Chapter 99: Blocked
The blinding flash of absolute white light faded away as the previous timeline shattered into a million digital pixels.
Ayla and Kenji opened their eyes to find themselves standing once again on the hard, metallic surface of the grand void bridge.
The suffocating, sulfurous heat of the real world rushed back to meet them. Below their feet, the massive cosmic alloy beams of the bridge were already snapping with the sound of thunder, sending showers of white-hot sparks into the absolute black abyss.
The spatial stabilization fields were flickering wildly, tearing open the exact same localized gravity vortexes they had seen before.
They had returned to the exact moment they exited the Spire Event.
Ayla furrowed her brows in deep dissatisfaction. When she had sliced her own neck clean using her claws, her actual intention was to go back into the Spire Event itself.
She had wanted to reset the timeline by a few days so she could perhaps change the ending of the Spire Event..
But there was something heavy and invisible blocking the full regression capacity of the Death Looper trait.
The loop anchor had stubbornly refused to budge past the exit threshold of the trial. It surprised her.
Ayla had never thought that the Death Looper trait, which she had proudly copied and used without issue before, could be blocked by something outside her own core control.
This whole Spire and the nature of the Spire Event seemed to be a lot more complex than she had ever expected.
The rules of the Crusade were not as simple as the rules of the tunnels she had born.
While she was completely submerged in her private thoughts, analyzing the limitations of the Death Looper, Kenji was shaking violently beside her.
His hazel eyes were wide, staring blankly at the armored silhouette of the Solgrace central fortress in the distance.
The terrifying news from the previous timeline was currently looping inside his clinical mind like a broken record.
His grandpa had been taken away by the Ghouls.
That too in a single day.
How was that even possible?
His grandpa, General Roric Vale, was a Diamond-ranked Crusader, a veteran of forty brutal campaigns who led entire divisions of elite powerhouses.
There was absolutely no way anyone in the Solgracr could take him away this easily, and it was mathematically absurd for an entity of that tier to be defeated within a single twenty-four-hour window.
Unless...
Unless someone above the Crown rank had taken direct action against the Eastern Front.
But Kenji knew that was completely impossible. Starting from the Crown rank, a Crusader was no longer called a regular ranker; they were formally called Ascendants.
The Nexusimplemented incredibly strong, unyielding laws that strictly prevented any Ascendants from directly involving themselves in worldly fights or regional territorial disputes.
The system was a rigid machine that punished deviations with immediate erasure.
Even the legendary Ghoul Conqueror, who sat at the absolute apex of their race’s power, would not dare to go against the rigid programming of the system.
Then how did someone as strong as his grandpa get completely defeated and dragged away in a single day?
What kind of hidden variable had the Enders and the Ghouls unleashed outside the grid to bypass the Diamond-tier defense?
"Kenji?"
He returned to his senses by the gentle, persistent tug on his uniform sleeves.
The frantic shouting of the void bridge’s collapse faded into the background as he looked down.
Ayla was looking up at him worriedly, her large golden pupils bright and focused.
"What’s wrong?" she asked, biting her lower lip slightly as she studied the rare, visible panic decorating his face.
Kenji did not answer her with words. His heart rate was running far outside its usual clinical sixty-beats-per-minute rhythm.
Driven by a sudden, intense surge of protectiveness, he reached out and pulled her into a deep, crushing hug.
He wrapped his arms tightly around her small frame, burying his face into the side of her neck as the titanium plates beneath his boots groaned.
"Did those bastards do anything wrong to you?" he breathed heavily into her neck, his voice shaking with a raw, uncharacteristic emotion.
Ayla’s neck turned completely red at the sudden physical proximity and the warmth of his breath against her skin.
She tensed for a microsecond before relaxing into his embrace, her small hands resting against his back.
"He said, ’I wonder how this future Conqueror tastes’..." Ayla whispered, perfectly mimicking the old, creepy, and ravenous tone the Marshal had used inside the luxurious bedroom.
