The hot water of the shower finally turned cold, snapping Max out of his deep thoughts. He reached out and twisted the metal knob, shutting off the spray. The sudden silence in the small bathroom was thick and heavy, save for the sound of water dripping slowly from the showerhead onto the porcelain tiles.
Max stepped out of the tub and wrapped a thick, white towel around his waist. He grabbed a smaller hand towel from the rack and began to roughly wipe his face and his damp amber hair. He scrubbed hard, trying to rub away the lingering fatigue of his intense morning workout and the stressful encounter with Bellatrix.
He walked out of the steamy bathroom and into his living room. The morning sunlight was fully streaming through the window, casting bright, warm squares across the cheap carpet. It felt like a perfectly normal, peaceful day in the city. But Max knew better than to trust the quiet.
He walked over to his small kitchen counter, grabbed a clean glass from the drying rack, and filled it with cold water from the tap. Holding the glass in his left hand, he walked over to the sofa and sat down heavily. He picked up the television remote from the coffee table and pressed the power button.
He wanted to watch the morning news. The conversation with Bellatrix about the black van, combined with the dead ends he had hit on the dark web last night, left him restless. He was deeply curious to see if the vibrant green-eyed person had struck again, specifically targeting more people connected to the underworld.
The television screen flickered to life, the volume slightly too loud. A bright, colorful commercial for a local car dealership was blaring across the screen.
"Sorry for the long advertisement break, folks…" the female news anchor's voice suddenly cut in as the broadcast returned to the studio.
Max ignored the apology. He took a slow sip of his cold water, letting the chill spread through his chest. He was just getting settled into the broadcast.
The camera zoomed in slightly on the news anchor. Her expression, which had been bright and professional just moments before the break, was now tight and incredibly serious. She looked down at her notes, her hands visibly trembling just a fraction.
"…For our next story, sigh…" The news anchor let out a highly unprofessional, heavy sigh on live television. She quickly gathered herself, straightening her posture, and continued with a grim tone.
"Tragically, another person was found dead early this morning, the victim of a severe car accident late last night on Route 9. However, authorities are now looking closer at the situation. It seems this recent incident shares a highly disturbing pattern with the string of similar fatal accidents we reported on earlier this week."
Max leaned forward slightly, resting his elbows on his knees. His amber eyes narrowed at the screen.
"According to leaked police reports," the news anchor continued, her voice grave, "most of the previous victims shared a very specific, rare physical trait. They all had amber-colored eyes. But unlike the previous victims, who were all women with somewhat complicated pasts, this time… the victim is a man."
Max froze. The world around him seemed to stop spinning.
His brain, forged by millions of lifetimes of combat and survival, processed the information in a fraction of a second.
The previous victims weren't targeted because they were former female mercenaries. They were targeted because they had amber eyes. The green-eyed killer wasn't hunting the underworld. The killer was hunting him, and anyone who remotely looked like him was just collateral damage in the search.
His fingers went entirely numb. The heavy glass of water slipped right through his grip.
—CRACKS!
The glass hit the edge of the wooden coffee table and shattered violently, sending sharp shards and cold water splashing all over his bare feet and the carpet.
Max didn't even flinch at the shattering glass. He stared blankly at the television screen.
"Wha—what the fuck?!" Max whispered into the empty room, his voice choked with sheer, unadulterated shock.
The puzzle pieces snapped together with terrifying clarity. The black van outside his apartment. The green eyes staring up at his window. The dead women. The dead man. It was a targeted, methodical hunt.
He kicked the broken glass out of the way with his heel, ignoring a small scratch on his ankle. He hurriedly stood up, lunged across the room, and grabbed his encrypted smartphone from the kitchen counter. His heart hammered furiously against his ribs.
He quickly unlocked the device, bypassed the secondary security wall, and dialed the Information Maester's highly secured, untraceable burn phone number.
He pressed the phone hard against his ear, pacing back and forth across the small kitchen space.
—RING, RING!
The dial tone felt agonizingly slow.
—RING, RING!
Every second that passed felt like an hour.
—RING, RING!
Finally, the line clicked. A heavily distorted, deep voice came through the speaker.
Information Maester: "Hello, M. Is this you?"
The Information Maester asked, his tone cautious. He rarely received calls on this specific line during the daylight hours.
