Colin had said that if anything unexpected happened, Roland only needed to ring the brass bell. Someone would come and handle it.

Roland was not sure whether the scene outside his window counted as the "unexpected situation" Colin had meant.

Still, Colin was an important figure in Far Harbor, and he had tried to recruit Roland earlier. He probably did not mean him harm.

With that in mind, Roland went to the cord and pulled it.

"Ring, ring, ring!"

The clear chime echoed through the dead quiet.

A few breaths passed.

Nothing happened.

Roland frowned, stripped off his sleeping clothes, and chose a fitted outfit from the wardrobe.

He had just fastened the final button when a muffled thud came from the depths of the corridor.

The sound was faint. On any normal day, he might not have noticed it.

In this silence, it hit his ears like thunder.

Before Roland could react, another dull impact sounded. Then another. Each one came closer than the last.

Whatever was making that noise was approaching his room.

"Bang!"

The door burst open.

A figure tumbled in with it and landed heavily on the soft wool carpet.

"He is..."

By the dim light, Roland's gaze fell on the man's dark blue uniform.

The cut and insignia were distinctive enough for him to recognize at once. This was one of the guards who had been patrolling Sea Pearl Hall earlier.

"What exactly is going on..."

Roland narrowed his eyes and studied the guard on the floor.

His uniform was neat. The brass buckle on his belt still gave off a cold gleam, and his sword hung untouched at his waist. Roland saw no sign of battle or injury anywhere on him.

Yet the man's face was pale as paper.

His lips had taken on an unnatural bluish-gray tint. His eyes were shut, almost peaceful, like he had simply fallen into deep sleep.

Roland crouched and pressed two fingers to the side of the guard's neck.

No pulse.

The skin beneath his fingertips was cold and stiff. The man had been dead for some time.

What unsettled Roland most was the guard's expression. It was too calm, almost serene, like some power had drawn away his life before he ever noticed.

Like he had died in his sleep without making a sound.

"How could this..."

Roland withdrew his hand, his expression tightening.

A sturdy patrol guard had died right outside his door without warning.

And the death was so... quiet.

His grip closed around the hilt at his waist. Roland drew a breath, lightened his steps, and moved to the doorway.

The corridor outside was darker than he had expected.

The wall lamps still burned, but their flames seemed pressed down by some invisible force. They barely lit the space around them.

Roland held his breath and looked out from the side.

What he saw nearly froze the blood in his veins.

In the long corridor, a guard's corpse lay every few steps.

Their postures differed.

Some were like the guard who had crashed through his door, eyes closed and faces calm to the point of eeriness.

Some stared wide-eyed into nothing, pupils spread, expressions twisted with the terror of whatever they had seen in their final moment.

Others had flushed cheeks and strange smiles fixed at the corners of their mouths, trapped in some hallucinated pleasure even at death.

Without exception, their uniforms were tidy. None bore wounds. None showed signs of struggle.

The corridor lay silent. Only the occasional crackle from the wall lamps accompanied this floor of soundless death.

Roland's throat tightened.

These guards...

How had they died?

What could take so many lives without leaving a single mark?

And what had they experienced before the end?

At the far end of the corridor, something moved in the darkness.

Roland caught the disturbance at once. Every muscle in his body tensed, and his gaze locked onto the black shape ahead.

Its outline was human.

Its posture was not.

It walked with a disjointed grace. Each step looked unhurried and elegant, yet its speed was horrifying. One heartbeat ago, it stood in the shadows at the end of the corridor. The next, it had flickered several yards closer, space bending under its feet.

In only a few breaths, the figure stopped less than ten paces from Roland.

The wavering lamplight finally revealed the newcomer.

An extraordinarily tall body stood wrapped in a spotless white robe. Beneath the fabric, Roland could just make out the shape of a gaunt frame.

A hand extended from one overlong sleeve, thin as dry twigs. Gray-white skin clung tight to bone, and the knuckles jutted out almost grotesquely.

Beneath the wide hood, only part of a pale jaw showed. The skin carried a sickly translucence, with bluish-purple veins visible underneath.

Most chilling of all...

When Roland's gaze met the darkness beneath that hood, a chill climbed his spine and settled at the back of his neck.

He could not see the man's eyes. Even so, he knew something was watching him.

"Is he... from the Church of Truth?"

The guess formed almost at once.

This appearance was far too similar to the Church of Truth members Roland had encountered before.

The air pressed down around them. Then the white-robed figure gave a soft laugh, hoarse and dry, like withered leaves scraping together.

"What a... pleasant surprise."

As the words fell, he raised his head. Two points of golden ghostlight lit beneath the shadow of his hood.

They were inhuman eyes, with long, narrow pupils like a snake's, glinting with a cold metallic light.

More terrifying than the eyes themselves was the emotion inside them.

Ecstasy. Craving. Greed.

Those should have been human emotions, but in those strange eyes, they had warped into something sickening.

