Inside the mid-tier fortress that served as the Blade Syndicate's headquarters, Marcus Skeiner stood stiffly before Zachary, the air between them heavy enough to suffocate. Zachary's expression was dark, his eyes cold and sharp, as if a storm were gathering just beneath the surface.

"What's going on in Blackridge?" Zachary asked at last, his voice low and tightly controlled. "How did the Nocturne Order manage to secure an Advanced-tier fortress?"

Even hearing the words made his chest burn. The capital he had poured into Ethereal had long since crossed the line from investment to obsession, becoming an abstract, humiliating number he no longer liked to think about. Back when he had first built his power base in the Harmony City region, he had been driven out during the Starter Zone era by Ethan. Forced to retreat, he had shifted south to Springhaven, propping up the Blade Syndicate as his new spearhead.

Blackridge had never been part of the plan. The region lacked any truly exceptional guilds and sat too far north to be desirable. Most of the native guilds had already migrated south, leaving the area thinly populated and economically unappealing. When the Fortress Wars began, Zachary had made a deliberate decision to ignore Blackridge entirely and concentrate all of his resources on capturing a single mid-tier fortress in Springhaven.

Even then, things had gone wrong. Despite focusing everything he had on a mid-tier objective, he had still been beaten by Ethan and the Renegade Alliance, who somehow seized an Advanced-tier fortress instead. Swallowing that humiliation had been hard enough.

Then came the sabotage.

The moment Zachary's own fortress had fallen into his hands, Ethan had sent that red named lunatic . A newly captured fortress was at its most vulnerable, with no defensive systems online and no protective arrays available. The guy's abilities were tailor-made for structural destruction. Walls, gates, core facilities, nothing was safe. In fortress warfare, he was less a player and more a walking calamity.

And yet, even that was not the worst of it.

What truly infuriated Zachary was the news that a nameless, loosely organized guild like the Nocturne Order had somehow taken an Advanced-tier fortress in Blackridge of all places. The absurdity of it gnawed at him. For a brief, irrational moment, he had even wondered whether Advanced fortresses were easier to capture than mid-tier ones.

As if to add insult to injury, Ethan had gone on to acquire yet another Divine Ability and triggered some absurd event, activating a mysterious Energy Pool System in the process. The rewards alone were staggering. Just the spoils from the Advanced fortress had pushed the Renegade Alliance to Level 11, placing them firmly at the top of the global guild rankings.

At first, Zachary had assumed the Nocturne Order's success was part of Ethan's scheme. That assumption did not survive contact with reality. Intelligence gathered over the past few hours painted a very different picture. The red named fiend had relentlessly harassed the Nocturne Order's coalition in Blackridge, striking almost the moment they secured their fortress. His opening attack had blown away half the outer walls and nearly destroyed their command center. Since then, the Nocturne Order had been hunting him like a wounded beast.

Fifteen minutes ago, the final report had arrived. The red named guy was dead.

Every thread of evidence pointed to the same conclusion. The Nocturne Order had no connection to Ethan. If anything, Ethan seemed furious that they had secured an Advanced fortress at all, enough to unleash Markham purely to tear it down out of spite. Ironically, the chaos in Blackridge had bought Springhaven some breathing room. If Markham had turned his attention there instead, the damage would have been catastrophic.

Which only made the question more pressing. How did a guild full of rogues like the Nocturne Order possess the strength to take an Advanced fortress in the first place?

That was why Marcus was here.

Marcus Skeiner was an idiot. Zachary had never pretended otherwise. But the man had connections, the kind that came from real-world loyalty, a swarm of hangers-on, and an uncanny ability to sniff out rumors before they spread. Those traits alone had made him worth backing.

"I heard from a buddy that they just… got insanely lucky," Marcus said, leaning forward and lowering his voice as if sharing a priceless secret.

"Lucky?" Zachary scoffed. "How lucky do you have to be to stumble into an Advanced fortress?"

"I'm serious," Marcus insisted. "My friend's in the Nocturne Order. He said when they reached the fortress, there were no NPC defenders at all. Just the Commander, and he was already at less than one percent health. They threw suicide squads at him, lost around twenty thousand players, and slowly chipped him down until they took control." Marcus rattled it all off in one breath, eyes shining with excitement, as though he himself had reaped the rewards.

Zachary's gaze sharpened. "They went straight for an Advanced fortress?"

"No," Marcus said quickly, shaking his head. "They were heading toward a nearby Starter Fortress. On the way, they noticed the Advanced fortress gates wide open. They checked it out and found the Commander barely hanging on."

Zachary fell silent, his thoughts racing. Luck like that bordered on the absurd, but the story had just enough internal logic to be dangerous. "Is your friend's information reliable?" he asked.

"Absolutely," Marcus said, thumping his chest. "We're hometown buddies. Skipped classes together, drank cheap beer, ate street food. Brothers."

"Hm." Zachary grunted, already calculating. Perhaps it was time to make contact with the Nocturne Order's leader. His eyes flicked briefly toward Marcus, unconsciously weighing the man's usefulness against the value of an Advanced fortress.

Marcus, oblivious to the silent appraisal, grinned foolishly. He had no idea that, if he stopped being useful, Zachary would discard him without hesitation and seek a closer alliance with the Nocturne Order instead.

What neither of them seemed to realize was how flawed Zachary's assumptions truly were. For all his scheming, he never once questioned whether the Nocturne Order would be willing to hand over a fortress they had bled for. In his mind, reaching out meant compliance. It was the rigid thinking of a spoiled heir who believed money could bend anything, even human pride, to his will. That blind faith was his greatest weakness.

He had also conveniently forgotten just how thoroughly he had alienated nearly every director on the Steele Consortium's board.

Even so, his thoughts soon drifted elsewhere. Earlier, he had received a message from Mirage. She had captured someone close to Ethan in the badlands and reported that Ethan's people had been selling gold on the black market. Zachary did not know where the gold had come from or how much there was, but using the black market meant the quantity had to be enormous.

His last order to Mirage had been simple. Take the person. Take the gold.

If his calculations were correct, securing even an unknown portion of that supply would cement his standing within the Steele Consortium. Access to major black markets alone required a minimum of ten metric tons. At black market rates, that was nearly a billion dollars. The number was staggering. How could a penniless nobody like Ethan possibly possess that kind of wealth? Was being an Energy User truly that profitable?

Zachary had already confirmed that Ethan had become an Energy User and had even joined the Ninth Division. Lately, however, something about the Ninth Division felt wrong. His contact there had gone silent without explanation. Still, no news was good news. At least, that was what Zachary told himself as he pushed the thought aside.

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