Date: January 11, 2018 | Time: 3:22 AM

Location: The Mother’s Layer — Chasm Interior

Perspective: Sylvia

The 10 minutes felt like an eternity.

The eerie, crushing silence of the Psychonosis began to lift. Across the cooling slush of the Blood Sea, my team started to stir. Navina blinked, her blue eyes shedding the distant glaze. Cid groaned, leaning heavily on his staff. Celia’s breath hitched as she opened her eyes, while Alina and Lucas, who had never fully succumbed, stood watching the Mother of Despair.

The S+ Rank Calamity was a ruined mess, clutching her calcified ’Baby’ as silver fluid leaked onto the ground.

"Are we... back?" Wren stammered, gripping his daggers.

"We are," I broadcasted over the Aether-Vox, my voice steady despite the hammer in my chest.

"Hold your positions."

"Should I kill it now?" Lucas asked, his voice flat. He didn’t sound triumphant; he sounded like an executioner clocking in for a shift.

"We can wait," I ordered, my eyes scanning the radar for residual mana spikes. "Let’s assess the—"

"Go kill it immediately."

The voice on the comms was X. Cold, absolute, and devoid of hesitation.

"Wait, what?" I blinked, my hand flying to my earpiece.

Before I could issue a counter-order, Lucas blitzed. He moved with terrifying speed, a blur of charcoal and white celestial light, his dagger drawn in a reverse grip. He aimed straight for the Mother’s exposed throat, ready to sever the connection to the core.

CLANG.

A shockwave of cursed black mana erupted, sending Lucas skidding backward across the ice.

Celia stood in front of the Mother of Despair, her pitch-black scythe planted firmly in the ground, her red eyes burning with a sudden, furious clarity.

"What the hell are you doing, Celia?!" Lucas roared, finding his footing. His light daggers flared, glowing with the aggressive current of his Flow. "Move! She’s right there!"

"I am not moving," Celia spat, her voice dripping with an imperial, absolute certainty.

"Killing her gains you nothing, Lucas. You saw it, didn’t you?" Celia’s voice trembled. "Rare few in this wretched world get parents who actually care. Parents who love their children so much they would give their lives for them... she did give her life. She gave everything, and it was still too late. And now you want to take what’s left just because you want to win?"

"What the hell happened to you?" Lucas blinked, his light daggers flickering with uncertainty. "You were the one insanely focused on killing her! You were the one screaming about ’Winning this game’ and execution!"

"That was before I felt it," Celia hissed, her red eyes welling with a cold, sharp light. "I can feel it, Lucas. The hollow weight of it. I too experienced that pain... being abandoned, left with nothing, hurt every single day because I was cast aside by the very people who were supposed to protect me. My parents didn’t want a curse; they wanted a daughter they could be their angel, but instead they got a curse."

"Unlike us, this ’monster’ stayed. She stayed until the very end."

She stepped closer to the Mother of Despair, the black thorns of her aura brushing against the silver fluid leaking from the core.

"She warned us, Lucas. In her own way, she told us to leave. She didn’t want to hurt us. She tried to show us mercy, but we were too overwhelmed in our own pathetic ego to see it. We saw a target. She saw a threat to her child."

"This is nothing like you!" Lucas screamed, his frustration reaching a boiling point. "The Celia I know doesn’t care about ’mercy’ or ’parents’! You’re being brainwashed by the Psychonosis!"

"Then you don’t know me at all!" Celia roared, slamming the butt of her scythe into the ice with enough force to crack the slush.

I watched from the command center, stunned. I knew Celia’s file—abandoned in a border village, treated as an omen of death before she was even ten. She wasn’t defending a monster; she was defending the concept of a mother that she never had. It was a projection, a violent, desperate attempt to protect the only ’parental’ sacrifice she had ever witnessed, even if it was from a Calamity.

Celia, the Queen of Curses, was standing as a guardian for the same S+ Rank beast she had vowed to execute.

"She’s right."

Navina stepped forward, lowering her Arcflingers. The Crimson Eclipse Guildmaster looked shaken, the usual blue fire in her eyes replaced by a deep sorrow.

"Navina, not you too," Alina said, her amethyst blades still drawn. "It’s an illusion. A psychological trap to make us drop our guard."

"It didn’t feel like an illusion, Alina," Navina argued, her voice projecting across the chasm. "I saw it. We all did. A small town, innocent people, ash bombs raining from the sky... That child in her chest isn’t just a monster. It was a casualty of a territorial war. The Mother was buried under the rubble, and the ambient cursed energy fused with her grief. She’s trapped here, reliving that final moment, trying to keep her child safe from a war that ended centuries ago!"

"Sylvia," X’s voice cut into my private channel, sharp and quiet. "What does she mean by an ash bombing?"

I frowned, a cold realization creeping up my spine. "Hold the line, X." I switched channels. "Intel team, run a historical cross-reference on the Scarred Crater’s coordinates. I need data on ’ash bombings’ during the First Continental War. Send it to me in a bit."

