This wasn't within my projected abilities at all. I hadn't come to the Great Lawn to play the part of the wandering hero, nor did I have a saviour complex.
My goals were singular and selfish: I wanted to gain a high-tier Class and survive the first month just like every other soul in this dying world. Taking on a rescue mission for a defenceless girl in the middle of a harbour wasn't just a detour—it was a potential death sentence.
"Can you help her?" Angelica asked. She looked at me in such a soft, vulnerable way that it almost masked the bloodstains on her gear. But how could I possibly be of any help here?
My power was limited by the System's quest caps, and I was still technically Classless. I had pulled a clever trick to limit the direct intervention of the three Angels governing this specific region, but the world was large.
Other regions still had Angels with enough Blessing Points to manifest a miracle—or a curse—that could kill me a thousand times over before I could blink.
"If she manages to reach this place, then I promise her my protection," I said finally. It was all I could offer for now. "Sorry, but I know my limits here. I'm not a god."
"But… she will die if she tries to come here alone," Angelica pleaded.
"And she will die if she stays there," I countered, shaking my head. "There must be a way to leave that island. She couldn't possibly have isolated herself there without a pre-planned way out, right? Someone with an Intelligence-focused build would have accounted for an exit strategy."
From Angelica's panicked expression, I could tell my deduction was correct.
"She brought a speedboat with her to the island just before the apocalypse hit," Angelica admitted, moving closer to me. She even dared to grab my hand, her fingers trembling.
She looked me straight in the eye, and all I could see in those red depths was pure, unadulterated sincerity. "But she can't touch the ground here—not without proper protection.
The moment she enters the city limits, the monsters will swarm her. Can't you go and help her? You are strong and… I can bring all the people I saved at the museum with us to help. We can form a convoy."
All the people? That's just wishful thinking, I inwardly sighed. I released my hand from her grasp, the leather of my gloves squeaking. "Sorry, but that's a suicidal plan. A group of untrained civilians moving through the city right now is just a mobile buffet for the wolves."
"Sister Ace can't die like that! We need to do something to help her!" Angelica's face was deeply troubled, and I could see a few tears welling up, threatening to spill over.
"Sister… Are you two related or something?" I couldn't help but ask. The term carried a weight that felt more than just casual.
"She… was my friend for a long time," Angelica replied, her face suddenly flushing in a strange, deep crimson.
Don't tell me… the two of them… no fcking way!* I thought. It wasn't uncommon to see two people of the same sex together in this age and time, but I pushed the thought aside. That wasn't my business, and I wouldn't butt in—especially not when the situation was this dire.
"I… promise to do anything you want… even… anything…" Her tone was shaky, her pride clearly dissolving under the pressure of her friend's impending doom. She had first tried the seductive approach, and now she was pulling the sympathetic card. She was using every weapon in her arsenal to move me.
However, I had to admit, she was a beauty even in such a fractured state. She wasn't "mine" to consider in a romantic sense, but as a strategic asset? She was invaluable.
If I managed to snatch her and bring her to my side, binding her with debts like these, my own chances of survival would skyrocket. A high-tier defector with a debt of blood was better than any legendary weapon.
Was there a way to save her friend without throwing my life away?
Angelica kept her silent, pleading gaze fixed on me. She was sincere, but in this world, words were the cheapest currency available. They meant nothing without the System to enforce them.
"Let's do it this way then," I said, my voice slow and deliberate. "I have a way to save your friend for now."
"Really?" Her face brightened instantly, a spark of hope returning to her eyes.
"Wait until you hear the offer to the end," I said, pointing a finger toward her face to stop her from interrupting. I needed her to understand the cost.
"I have a way to make her escape the upcoming calamity and bring her halfway here. But she has to survive until the end of this quest before I can go and pick her up. She'll have to hold a middle-ground position."
"That's… great!" she said, not refusing the idea. "But… how long will she have to stay alone there?"
"At least ten hours," I gave her my worst-case expectation. "Give or take two hours from it. It's a long time for someone with locked stats."
"This…" Angelica began to pace, her fists clenched at her sides. "If you manage to bring her closer to here, then I'll go and bring her the rest of the way myself. I can fight."
"Out of the question," I shook my head. "You can't step a single foot outside of my sight without my explicit permission."
"What?!" She stopped, her eyes wide with shock.