Max: "Yeah, it's me! Turn on the damn news right now! I already know why the recent incidents happened, and I finally know the certain pattern. Fuck! If I had known earlier that the bastard was targeting people who simply have amber eyes, and not just people from the underworld, then everything would make so much more sense!"
Max's voice was loud, echoing with frustration and a rising tide of dark panic.
There was a brief pause on the other end of the line as the Maester likely pulled up the news feed on his own monitors.
Information Maester: "Yeah, I see it now. Thanks to the morning news, and it seems thanks to a bunch of obsessive 4chan users and internet sleuths who connected the dots hours ago. We already know the serial killer's visual pattern. The dark web forums are blowing up over it. They've already given the serial killer a title. They are calling him 'The Gilded Purge', or 'Gild Killer' for short, because of the amber eye connection."
Max stopped pacing. He squeezed the bridge of his nose, his eyes squeezing shut in deep irritation.
'Why the fuck did they give that motherfucker a badass name?' Max thought inwardly, a wave of professional disgust washing over him. 'This is exactly the reason why serial killers get so much more confidence and become bolder. Because they are given theatrical names like that by the public! It feeds their twisted egos!'
He took a sharp breath, nodding his head even though the Maester couldn't see him, and replied to the call.
Max: "Yeah, yeah, thanks for the internet update, but I don't need it! Goddamnit! That fucker might be doing these random killings because it seems like a sick way to warn me to hide, or to draw me out into the open. But if that fucker thinks I will cower in a corner, that fucker is goddamn wrong. I'm gonna fucking shoot him right in the head the second I see those green eyes!"
Information Maester: "Calm down, M. Think logically. Why is this killer doing this if the ultimate target is specifically you? Did you do something incredibly reckless in one of your killing contracts before you retired? Did you wipe out a syndicate and leave a survivor? Did you make a powerful person so mad that they spent seven years tracking you down? Because the only thing I could think of right now is that this is either a deeply deranged vigilante or a very personal vengeance."
The Maester paused, the sound of keyboard clacking bleeding through the audio.
Information Maester: "That's why this person is targeting people with amber eyes. They are looking for a needle in a haystack and burning the hay to find it. Though, the recent victim... the man who died last night... it makes this much worse. He's not from the underworld at all, M. He was just a fucking normal guy!"
Max frowned deeply. He had assumed that, even if the target was amber eyes, the killer was still sticking to the criminal element to cover their tracks.
Max: "Really? Are you sure? I thought he had to be from the underworld. A former criminal, a launderer, a smuggler... something to justify why he was also targeted."
Information Maester: "Nahh. After they newly revealed the 'Gild Killer' name on the forums, I already did my own deep search into the victim's background. And it turns out this guy is completely clean. Like, squeaky clean. He was just a normal, working-class man with a happy family. He leaves behind a grieving wife and his four young kids."
Max felt the breath leave his lungs. He slowly lowered the phone away from his ear for a second, staring blankly at the kitchen wall.
"Shit!" Max hissed through his teeth.
He was a hardened killer. He had slaughtered millions in his past lives as the Dark Lord. He had taken hundreds of lives as an earthbound assassin. But he had always operated with a code. He killed soldiers, he killed criminals, he killed monsters.
He was starting to feel a massive, crushing weight of guilt. An innocent father was killed brutally in a staged car crash simply because he shared the same eye color as Max. And worse, that man's family—his wife and his four young kids—were now destroyed, left fatherless, all because a green-eyed ghost was hunting Max Theo Hoffman.
"I swear…" Max said in a low, dangerous whisper. He clenched his free hand into a tight fist, his knuckles popping loudly.
He brought the phone back to his ear, his amber eyes burning with a cold, focused fury. In the background, the television news was still ongoing, giving painful, personal details about the innocent victim's life and the community's outrage.
Max: "Maester. Listen to me carefully. I need you to use every single resource you have. Help me get all and any information about this fucker immediately. I need traffic cameras, satellite imagery, dark web rumors, anything. I need to find this bastard before it sets its sights next to my neighbors! I have a young woman who lives down the hall, and my landlady is an older woman. If this killer is just hitting random targets around my location to flush me out, they are in danger."
There was a heavy sigh on the other end of the line.
Information Maester: "Alright, M. Copy that. I will put my top scrubbers on it. But… M…"
Max: "Hmm? What is it?"
