Chapter 124: Her Revolution Burns

The Unchained won the battle against Exarch Darius and his heavy infantry.

They looted the two thousand dead Church soldiers and took their steel weapons and gold armor, but the victory required a high price.

Forty Unchained died in the fighting.

Zion sat on a flat rock near the fresh graves.

Varek and his men dug the deep holes with iron shovels.

They worked in silence under the setting sun.

They placed the broken bodies in the dirt and covered them.

Varek planted simple wooden crosses over the mounds of earth to mark the dead.

Zion knew twelve of the dead by name.

She knew Morrigan, he was the old blacksmith who repaired her leather boots two days ago.

She knew Alysa, the archer with the missing ear scouted the river crossings for the rebel army.

She knew Elton, The young boy shared his water ration with her during the long march across the salt plains.

She never memorized NPC names in her past runs.

She viewed them as walking experience points and disposable meat shields.

She used them to block enemy spells and left them to rot in the mud without a second thought.

Now she remembered their faces and the specific sound of their voices.

Her throat tightened.

She hated that physical sensation.

Zion stood up and walked away from the graves.

She retreated to her command tent and dropped her black sword on the dirt floor.

She sat on her metal throne made of melted Inquisition armor and closed her eyes.

A blue window materialized in her vision.

[ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED: IMPERFECT LEADER]

[DESCRIPTION: You won a battle and mourned the fallen. First time in any Player history.]

[REWARD: +10 Humanity]

[CURRENT HUMANITY: 47%]

Zion opened her eyes and stared at the floating text.

The hidden entity behind the game tracked her private emotions and handed out reward points for her pain.

The system gamified her actual grief.

Zion channeled raw void mana into her right fist. Her knuckles glowed with dark purple energy.

She punched the holographic screen with all her strength.

CRASH!

The blue window shattered into dead pixels and the notification vanished into thin air.

Zion breathed hard and gripped her hands into tight fists.

She wanted to find the entity and rip it to pieces, she refused to be a puppet in a rigged system.

She walked out of the tent.

She went back to the edge of the camp where the fresh graves sat under the moonlight.

She sat on the cold grass next to the disturbed dirt looking at the wooden crosses.

Small footsteps approached from behind.

Mila walked up and stopped next to her.

“Are you sad?” Mila asked.

Zion did not look at her. “Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because people who trusted me are dead,” Zion said.

Mila sat down on the grass right next to the armored Player. She placed her doll on her lap and looked at the dark mounds of dirt.

“Dad said leaders are always sad,” Mila stated.

Zion looked at the little girl. “Was your dad a leader?”

“No. He was a farmer. But he read a lot of books.”

Zion looked back at the graves.

“Where is your dad?” Zion asked.

Mila did not answer, just looked down at her dirty bare feet.

Zion understood. She reached out and placed her armored hand on top of Mila’s head.

She let her hand rest there, did not say anything else because there was nothing else to say.

***

Varek approached the graves an hour later.

He brought the capital spy with him.

The spy wore a dark gray cloak and held a sealed scroll in his hands.

He looked tired and covered in road dust.

Zion removed her hand from Mila’s head and stood up.

She motioned for Varek and the spy to follow her away from the graves.

They walked and stopped near the command tent to discuss the intelligence report.

“Report,” Zion ordered.

The spy bowed his head. “I bring more news from the Ascension Tournament at St. Celeste.”

Zion crossed her arms. “I already know about the tournament. The Church gathers their best novices to show off their power. Give me something useful.”

The spy pulled a piece of parchment from his cloak.

“I have a specific name this time. The anomaly in the East Basement belongs to a first-year novice. He mastered the Gift of Inscription in three weeks and activated ancient runic magic. The elite Inquisitors are watching his every move.”

Zion narrowed her eyes. “What is his name?”

“Raziel,” the spy answered. “Raziel Celeste.”

The name hit Zion’s ears.

The blue interface filled her vision.

The text bled red and black across her retinas.

The letters scrambled and glitched with chaotic force.

[R̸̨̛A̸̢Z̵I̸E̵L̶.̵ ̵F̷R̷A̶G̶M̵E̸N̶T̸E̵D̸ ̵M̶E̷M̵O̷R̶Y̵.̵ ̵C̸A̷C̶H̵E̵ ̵E̷R̷R̴O̸R̷.̵]

A flash of bright white light hit her eyes.

Zion lost her balance and stumbled backward.

She saw an image. Just one second of a vision pulled from a deleted save file.

He looked up at her from a shattered cathedral floor.

The stained glass windows cast colorful shadows over his broken body.

He had golden eyes with black veins. Those eyes looked at her with terror and defiance while she raised her black sword to kill him.

He spoke in the vision.

He forgave her.

The image vanished.

Zion gasped for air. She grabbed the thick fabric of her tent to stay upright.

Varek took a step forward. “Liberator? Are you injured?”

Zion dropped her hand from the tent and touched her own chest.

The golden eyes burned in her mind.

She had killed thousands of people across multiple runs.

She never remembered a single victim but this face carried the weight of a monumental system error.

She opened her interface again and navigated to the combat logs.

She scrolled through years of deleted data and typed the name Raziel into the search bar.

The system loaded for three seconds.

[SEARCH RESULT: ACCESS DENIED. OVERRIDE REQUIRED BY ARCHITECT.]

Zion closed the interface.

The other Player in the capital possessed a name and a face that broke her own game files.

“Do I know him?” Zion whispered to herself. “Where do I know him from?”

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep