"Taula?" Klaus managed to wheeze out as his eyes blinked against the harsh moonlight.

She was the last person he expected to see standing in the ruins of a merchant town.

The A-rank adventurer stood like an ivory pillar with her heavy axe still locked against Kahn’s rotting hammer.

"Klaus!"

Another voice that was higher and filled with frantic terror called out his name.

Astrid, the Guild’s receptionist, came sprinting toward them through the debris. Her face was pale and her breath hitched as she saw the carnage but as she got closer, her steps faltered.

She stopped ten feet away, her eyes widening as they landed on the man staggering back from Taula’s axe.

The dungeon gate behind him flickered one last time and vanished into nothingness, leaving the rot-covered giant standing alone in the moonlight.

"Big brother..." Astrid whispered.

Kahn’s single remaining pupil dilated.

He looked at his sister while breathing and his nose made a wet bubbling sound.

His lips twitched, attempting a smile, but with half his face sloughed away by the rot shaman’s magic, the gesture was a grotesque display of yellowed bone and blackened gums.

He looked like a corpse that had forgotten to lie down.

Taula didn’t lower her axe as the man staggered backward but she stepped back toward Klaus though her eyes never left Kahn.

Astrid looked at the empty space where the gate had been.

"Where are Vex and Garrick? Why... why were you trying to kill Klaus?"

Kahn’s good eye twitched and he leaned heavily on his hammer, the metal was pitted and scarred by poison.

"I killed them," he said in a low voice. "For us. I did it for us, Astrid."

"Us?" Astrid’s voice broke.

Kahn took a staggering step forward.

"This was meant to be the one, Astrid. The last raid... The one where I’d never have to draw blood again. I was going to take you away from that desk. We’d go to the Capital or the coast. We’d buy a mansion, Astrid. We’d buy the names of nobles and we’d live in peace with no need to worry about monsters."

"That wasn’t the question!" Astrid screamed as her fists clenched at the sides. "I don’t care about mansions! I don’t care about the Capital! I just wanted everyone to come back! What happened to Vex? What happened to Garrick?"

She stared at him, hoping... in fact praying that this was some sick dark joke.

Vex and Garrick weren’t just squadmates, they were the brothers Kahn had chosen a long time ago.

They had shared rooms, shared meals, shared the same cramped house when they had nothing but their dreams and a few copper coins.

Astrid had spent years watching the four of them laugh together, wishing those days would never end.

"I had to..." Kahn persisted, his delusion shielding him from the horror in her eyes. "Give me a moment to explain, Astrid. All of this... every drop of blood was for you."

"What the fuck is wrong with you?" Astrid’s voice interrupted him. "Did you forget? Vex had a cousin waiting for him! He was so close to buying her back from those nobles! He talked about it every single night! And Garrick... he was going to take his sister to the Capital to save her! He was going to find the Saintess candidate to cure her and take her to school too! Did you just forget they had lives, too?"

"SHUT UP!" Kahn roared, a burst of crimson aura flickering around his rotted limbs.

"Why should I shut up?" Astrid stepped toward him with her grief turning into a cold hard fury.

"You’re ungrateful..." Kahn hissed, his teeth grinding together. "I killed them because I wanted a happy ending! I promised Mother before she passed... I promised I’d take care of you!"

"I don’t care about a promise that costs other people their lives!" Astrid shouted back. "What you did... it’s wrong. It’s evil. I hate you, Kahn. I hate you so much."

The words hit Kahn harder than any blow he had received up until this point and he froze.

The crimson aura around him flickered and died, leaving him looking small and pathetic in his ruined armor.

"You... you hate me?" he whispered.

"I hate what you’ve become..." she sobbed, her strength finally giving way to tears. "Why did you have to ruin everything?"

Kahn stood there for a long time as the wind whistled through the gaps in his armor then, he started to laugh.

It wasn’t the hearty, booming laugh Klaus had heard in the dungeon but it was a hollow, pained sound that scraped against the ears like sandpaper.

"Then I don’t have a reason anymore..." Kahn muttered.

His eye snapped to Klaus. In a sudden, desperate burst of movement, he made a beeline for the young man on the ground.

He didn’t care about survival anymore; he just wanted to destroy the last witness of his failure but Taula was faster.

She stepped into his path with the grace of a mountain slide. Kahn swung his hammer with everything he had left making the metal scream through the air.

"GET OUT OF THE WAY OR DIE!"

Taula didn’t dodge and she didn’t even raise her axe. She simply reached out with her bare hand and caught the head of the hammer.

BOOM!

The impact created a shockwave that kicked up a circle of dust. Cracks spider-webbed across the body of the hammer as Taula’s fingers sank into the reinforced metal.

