Chapter 193: V-13

The clapping continued, echoing through the desolate landscape, once, twice, slow and deliberate. Each sound carried a weight that thickened the air around her. This wasn’t applause for victory, it felt like something far more sinister, mockery, recognition, ownership.

Valeria tightened her grip on her sword but remained motionless. Her body was still recovering, muscles screamed from exhaustion, mana circulation was unstable after consuming the Lion’s blood, and her wounds were only partially healed. Yet instinct kicked in where strength faltered.

Her feet anchored into the cracked earth as she straightened her shoulders despite the pain, angling her blade slightly downward, not for attack but in preparation for movement.

Shadows began to emerge along the broken ridgelines and through drifting curtains of ash, dark figures stepping out from behind shattered stone slabs and half-melted trees that should not have been standing. They appeared silently, hundreds of them, all clad in dark clothing that absorbed light rather than reflected it, their faces masked or obscured.

Valeria turned slowly to survey her surroundings, a grim expression settling on her face as solemnity flashed in her eyes.

Blackness surrounded her. The figures spread out without uttering a word, forming a precise circle around her with movements so rehearsed they seemed choreographed. No hesitation. No wasted steps. The formation closed around her like a tightening noose, leaving Valeria standing alone at its center beside the corpse of the Crimson Abyssal Lion.

Not one of them attacked or made any move; they simply stood there, coldly regarding her like stone statues.

Valeria narrowed her eyes and slowed her breathing. Her instincts screamed that these weren’t mercenaries or adventurers.

This was something else entirely.

Just then, an eerily familiar voice echoed in her ears, a voice both long-lost and hauntingly recognizable.

“Well… well… well… look who’s here! You’ve really changed since the last time I saw you.”

The voice sliced through the silence like a blade, smooth and controlled, familiar enough to make Valeria stiffen before she could react. Her fingers tightened around the sword’s hilt; tension coiled within her as chilling killing intent surged from deep within.

Because she knew that voice, even after all these years and after burying it beneath bloodshed and distance.

The sound rippled across the circle of black-clad figures as a man stepped forward from their midst. He walked calmly over the broken ground, the crunch of his boots against cooled obsidian and ash punctuating his approach, as if this were nothing more than a quiet evening conversation rather than standing amidst the aftermath of a Lord Beast’s death.

He halted just meters away from Valeria, who trembled not from fear but from something much worse.

Her expression twisted; muscles in her jaw tightened as darkness clouded her gaze until it bore an edge sharp enough to cut steel.

“…Riven.”

The name slipped from her lips like poison.

The man smiled playfully at Valeria, a subtle curve of his mouth that suggested he had been waiting a long time to hear it again.

“Valeria.”

He spoke her name effortlessly, as if she were just an old friend.

But then his gaze shifted, something colder settling in his eyes as he tilted his head slightly. “…Or should I say… V-13?”

In that moment, the world around them seemed to fade away. The battlefield vanished, the ruined land, the corpse of the Lion, the figures cloaked in black, all dissolved beneath the sudden weight of memories crashing back into her mind like a dam bursting.

A cold chamber. Chains. Training halls soaked in blood. Girls screaming. Steel clashing against bone. Numbers replacing names. Weapons instead of daughters.

For a heartbeat the weight of her armor vanished, replaced by the ghost-sensation of a lightweight training tunic. The smell of blood and antiseptic flooded her senses, overwhelming the ash and ozone of the battlefield.

Valeria’s breath hitched as her hand trembled around her sword, pointing it directly at him.

Her eyes burned with an intensity that felt almost tangible, making the air itself recoil.

“You,” she said, her voice low and steady yet terrifyingly calm. “You don’t get to call me that.”

Riven’s smile didn’t waver; if anything, it softened, almost amused and perhaps… proud. He glanced at the sword aimed at him before returning his gaze to her face, studying her like a long-lost artifact finally unearthed.

“You’ve grown,” he remarked. “Stronger, sharper, more controlled. I always knew you would.”

Valeria’s jaw tightened. “You should be dead,” she replied.

“And miss this?” Riven gestured casually toward the lifeless body of the Crimson Abyssal Lion. “Watching you take down a Lord Beast with your own hands? No, that would have been a waste.”

He took a slow step closer while the figures in black remained still, each radiating pressure that pressed down on the battlefield like an oppressive sky.

“I wondered,” Riven continued thoughtfully, “what you would do after you ran away, whether you’d hide or break or waste yourself in some forgotten corner of the world.”

His gaze roamed over her battered form, the bloodstains, shattered armor, and wounds but Valeria held firm; her sword unwavering and eyes icy with resolve.

“But instead… you became this,” he concluded.

“I became this,” she shot back fiercely, “because of you and those old geezers behind you.”

For the first time, something flickered in Riven’s expression, interest. He bowed his head slightly in a polite yet formal gesture.

“Then I’m honored,” he said smoothly. “To have been your motivation.”

Valeria’s killing intent surged within her; frost began to form along shattered stone and blackened earth as her sheer will pressed outward like an invisible force field. The black-clad figures subtly adjusted their stances as instinct warned them of danger.

Her voice dropped lower, quieter, and more menacing. “You and those old geezers behind you,” she said, “are the reason I walk this path. Every scar, every kill, every step I take.”

Her sword angled slightly forward. “I didn’t survive,” she added, “to see you again.”

Riven’s gaze sharpened as he glanced past her at the shriveled remains of the Lion, its massive body drained, its head severed, its dominance reduced to nothing.

A slow, wicked smirk crept across his face. “So that’s the path you chose,” he murmured. “Blood. Monsters. Power. You always were… efficient.”

He tilted his head, eyes gleaming faintly. “But you misunderstand something, V–13.”

He took another step closer; the circle tightened slightly around them. “You didn’t escape,” he said softly. “None of you ever do.”

Valeria’s grip tightened on her weapon as her killing intent surged, cracking the ground beneath her with a surge of raw mana.

“You were made for this,” Riven continued. “Forged, refined, perfected. Every step you take and every enemy you cut down… it all leads back to where you began.”

His gaze hardened as he locked eyes with her. “You can run. You can change your name. You can pretend to be something else. But in the end…”

“…you’ll return to the thing that created you.”

The silence that followed felt suffocating. Valeria remained still; her eyes had transformed from cold to lethal.

Her voice emerged like steel grinding against stone: “Say another word,” she warned, “and I’ll carve your spine out of your back.”

Riven chuckled softly in amusement. “There it is,” he said with a grin, “the look, the presence, that intent.”

He straightened slightly but kept his hands behind his back. “That’s the weapon I remember.”

The word hung heavily in the air.

Valeria moved, just one step forward but as she did so, the ground beneath her boot cracked under pressure radiating outward from her aura; frost crept along the ruined terrain as temperatures plummeted.

The black-clad figures shifted again as tension mounted.

Suddenly, two streaks tore across the sky like blades slicing through cloth amidst lingering mana storms.

BOOOM!

They slammed into the battlefield beside Valeria with a thunderous boom; shockwaves rippled outward and forced several black-clad figures to instinctively step back.

As the light faded, Gregor appeared to her right, breathing heavily with cracked armor and sword drawn, green wind spiraling faintly around him while Vanthrice stood to her left with a halberd resting against her shoulder and golden mana flickering along its edge; her sharp eyes immediately locked onto their encirclement.

Neither of them spoke. Their mere presence shifted the atmosphere, and now three figures stood at the heart of the encirclement.

Riven observed them for a moment before turning to Vanthrice with a knowing smile.

“Well, well, well… if it isn’t little Vanthrice,” he said softly. “Now this is starting to get interesting.”

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