Re: From Elf Mage to Overlord Slayer-Chapter 27: An Unwelcome Ghost

Chapter 27: An Unwelcome Ghost
That cold determination settled back in, like a solid chunk of ice in my chest.
Seraphina, the Sentinels, the ranks... they were all just noise.
Temporary problems in a much bigger plan.
My mind focused on the one thing that mattered.
The reason I was here.
A flash of amethyst eyes, full of pain and betrayal.
The sound of a bone snapping.
Stay away from me...
The memory wasn’t a source of wild, crazy rage anymore.
It was a whetstone.
Cold, hard, and unforgiving.
And on it, I was going to sharpen myself into the blade that would kill a god.
----------
So this was my new room.
What a joke.
It was a box.
A sad, little stone box with a bed that looked like a slab of rock with a blanket thrown on it.
Home sweet home.
Yeah, right.
The Forging Ground, they called it.
More like the Slag Heap, if you ask me.
And I was officially the newest, shiniest piece of slag.
I sat on the edge of the cot.
The silence was heavy.
It was the kind of quiet where you can hear your own thoughts way too loud.
Rank 3.
That number was basically a "kick me" sign.
A label that told every shark in this tank that I was weak.
A total noob.
Expendable.
A faint smile touched my lips, a cold, empty thing that didn’t reach my eyes.
Perfect.
This was exactly what I wanted.
Let them think I was a nobody.
Let Seraphina and her high-level buddies look down their perfect elven noses at me.
Let the instructors write me off as another scrub who would rage-quit in a week.
Anonymity was basically stealth mode.
Underestimation was my new shield.
While they were all busy posturing and trying to top the leaderboards, I’d be in the shadows.
Watching.
Learning.
Grinding.
The System’s objective was my only reality now.
Learn control.
The rage that fried Kazuki was like a nuke.
Powerful, sure.
But messy.
Unreliable as hell.
It left me with my HP and MP bars totally empty.
Here, I’d turn that nuke into a scalpel.
A cold, precise weapon I could actually aim.
A tool to carve my way back to her.
A sudden noise from the hallway broke the silence.
It wasn’t the usual quiet shuffle of other players.
This was louder.
Clumsier.
The sound of people who didn’t belong here.
I heard voices, low and strained.
A guard’s sharp, robotic command.
"Move along. To the Anvil Chamber."
My first thought was that it was just more fresh meat for the grinder.
A new batch of newbies.
I didn’t care.
They were just more NPCs in my tutorial zone.
Then I heard a different voice.
One I recognized.
It was rough, laced with a grief so raw it felt like a status effect.
"...need to know where he is."
My body went still.
No.
It couldn’t be.
I stood up from the cot, my movements totally silent.
I moved to the doorway of my cell, a simple opening in the stone with no door.
I stayed in the shadows, just another part of the dark rock.
I looked down the long, cold corridor.
A small, ragged group of elves was being herded by a pair of those masked Sentinel NPCs.
They weren’t initiates.
They were survivors.
Their clothes were torn and their gear was broken.
Their faces were hollowed out by fear and loss.
They were from the capital.
And leading them, walking with a stiff, pained limp but with his shoulders squared and his chin held high, was him.
Gandalf.
The Captain of the Royal Guard.
The son who had watched his father get crushed.
The unwelcome ghost from a story arc I had already burned to ash.
He looked older.
The rugged handsomeness was still there, but it was buried under a nasty exhaustion debuff.
The scar over his eye seemed deeper, darker.
His cool, grey eyes weren’t calculating anymore.
They were burning.
Burning with a singular, hateful purpose.
As if he could feel me watching, his head snapped up.
His eyes scanned the shadowy doorways of the low-rank barracks.
And they found me.
For a long second, we just stared at each other down the length of the hall.
The world seemed to shrink until it was just the two of us.
The air crackled with a tension that had nothing to do with my aura.
This was old.
This was personal.
He broke the silence.
"You."
The word was a piece of gravel spat from his throat.
The other survivors stopped, looking from him to me with confusion and fear.
The Sentinels paused, their silver eye-slits swiveling to assess the new situation.
Gandalf took a step toward me, breaking away from the group.
He didn’t run.
He stalked.
