Surviving the Death Hunt-Chapter 65: Target

Alone in the deserted Grand Library, Emma yawned. It came out of her fully and without restraint, pulling along the fatigue she’d been quietly storing for days.

She and Mingle and the rest of lab 24 had been deep in the work of building an armband, one designed specifically for the Royal Knights and Alpha Academy students who would be competing in the upcoming Epic Competition.

It wasn’t their lab’s primary focus, not by a long stretch, but Mingle’s presence had a way of expanding what was possible. The Supreme Council knew that. They expected miracles from that lab, and with Mingle involved, miracles had a habit of showing up.

The book between her fingers was enormous, its shell hardened to the point where it looked less like a cover and more like a weapon, one good swing and a skull wouldn’t stand a chance.

She held it with one hand and rubbed her eyes with the other, yawning through the whole thing, her glasses threatening to abandon her face entirely.

"I don’t even know how I got pulled into this. My Inheritance isn’t made for situations like this. Still, they thought I could handle it... just because it gives me unparalleled knowledge."

Emma sneered.

It was true enough on the surface. Kin of Thoth gave her access to all information that had ever existed, which made the argument for her past knowledge easy to make. But her Inheritance was rooted in facts—recorded, verifiable, and documented.

Constructive truth was a different thing entirely, and assumptions were further still. The distinction existed, and it was important. No one acknowledged it, though. They saw the scope of her knowledge and decided the rest filled itself in.

The armband her unit had finished was built with the competition in mind, specifically for the humans who would be competing.

They called it the Staller. What it did was reduce the damage a human sustained, soften the blow of every hit, and keep them standing longer than they otherwise would.

Knowledge was what Emma had always been valued for, and this situation was no exception. Her Inheritance made retrieving the procedure possible, pulling it from wherever the past had buried it.

But the history behind Staller wasn’t encouraging. Every attempt to create it had fallen short, never once coming close to a perfect result.

Every past version had landed in one of two categories, dangerously unstable or uselessly weak, and neither held up when a human took repeated hits.

The Staller would malfunction, and that was the end of it. Emma had worked through all of that and arrived at a 90% success rate, which was no small thing. Recognition, though, had been in short supply.

Tsk.

"I could’ve continued Scar’s research by now if the Council hadn’t pushed things so hard. They didn’t even give me time to rest after I was kidnapped."

A few days had passed since Emma was saved from Luccy’s kidnapping, all because of the information she’d been trying to pull together for Scar.

The two days that followed had been quiet ones, deliberately so. Emma had refrained from digging further. She was under no illusions about the situation she was in.

She knew the Precognition of Fate intimately, centuries of being enemies had guaranteed that much.

The gap between them was all the more absurd. Kin of Thoth was Enforcer-class. Precognition of Fate sat at Executor. And yet they had always been drawn into conflict, perhaps because of how differently they worked.

Emma’s Inheritance reached into the past. Her enemy’s stretched into the future. And behind each of them stood an Architect, both operating in ways that couldn’t have been more different from each other.

Freedom on one side and justice on the other, the collision had been inevitable. The hatred hadn’t needed much time to find its footing. Though there was a difference in what each of them brought to their respective masters.

Precognition of Fate’s devotion had never been as rooted, as absolute, as Emma’s loyalty that had begun before the dawn of time itself.

There was more behind Emma’s determination than friendship or duty to Arthur’s orders. Those things were real, but they weren’t the whole of it. Beneath everything sat something older and more personal.

She had been waiting centuries to make a point. That facts would always outclass foresight. That the past would always have the edge over the future

This was one of the reasons why Emma wasn’t feeling great at the moment.

She frowned, sweat beating on her brow as her mind drifted from what she was reading.

’Today too?’

From the moment she picked the research back up, a feeling emerged. Something heavy and close, like breath on the back of her neck.

She wasn’t built for this kind of thing. No strategy, no sixth sense, no instincts sharpened by her Inheritance.

None of that.

But she didn’t need any of it to know she was being watched. The situation was obvious enough that even someone without ears could have heard it approaching.

Her only real weapon had always been her mind, and that was all she had now.

Luccy wasn’t behind this. The girl was too energetic, and too openly confident to operate like a shadow, and she had returned to tailing Scar regardless.

Emma knew because she had passed through before heading to the library, catching Scar training with Black Sun, his blade, with two days left before a potential confrontation with his father’s killer.

Luccy had been there when Emma arrived, resting on Scar’s bed without a care.

The more she thought about it, the more she believed the person on her trail was someone else entirely. 𝒇𝙧𝙚𝓮𝔀𝓮𝒃𝙣𝓸𝒗𝒆𝒍.𝙘𝒐𝒎

She had intended to raise it with Scar during her visit. But she’d changed her mind by the time she got there. Luccy’s presence was part of it, but the bigger reason was Scar himself.

Telling him her life was in danger again would practically guarantee he’d want her to walk away from the research. And she wasn’t ready for that conversation.

"I’m not done yet. Before Scar can remember everything, he needs to hear all the stories... and read the message on the ancient tablet. That should be enough to bring his memories back."

This particular ancient tablet had been written in a foreign language, adding its own layer of difficulty to everything else. The main tablet had disappeared since the Red Day and hadn’t surfaced since.

What remained was a replica. The diminished version, carrying only a fraction of what the original held. But even that fraction had value. It was capable of helping Scar, and for now, that was what mattered.

That, however, came with its own complications. The replica was housed in the Supreme Council’s historic office, not because the Council knew what it was, most of them didn’t.

But that was almost beside the point. Scar’s enemies had placed it there with intention, using the weight of that office to make retrieval as close to impossible as they could.

"I could give Scar the three books: Eternal Rot and Hunger, Fire as the End of Hope, and Divine Melody. But they’re just stories. Even if some of it is true, it won’t be enough... No. I need every story I can find. And the tablet."

When she spoke, something caught her attention. A sound.

Her eyes moved carefully across the room, and the unease settled more heavily as the reality of it landed. She was in a deserted library, feeling free, with not even a receptionist nearby. That was a bad combination.

She grimaced, teeth pressed together, and every nerve pulling taut.

The footsteps were heavy and deliberate, the kind that belonged to an academy student.

Which made no sense. Only staff had access to the library. She didn’t waste time thinking it through. The situation had already done that for her. She was in trouble.

"Who is that? Why me? ...No. Maybe I’m just imagining things." She muttered in panic.