"That's the second part of our contract," I said slowly, letting the weight of the words sink in. "We'll sign a contract bound by the System itself. You won't be able to do anything without my permission, or your life will be the price. From this moment onward, you'll be one of my minions. Got it?"
I watched her closely, my eyes cold and unyielding. I had to be this strict; I couldn't afford to be soft, and I certainly couldn't afford to be naive. In the world that was coming, mercy wasn't just a weakness—it was a death sentence.
It wasn't just about the darkness in people's hearts or the simple temptation to backstab a comrade for a few extra coins. The true danger lay in the more sophisticated cruelties: the use of leverage and threats to turn an ally into an enemy.
Just as I was doing here, exploiting her emotional weak spot to bind her to my side, others would do the same to maximise their own benefits. Especially those distasteful, manipulative Angels. If I didn't own her soul now, they would surely find a way to buy it later.
"You want me to be linked… forever with you?" she asked, her voice a mere whisper. She closed her eyes, and for a fleeting second, I thought she was going to refuse. Then, her shoulders slumped. "Alright. Anything. Just to save her."
So, that girl at the Statue of Liberty truly held such a monumental place in your heart. I felt a small, fleeting pang of guilt in the back of my mind, but I made sure none of it reached my face.
In this lifetime, I knew I would have to commit many such cold-blooded acts to ensure my path remained clear. I wouldn't regret it. This was the only way to survive the coming dark times, and I was determined to be the one standing at the end.
"Give me your hand," I said, stretching my arm out.
She didn't hesitate. She placed her hand in mine, her skin warm against my palm. There were several ways to manifest a binding contract in this reality, but the simplest was an ethereal bond facilitated by the System fragments embedded in our souls. I closed my eyes, intending to initiate the process.
[NOTIFICATION: You do not have enough coins to perform this contract. The process is cancelled.]
"Damn!" I hissed under my breath.
I had been so focused on stat-capping my Strength and Speed that I had totally forgotten I was flat broke. I had burned every last coin to survive the wolf-tide.
"You don't have enough coins?" she asked. It seemed she had received a similar notification or had read the frustration on my face. "Alright, let me buy a contract from the market then."
"You can't do that," I snapped, my annoyance growing. "The market is locked for everyone while a localised quest is active. We're in the middle of a conflict zone."
"That's not a problem for me," she replied calmly.
Before I could ask what she meant, she reached into her inventory and pulled out a physical reel. It was a yellowed, ancient-looking piece of animal skin—an Empty System Scroll.
I could tell instinctively that it was an item that could be inscribed with terms simply by the user's thoughts. She tossed it toward me, and I caught it reflexively, my expression one of utter flabbergastment.
"This…" I trailed off. The shock wasn't that she had the scroll; it was the fact that she had managed to access her market interface while the rest of the world was in a blackout.
"How can I use it?" She finally smiled, her tense expression fading as she regained a bit of her old, playful confidence. "I have a Class, after all. Why wouldn't I be able to use the market?"
My heart sank. Gosh! There were people in this world who were truly born with silver spoons in their mouths. I couldn't help but feel a wave of bitterness wash over me. I had lived an entire lifetime—decades of struggle—dreaming of the day I could finally secure a Class, and here she was, already possessing one before the first quest had even concluded.
How could the System call this fair?
"Don't give me that look, as if I'm someone special," she said, sensing the dark turn of my thoughts as I began to mentally fill in the required fields of the contract scroll.
"I have that useless 'Traitor' Class. Despite being shut away from most of the basic features it's supposed to have, I can still increase my stats and access the market through its backdoor protocols."
Oh, so it was this… I processed the information quickly. But a new worry emerged. "Wait. If you have it, won't every other traitor have a Class as well?"
If that were true, I was in far more trouble than I'd anticipated. Comparing a Classless survivor to a Class-holder was like comparing the earth to the heavens.
I might have used a beginner's package to supplement my stats, but that was a temporary patch. A Class didn't just grant stat points; it unlocked the gates to increasing levels, ranks, and specialised skills. It was the reason I was so desperate to reach my own goal.
"All of the traitors? That's a joke," Angelica chuckled, though there was no humour in it. "Only the leaders gain such an opportunity this early. In the entire world, there are only three hundred and sixty-seven leaders. They are assigned to lead one region each."
I absorbed that in silence. I hadn't known the exact numbers of the celestial hierarchy before. It was becoming clear that having a mole from the inner circle was going to be more valuable than I had ever imagined.
