The memory of the old man's final words echoed in my mind like a haunting refrain. Before he sent me back through the veil of time, he had given me one cryptic mandate: Look after our race. Look for the Golden Quests.
At the time, I hadn't taken his words to heart. I had dismissed them as the ramblings of a dying man clinging to myths. The "Golden Quests" were something I had never heard of in all my years of fighting through the apocalypse. But now, standing amidst the cooling corpses of a traitor cell, hearing the name from Angelica's lips... I couldn't help but be deeply shaken.
So these quests appear after Quest Five? What exactly are they? Special quests? Hidden scenarios? I racked my brain, but I couldn't pinpoint the answer. No record from my previous life, no battle report, and not even a single tale from the old man had ever mentioned the existence of "Golden" objectives. The history I had lived was suddenly feeling like a hollow shell.
"Hye, are you okay?"
Angelica's voice broke through the fog. She was waving her hand in front of my face, her brow furrowed as she forced me out of my disturbed thoughts.
"Do you know anything else about these quests?" I asked immediately, trying to gather every scrap of information she might have gathered from the inner circle.
"Why do I feel like you're the one who should be answering that question, not me?" Angelica crossed her arms over her chest, eyeing me with suspicion for a long moment.
She saw the intensity in my gaze and realised I was searching for more than just trivia. Finally, she let out a sigh. "Forget it. I've told you everything I heard. I was just a mid-level leader; I didn't get the full briefing. Honestly, I never even thought the rumours were real."
"Looks like they are," I said, my voice dropping to a low, mysterious register. I needed to shift gears before the gravity of the future paralysed me. "C'mon. Enough talk. Help me cut into these monsters and gather their items."
"And you want to do that... why, exactly?" She looked at the field of rotting meat with genuine confusion. It seemed that despite her "Traitor" class, she was still ignorant about the true potential of the marketplace.
"We can sell these in the market for coins," I explained, already kneeling over the carcass of a wolf. I worked with practised efficiency, extracting the monster core and stripping any valuable claws or fangs from the body. "Let's do it together. There are thousands of monsters here. Every minute we waste is a minute some other scavenger might show up."
I noticed a flicker of ecstasy cross her face as the realisation hit her: coins meant power. She moved in agreement and began to mirror my actions. I didn't mind sharing the loot. The Great Lawn was a sea of carcasses; there were far too many for one person to process before the corpses began to despawn or rot.
If I had been alone, I would have wasted an entire day on this grisly harvest. Even with the two of us working in a synchronised rhythm, it took almost four hours of constant labour before the field was finally cleared of its most valuable components. My inventory was bulging with cores, and my hands were stained a dark, permanent crimson.
"What's the time now?" I asked, wiping my brow. She knew I wasn't asking for the System's arbitrary countdown.
"It's past eight A.M.," she replied, checking her internal chronometer.
"Good." I stood up, feeling the weight of the morning sun. I started walking toward the edge of the park. "Tell your friend to get on that speedboat of hers. She needs to move at least ten miles away from the island within the next thirty minutes."
"What is this setting for?" Angelica stopped in her tracks, her face twisting in puzzlement. "Ten miles? That means she'll be heading into the depths of the ocean. Why would she leave the safety of the island for open water?"
"Just tell her to do it," I said, offering no further explanation. "When it happens, she'll see the chance to survive what's coming at her. If she's on that island when the clock strikes, there won't even be ashes left to bury."
"Can't you just tell me directly what you're expecting?" she pressed, her voice rising in frustration.
I ignored the plea. I knew what was going to happen—I knew the exact nature of the celestial "cleaning" that was scheduled for the harbour. However, because my very presence in this timeline had already changed the flow of events, I couldn't be 100% sure about the timing of the Angels' dirty play.
I had worked my best to cut off the three Angels dominating this specific region by draining their Blessing Points, but the Statue of Liberty was a different jurisdiction altogether.