A wounded wolf that had finally cornered the thing it blamed for its pain.
"What are you doing here?" he snarled, his voice low and dangerous.
I stepped out of the shadows.
My face was a blank mask.
My voice was the flat, dead tone of the Slayer protocol.
"The same thing as you, apparently."
He stopped a few feet away, his whole body trembling with a rage he was barely holding back.
"Don’t you compare yourself to me," he hissed.
"I am here to gain the strength to protect what’s left of my people."
"I am here for duty."
"For vengeance."
His eyes narrowed into slits.
"You... you’re just a monster hiding from the mess you made."
Data.
His words were just data.
An emotional response from a grieving NPC.
It meant nothing.
"I am here to train," I said, my voice unwavering.
"This doesn’t concern you."
His laugh was a harsh, ugly sound.
"Doesn’t concern me?"
He jabbed a finger in my direction, his hand shaking.
"My father is dead because of you."
"My city is a graveyard because of you."
"Because your arrogant pride couldn’t resist poking a raid boss!"
The accusation hung in the air.
He wasn’t wrong.
The Slayer protocol filed it away.
<System notice: Fact logged. User’s past actions resulted in significant collateral damage.>
But then he went further.
His voice dropped, becoming thick with a pain that was sharper than any blade.
"And Yael..."
My name for her.
He used my name for her.
At the sound of her name, something inside me tightened.
A cold, vicious clamp around my soul.
The System’s placid interface flickered for a microsecond.
<WARNING: ANCHOR-RELATED STIMULI DETECTED. EMOTIONAL STABILITY FLUCTUATING.>
I crushed it.
I forced the cold logic back into place.
"While you’re here, playing with your new shadow puppet," Gandalf continued, his voice dripping with venom, "do you even know what’s happening to her?"
"Do you even care?"
"She’s lying broken in a damp cave, surrounded by the dying."
"The healers say the damage is... unnatural."
"They say there’s something wrong with the wounds. A corruption debuff they can’t cleanse."
"She’s in constant pain."
He took another step, his face a mask of righteous fury.
He was so close I could see the flecks of grey in his tired eyes.
"She screams your name in her sleep."
"Not because she’s calling for you."
"Because she’s having nightmares about you."
Each word was a hammer blow against the furnace I was trying to build around my heart.
My control held.
Barely.
My face remained a mask.
My silver eyes remained empty.
But Gandalf saw it.
He saw the flicker.
The micro-expression of pain I couldn’t completely suppress.
He thought it was guilt.
He thought it was weakness.
And it fed his resolve.
"I made a promise," he growled, his voice dropping to a vow.
"I am here to gain the strength that you so clearly lack."
"I will become the weapon this kingdom needs."
"I will become the protector that she deserves."
He looked me up and down, his gaze filled with a mixture of pity and contempt.
"I’m going to surpass you, Quinn."
"I’m going to become everything you pretended to be."
"And when I have the power, I will be the one to end Vex."
"And maybe then, she’ll finally be able to heal from the damage you caused."
With that, he spun around.
He didn’t wait for a response.
He stalked back to his group of survivors, his back ramrod straight.
"Let’s go," he barked at the Sentinels. "Take us to the Anvil."
The guards, who had watched the entire exchange with silent, robotic indifference, simply nodded.
They led the group away, their heavy footsteps echoing in the corridor.
The other low-rank players, who had been peeking out of their own cells, quickly ducked back inside, not wanting any part of whatever that was.
I was alone again in the hallway.
The ghost of his words still hung in the air.
A corruption they can’t cleanse.
She screams your name in her sleep.
My plan to be an anonymous, underestimated recruit was already failing.
An old rivalry, now drenched in blood and grief, had followed me into the darkness.
It didn’t matter.
Let him have his rage.
Let him have his vow.
Let him think he was her protector now.
He was just another variable in the equation.
I turned and walked back into my stone box of a room.
I sat on the cot.
The cold settled back in, but it was sharper now.
More focused.
Gandalf was fighting for vengeance.
For duty.
For the memory of his father.
I was fighting for something else entirely.
I was fighting for a cure.
And I would burn this world, and myself, to ash to get it.
His rivalry was a game.
My mission was an absolute.