"Here," I said, tossing the yellowed reel back to her. "All it needs is your final confirmation."
I had filled out the contract with the cold efficiency of a man who had seen a thousand betrayals. I didn't leave a single loophole. The conditions were the most secure I had ever encountered; the terms were ironclad. If she even entertained the thought of double-crossing me, the System would recognise the intent and terminate her life on the spot.
"Done," she whispered. She scanned the text briefly, her eyes darting over the glowing runes before she gave her mental consent.
The moment the agreement was finalised, the reel dissolved into a fine, shimmering fog, dissipating into the morning air as if it had never existed. The bond was now etched directly into her soul.
"Now tell me," she demanded, her urgency returning tenfold. "How do we save her? How do we get her off that island?"
However, I didn't give her the answer she wanted. Instead, I asked a question that seemed entirely unrelated to the life of the "Monster Nemesis."
"Do you know what time it is right now?"
"..." Angelica stared at me, startled and clearly frustrated. "You can check the System clock for that, genius!" she snapped.
"I didn't mean the System clock," I snorted, shaking my head in a show of feigned disappointment.
She looked at me in total puzzlement. To her, the System clock was the only thing that mattered now. However, I knew a truth she didn't: the early records of the apocalypse—the ones I had memorised from my past life—were written according to the old world's time, not the new celestial clock.
To predict the Angels' next move, I had to calculate the position of the sun and the old-world cycle. But I hated math; it was a tedious necessity of time-travelling.
"What does the time have to do with saving the Ace?" she pouted, her anger bubbling to the surface.
"Just tell me. It's crucial," I added, my voice dropping to a serious register. "I need to time her escape perfectly. If she leaves a minute too early or too late, she's dead."
"It's about seven A.M. now," she said after closing her eyes to gauge the light and her internal chronometer. "Now, tell me how to save her."
"Not now," I said firmly, shaking my head.
"Are you going back on your words? The contract was the sole condition of me helping you! I've bound myself to you!"
"I didn't say I wouldn't help," I said, looking at her with a meaningful gaze, hoping she would see the calculation in my eyes. "When the precise moment comes, I'll let you know. For now, we wait."
"You…" She looked like she was about to lunge across the gap and punch me, contract be damned. To prevent a physical confrontation, I quickly changed the subject.
"So, you are the leader of New York?"
She glared at me for several long seconds, her chest heaving as she considered whether breaching the System-monitored contract was worth the satisfaction of hitting me. Finally, her face showed a defeated resignation. She had no choice but to follow my lead.
"I was," she said, shaking her head. "But now there's someone else supervising the activities of the traitors here. A higher authority was brought in when I proved... difficult."
As long as she was talking, I wasn't going to stop digging. "What is the real goal of the traitors? Not the fluff the Angels tell you—the fundamental objective."
"We… they have a list," she paused, her eyes turning deadly serious. "A list of names. Thousands of them. There isn't a continent or a single country without a long list of specific targets. The traitors are ordered to kill everyone on those lists before the start of Quest Five."
So this is their aim after all, I thought. But why Quest Five? What's so special about it?
I mentally scrolled through the timeline of the first ten quests. They were all notoriously cruel and challenging, the period where the human population would see its most catastrophic decline. But in my memory, Quest Five was just another hurdle. I couldn't recall anything particularly unique about it.
"Do you know why they're targeting them?" I asked, faking ignorance to see if she had a piece of the puzzle I lacked.
"The Angels claim these people hold a great threat to the 'balance' of the world," Angelica said, her tone suggesting she found the explanation as ridiculous as I did.
"But I once heard a rumour among the inner circle... They say that after the fifth quest, special opportunities will appear. 'Golden Quests,' they called them. These people on the list are deemed the most likely to trigger them, so the traitors want them cleared out of the picture before they can even start."
I began to move across the battlefield, systematically harvesting the cores from the monster corpses. This battle had been a goldmine—thousands of monsters and four Alphas. If I gathered every core and valuable drop, I would be the richest man in the city.
But as her words sank in, my hand stiffened around a monster core. My mind went ablaze.
The Golden Quests? No fcking way!* Those were the exact words the old man had used. The final, desperate instruction he had given me before I was sent back: "Pay attention to the Golden Quests."
"What's wrong?" Angelica asked, noticing the sudden change in my expression. "Do you know about them?"