
What if this was it?
What if I never awakened properly?
Accessory cores were small. Subtle. Easily dismissed. Scholars treated them like curiosities, footnotes at the edge of proper theory.
But they could keep someone alive.
And right now, survival mattered more than pride.
The risk was simple and terrifying.
If my primary core never awakened, an accessory core would stop being a stepping stone and become a ceiling.
No one truly understood accessory cores.
Not the Monarchs.
Not the academies.
Not even the people who taught others how to awaken.
That ignorance was my only shield.
Their ignorance will be my bliss.
Before leaving, I had prepared as best I could.
I had met Diego one last time.
Daniel Georgioni, alias Diego.
A side branch member of the Georgioni family. A man who worked directly under Ronald Webnar, the Patriarch's shadow. A name most people did not know.
Which made him dangerous.
When I mentioned Ronald again, Daniel had not hesitated.
That alone told me everything.
The money I transferred was returned clean and untraceable in the form of origin crystals.
Upon asking, he also provided supplies meant for disappearance rather than combat. Food. Survival gear. A face altering mask. A runic inscription tool. Defensive artifacts layered like quiet prayers.
He overdid it.
I accepted everything.
"He's a good man," I thought.
One I would kill in the future.
The reason stayed sealed, waiting for a time when remembering it would be useful.
The train slowed.
The announcement echoed softly through the cabin as the landscape outside changed.
Mountains rose like broken teeth, wrapped in a permanent dusk. The air felt heavier here, not colder, not warmer, just reluctant to move.
As if time itself had second thoughts.
I stepped off the train.
The heart of the Western Domain.
The edge of a Death Zone.
Ahead of me lay the Noct Vale Highlands, where time stuttered, memories slipped, and people who entered often returned quieter than before.
If they returned at all.
I stood there longer than necessary, staring at the mountains.
For the first time since coming to this world, fear did not knock.
It sat down beside me.
I swallowed, adjusted my mask, and took a step forward anyway.
The train doors closed behind me with a soft mechanical hiss.
Entering the waiting line, a thought crossed my mind.
If I died here, nothing would change.
The protagonist would still rise.
The Academy would still open.
The world would continue.
But if I survived,
things would surely change.
For better or for worse, I cannot say.
I have survived the Sovereign.
I have stood in the presence of something that could have erased me without effort.
There is no way I am going to fall on a mountain.
Death can have me only when it earns me.