It was an area controlled by a completely different group of celestial overseers. If I told Angelica to move her friend too early, the Angels might detect the manoeuvre and change their aim, or worse, escalate their methods.
A weapon of the magnitude the Angels were preparing required a tether—a focused window of preparation that I estimated would take at least thirty minutes of channelling.
Moving the "Monster Nemesis" during this narrow window was a gamble; it meant the Angels might sense the shift and redirect their wrath, or rush the activation to catch her in transit.
But nothing was guaranteed. I was operating on the jagged edge of my memories, making the best guesses possible with the limited data I had. I was playing a game of chess against entities that owned the board.
As Angelica realised I wasn't going to offer any more explanations, she finally resigned herself to silence. Her eyes glazed over for several long minutes, a sign she was deep in a telepathic exchange with the Ace through their communication item.
I didn't expect the girl on the island to argue as much as Angelica had; someone with an Intelligence-focused build would recognise the cold logic of the situation.
But just as I was bracing for the news of the Ace's departure, a notification window flared a violent, warning red in front of my eyes. It hit me like a physical punch to the gut.
[WARNING: 25% of the people you are protecting have been killed.]
"What the f*ck?!!"
I cursed loudly, the sound echoing across the desolate park. My whole body stiffened, a toxic mixture of rage and shock flooding my veins. This wasn't supposed to happen. It was a statistical impossibility based on the current monster density in the region.
My plan had been simple: secure the park, then return to the museum to stabilise the survivors. I had been certain that I had decimated the monster population in this sector.
I knew the local Angels were beyond pissed at me, but I had calculated their limits. Without Blessing Points, they couldn't just snap their fingers and summon a new legion. They were crippled, and calling other Angels for assistance was a joke—celestial beings were notorious for their pride and their reluctance to share credit or resources.
In my eyes, the museum should have been the safest spot in New York.
I was confident in the team I had left behind. Under Isabella's leadership, they were supposed to be the ultimate safeguard for the civilians. Even if a wandering pack of monsters had stumbled upon the building, they shouldn't have been able to rack up a twenty-five percent casualty rate without a prolonged, noisy struggle.
There was something deeply wrong. A new, dirty plot had been laid down while I was busy harvesting cores. My mind raced, sifting through the variables until only one terrifying answer remained.
They used the same method they used for Angelica.
It was the only explanation that made sense. Initially, the Angels had placed the ex-traitors at the top of their hit list, viewing them as the primary threat. But after my performance tonight—capping my stats and slaughtering their assets—it seemed they had officially pivoted. I was now the target.
The subquest to protect the civilians was no longer just a way for me to drain the Angels' resources; it had become a noose around my neck. The penalty for failure was the loss of half my current stats.
In any other situation, I might have accepted the loss; even half-strength, I would be stronger than most. But after witnessing the power of the Hybrid and seeing the underhanded moves the Angels were capable of, I realised I couldn't afford to lose a single point.
If I wanted to reach my ultimate goal and stay alive, I needed to protect every stat point I had earned. I didn't just need to keep my current power; I needed to push every attribute to the absolute cap. That was my only insurance policy in a world where the rules were being rewritten on the fly.
"What's wrong?" Angelica asked, her head snapping around as she searched the treeline. She saw the look on my face and assumed we were being targeted by another ambush.
"No time to explain! Follow me!"
I didn't wait for her to process the command. I turned and sprinted toward the museum, picking up the pace until I was a blur of motion. My Speed stat was at the quest limit, far higher than anything Angelica could hope to match. I didn't care about being stealthy anymore; I needed to bridge the gap before that twenty-five percent climbed to fifty.
"Wait for me!" she shouted from behind. The distance between us was widening by the second as I pushed my reinforced legs to their limit. "Where are we going? Tell me at least!"
"To the Great Lawn!" I barked over my shoulder, my eyes flashing with a cold, predatory light in the dimness of the pre-dawn hours. "We have a big fight waiting for us there!"
