Her tone was thick with a seductive power so concentrated that it felt like a physical weight in the air. I found myself momentarily paralysed. In my past life, surviving the apocalypse meant a total abandonment of comfort; I had never possessed the luxury of feeling a girl's warmth or the softness of a voice that wasn't screaming in pain.
"What is that look on your face?"
The question was a velvet challenge. Just as I was clenching my jaw, trying to exert a veteran's iron control over the sudden spike of desire, she dared to lean over. She placed her head right next to my neck, her fiery hair brushing against my skin like a slow-burning fuse.
"I said I'm yours," she whispered, her voice a low vibration against my collarbone. "Do you think little of me?"
The proximity was dangerous. I had to step away from her, and I did it fast, my boots skidding on the blood-slicked grass. I needed air and distance before I lost my grip on the situation entirely.
"Ahem, it's not what I wanted from you," I managed to say, forcing a gruffness into my voice to mask the struggle. I hoped a firm rejection would stop her, but how could a woman like this be stopped?
She didn't stay back. She closed the distance again, pinning me with those enchanting, bright red gems she called eyes. They weren't just beautiful; they were predatory in their own right.
"Do you think I don't know how to please you?" she purred. "I might look young, but I've had my share of adventures and fun before this world went to hell. I know exactly how to make you like me…"
The transition was seamless. Without me even realising how she had bypassed my guard, she was already speaking directly into my ear.
I could feel the heat of her breath entrapping my heart, fanning the embers of a desire I thought I had buried years ago. Her two arms found their way toward my lower parts, wandering with a practised, distracting grace. It was clear she intended to keep going—to turn this battlefield into a private sanctuary of her own making.
"Please, can we stop here?" I said, finally wrenching myself from her witching grasp. My tone held the ragged edges of my internal struggle. "We aren't in a time to play and fool around. Our lives are at stake here. The System doesn't pause for games."
"And what?" She shrugged, the motion casual as if the two thousand corpses surrounding us were just stage props. "I have you by my side now. You saved me from thousands of monsters and those deadly traps. I'm sure you can stand against anything the heavens throw at us. I've set my eyes on you already."
"Keep them for yourself for now," I snapped, widening the gap between us once more. I watched her warily. This girl was dangerous in ways that had nothing to do with her sword. She was a master of distraction, a variable I hadn't accounted for in my tactical plans.
"I want to know why they were after you," I said, my voice hardening into a firm, commanding tone. It was time to put an end to her little fun and get to the truth.
"Didn't you hear them?" she replied, her flirtatious mask slipping just enough to reveal a flicker of reality. "I was once a traitor."
"I heard," I countered, "but I wanted to hear more. I never expected traitors to be able to break free of their own will. Usually, the contract is a death sentence."
She gave me a long, searching gaze before she let out a sweet, melodic chuckle. "It's me who should be astonished by your words. I never heard of you before as a traitor, and it's not possible for anyone else—any normal human—to know about our internal structure. How do you know so much about how we operate?"
"That's my business," I said slowly, meeting her red eyes with my own cold stare. "And remember, I was the one to save your life, not the other way around. I'm the one asking the questions."
"Alright, alright. Don't act so cocky with me," she said, her eyes travelling over my body with an appreciative, lingering look. For a second, her lewd expression returned. "I love cocky boys, especially the ones holding dark secrets and immense power like you."
"I'm still waiting for your answer," I repeated, refusing to let her drag the conversation back to that path. It was maddening. We were in the early, most volatile stages of the apocalypse, and all she seemed to care about was satisfying her immediate whims.
Let us survive the upcoming ordeals first, I thought grimly, then I'd make you regret fooling with me in many ways.
"I was given a chance to hold power beyond anyone's imagination," she finally began, her tone shifting into something serious for the first time. The air around her seemed to chill.
"Who in their right mind would refuse that offer? Although, to be fair, we all thought this was just some kind of elaborate game or a sick joke at first. But when we actually tested our new power in the real world... we couldn't help but be shocked. Then the apocalypse truly arrived, and the orders started coming. Strange, impossible orders..."
Her face changed, the seductive mask falling away to reveal a deep, jagged pain. It seemed the specific quests the Angels had handed down weren't well accepted by everyone in the traitor cells.
In my past life, I had never heard of a group of traitors turning their backs on their celestial masters. This was a massive deviation from the timeline I knew.
"We gathered around fifty of our strongest people," she continued, her voice trembling slightly with a mix of rage and regret. "We decided then and there not to follow those shitty orders. Killing other humans just to farm coins? That's not a quest; that's brutality. We didn't sign up for this kind of sh*t."
