Chapter 89: Marked by the City (2)

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[Class change at will]

Time remaining until next use: 3:26:55

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There were still three hours left before he could change his class and regain his strength as an Adept Knight.

For now, his only option… was to hide.

The atmosphere was suffocating—oppressive, desolate, heavy with danger.

Ethan stared into the darkness, immersed in his solitude, doing everything he could to avoid drawing attention.

His situation was miserable.

In a place like this, his life could end at any moment.

Under such circumstances, anyone would be on the verge of breaking down.

Yet somehow…

Amid that darkness…

Ethan felt something unexpected.

Familiarity.

“…Haha… I must’ve lost it,” he muttered, leaning back against the cold stone wall.

His gaze drifted across the broken furniture… the empty, lifeless room.

“In a way… it kind of reminds me of my old room. Minus the smell of dried blood… heh.”

Ethan let out a quiet laugh, as fragments of unpleasant memories surfaced in his mind.

Despite the strangeness of the comparison, it helped him calm down further … finding an odd sense of familiarity within a place as desolate as this.

His breathing steadied. His heartbeat slowed. And for a fleeting second…

He forgot.

The city. The monsters. The suffocating danger closing in from all sides.

With a faint smile, Ethan slipped his hand into the pocket of his long black coat and pulled something out.

An apple.

A ripe, crimson apple—tempting, almost unnaturally so.

But he hadn’t taken it out to eat. Not at all.

Exhaling slowly, Ethan closed his eyes, running his fingers over its surface, attempting to reconstruct its physical form within his mind.

At that moment, Luna’s instructions resurfaced in his thoughts … the guidance she had given him when she agreed to teach him magic.

The very first step… had been this method of training.

“Try to create an apple identical to this one inside your mind. Don’t imagine it—build it. Truly.”

That was all she had told him. And with how little time he’d had… he hadn’t been able to receive any further guidance.

With more than three hours remaining before his next class change…

Ethan decided to train. If only to pass the time—and push away the lingering tension gnawing at him.

The task sounded simple.

Yet it was anything but.

He was attempting to bring something physical… into a realm that was purely spiritual.

Thanks to his relatively high Intelligence and Mana, Ethan managed to slip into a state akin to astral projection.

It was a world beyond the confines of three dimensions.

A spiritual domain that seemed to exist both within his mind… and outside it at the same time.

His task was clear:

To bring that apple into this inner, spiritual world.

And as time passed… he began to understand just how difficult that truly was.

His spiritual world was bleak—oppressive and hollow.

It resembled, almost perfectly, the nightmares that haunted him whenever he lost consciousness.

It felt like a reflection of himself—of who he truly was.

An unsettling place to exist in.

Yet necessary.

Amid that suffocating darkness, only two sources of light remained …

Ethan’s spiritual form…

And the apple he was trying to create.

Between his hands, the outer shell of the apple began to take shape … radiant, golden, gleaming with an intense brilliance.

Within it, fibers stretched and intertwined like threads of light, weaving together to form its inner structure.

Slowly… steadily…

A fully formed apple began to shine within Ethan’s spiritual world.

Seeing that, he smiled—before opening his eyes once more.

“That was easier than I expected.”

Still holding the real apple in his hand, he took a bite, finally eating it now that he no longer needed it.

After all…

His true apple … the golden one still existed within his mind.

The foundation of his magic.

The core upon which everything else would be built.

Ethan treated the achievement as something natural.

He was pleased… but not overly so.

What he didn’t realize—

Was that achieving something like this, at such speed… was far from normal.

As he continued eating, his thoughts drifted elsewhere—toward what he should do next.

Inevitably, his mind wandered to the other hunters…

Especially his own squad.

“I barely knew them for a month… I don’t have any real bonds with them. But… I don’t want them to die. They treated me well.”

He muttered softly to himself.

Absentmindedly fiddling with his Legion Arm, he took a moment to think about them.

“Would I really risk my life for them…? Against something like that…?”

The image of the massive, dark creature resurfaced in his mind.

Only this time—

It was his teammates standing where those three hunters had been… the ones who were crushed without mercy.

For some reason, his mind forced the scene further …

He watched them die… right in front of him.

If that were to happen…

He wasn’t sure he would be able to muster the courage to fight that thing for their sake.

“…Why am I even here?”

His gaze lifted toward the ceiling as he began to question himself.

“Am I playing this just to finish the game again…? Or am I doing something entirely different…?”

His purpose. His motives. The reason he fought.

Was it the reward?

The sense of achievement?

Or simply a fate forced upon him?

Whatever the answer was…

He didn’t get the chance to dwell on it for long.

Because of the eyes.

They appeared through the cracks in the walls.

Ethan noticed them too late.

Crimson eyes.

Dozens of them.

Surrounding him from every direction.

The eyes of those who had lost their humanity.

Men and women alike—faces twisted into feral expressions that made Ethan’s heart jolt as he sprang to his feet, alert.

Only seconds passed …

Before the wall shattered.

And dozens of figures emerged before him, as if from nowhere.

“…The city’s inhabitants?”

They looked human.

They carried torches, axes, spears—sometimes rusted knives and cleavers.

They had approached him in silence.

Perhaps… they had been there from the very beginning.

Ethan didn’t know.

But now ..

They were right in front of him.

And suddenly, they began screaming.

Their mouths opened wide, revealing jagged, hollowed teeth.

“Filthy rat!”

“You’re not welcome here!”

To Ethan’s surprise—

They spoke his language.

Hostile. Enraged.

They charged at him immediately, swinging their crude weapons without hesitation.

Ethan reacted instantly, stepping back as he raised his mechanical arm toward the ceiling.

“I see I’m not welcome here—so I’ll be taking my leave !”

Firing the grappling hook, Ethan latched onto the ceiling before launching himself upward …

Bursting back outside.

The moment he emerged, he scanned his surroundings …

Only to find that the once-empty streets were now crawling with those feral inhabitants.

They roamed with torches in hand… as if searching for someone.

Or rather—

A group of people.

“…Where did all of these come from?” Ethan muttered, stunned by their sheer number.

But his surprise didn’t last.

The ones he had left behind climbed up after him.

“You really want a piece of me that badly?!”

With them closing in, Ethan dashed toward the edge of the building.

He sprinted at full speed—then leapt down without hesitation.

His body plummeted rapidly…

And below, more and more of those twisted inhabitants waited.

But he had no intention of falling among them.

Firing his grappling hook once more, Ethan swung across to another building …

Soaring above their heads with precision before landing on a distant rooftop.

Raising his middle finger toward them, he took off running—almost as if daring them to catch him.

They gave chase instantly.

From rooftops. From streets. From every alleyway.

They pursued him relentlessly …

As if the hunt had begun.

And today…

The hunter had become the hunted.

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