Information Maester: "Are you slowly becoming human again? I mean... being kind? You know exactly who and what you are. You are an assassin. A hitman. A ghost in the shadows. You should not care about those normal people. You shouldn't care about a random neighbor or a landlady."
The Maester's voice turned hard, taking on a paternal, scolding tone.
Information Maester: "I know this might sound selfish and cruel, but you should not care about them, M! In our line of work, caring gets you killed. Even instead, you should ignore them! Use them as bait if you have to, and run! Don't be soft, M. Remember the harsh lesson from your past. Remember the very reason why your parents died. It was because of that exact fault. Caring for the wrong people."
Max clenched his hands so tightly his fingernails dug deep into his palms. The phone casing groaned under his grip. He knew the Information Maester was right. The logic of the underworld demanded cold detachment.
The Maester's words acted like a harsh trigger, violently ripping open a locked vault in Max's mind. A wave of dizziness washed over him as a suppressed, horrific memory from his childhood dragged him backward through time.
Before he was a legendary assassin, before he was transmigrated to become a Dark Lord, he was just a normal child. And as a child, he had foolishly trusted a fifteen-year-old girl who lived in his neighborhood. He had trusted her because she had treated him kindly, like a little brother. He had shared his toys, his secrets, and the location of his home.
And that innocent trust was the sole cause of the tragedy that happened many years ago.
His vision blurred, the modern apartment fading away, replaced by the dark, metallic smell of fresh blood and the cold, hardwood floor of his childhood home.
He remembered the night his parents died. They didn't die in an accident. They died by the hands of that same fifteen-year-old girl. She had slaughtered them without an ounce of hesitation, and then, standing over their bodies, she had blamed young Max for their deaths.
The memory was so vivid it made his chest ache.
He remembered her walking slowly toward him in the dimly lit living room. Her clothes were stained dark red. As she approached, she firmly gripped her heavy, smoking handgun in one hand, and a long, bloody combat blade in the other.
She knelt down in front of him. She reached out with a blood-slicked hand, gently touching his tear-stained cheeks, and then leaned forward to press a soft, horrifyingly affectionate kiss to his forehead.
"This is your fault, y'know," the girl had whispered, her voice sickeningly sweet and calm despite the carnage around them. "You shouldn't trust people so foolishly. Now you are paying that heavy price. Though, to be fair, they are the main reason why I'm doing this tonight. They were the ones who killed my dad, after all. This is just balancing the scales."
The young Max had widened his eyes in pure terror. He sat on the floor, clutching his brown teddy bear so tightly to his chest that the seams threatened to tear. He wanted to scream. He wanted to scramble across the blood-soaked wood, run toward his parents, clutch their dead bodies, and scream for anyone to help.
But he couldn't move. He was entirely paralyzed, terrified of the smiling monster kneeling directly in front of him.
"Are you starting to cry?" the young woman asked, her tone shifting into a mocking, cruel lilt. She reached out and tightly gripped his small wrist, her fingers digging painfully into his skin.
"You shouldn't cry," she said, her eyes devoid of any human empathy. "After all, they deserve this. Your parents deserve this fate."
The young Max finally found his voice. He tried to resist her iron grip, pulling his arm back, and shouted at her with a broken, terrified voice.
"Le—let me go! Mom! Dad! Hic… hic… hic!" he sobbed, the reality of the nightmare crushing him.
The teenage girl sighed, looking down at him with a strange, disappointed expression.
"You're always the exact same as ever. Always so fragile. This is exactly why you should come with me right now, Sylan."
The memory spiked with a sharp, blinding pain in Max's current mind.
Sylan.
She had called him Sylan. On Earth. Years before he ever found that cursed game, years before he transmigrated, the girl who murdered his parents had looked him in the eye and called him by the name of the Dark Lord. It was a terrifying, impossible detail that his brain had buried deep under layers of trauma.
In the memory, the young Max tried to resist her grip again, thrashing wildly, having no idea what that name meant at the time. He shouted at her, his voice hoarse.
"Let me go! I said I'm not Sylan! My name is Max! Le—let me go!!! Help! Somebody help me!"
The teenage woman widened her eyes, suddenly snapping her head toward the window. She clicked her tongue in deep annoyance as the faint, wailing sound of police sirens echoed in the distance, rapidly approaching the house. Neighbors had heard the gunshots.