She seemed truly enraged as the words left her mouth, her eyes flashing with a spark of genuine defiance. As I processed her claim, I had to admit she had a point.
Not every human being, even those granted sudden, god-like power, would be immediately absorbed by the selfish desire to grow stronger at any cost. There were those whose moral compasses hadn't been shattered by the System's arrival. But this was entirely new information to me—a blind spot in my memory of the future—and I felt a cold urge to dig deeper.
"But what makes you so special?" I asked, voicing the main dilemma currently gnawing at my mind. "Compared to you, I've caused far more trouble for the Angels tonight. I've dismantled their plans and slaughtered their assets. Why was the focus so heavy on you?"
"Well… This…" She hesitated, her eyes darting away as she struggled to formulate an answer.
I didn't let up. I had to get this answer no matter what. Even if she had betrayed the traitors, there was no logical way her value on the hit list should exceed mine unless there was a variable I couldn't see. She clearly possessed a secret, and I wouldn't stop until I had extracted every syllable of it.
"Aiming at you is one thing," I continued, stepping closer to maintain the pressure. "But the sheer effort they exerted—the trap they set, the resources they burned—it all tells me you are more than just a common deserter. They didn't just want you dead; they wanted you erased."
"I told you, I'm one of the strongest people out there," she said defensively, but her voice lacked its usual seductive conviction.
"Not enough," I said, shaking my head slowly. "Strength alone doesn't explain this. There has to be something else. Why are they pursuing you with such pathological persistence?"
I thought back to the battle. They had sacrificed a Hybrid monster, burned a complex teleportation array, and committed nearly the entire monster population of the park just to pin her down. It defied logic.
Even the fact that I had triggered the Hybrid early didn't explain the tenacity of the traitors I had just killed. They never showed a single sign of retreat. Even when I scattered their armies, they had used the Horn of Leadership to drag the chaos back toward her. To them, killing Angelica was more important than their own survival.
A simple bounty wouldn't justify that level of fanaticism.
"I… the group of fifty I talked about earlier… We hold a secret…" She finally broke, the words spilling out like water from a cracked dam.
"We have much stronger humans in our ranks. We call them: Ace. And it just so happens that these Aces have gone into hiding, slipping away from the Angels' grasp. They wanted to interrogate us to find out where the Aces are—or, at least, kill all of us to ensure the Aces don't have a support network."
"Ace…"
The word hit me with the force of a physical blow. I was genuinely shocked. It made a terrifying kind of sense. In my previous life, the three Great Human Kingdoms that stood against the darkness were all founded by individuals known as "Aces."
Don't tell me those legends were traitors to begin with… The thought was unbelievable. Even the old man and his mentor never possessed this knowledge!
Slowly, the realisation dawned on me that the history I had memorised was a sanitised version of the truth. Whatever the old man had told me wasn't the full picture; it was merely the information a single strong human had managed to scrape together through his own cycles of return. But it wasn't enough. This one secret alone proved that the foundations of my world-view were built on a lie.
"So one of the Aces you're talking about is currently hiding in the US?" I asked. It was a leading question; I already "knew" the answer. Or I thought I did.
In my time, the life story of each Ace was a legend taught to every survivor. I knew their origins, their battles, and their locations. I was certain I knew exactly where that specific human was supposed to be.
"It's not a secret anymore," her expression darkened, her complexion turning pale. "One of ours was attacked earlier while I was trapped here. They've already cracked the encryption. They know where the Ace is now."
"..."
I was silenced by the gravity of the mistake. A secret is only a weapon as long as it's kept to oneself. Trusting fifty people with the location of a world-altering asset was the height of tactical incompetence. I understood they were improvising under extreme pressure, but the fallout was catastrophic. However, another detail in her story caught my attention.
"Wait... can you still talk to each other?" I asked, narrowing my eyes. "The technology is dead."
"We bought a specialised communication item from the market before the apocalypse began," she explained, nodding. "Our group is scattered all over the globe. We had heard the rumours—the warnings that the world would be hit with a pulse to render our technology useless. We prepared for the blackout."
"That's exactly what happened," I agreed. It was a smart move, but it led to a terrifying conclusion. "If they've compromised your network, then your Ace in California is at extreme risk right now."
She looked at me weirdly, her brow furrowing in genuine confusion. "Who said he is in California?"
She paused, then added a sentence that made the ground feel like it was shifting beneath my feet. "He isn't in the West. He is right here, in New York."
"What?!!!"
This time, my shock was absolute. My mental map of the apocalypse was being torn to shreds. I had memorised the biographies of the legends by heart. The Ace who established the American Empire—the founder of the continent's last bastion—was supposed to be in California. That was an immutable fact of history.