Kahn tried to yank the weapon back with his muscles bulging but it was like trying to pull a mountain.

With a sickening crunch of metal, Taula’s grip tightened.

The hammer... the same weapon that had flattened Garrick’s head shattered like glass under her palm.

Kahn staggered back with his balance gone and he tried to gather his aura for one last strike, but as he looked up, Taula was already there.

Her eyes were twin pools of emerald fire, radiating a level of power that made Kahn’s Practitioner-level aura look like a candle in a hurricane.

She swung her axe in a horizontal blur, aiming straight for his neck and Kahn’s rotted eyes widened.

He couldn’t move... He couldn’t even breathe.

Death was a centimeter away...

"DON’T HURT MY BROTHER!" Astrid’s scream echoed across the ruins and the axe stopped.

The blade was close enough to Kahn’s throat that a single bead of blood trickled down his neck yet the kinetic force behind the swing didn’t just disappear.

A massive shockwave of displaced air exploded from the edge of the blade, knocking Kahn backward and blowing everyone’s hair back with the force of a gale.

Taula stood perfectly still as her muscles coiled like a spring. She slowly turned her head toward Astrid.

"He tried to kill Klaus... so..." she said simply. "Why?"

Astrid didn’t answer with words.

She ran past Taula and threw herself onto her brother’s chest. Kahn had collapsed with his strength finally spent and the rot taking over his remaining vitals.

Astrid held him with her tears soaking into his ruined armor.

"I’ve already lost Mom and Dad..." she sobbed, her voice muffled against his chest. "I can’t lose you too. Please... even if you’re a monster, don’t leave me alone."

Taula watched in a heavy silence.

She didn’t have a brother so she didn’t understand the bond that could make a person protect a murderer but she thought of her Grandma, and for the first time, she lowered her axe completely.

"Fuck..."

A low grunt from the ground drew Taula’s attention. She spun around with her face softening instantly.

Klaus was slumped over and Taula slid to her knees and pulled his head onto her lap.

"Klaus?... Klaus? Are you okay? Stay with me."

"How... how did you find me?" Klaus asked in a whisper.

"I finished work with the other A-ranks and I didn’t see you..." Taula murmured, her hand brushing a strand of hair from his forehead. "Astrid said you were on a raid with her brother and she was worried so we came as fast as we could."

Klaus tried to respond, but the world was starting to fray at the edges. The sky was turning white and the sounds of Astrid’s sobbing grew distant replaced by a high pitched ringing.

"Klaus! Klaus!"

Taula’s voice was the last thing he heard before his eyes rolled back and the darkness claimed him.

...

’This wouldn’t be the first time I’ve fainted...’ Klaus thought as he drifted through the void. ’At least this time, I’m pretty sure I’m not dead.’

He opened his eyes to find himself in a place that defied logic.

It was a field that stretched infinitely in every direction, filled with blossoms of pure white that smelled like jasmine and the grass beneath him was a vibrant, impossibly healthy green.

He looked ahead.

Standing in the center of the field was a woman and she wore a beautiful white dress that trailed against the ground and a grey blindfold that covered her eyes yet Klaus felt her gaze as clearly as a physical touch.

He recognized her instantly from the lore of Artemis Online.

"Saintess?" he asked.

The woman didn’t speak with her voice.

Her lips moved and though no sound reached his ears, the words resonated in his very soul as he read her lips with perfect clarity.

"I love you, Klaus."

Klaus blinked. The white field vanished, replaced by the familiar wooden rafters of a ceiling. He could hear voices... two of them calling his name.

As his vision cleared, he realized he was lying on a plush couch.

Two faces were hovering directly above him. On the left was Serra with her eyes red but wide with relief and on the right was Taula with a relieved face.

"What... what happened?" Klaus groaned, trying to sit up.

Taula didn’t let him. She leaned forward and wrapped her arms around him, lifting him off the couch in a rib-cracking hug.

"Never worry me like that again or I’ll beat you up myself..." she whispered into his ear. She held him for a long beat before setting him back down with a small genuine smile that lit up her face.

Klaus was still trying to process the dream and the fact that he was alive when a familiar translucent blue tab flickered into existence in front of his eyes.

「Congratulations, you have been gifted a Unique Trait from the Goddess of Light」

Klaus’s heart skipped a beat.

「Unique Trait: Light’s Blessing」

「Tier: ???」

「Description: When your mana and mental energy are depleted, call upon the power of the goddess and they will be refilled. This effect scales with the user’s faith or divine favor and the User can only use it three times a day.」

Klaus stared at the floating text with his mouth hanging slightly open.

’What the fuck?!’ He thought.