The dawn brought no clarity, only a grim and heavy resolve. The fear that had gripped him in the night hadn't vanished; it had crystallized. The map of the world, stained with his corruption, was now burned onto the back of his eyes. He could not undo what he had done. But he could spend every second of his existence trying to clean it up.
Seraphina's offer, which had seemed so tempting and dangerous yesterday, now felt like a trivial distraction. A partnership? A study? He didn't have time for her intellectual games. He had a world to scrub clean.
He went to the guild as it opened, the morning light doing little to lift the grim set of his jaw. He ignored the B-rank board entirely. His eyes went straight to the A-rank postings, a section he had only ever looked at with distant ambition. The quests here were different. They spoke of regional threats, of ancient evils stirring, of dungeons that had claimed entire parties.
One, in particular, caught his eye. It was stamped with the Royal Seal, a cut above the rest.
A-Rank Emergency: The Sunken City of Val
The fishing town of Seabreeze reports their catches are twisted, their waters turning black. Ships venturing too far east do not return. Survivors speak of a miasma that breeds nightmares and a song that lures men to the depths. The Coral-King, guardian of the sunken city, has fallen silent. Investigate the source of the corruption and neutralize it. Reward: 50 Gold Crowns, Royal Favor.
A sunken city. Corrupted waters. A fallen guardian. It was another pocket of poison. A big one. And it was far from here, on the coast. A new place for his stain to have spread.
He didn't hesitate. He walked to the counter, where Elara was already sorting the day's paperwork with ruthless efficiency. He placed the parchment on the counter.
"I'll take this one," he said, his voice flat.
Elara looked up, her steel-grey eyes narrowing behind her spectacles. She looked from his face to the A-rank quest and back. "This is not a request for a B-rank adventurer, regardless of his... notoriety. The prerequisites require a minimum of three verified A-rank completions or a sponsor from the Guild Council."
"I don't have either," Kaito said, his gaze unwavering. "But I'm the only one who can fix it."
His certainty was absolute, and it wasn't born of arrogance. It was the grim understanding of a janitor who knew the specific type of toxic spill he was uniquely equipped to handle.
Elara studied him for a long, cold moment. She saw the exhaustion, the deep-seated desperation that had replaced the confusion. She saw a man on a mission that transcended guild regulations.
"Excessive confidence leads to messy paperwork," she stated flatly. But then, with a sigh that seemed to violate her own internal rules of efficiency, she picked up a different stamp—a heavier, more intricate one used for provisional waivers. She slammed it onto his quest form with a definitive thwump.
"Provisional A-rank authorization," she said, her tone making it clear this was a logistical nightmare she would personally resent him for. "The reward is contingent on verified success and survival. Do not make me process a death certificate. It is a waste of ink."
He simply nodded, took the stamped parchment, and turned to leave.
"Kaito."
He paused, surprised to hear her use his name. She wasn't looking at him, but down at her ledger.
"The road to Seabreeze passes through the Silverwood," she said, her voice still clipped. "The guild outpost there has reported... anomalous tree growth. Aggressive. It would be inefficient to handle two separate incidents if one adventurer is already in the area." She looked up, her gaze impersonal. "Consider it an addendum to your contract. No additional reward."
It wasn't a request. It was her way of saying the sickness is there, too. And she was sending the only cleaner she had.
He gave another short nod and left the guild. He didn't pack. He didn't plan. He just started walking east, out of the city, the A-rank quest in his pocket. He was no longer an adventurer climbing a ladder. He was a penitent walking a pilgrimage of atonement, and his road was paved with the consequences of his own existence. The first stop: the twisted trees of the Silverwood. Then, the sunken city, and whatever nightmare festered in the deep.
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CH63.5 The Road to Seabreeze
The road east out of Whitepeak was a well-traveled trade route, a ribbon of packed earth winding through rolling hills and small, fortified villages. For the first day, Kaito walked in a bubble of self-imposed silence, the grim purpose of his mission a shield against the world. Farmers tending their fields, merchants with carts laden with goods, children playing by the roadside—they were all part of a life that felt distant, a play he was no longer watching from the audience but had been forcibly cast in.
He paid for a meal at a roadside inn with a copper coin, the simple transaction a stark reminder of the mundane system he was operating within. The innkeeper, a stout woman with flour on her apron, eyed the staff on his back but asked no questions. His B-rank badge, visible on his tunic, was answer enough.
On the second day, the land began to change. The air grew cooler, carrying a damp, earthy scent from the great forest that now dominated the horizon—the Silverwood. The cheerful, sun-drenched fields gave way to older, more silent country. The road here was less maintained, the ruts deeper.
It was here he found the first sign. A squirrel, normally a skittish bundle of fur, was clinging to the bark of a pine tree at the forest's edge. But its fur was not brown. It was a mottled, metallic grey, and one of its eyes was a solid, glowing amber. It chittered at him not with alarm, but with a low, continuous hiss, baring teeth that were too long and sharp. It didn't flee. It watched him, a sentinel of the blight.
Kaito felt a familiar, sickening pull in his core. The "bad taste" Seraphina had so clinically identified. It was faint here, on the periphery, but unmistakable. He didn't raise his staff. He simply looked at the creature, and with a focused thought, he gently pulled at the chaotic energy infesting it.
The amber light in its eye flickered and died. The metallic sheen on its fur softened back to a normal brown. The squirrel blinked, shook its head in a flurry of confusion, and then shot up the tree and vanished into the canopy.
He hadn't healed the forest. He had simply cleaned one small stain. But it was a confirmation. Elara's "addendum" was not bureaucratic busywork. The sickness was here, seeping out from the Silverwood's heart.
He pressed on, the road now leading under the great canopy. The light changed, filtering through the dense leaves in shifting, green-gold patterns. The silence was different here too—not peaceful, but watchful. He could feel the weight of the trees, ancient and now disturbed. He could sense the aggressive, twisted growth she had mentioned, a feeling of thorns and grasping roots waiting just out of sight.
He was getting closer. Not just to the first task on his list, but to another open wound he was responsible for. He adjusted his grip on the Leviathan Staff and walked deeper into the waiting gloom.