"According to the coordinates, it should be right around here."
"Let me think... I've passed through this area before, and I'm pretty sure I saw one of those recon towers. Yeah, it was this way."
Rover and Danjin trekked through the wilds, hunting for the silent recon tower. The girl munched on Loong Whiskers Crisp while dredging her memory for landmarks, then pointed down a trail.
"Alright, let's check it out. Speaking of which, Danjin... you really love that stuff, don't you? How many is that now?"
She flushed. "Because the sugar replenishes stamina after heavy exertion! And the texture is soft and sweet and it's delicious, okay? Besides, Loong Whiskers Crisp is supposed to bring good luck."
"Ha, fair enough. Eat as many as you want."
He ruffled her hair and handed over the rest of the bag. Honestly, if we're talking about good fortune, Danjin's face alone is lucky enough for the both of us.
They walked side by side, looking for all the world like an older brother indulging his little sister. The picture was almost heartwarming, so long as you ignored the trail of dead Tacet Discords they'd left in their wake.
When they finally reached the coordinates, the recon tower stood where it was supposed to. So did three strangers, dirt-smeared and hunched over the device with tools, halfway through dismantling it.
"What do you think you're doing? That's military equipment."
"Shit, someone's here. Run!"
All three bolted at the sight of them, but the man in the lead skidded to a halt. His gaze had snagged on something hanging from Danjin's neck.
A jade pendant. Vivid green, flawless, luminous as a crescent moon carved from pure light.
One glance was enough to know it was worth a fortune.
The man's eyes met his companions'. Three throats bobbed in unison, the same gleam kindling behind every pair of eyes. Greed.
"W-wait, please, don't hurt us. We only stole because we had no choice! The fighting up north's cut off all our supplies. We'll starve without money, and we figured we could sell the parts. Please."
"This is a recon tower." Rover's voice went flat, his brow furrowed tight. "It detects approaching Tacet Discords. If this thing goes down, an undetected Tide could hit from a blind spot and catch the soldiers on the front lines in a pincer. You understand what you almost caused?"
"I... we can't worry about all that! We can't just lie down and die out here! Look, you... you've got food." The man turned to Danjin, his face crumpling into something pitiful. He shuffled toward her step by step. "Please, miss, even a little. We're starving."
Danjin hesitated. Then sympathy softened her features, and she held out her last two pieces of Loong Whiskers Crisp.
"You'd share with us? Thank you! Thank you so much, miss, you're a saint! Bless you, truly, bless you..."
Tears welled in his eyes as he reached for the candy with trembling fingers. His hand crept closer to that cloud of white, pillowy sweetness. Then, an inch away, the act dropped like a mask hitting the floor.
"You know what, since you're playing the saint, why not go all the way? That jade'll make fine travel money too!" He lunged past the candy and grabbed for the pendant at her chest.
His other hand was already at the small of his back.
It came up gripping a knife. The blade was still crusted with someone else's blood.
The plan was obvious: catch the two marks off guard, snatch the jade, put them down, disappear. Quick and clean.
The thinking was sound. He never got to finish the thought.
A blade the color of wet blood punched through his torso from the front.
"Ah... you... you..."
"Guys like you fall for it every time."
Danjin twisted the crimson sword without an ounce of mercy, carving the wound wider. In the last seconds of his life, through agony that made death feel like relief, the man saw her face clearly.
Gone was the wide-eyed innocent. Those clear eyes had turned to winter steel.
"Nice work," Rover said, tapping the pommel of his own sword in appreciation. "Great performance, too. That man was acting, but so were you, and your trap was better than his."
An ordinary observer would have clocked the sword at Danjin's hip and watched her hands. When she'd offered the candy with nothing else drawn, smiling that guileless smile, no one alive would have felt threatened.
What they wouldn't know was that her blood was her blade.
The weapon had been inside her body the entire time.
The sword on her hip was the decoy.
Weapon: ready. Misdirection: set. All that remained was bait to lure in the wicked, and for that, she had the pendant resting against her chest: the Jade of Cherished Virtue, a gemstone rarer than anything most people would see in a lifetime.
Fine jade was said to nourish the wearer. It also ignited greed. For an ordinary person, a stone like that was a death sentence waiting to happen.
For Danjin, whose entire purpose was hunting predators, she welcomed every last one of those death sentences.
The jade was her lure. And the fish bit every time.
Courage, cunning, and a trap elegant enough to look like naivety. She'd lost count of how many overconfident bandits had taken the bait and paid with their lives.
"B-Boss! You... how could you..."
Watching their leader drop in a single stroke, the remaining two panicked. They understood now. These weren't sheep. They were hunters wearing wool.
"Judging by your gear, you're exiles." Rover drew his sword, studying the pair. They looked a little different from their game counterparts: no gas masks, and they probably wouldn't drop any loot when they went down.
Exiles were criminals who'd fled into the wilderness rather than face prison. They banded together out of necessity and survived through robbery, murder, kidnapping, human trafficking, smuggling... the full catalog of human ugliness.
Solaris-3 wasn't like his old world. Tacet Discords roamed the wilds, making pursuit nearly impossible for city patrols. The exiles traded the safety of Civilization for lawless freedom, gambling their lives against the monsters every day.
The two survivors watched Rover and Danjin close the distance, and what little courage they had dissolved.
"S-stay back! Do exiles deserve to die just for being exiles?!"
"Obviously." Rover blinked, as if the man had asked whether water was wet. "What, you think we deserve to die instead?"
Nothing good came in exile packaging. He'd played enough of the game to know how many ruined childhoods and shattered families traced back to people like these.
Once an exile, always an exile.
And if Jianxin had been here instead of Danjin, these three would have pushed their act even harder, played even dirtier against someone who couldn't bring herself to suspect the worst.
Danjin's gaze cut into the remaining pair like a blade's edge. Jinzhou's Little Reaper had surveyed the length and breadth of Huanglong's lands, all seven cities, and distilled a single truth from everything she'd seen.
Kill.
Years ago, when she was still a child, exiles had used the same trick on her family. Her sister, gentle and trusting, had opened the door out of compassion. The wolves behind it had driven their knives into everyone she loved.
In the chaos, Danjin's Forte had awakened, and she'd killed them all. It was the only reason she and her sister survived.
From that day forward, she'd made her choice.
Kill. Kill every last one of them who preyed on the innocent.
My sister wasn't wrong. Jianxin isn't wrong either. They're good people. The ones who are wrong are scum like you, who trample on kindness. I'll cut down every single one until I've carved out a world where good people don't have to be afraid.
Scarlet light pulsed across her skin. Her irises bled crimson. The early signs of her Forte spiraling out of control.
"P-please, stay away! Don't kill us!"
"We know what we did was wrong! We swear!"
Their mouths begged for mercy. Their hands told a different story. One of them had a Tacetite pistol hidden under her coat. She whipped it out and squeezed the trigger at Danjin in rapid succession.
Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang.
Five lethal rounds screamed toward the girl.
Then the Temporal Mandate answered, and time itself became a wall that would not be crossed.
The two exiles stared, slack-jawed, at bullets hanging motionless in the air. A dark-haired boy with golden eyes stepped forward and flicked each one aside, one by one, like he was brushing away flies.
"See?" Rover said. "Told you that you deserved it."