Chapter 40: The Enemy Within the Guild
The silence in the Kazen household was heavier than usual.
Ryo sat on the edge of his sister's bed, her final words echoing endlessly in his mind: "Find the one with the eyes of dusk. He's already close…" Her fever had broken overnight, but she hadn't spoken since. Still breathing, but barely.
Outside, storm clouds were gathering—literally and figuratively.
Kael was no longer just a hunter. He was a ticking time bomb of evolving protocols, mysterious enemies, and personal vendettas. The more he uncovered, the deeper the rot beneath the surface of this broken world seemed to run.
At the Obsidian Guild headquarters, Ryo stood in front of the main briefing screen, scanning lines of mission data while pretending not to notice the sideways glances aimed at him.
Since his return from the rogue dungeon, something had shifted. Whispers followed him like shadows. He could feel it in the air—he was being watched.
"Kael," a familiar voice called.
He turned to see Alira approaching. Her red hair was pulled back into a tight braid, and her usually warm expression was taut with concern.
"You've been dodging my messages," she said, crossing her arms.
"I've been… busy."
"Busy nearly getting killed alone in a corrupted dungeon?" she snapped, then lowered her voice. "You can't keep doing this. You need backup. You need people."
"I don't know who I can trust," Ryo replied, his voice hardening.
Alira hesitated. "Well, start with me."
Before Ryo could answer, a notification pinged across the guild's screens. A red alert—urgent.
"Guild breach detected. Infiltration attempt at Sector 9 Armory."
Gasps filled the hall.
Alira paled. "That's a restricted zone. Only guild leaders and elite enforcers have access there."
And Kael knew it too well. It housed rare artifacts, weaponized data shards—and the sealed Shadow Core recovered from an S-Class dungeon months ago. No one outside the high council even knew it existed.
Or so they thought.
"Call the squad," Kael ordered. "I'm heading there now."
The corridors to Sector 9 were long, winding, and heavily protected by biometric scanners and automated defenses. Yet, as Ryo and Alira approached, they found the inner gate half-open.
Slashed.
Security was compromised.
Bodies of two guards lay slumped against the walls—scorch marks on their armor and a strange black residue oozing from their eyes. Not shadow corruption. Something else.
Kael reached out, using the Shadow Protocol to scan the area.
[SCANNING...][TRACE PARTICLE: PROTOCOL VARIANT – TYPE UNKNOWN][SIGNATURE MATCH: OBSCURED – ENCRYPTED BY GUILD AUTHORITY]
Encrypted… by someone inside?
He knelt beside one of the corpses. Something shimmered faintly on the chestplate—an emblem of the Obsidian Guild with a faint glitching aura.
"This wasn't an outsider," Kael muttered. "Someone from inside the guild did this."
Alira's face paled further. "That can't be…"
[WARNING: INTERFERENCE DETECTED IN GUILD NETWORK]
Ryo's HUD glitched violently, then recalibrated.
And then a new presence made itself known.
From the shadows of the chamber, a figure stepped forward—cloaked in standard guild armor, but with eyes that glowed an unnatural shade of dusk.
Ryo froze.
Eyes of dusk…
The figure removed their helmet.
Ryo's blood turned to ice.
"Master Velan?" Alira whispered.
Guild Commander Velan—second in command of Obsidian—looked unrecognizable. His eyes pulsed with corrupted data, and his voice, when he spoke, was layered with static.
"You weren't supposed to find this, Kael."
"Why?" Ryo demanded. "You trained me. You protected the guild. Why betray it?"
Velan's laugh was low, metallic. "You think this is betrayal? This guild is a prison. The system is broken. The Shadow Protocol is the key to fixing it."
"You were using the guild as a front," Kael realized. "Recruiting from the inside, manipulating missions—"
"To weed out the weak. To find those compatible with the true Protocol."
With a flick of his fingers, the doors slammed shut behind them. Dark tendrils of corrupted code snaked from his gloves, warping the floor beneath him.
"You're a failure, Kael. A deviation. But now that you've absorbed enough fragments, I can take it all back."
The floor cracked as a surge of corrupted energy exploded toward them. Ryo dove to the side, rolling as Alira fired a volley of explosive rounds at Velan. They phased right through his form—an afterimage.
"He's ghosted!" she shouted.
"Not anymore," Ryo growled, activating Shadow Mode: Phased Combat.
His body slipped into the ethereal plane for 1.7 seconds—just long enough to dodge Velan's next strike and counter with a shadow blade slash that dug deep into Velan's side.
But Velan didn't bleed.
He laughed.
"You're learning," he said. "But not fast enough."
The battle raged for minutes that felt like hours. Protocol clashes. Raw data manipulation. Shadows clashing with corrupted light.
But eventually, Velan retreated, fading into the wall of static he conjured.
[TARGET LOST – PROTOCOL VARIANT ESCAPED]
Kael knelt, panting, his blade crackling.
"Why does it always come back to betrayal?" he muttered.
Alira placed a hand on his shoulder.
"Because power changes people. And you—Kael—you've got more power than most."
Later that night, Ryo stood by his sister's bed once again. She hadn't moved, but something in her expression seemed… lighter.
"Master Velan was the enemy," he whispered. "You were right."
She stirred—just barely—and murmured:
"He's not the last."
Ryo stepped back, heart racing.
There were more.
And they were already watching.
End of Chapter 40