Luke was making his way through the Wild Zone, heading back toward the Safe Zone.

It was still a long way off.

Each day in that place, each night, only reminded him of home. He tried to forget the Baumann family, but he couldn’t. Most of the time, he simply avoided thinking. The Wild Zone did the rest for him. The ever-present sense of death lurking nearby, the monsters, the unexpected encounters—everything in that cursed territory demanded his focus. Especially here, in the heart of it all.

Right now, he sat atop an ancient tower, a moss-covered stone structure cloaked in the dust of forgotten centuries. Perched on the ledge, he chewed on a piece of roasted meat. Having a storage item had its perks. He could prepare meals in advance, store them, and when he pulled one back out, it would be just as he’d left it. Same flavor. Same temperature.

A sound echoed through the ruined city.

The bell.

Distant, slicing through the silence of the night.

Luke froze mid-bite. Then, from below, metallic footsteps began to echo across the abandoned streets.

The Midnight Wardens were leaving their hiding places. He watched from above as they moved through the empty roads with mechanical precision. Methodical, cold. Almost robotic. But they weren’t machines. Not quite.

He didn’t know what was beneath those black suits of armor, and truth be told, he didn’t want to find out. Not yet.

Still, he knew he’d have to. If he wanted to survive, he needed to understand them. Knowing your enemy was the first rule in the assassin’s craft. Study their behavior, their movement, their patterns. Memorize every step.

Because one day… he would need to kill one.

His entire journey through the Wild Zone had a single goal: to locate the third mechanism. But so far, he’d found nothing. He was searching for a military stronghold, something like Bastion or the orc outpost. Instead, the Wild Zone had offered only silence and stone.

Now, his theory felt more certain. The third mechanism was beyond the barrier, the one that divided the Wild Zone into two distinct territories. And if that was true, then the other side was likely even worse than this one.

The tutorial wasn’t punishing them. It was warning them.

Requiring the arm of a Midnight Warden to open the gate wasn’t some arbitrary punishment. It was a threshold. A filter. Only someone strong enough to kill one of those creatures would be ready for what lay ahead.

But what also kept Luke on edge was the fact that no one had ever mentioned the second way to open the gate. Whenever the Haven leaders spoke about it, it was always with the firm belief that only the activation of two mechanisms would unlock it.

“Do they really not know about the other option?”

It made sense. No one in their right mind wandered alone in that area. One broken bone, one poorly healed wound… and death would come quietly, without warning. Most people didn’t even dare stray far from the Safe Zone.

“Paul said he touched the barrier…”

Jonathan, Quinn, and Gilbert had also approached it at some point, trying to get a glimpse with their own eyes. But only Paul had the courage—or the foolishness—to actually lay a hand on it. That meant he had seen the message the barrier revealed. He knew about the second method. And most likely… so did Angelica.

Luke let out a long sigh.

His thoughts began to drift away from spirals of conspiracy. From Paul and Angelica’s perspective, as leaders of the Haven, it was natural to prioritize the safety of their community. Feeding everyone was already a daily challenge. Sending someone on a suicide mission to try and kill a Midnight Warden? What kind of reward could justify that kind of risk?

Besides, the gate itself made it clear: there was a safer alternative—the activation of both mechanisms. So why rush into a deadly confrontation, especially when the mechanisms were still located in the first area and hadn’t even been found yet?

Maybe the real fear wasn’t about failure.

Maybe it was about what waited on the other side.

Maybe they feared that opening the gate would unleash something worse than death.

Luke looked down at his hands.

“I need the damn arm of a Midnight Warden.”

Either way, that wasn’t something that could stop Luke. He would try everything within his power to escape that place. However… there was another way for him to get that creature’s arm.

Bartholomew and his group had killed one in the past, back when they took Bastion. Luke considered asking him about it. But in the end, he decided not to.

If Bartholomew truly wanted to leave this place, the gate would already be open. Even with all his stealth and the edge granted by Demonic Perception, Luke didn’t believe he was the only one to have made it this far. Especially not Bartholomew, who had been here for eight long years. Surely, either he or one of his men had already found the gate.

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And if it remained closed…

It was because Bartholomew didn’t want it open.

Why?

Luke had a theory.

War.

Bartholomew couldn’t move forward without weakening his forces. Marshall might know the gate’s secret as well, but he wasn’t trying to open it either. For the same reason. Whoever took the first step would be exposing their rear.

And in this world, taking a fortress was hard. Keeping it was harder.

If Bartholomew lost too many men trying to seize the second mechanism, he’d become vulnerable. And then Marshall would crush him. The same logic applied in reverse.

Luke understood—they were all trapped. Not because they were weak, but because they were afraid. Afraid, and bound by the fragile balance of war.

Bartholomew had every advantage.

