Alice Scarlet.

I knew her from the game. Everyone who played The Hero Chronicles knew her.

She was a commoner prodigy who had clawed her way to the top through sheer talent and stubbornness, with no family name to back her up and no patron to smooth her path.

But there was more to her than that — secrets that the game developers had hidden in side quests, details that most players missed.

She was a half-dragon, though she hadn’t known about this fact until later in the game.

That was why her physical abilities were so absurd, and the reason she could swing a sword nearly as long as she was tall like it weighed nothing, why she never seemed to tire no matter how long she fought.

Her draconic blood gave her strength, speed, and endurance that no normal human could match, and every time she stepped into the arena, she reminded everyone watching why dragons were feared across the world.

The old man who had taken her in, the Headmaster of Aegis Academy, was the one who had found her after her parents died. He had raised her, trained her, and given her a place to belong. The other candidates didn’t know that. Most people didn’t know that.

But the old dragon had done it anyway, not out of pity, but because he saw something in her — a spark, a fire, a hunger that reminded him of himself. He thought of her as a granddaughter, though neither of them would ever admit it.

He was too proud. She was too stubborn.

And Alice?

She didn’t know the full story.

She thought he had taken her in because she was useful, because she was strong, and because she could kill monsters and earn the Academy money and fame. She didn’t know that he saw her as something more than that.

He had watched over her since she was a child, protecting her from the shadows, making sure she never had to face the world alone.

She would find out someday.

But not yet.

Her core was SSS-rank — one of the few in the world, and her path was called The Scarlet Reaver Path. Not because it was flashy or poetic, but because it was honest. The color of blood. The color of her hair.

The color of the path she walked.

Her affinity was not an element like fire or water. It was a concept just like Arthur’s affinity.

Reave Affinity — to carry something away by force, to plunder, to steal. Every demon she cut down made her stronger. Every enemy she defeated left something behind for her to claim. It was dark and predatory, the kind of power that would have belonged to a monster in another life.

But it had a cost.

She could not grow stronger without fighting. She could not sit in a room and meditate like other cultivators. She could not drink potions or absorb mana from the air. She had to kill. She had to hunt.

She had to take power from the things she destroyed. That was a curse as much as a blessing. It pushed her to fight more, to take risks, to throw herself into danger again and again, because the only way she could get stronger was by killing.

And if she stopped killing, she stopped growing.

That fit her perfectly.

Alice Scarlet was not a patient girl. She was not someone who could sit still and wait for power to come to her. She hunted. She fought. She killed. And every time she did, she took something from her enemy and made it her own.

The players on the forums had loved her for it. They made memes about her. They quoted her insults in comment sections.

They called her "the Crimson Curse," "the Unfiltered Storm," "the Queen of Salt" — and her favorite, "the Only Person in the Game with No Filter." They admired her strength, her ferocity, her refusal to bow to anyone.

She was the character you wanted on your side and the enemy you feared facing alone.

But they also pitied her, sometimes.

Her story was tragic — losing her parents, growing up in a world that didn’t care about commoners, learning to fight and kill before she had even learned to read properly. She had no family name to protect her, no patron to smooth her path.

She had only herself, her sword, and the dragon who had taken her in and taught her to survive.

She never joined Arthur’s harem, not really. She was his friend, his ally, his comrade in arms, but never his love interest. The developers had tried to give her a romance route once, the fans had rioted.

They said it didn’t fit her character. They were right.

...And now she was standing in front of me, dusting herself off after walking straight into me like I was invisible.

_

She was about my age, maybe a year younger, with wild crimson hair that fell in messy waves past her shoulders and sharp amber eyes that were currently blazing with irritation.

She wore a fitted leather jacket over a simple shirt, dark pants tucked into combat boots, and a scowl that said she hadn’t woken up on the right side of the bed and wasn’t planning to. A heavy longsword was strapped across her back, the blade nearly as long as she was tall.

"What are you staring at, you bastard? You got a death wish or something?" she said, her amber eyes narrowing as she looked me up and down. "Standing in the middle of the street like a goddamn statue. What, you think people are gonna walk around you just because you’ve got that stupid noble look on your face?"

"You walked into me," I said.

"So? Move next time. Not my fault you were standing there like a lost puppy."

She hitched her longsword higher on her back and stepped around me like I wasn’t worth another second of her time. "Out of my way. Some of us actually have shit to do and don’t have time to stand around staring at buildings like tourists."

I watched her go, her crimson hair swaying with each step, and felt my eye twitch.

That’s Alice Scarlet for you. No filter. No patience. No give-a-damn about who you are or what your name means. She’d flip off the Emperor himself if he got in her way, and she’d probably curse him out in words that would make his ancestors blush.

And honestly?

I respected that.

We made it to the registration hall without killing each other, which I considered a win.

The hall was even more massive on the inside than it had looked from the outside — a domed cavern of white stone and silver metal with rows of counters stretching across the floor like the aisles of a cathedral.

Candidates were everywhere, thousands of them packed into lines that snaked across the marble floor like rivers of flesh and fabric. The air was thick with nervous energy and the smell of too many bodies crammed into too small a space.

Alice and I joined the line. It was shorter than the general line but still long enough to make us wait — and neither of us spoke. The silence between us was tense but not uncomfortable. It was the silence of two people who had already said everything they needed to say and were content to just exist in each other’s presence.

When we finally reached the front of the line, we both stepped forward at the same time.

"Me first," Alice said.

"Me first," I said at the exact same moment.

We glared at each other.