"Tch! The pigs are here. I'm gonna have to get you back another time…"
She stood up, towering over his small, trembling frame. She looked down at him, her eyes burning with an obsessive, dark promise.
"…Next time, you will be mine completely."
She turned on her heel and sprinted toward the back door of the house, disappearing into the dark night, leaving him completely alone.
The young Max was left alone in the devastating silence of the house, keeping up his endless crying. He slowly and shakily crawled across the cold floor, moving toward the bodies of his parents. He collapsed between them, hugging both of them desperately with his little hands, getting his pajamas soaked in their blood.
"Mom! Dad! Uwaaaaa! Hic, hic, hic! Uwaaaaaaa!!!"
The horrific wails of his younger self echoed in his mind until he violently forced the memory away.
Max snapped his eyes open, gasping for air as if he had been held underwater. He was back in his apartment. The television was still playing. The phone was still pressed to his ear.
He swallowed hard, pushing the terrifying implications of the name 'Sylan' back into the vault for now. He needed to focus on the present threat. He let out a long, shaky sigh, steadying his voice, and spoke into the phone.
Max: "I know, Maester. Believe me, I know perfectly well that I should not trust easily. But that doesn't mean I should completely abandon my humanity and my morality. I know this might sound foolish to you, especially since this is really not the old me talking, but…"
He looked toward the wall separating his apartment from Bellatrix's room.
Max: "….I already care for them. After all, they are good, innocent people living normal lives. And you know I don't trust people easily anymore, Maester. I learned that bloody lesson a very long time ago."
Max fell silent, holding the phone, but his mind continued to race inwardly.
'That's right,' Max thought to himself, his internal voice thick with sorrow. 'I learned so much about the fatal cost of trust from that incident a long time ago. And I learned it again, in the most painful way possible, in that other world.'
His thoughts drifted from his childhood trauma on Earth to the endless, agonizing lifetimes he had spent in the magical realm. He thought about the complex web of relationships he had navigated as the Dark Lord.
He thought about the Villainess, the Crown Prince's beautiful, haughty fiancée. In the original visual novel game, she was his absolute favorite character. She was complex, driven, and fiercely intelligent. When he first transmigrated, he had tried to ally with her. He had tried to save her from her tragic fate.
But the script of the world was cruel. After gaining her trust, after fighting beside her, she had ultimately betrayed him to save her own skin. She had drugged him, bound him in magical chains, and locked him deep within her cold, dark basement, keeping him as a secret prisoner while the heroes hunted him. The betrayal had been absolute. The emotional scars from those dark days in the basement, and the subtle, twisted things that happened in the shadows of that imprisonment, still haunted him.
Max clicked his tongue in deep, lingering resentment.
'Tch! And that specific betrayal by the Villainess… that was the direct cause of the death of my true lover, Emhy.'
Just thinking her name made his chest tighten painfully. The lover he thought about was none other than the dark blue-haired elf, Emhyria Van Hemreis.
She was the exiled Princess of the Aen Elle Empire. In the context of the game's lore, she was the tragic Villainess of the massive expansion DLC. When a player bought that expansion, they unlocked the sprawling, dangerous realm of the Aen Elle Empire, the hidden domain of the ancient elves. Emhyria was feared by the entire world. She was known by the terrifying title "The Witch of Calamity," and in the original, ancient lore of the world, she was the true, original Dark Lord of the prophecy before Sylan ever took the mantle to protect her.
'That woman….' Max thought, closing his amber eyes, remembering her fierce ruby-red gaze and her surprisingly gentle touch.
'….She was my absolutely everything. She was the only light I had in that cursed world. And her… Emilia the Saintess… and those self-righteous bastards from the Empire… they stole her from me! They hunted her down and slaughtered her!'
A fresh wave of rage boiled in his blood. He clenched his hands even tighter, his fingernails finally breaking the skin. Small drops of blood welled up on his palms, but he didn't feel the physical pain.
'Just how many times did I try to save her?!' his mind screamed. 'I tried to save them all from that disaster starting from my 3rd regression! And I spent from my 250 millionth regression all the way to my 300 millionth loop focused entirely on keeping Emhyria alive! Millions of lifetimes of bleeding, fighting, and dying for her!'
He opened his eyes, glaring at the floor.