Every week, dozens of Reward Event chests. Potions. Gear. Resources. Meanwhile, Marshall had nothing. If Marshall tried to take the second fortress, he’d be doing exactly what Bartholomew wanted. And if Bartholomew did the same… the result would be no different.

They both knew. They were both waiting—a silent war already underway. Each side knew the truth of this place and was simply waiting for the other to make a mistake. But in the process, they were dooming everyone else to remain trapped in this world.

Bartholomew didn’t care. And the reason was obvious.

Luke saw it clearly.

The man called himself a king. He had access to virtually limitless resources, commanded soldiers, controlled dozens of healing mages, and had the entire Safe Zone under his heel. Why would someone like that be in a rush to return to Earth?

Of course he wouldn’t be.

Marshall, on the other hand… he was harder to read.

If he knew about the mechanisms—if he truly wanted to get out—why hadn’t he told everyone the truth? He could have turned the survivors against Bartholomew. Could have slowly weakened his influence. But he hadn’t.

And that was exactly why Luke didn’t trust him either.

Both Bartholomew and Marshall had their own agendas, and nothing suggested that escaping the tutorial was a priority for either of them. Maybe what they really wanted… was to kill each other. And that was the only reason there had been no truce. Only stalling. Only containment. Only manipulation.

In the end, that was all there was.

Self-interest.

And Luke saw the cold truth: for anything to change, one of them had to fall.

It was the most obvious solution. But also the most dangerous. Because whoever won would become the next absolute tyrant of the Safe Zone.

Bartholomew already ruled like a king. But maybe the only reason he hadn’t become a full-blown dictator was the fear that the survivors might rally behind Marshall. A fragile balance. Power held in place by the fear of the other.

Luke was caught in the middle of it all. And he couldn’t trust either of them.

Then came the final discovery—one that confirmed everything he suspected.

There was no one else in the Safe Zone with the Assassin class.

Of course, people didn’t go around announcing their class. Some were obvious—healers, archers, mages. Others blended in among the common ones—warrior, knight, swordsman, mercenary.

But Assassin… that one was rare. And every assassin that had ever appeared in the Safe Zone had disappeared soon after.

“Accidents” in the Wild Zone.

Mysterious vanishings.

Luke connected the dots.

Bartholomew was terrified of being assassinated. He even kept his own personal killer—Kruger, the Ghost. It all made sense. The Assassin class was perfect for infiltration, sabotage, silent execution. Maybe Bartholomew just made sure to eliminate anyone with that class before they became a problem.

Luke had never revealed his class.

He lied.

Claimed to be a Mercenary. And it worked. His dual-wielding combat style helped sell the story. Because he knew—being an Assassin in that place was a death sentence.

In the end, Luke understood something else:

He wasn’t just a player outside the political game.

He was a living threat, hiding deep inside the machine.

Luke remembered something else. Back on the day he first arrived at the mission statue, he’d seen Oswald—Bartholomew’s administrator—smiling as he handed out good food to the newcomers. Free meals. Warm greetings. A welcoming atmosphere.

But there was a price. Name… and Class.

At the time, it had seemed like a simple, generous gesture. But now, Luke understood. They weren’t just being kind. They were tracking. Identifying. Filtering. And if someone said “Assassin”… maybe that was all it took to sign their own death sentence.

Luke turned his gaze away as a metallic sound echoed through the streets below.

CLANG. CLANG. CLANG.

A Midnight Warden marched beneath him, stepping through the rubble of the forgotten city. Luke ducked lower, pressing himself into the shadows between the broken stones of the old structure. He watched.

The figure was imposing—towering, armored head to toe in black, wielding a spear as tall as a lamppost. He’d seen one before. He knew what came next.

Through hours of observation and whispered accounts from other survivors, Luke had learned something important: Midnight Wardens had two combat modes.

The first was their default state. They used the spear—versatile and deadly, capable of both close and mid-range combat. Thrusts, charges, precision throws. A dangerous weapon in skilled hands… or claws.

But the second mode was different. It emerged when the creature grew enraged. When a fight dragged on. When something pushed them too far. That was when they dropped the spear and drew from their inventory a massive sword.

That was the rage mode. The berserker state. Everything changed—movement, speed, strength. It all doubled. And no one—absolutely no one—had ever survived a fight once a Guard entered that mode.

Not that the first mode was easy. Even with the spear, very few had managed to escape. But with the sword, it wasn’t a fight. It was a massacre.

Luke knew what that meant. If he wanted to kill one of these monsters, it had to be before they transitioned into rage mode. He would need to be fast. Lethal. Precise. A prolonged fight was suicide.

And alone? Impossible.

He needed a strong party, a flawless plan, an isolated location, and a Midnight Warden cut off from the others. Because if more than one got involved… it was over.

Luke closed his eyes for a moment. “I need the arm of one of those things.” That was all the gate required. But what it demanded from him… was almost unthinkable.

Almost.

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