Or at least, it was supposed to be.
"The Ace is here? Where?" I pressed her, my voice cutting through the heavy, blood-scented air of the park. Angelica seemed hesitant, her fingers fidgeting with the hem of her tactical vest. "C'mon, you said it yourself—they already know about his location. Keeping it from me now serves no purpose."
"Knowing the location won't help them easily," she said slowly, her voice gaining a defensive edge. "The Ace knew about the fundamental weaknesses of the System's early quests. Monsters are terrestrial in this phase; they cannot manifest in deep water. So, he chose a secluded island. He must be safe for now."
A secluded island in New York… I drifted into deep thought. My mental archives of the city's geography during the Great Fall were extensive. There was only one island worthy of note that could be considered both secluded and strategically significant enough for a high-value asset.
"Don't tell me…" I looked at her, my eyes narrowing. She gave a sombre nod.
"He is at the Statue of Liberty," she confirmed, speaking of the landmark as if it were an impregnable fortress. "He's away from any monster reach. Even if other traitors were sent there, they won't be able to get close. The Ace bought tons of specialised items from the market before the apocalypse even began. He's entrenched."
I stared at her, a mixture of pity and frustration bubbling up. This girl! It wasn't entirely her fault; humans were originally pure, relatively simple creatures compared to the cosmic darkness currently descending upon us. They thought they understood the rules because they had read a few prompts.
"Do you have a direct connection with that Ace here in New York?" I asked.
The realisation was finally hitting me: the "Ace" stories from my original timeline and this reality were different because they were two entirely different people. The timeline had branched, or perhaps my previous knowledge was even more fragmented than I feared.
"Sure, I can send a message at any time," she said, looking at me with a strange, questioning tilt of her head. "Don't tell me you want to go all the way there."
"No," I said firmly, my mind already calculating the variables. "The Ace will have to move from there and come to meet us."
Her face turned ugly the moment the words left my mouth. "There is no risk for the Ace there! Why would he leave a perfect sanctuary and come here into the middle of a war zone?"
She clearly couldn't see through the hidden mechanics of the "Heavens." I had to elaborate. "That place isn't safe, Angelica. In fact, it is the most dangerous spot in the city during the upcoming hours."
"How come… Don't tell me you have intel we don't have?!" She searched my face. She knew me by now; I wasn't the type to fool around or make groundless claims.
"You're right that terrestrial monsters can't invade through the water, and true aquatic monsters won't appear this early in the cycle," I agreed. "But you made a grave mistake underestimating the spite of your enemies."
"The Angels?" Her tone told me she was starting to grasp the severity of my warning. "Will they use the same weird trap like they used on me? Another Hybrid?"
I shook my head. I begged to differ. It seemed this particular Ace was someone the Angels were genuinely terrified of. In my past life, I remembered the cryptic records of how the Statue of Liberty had been obliterated—smashed down during the earliest quests of the apocalypse. It hadn't been a monster raid; it had been an execution.
"They'll use a far more brutal and deadly way to kill the Ace," I said, my voice cold and certain. This was a historical fact in my mind. "That Ace has to move fast. He needs to leave that statue before it's too late."
"But…" Angelica's face twisted, showing a troubled expression she hadn't revealed until now.
"But what? Monsters? Traitors? The Ace can just come directly here," I argued. "The journey isn't that long. If he sticks to the main streets and uses his pre-purchased items, he can survive the transit. Then we'll wait for him and protect him properly."
That was the only viable plan. I didn't know a safer place than our current position, especially as I was reconsidering the need to retrieve my own high-tier items.
These Angels were far more tricky than I had initially given them credit for. If I faced another Hybrid monster without proper gear, I would be finished. I had only survived the last one because it was preoccupied with a teleportation mission.
"The thing is…" Angelica's voice was small, her troubled expression deepening. "The Ace doesn't have battle abilities. In fact... she was gifted with a unique Sight. She can see through the future movements of the surrounding monsters. We call her the Monster Nemesis."
I felt a jolt of surprise. A girl. But that wasn't the problem.
"She would never survive this journey alone," Angelica continued, her eyes downcast. "Her stats are all locked except for Intelligence. She is physically as fragile as a normal human before the fall."
"That…"
I was stunned. I had never heard of a System configuration like this. Stats locked except for a single attribute? It was essentially the System marking someone for death while giving them the intelligence to watch it coming. If she stayed on the island, the Angels would erase her. If she left, the first stray wolf she encountered would tear her apart.
What should I do? What could I do?