"I agree with Guildmaster," Pryce muttered over the open comms. "What Lady Navina says is true, there’s no honor in this kill."

"I agree," Bram rumbled, his massive warhammer resting on the slush. "I’m a soldier, not a butcher. If the beast is just grieving in an isolated crater, why are we poking the sorrow?"

"Yeah... I don’t want to kill a grieving mother," Wren added, looking away from the silver blood.

"Oh, for the love of..." Cid Valthor groaned, his face twisting into a sneer of pure disgust. "Are you all taking crazy idiots? It’s an S+ priority target! I couldn’t care less about her pains, her kid, or her tragic backstory. We were hired to take it out, and I intend to collect my bounty."

Cid raised his staff, a sickly violet aura flaring as he prepared to summon his Bone-Crushers.

Bang. Bang. Bang.

Three localized plasma bursts erased the forming shadows before they could even materialize. Navina had her Needle aimed directly at Cid’s chest, her finger hovering over the trigger.

"Summon another shadow, Cid," Navina threatened, her voice a lethal whisper, "and I’ll turn you into ash."

"You guys are being brainwashed!" Lucas screamed, his frustration reaching a boiling point. The air around him shimmered as his Celestial magic flared aggressively.

"It’s playing you! It’s an anomaly that consumes souls!"

"I agree with Lucas," Alina stated, stepping to his side, her logic calculating the variables. "Sorrow or not, it’s a threat to the ecosystem. We have a mission."

"Then you’ll have to go through me, you lukewarm piece of trash," Celia hissed at Lucas, her chains rattling.

"Commander," my intel officer’s voice crackled. "I have the data."

I quickly scanned the scrolling text on my terminal, it made my blood run cold.

X too had gotten it.

"Everyone, stand down!" I shouted into the Aether-Vox, breaking the imminent fight. "Alina! Run a mana catalyst test on the bedrock beneath the Mother. Now!"

Alina blinked, surprised by my tone, but quickly sent a pulse of amethyst mana into the slush. "There’s... nothing. No raw mana. It’s completely inert."

Lucas’s eyes widened as he grasped the implication. He slammed his light dagger into the ground, altering its form. The blade shifted into a tuning fork—a localized geophone designed to measure resonant ground frequency. He closed his eyes, feeling the vibrations.

"There’s something down there," Lucas muttered, his face paling. "It’s huge. And it’s ticking."

"All units, prepare for an immediate tactical retreat," I ordered, my voice dead serious. "There is a subterranean Ash Bomb beneath the chasm floor."

"An Ash Bomb?" Pryce gasped.

"A weapon from the war," I explained quickly, my hands flying across the terminal to map the blast radius. "They’re compressed magical ash and combustible promethium, designed to sink deep into the skin and detonate on a pressure trigger. It causes massive subterranean explosions that turn the ground into a permanent, toxic wasteland. It should have exploded centuries ago."

"But it didn’t," Celia said, her red eyes locked on Lucas. "Because she’s protecting us from it."

"Exactly," I confirmed. "The Mother of Despair’s cursed magic—the heavy, localized gravity of her Suffocating Domain—has been suppressing the pressure trigger. She’s been keeping it safe."

"If that bomb goes off," Navina realized, her voice trembling, "it won’t just destroy the crater. The seismic shock will rupture the leylines. It’ll ruin the nearby villages, making the lands infertile for generations."

"If you kill her, the gravity lifts. The bomb detonates," I agreed, letting out a long breath. "If you guys are right, and she’s just containing it... we have no reason to fight her."

"You understand, Sylvia," Navina exclaimed, a wave of profound relief washing over her face. "I’m glad to hear it."

"No."

X’s voice sliced through the comms like a guillotine.

"Lucas and Alina, you two must execute it."

The comms exploded with shock.

"Are you insane?!" Bram roared.

"It’ll wipe out the entire region!" Pryce yelled.

"You want us all dead, Ghost?!" Wren shrieked.

"Even I’m not that crazy," Cid muttered, lowering his staff.

"We just agreed to retreat!" Navina shouted, her plasma rifle shaking. "We can’t risk the villages!"

In the center of the chasm, Lucas stood up. He didn’t look terrified. He looked directly up at the sky, a slow, dark smirk spreading across his face.

He finally understood the person.

"You are free to choose, but you are not free from the consequence of your choice." X said casually, his boredom returning.

"I did not join this comm to retreat over a dramatic sob story..."

"I’m here to win."

"And in this world."

"Winning is everything."

Celia didn’t look at the sky. She looked at Lucas, but her words weren’t meant for him. Her eyes grew to a murderous, glowing red.

The Queen of Curses gripped her scythe, her aura erupting in a violent storm of black thorns.

"Kaiser Everhart." She said out loud, her voice a terrifying, absolute promise.

"You won’t win this time." She said.

"For the sake of the world." She continued, "I will stop you from causing more harm." She said.

"I, Celia will defeat you." She promised.