"The Great Lawn?" Angelica paused for a split second, the name clearly triggering a memory of her own recent ordeal. She shouted back as I pulled further away, "Go ahead then! I know the way! I'll catch up!"
"Don't dawdle for long! This park isn't safe yet!" I didn't wait for her response.
Whatever she said next was swallowed by the wind of my own passage. I was pushing my physical limits, my lungs burning as I converted every ounce of stamina into raw velocity.
A bad foreboding was clawing at my chest, a cold weight that sat heavier than the swords at my waist. The Angels were aiming for my stats—my very foundation—and they wouldn't have initiated a move like this without being fully prepared for the fallout.
[WARNING: 35% of the people you are protecting have been killed.]
"Dammit! They are really killing them fast!" I cursed, my voice thick with rage. My worst fears were manifesting in real-time. The casualty rate was spiking at an impossible speed; it was as if the survivors were lining up in a neat row to be slaughtered.
The distance that should have taken a normal human thirty minutes to traverse was swallowed in less than five. I felt my stamina bar flashing a warning, the depletion rate staggering, but I didn't care. I needed to see the battlefield with my own eyes. Only then could I apply my experience to solve the unsolvable.
The open expanse of the Great Lawn loomed in the distance. From my elevated position on the approach, I had a clear line of sight. I scanned the area, expecting to see a swarm of high-tier predators or perhaps another teleported Hybrid.
"How can this be…?!"
The words escaped me in a breath of pure disbelief. If it weren't for the next System notification flashing in my periphery, I would have thought my own eyes were failing me—that the whole thing was some sick, elaborate joke.
[WARNING: 40% of the people you are protecting have been killed.]
Monsters in this tier had massive, unmistakable silhouettes. Even in the dim, gray light of the early morning, my Night Vision skill should have picked up the heat signatures or the bulk of a wolf pack from miles away. But the landscape was devoid of beasts.
Instead, all I could see was the massive cluster of survivors. They looked like a disturbed anthill, a chaotic sea of bodies moving in frantic, distressed patterns. They were fighting, yes, but not against an external predator.
As I closed the final five hundred meters, the gruesome reality finally snapped into focus. The bile rose in my throat.
"What the f*ck is happening here?!" I roared. My voice carried a heavy, palpable killing intent that seemed to ripple through the air, but the slaughter didn't stop.
It wasn't hyenas. It wasn't wolves. It wasn't a teleported horror like the one that had cornered Angelica.
It was the survivors.
Hidden traitors within the group had unsheathed weapons and were driving them into the throats of the people they had been huddling with just minutes ago. There was no mercy, no hesitation, and no negotiation. It was a cold, systematic culling.
All I could see was absolute chaos. People were sprinting in every direction, their terrified wails echoing off the surrounding treeline.
The traitors had organised themselves into more than twenty small hit-squads, each consisting of two or three armed individuals. They were hunting through the crowd, picking off the surprised and the weak with practised efficiency.
Without needing to ask, I understood the grim math of the situation. The "normal" people here—the civilians I had risked everything to shield—were powerless. This wasn't a fight or a skirmish; it was a massacre in its purest form.
But as I swept my gaze over the carnage, calculating the numbers, my heart hit rock bottom. There were dozens of them. Enough traitors to finish the job and wipe out the remaining sixty percent of the population in a matter of minutes.
Damn it!!
The only saving grace was my own team. Isabella and the others were moving through the madness, trying to exert some level of control. My elite guards were far stronger than the average traitor; no one who crossed their path managed to withstand their counter-attack.
The traitors didn't even seem interested in self-defence; they were focused entirely on maximising the body count, acting like mad wolves who knew their time was short.
I stood motionless for a heartbeat, the rage inside me reaching a boiling point. I realised the trap the Angels had set. No matter which path I took now—no matter how many traitors I cut down—the damage was already catastrophic. The momentum of the massacre was too high.
I was looking at the inevitable failure of my subquest.