"I was here before you," she said.

"You were not," I replied.

"I was!" she insisted.

"You literally walked into me earlier," I said, keeping my voice flat while waving my hand in front of her face like I was dismissing a servant who had overstayed their welcome. "That means I was standing still before you were moving, and therefore I was here first. Now hush."

Her eye twitched so hard I thought it might spasm right out of her skull. "You absolute bastard, that’s not how it works!"

"It is now," I said. "I just decided."

The clerk — a tired-looking woman with grey hair and spectacles, looked between us with an expression of long-suffering patience. "Are you two together?"

"NO!" we both shouted at the same time.

The clerk sighed. "Name?"

Alice straightened her jacket and lifted her chin. "Alice Scarlet."

The clerk typed something into her console. "And you?"

I stepped forward. "Leo von Celestial."

The clerk’s fingers paused over the keys for just a moment. Her eyes flicked up to my face, then to my white hair, then back to her screen. I could see her mind working, putting the pieces together — the name, the appearance, the rumors.

"Leo von Celestial?" she asked. "The Celestial boy?"

I didn’t answer. I just met her gaze and waited.

The woman behind us in line gasped. Another voice whispered, "I heard he demanded a kiss from the princess." Someone else added, "And he insulted the Emperor to his face, he refused to kneel under Sovereign pressure. I heard he was bleeding from his ears and still wouldn’t bow."

The whispers spread like wildfire, crawling through the line like insects. I could feel the eyes on me, hundreds of them, sharp and curious and hungry for a glimpse of the monster they had heard about in the rumors.

Some of them whispered about Sylvia too — "Isn’t that the vice president’s brother?" — and others about the Celestial family, about the white hair, about the trial that was supposed to have killed me.

I kept my face neutral, my eyes cold, my back straight.

Alice looked at me, and her lips curled into something that wasn’t quite a smile. "Well, well," she said, her voice dripping with sarcasm. "The great Leo von Celestial. Should I bow? Kiss your ring? Call you ’my lord’?"

She put her hand on her chest and fluttered her eyelashes mockingly. "Is there anything the young master needs? Perhaps I could carry your bags? Shine your boots? Fan you with a large leaf while you lounge about?"

My eyebrow twitched and I could hear bastard Nova laughing.

The clerk cleared her throat loudly. "If you two are finished, I still need to process your registration."

We both turned back to the counter. The clerk typed something into her console, and two silver bracers materialized from a slot beneath the counter. They were sleek and cool to the touch, with small mana-crystal screens that glowed faintly in the dim light.

The clerk handed them over with the same practiced monotone she had probably used a thousand times before.

"These are your bracers. Wear them at all times. They will track your vitals, your location, and the time remaining. Use the emergency teleport if you want to live. Pressing it means disqualification. Losing it means disqualification. Damaging it means disqualification."

She paused. "Now, you can go to the waiting room."

Alice snatched her bracer and slipped it onto her wrist without bothering to check if it fit. I did the same.

"Good luck," the clerk said. "You’ll need it."

We both reached the waiting area.

The place was a massive open space at the end of the hall, a circular chamber with a domed ceiling that rose so high it disappeared into shadow.

The floor was polished marble, white and grey and black, arranged in patterns that seemed to shift when you weren’t looking directly at them, and the walls were lined with benches carved from dark wood that had been enchanted to glow faintly in the dim light.

Candidates filled every available seat, hundreds of them, maybe thousands, and the air was thick with tension and the low murmur of nervous conversation.

"Lyra," I said without turning around, "go rest in the city. You can’t come with me from here."

She appeared at my shoulder, her emerald eyes scanning the crowd with the same careful precision she always used. She nodded once and disappeared into the crowd, silent as a shadow, leaving me alone among strangers.

I walked further into the waiting area, weaving between benches and clusters of candidates, and found an empty spot near the back wall where I could see the entire room without being seen myself.

My eyes swept across the room, searching for where the main cast was. Surely, they would also be here, though it would be a miracle if I saw at least some of them in this big crowd of students.

I was looking at the candidates when I found them.

There, near the front, was Cordelia Valerion with her strawberry-blonde hair and emerald eyes, her hands clasped tightly in her lap and her posture stiff with nervous energy, dressed in simple travel clothes instead of the elegant gowns she had worn at the palace.

She was trying to look inconspicuous, trying to blend in with the commoners and lesser nobles, but her bearing gave her away, you could take the princess out of the palace, but you couldn’t take the palace out of the princess.

Further to the left, I spotted Riven Ashford leaning against his chair with his ash-blonde hair and steel-red eyes, his arms crossed and his expression bored, his posture relaxed despite the tension in the room.

He wore a dark shirt and black pants.

And of course, near the center of the room, surrounded by a small crowd of admirers who hung on his every word, stood Arthur Vale with his jet-black hair and golden eyes.

He was dressed simply, and he was speaking quietly with the girl beside him, Amelia Nightshade, her midnight-blue hair pinned up and her silver-violet eyes scanning the crowd with the same assessing look I was using.

My gaze drifted across the room, scanning the sea of faces, searching for someone I had seen in the game but never met in person — someone who, if Arthur Vale hadn’t been chosen by the Goddess, would have been the hero instead.

Or maybe he still could be. Who knew anymore?

Where is he?

Then I found him.

Roan Sol-Valis stood near the far wall, the elven prince unmistakable even in a crowd of thousands, his long platinum hair falling past his shoulders like a waterfall of liquid silver and his storm-silver eyes crackling with an intensity.

There you are.