Seducing the Guideverse With My System — Raising an Anomaly [BL]

Chapter 273: _People Can Change If They Want To

In an abandoned warehouse somewhere in Aurelia, the Guild master of the Steel Falcon Guild was on the move.

Dorothy stepped out of a grey SUV, pulling out a little blonde boy with her. She whipped back her braids, gaze sweeping over the warehouse.

"Hey!" Orion squealed under her grip. "You’re squeezing my wrist too hard. Let go!"

She ignored the brat, shutting the doors before dragging him along. "We’re here," she called out, blinking expectantly. "Hello?"

Her blood still sizzled with an unexplainable high after what she did at Blue Diamond Academy. A high she desperately didn’t want to leave her.

Because she could feel it.

The second it leaves her—something ugly will claw at her chest.

Guilt.

"Why are you doing this?" Orion asked, those big golden eyes glistening with tears. "Y–You hurt all those people. You killed them."

Dorothy barely spared him a glance. "If it makes you feel any better," she lowered her head until she and the boy looked each other in the eyes, "I gave them painless deaths. It’s not even much of a death. More of... silent non-existence."

The fear and confusion on the boy’s face only made her more eager to get this over with.

"Hey?!" She yelled out, scouring the broken glasses and dilapidated walls for any signs of the one she was dealing with. "I brought you the boy. Just like you wanted."

Silence.

Dorothy’s jaw tightened. "Can we skip to the part where I no longer have a part in this? You... you’ve been talking in my head these past few days. The least you could do is show up and—"

Her neck arched at an unnatural angle as the blackness in her eyes exploded until it covered everything in her line of sight. Her psyche was pulled into her own mental space.

Dark and unnervingly quiet.

"You have the boy." The faceless one’s voice echoed all around her. She turned sharply in time to see it.

A figure levitating about ten meters ahead of her, with a slender pitch-black body and a spinning mini black hole where its face was supposed to be.

She could tell it was observing her. Keenly.

"I–I do," She faked a cough, wearing a smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. "So does that mean we’re done? Y–You promised you’d give me power if—"

"And what do you think you have now, Dorothy?" It appeared right beside her, its voice male and female all at once. "I gave you a fraction of my gifts and look what you accomplished."

Dorothy’s forehead creased. "A–Accomplished?" For some reason, she found that insulting. "All I did was... kill people. Not just kill them. I blinked them out of existence. All for one kid whom you don’t want to come grab like we discussed for whatever reason."

The Void Entity stayed silent for a moment.

Enough time passed for Dorothy to think whether she overstepped with her words.

"Yet you still had people... right under your fingertips," It reached for her cheek, fondling her with the tenderness a parent would give their child. "And still—you haven’t completed the original mission to my satisfaction."

Chills ran down Dorothy’s spine when dark lightning sparkled within the black hole’s horizon. "You didn’t bring me Ambrose Hale. You weren’t able to isolate him as we discussed."

"I–I... we concluded—"

"I had to carefully orchestrate all the events leading up to this moment," Its fingers stayed glued to her cheek, trailing down to her jaw like a vice. "Han Jae-won’s corruption... the way it made the Pantheon more fixed on finding me instead of protecting the Guide and those around him..."

Something terrifying began happening to Dorothy’s face. Skin by skin, flesh by flesh—the areas the Void Entity touched were getting consumed by absolute darkness.

It spread fast like ink, making her blink helplessly as the Void Entity added:

"I’ve made your job easier by only making you capture the child," it let go at last just when the darkness was about to reach her eyes. "You should be grateful you still have my powers."

Although it was all happening in her mental space, Dorothy felt so overwhelmed that she fell to her knees, panting like someone seconds away from drowning forever.

Her breathing came in ragged bursts as she struggled to push herself upright. The lingering darkness receded from her skin little by little, leaving behind an icy numbness she couldn’t shake.

"I..." She swallowed hard. "Then what now?"

The Void Entity remained motionless, the miniature black hole that served as its face rotating lazily.

"The Pantheon hunts me," it answered at last. "Every one of them now searches the skies, the city... the shadows themselves. Appearing before the child now would be inefficient."

Dorothy blinked. "So, you’re not taking him?"

"Not yet." Its voice remained eerily calm. "Keep him hidden. Await my summons. When the time is right... I shall come."

Something inside Dorothy relaxed despite herself. "A–And if they find me first?"

"They won’t." The certainty behind those two words was enough to silence every other question.

Then—the darkness shattered.

Dorothy’s consciousness snapped violently back into reality.

She staggered, sucking in a sharp breath.

"H-Hey!"

Her head whipped toward the voice.

Orion had somehow slipped halfway out of her grip while she’d been standing there frozen. The little boy had already taken off, tiny legs pumping as fast as they could toward the road.

Dorothy’s eyes widened. "Oh no you don’t."

She lunged forward, catching him by the back of his shirt before he got more than a few meters away. Orion grunted as she pulled him back against her side, squirming furiously.

"Let me go!"

"I said stop struggling."

"Well, I’m not scared of you!"

For the briefest instant, the warehouse shadows rippled. Not from the clouds overhead.

They simply... moved.

Dorothy froze.

Her gaze slowly lowered to the little boy. "What exactly are you?"

Orion frowned through watery eyes.

She shook her head before he could answer.

"Actually..." A bitter smile crossed her lips. "You shouldn’t be afraid of me."

The boy sniffled.

"My papa says..." he murmured, "people who hurt others can still change if they really want to."

He looked up at her with innocent certainty. "I think you can too."

Dorothy’s steps halted.

For one fragile heartbeat, something inside her wavered.

Then she looked away. "You’re too naïve."

Tightening her grip once more, she led Orion deeper into the abandoned warehouse, swallowing the strange feeling before it could take root.