She even captured the exact pause and the dark, wet cadence of the Ghoul King’s voice.
Upon noticing the sudden, terrifying flash of pure anger that exploded across Kenji’s face, she was completely taken aback.
His entire body went rigid, and the hazel light in his eyes turned into a cold, murderous glare that she had never seen him direct toward anyone before.
He looked ready to tear the Marshal apart with his bare hands.
Seeing his intense reaction, a funny, mischievous idea suddenly appeared in her primitive mind.
She decided to use this moment to experiment with human emotional manipulation.
She dug into her extensive catalogue of memories and pulled out a specific scene she had witnessed through her tracking traits.
It was a captured memory of Amanda from their early academy days, back when Amanda was crying fake, pathetic tears before a powerful senior student to fulfill her own selfish needs and gain sympathy.
Ayla adjusted her facial muscles, letting her eyes go wide and watery as she looked up at him with the most vulnerable, helpless expression her human slate could manage.
"He also slit my throat..." she whimpered softly, wiping an imaginary tear from her cheek while continuing to mimic Amanda’s pathetic, fragile style.
Kenji’s breath completely stopped. The physical pressure radiating from his body spiked so violently that even the air currents around them seemed to freeze for a split second.
He didn’t realize that she was technically the one who had slit her own throat to escape the room.
To his mind, the picture of the Marshal placing his dirty hands on her and executing her inside a locked room was enough to break his stoic filter entirely.
"He did what?" Kenji whispered, his voice dropping into a tone that was so cold it sounded completely hollow.
"He was very creepy," Ayla continued, enjoying the absolute dominance she now held over his emotional state. She let her head rest back against his shoulder, her gold eyes blinking innocently.
"His mind was completely empty, Kenji. I couldn’t read a single thought before he entered. And his human skin is just a fake dress. He is a very ugly monster underneath."
"A Ghoul King," Kenji ground out through his clenched teeth, his fingers tightening around the leather wrapping of his iron sword hilt until his knuckles turned white.
His analytical mind rapidly began to connect the missing pieces of the puzzle. If the Marshal was a high-tier Ghoul King operating inside the human high command with an empty mind filter, it meant the cognitive block that had blinded them for a year inside the Spire Event was also operating at a macro level out here in the real world.
The military lines had not been compromised by a standard political betrayal.
The fortress had been systematically infiltrated by an external faction and they were clearing the background assets of humans.
They hadn’t just lost a Spire Event. They were currently losing the entire human sector.
"We can’t walk into the briefing room like last time," Kenji said, his voice regaining its sharp, clinical focus as he loosened his grip on her shoulders, though his eyes remained dark with lingering fury.
"The moment we step onto the landing pad, the enforcers will deploy the trait-suppressing locks. They already know our data profiles."
"Then what should we do?" Ayla asked, her human disguise shifting smoothly back into its standard, calm arrangement. T
he fake tears vanished instantly, replaced by a glint of predatory excitement in her pupils. "Should I change into my Celestial Form and eat the guards at the gates? I am still very hungry, Kenji. A massive war means we can harvest everyone without the system tracking our contribution parameters."
Kenji looked down at her, his hazel eyes locking with her vertical pupils. He could feel her Apocalypse Core humming with absolute readiness against his thighs.
The rules of the Spire were broken, the General was captured, and the fortress was entirely run by traitors.
But this time, they carried the absolute advantage of the loop. They knew the positions of the pieces before the board was even set.
"No," Kenji commanded softly, a confident, dangerous look appearing deep within his hazel eyes as he raised his iron blade.
"We are not going to clear the fortress from the outside. We are going to let them lock me up just like before. We need to reach the deep dungeons to secure Captain Robert and Maren’s strike unit.
While they are busy focusing their assets on containing me, you are going to operate as a silent ghost on the upper levels."
"Can I eat them?"
"If I said no..?"
"I will still eat..."