'And this! This is how the heavens paid me back! By forcing me to watch them kill her, over and over and over again!'
Max took a deep, shuddering breath, forcing himself to gather his fractured emotions. He was back on Earth now. The magic was gone. The Empire was gone. But the pain remained.
He wanted to forget everything. He wanted to burn the memories just like he had burned the game tape in the alley. But it was impossible. It was incredibly hard to forget everything, especially Emhy's brutal death, and especially the deep, personal betrayal of his favorite character locking him in the dark.
Max repeatedly inhaled and exhaled, performing a tactical breathing exercise to lower his heart rate and push the panic attack down.
The silence on the phone line was broken by the Maester's concerned voice.
Information Maester: "Hey, M. Is everything alright over there? You are gasping repeatedly. Are you having an episode?"
Max wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand.
Max: "Yeah. I'm all good, old man. Just… ghosts. And hey—"
Information Maester: "I know, I know. I shouldn't have brought up your parents or recommended that you let innocent people die. I crossed a line. I'm sorry, M. You're right to want to protect your turf."
Max offered a small, tired smile to the empty room.
Max: "Yeah. Thanks for understanding. Listen, I need to go dark for the rest of the day to prepare. But I will go directly to your HQ tonight. I need deep information. I need a lot of information connecting on this Gild Killer, the van, the routing of their license plates, everything."
Information Maester: "Sure, you can come by. But, a quick heads up. I already changed my primary HQ. I am already not operating in my old warehouse district which you used to always visit 7 years ago. Don't worry, it's highly secure. I'll send the new encrypted location coordinates to your device shortly."
Max frowned slightly, surprised by the news. The Maester was a creature of extreme habit.
Max: "Wait, you actually left that place? I thought you liked the setup there? You had the entire block wired."
Information Maester: "Nahh, I got tired of that place. Too many eyes. Also, the local mafias and the heavily armed cartels are starting to gather more in that specific subdivision. They are getting bold, having turf wars. It was getting far too loud for a quiet information broker like me to work in peace."
Max: "I see, I see. Smart move staying ahead of the bullets. Yeah, send the location later today, and I'll see you tonight. Bye, old man."
Information Maester: "Yeah, goodbye, M. Be careful out there. And remember, don't die a virgin, alright? It's bad luck."
Max clicked his tongue in deep annoyance, rolling his eyes at the recurring joke.
Max: "Yeah, yeah. Very funny. Bye."
—BEEP!
Max hit the end call button and tossed the encrypted phone onto the sofa. He let out a long, heavy sigh that seemed to drain the last bit of adrenaline from his body.
He stood alone in his living room, the shattered glass still on the floor, the news anchor still talking on the television.
"Haaah, what should I do next…" Max muttered to himself, rubbing the back of his neck.
He needed a tactical plan. He couldn't just sit in his apartment waiting for the green-eyed killer to drive by again. He needed to take the offensive. He needed to track the van, analyze the chemical composition of the tire tracks, or set up a perimeter trap.
"…I need to do something proactive before that fucker really targets me directly, or hurts the people in this building."
He crossed his arms, looking at the wall dividing his room from Bellatrix's. He was a master of stealth, combat, and assassination. But he was severely lacking in modern forensics, surveillance tech, and chemical analysis. He needed someone who understood science. He needed someone who was already involved and aware of the van.
"Guess I don't have any other choice, huh?" Max said, a reluctant smile touching his lips. "I really need her help to pull this off."
He determined himself to take the risk. He needed Bell's help. She was a chemist. She was smart. And she had already proven she had the guts to yell at a suspicious van in the middle of the night.
"Sigh, I really hope she agrees to help me, especially after how awkward things got earlier," Max said, running a hand through his damp hair.
He turned around and walked away from the broken glass, heading straight toward the kitchen area. He opened the refrigerator door, the cool air blowing over his chest. He looked past the water bottles and reached into the back of the freezer compartment.
He pulled out the familiar, triangular yellow packaging. He picked up his very last Toblerone bar.
He held the chocolate in his hand, a genuine, warm laugh escaping his chest as he thought about her reaction from the morning.
"In case she doesn't easily accept my plea for help, I definitely needed a solid bribe somehow, hahaha."
Max laughed softly into the quiet kitchen, feeling a small spark of hope in the dark situation. He firmly pushed the refrigerator door shut, ready to face whatever came next.