He looked at Roland like a dying man who had found water in a desert, like a starving man staring at a feast.

That naked hunger almost became physical. Roland felt every inch of his skin prickle.

But the white-robed man's behavior did not shake his mind.

Roland's gaze sharpened. His left leg slid back, his body angled forward, and he settled into a fighting stance.

He still did not know who this man was. But the guards' unexplained deaths in the corridor were surely connected to him.

And that suffocating malice rolling off his body was answer enough.

Before the white-robed man could speak again, Roland struck.

His injuries had not healed, and his strength had only recovered to eighty percent, but the sword still moved with thunderous speed.

The Mithril longsword carved a cold arc through the dim corridor and slashed straight for the white-robed man's slender neck.

No flourish. No wasted motion.

Only speed, accuracy, and ruthless intent.

It was a killing strike tempered through countless life-and-death battles.

"Shing!"

The blade swept through the white-robed man's neck without resistance.

In the next instant, Roland's expression changed.

Every muscle tightened. He leaped several steps back and fixed his stare on the white-robed figure, his grip clamping down around the sword hilt.

That strike...

There had been no sensation of cutting flesh.

No resistance. No impact.

The Mithril longsword had passed through him like mist.

The untouched neck and bloodless blade declared the truth in silence.

The strange feeling that his strike had missed was no illusion.

Unlike Roland, who was now fully on guard, the white-robed man paid no attention to the attack.

He extended a long scarlet tongue and licked his cracked lips, savoring the moment before a feast.

Those gold pupils locked onto Roland, desire surging in them beyond restraint.

"Although I don't know which gutter that fool Morne is hiding in right now, trembling in the dark, but..."

The white-robed man's greedy stare traveled over Roland's body.

His back stood straight as a pine. His shoulders were broad and powerful. His muscles were sharply defined.

Every part of him made the man drool.

Recalling Roland's heroic figure in battle back at the Blackwater Territory estate, the white-robed man gave a tiny nod. Under the hood, his mouth bent into a strange arc.

"Compared to that useless Gavin's son... this little fellow is simply... perfect..."

At that thought, he could no longer hold back. His figure swayed, and he stepped forward.

Roland swung backhanded on instinct.

The result was enough to crush hope.

The blade passed through the white-robed man's body without obstruction, cutting only empty mist.

Stranger still, the broad white robe did not even wrinkle. The sword strike might never have existed.

"Damn it!"

Roland cursed inwardly. At the same time, he twisted aside and barely avoided the pale claw that swept toward him.

Before he could regain his footing, a sudden palpitation seized his chest.

As the white-robed man drew closer, the air turned bone-chilling at a terrifying speed.

Even worse, Roland could feel his stamina being pulled away by an invisible force, his life squeezed out bit by bit through countless tiny needles.

He had no time to investigate the source.

The white-robed man's next attack was already on him.

In only a few breaths, Roland launched several fierce counters.

His blade split the air. His fists struck with enough force to roar. Yet every attack cut through fog, unable to touch even the edge of the man's robe.

Meanwhile, those eerie steps kept closing the distance. The broad white robe traced dizzying paths through the air.

"Some kind of spirit creature?"

After several probes, the thought crossed Roland's mind.

Complete immunity to physical attacks was far too similar to the undead creatures he remembered from his previous life, things like liches and evil spirits.

"Run!"

Once he confirmed his attacks were useless, Roland made his decision. His legs erupted with force, and his whole body shot toward the window at the end of the corridor like an arrow loosed from a string.

"Crash!"

Glass shattered. Roland flipped through the opening, landed cleanly, and sprinted without a pause.

"Running away? A wise decision. However..."

The white-robed figure gave a low laugh. He took only one step, yet the distance between them shortened in a way that defied reason, space twisting beneath his foot.

"It is only the struggle of a trapped beast."

The street was silent as a grave.

Roland raced through the empty road, boots striking scattered ribbons and overturned wine cups.

His breathing came hard, but his gaze stayed forward.

Behind him, the white-robed man followed like a shadow. Each step seemed to shrink the ground beneath him. He never appeared to hurry, yet he kept closing in.

Lanterns on both sides swayed by themselves, casting two long shadows through the remains of the festival, one fleeing and one pursuing.

No one witnessed the chase.

Only crooked stalls, half-toppled wine barrels, and the hollow eyes of a puppet turning in place caught their passing forms.

"This is damned ridiculous!"

Even at full speed, Roland could not widen the gap. His mouth tightened.

But his pace did not falter. He forced himself faster.

Before long, the inn where he was staying appeared ahead.

"Finally!"

Roland released a short breath, but he did not relax.

He rushed through the inn's front door in a single stride, bounded up the stairs three at a time, and headed straight for his room.

His understanding of spirit creatures was not especially deep, but Roland was certain they were not invincible.

If physical attacks were useless against them...

Roland slammed the door open, reached into the hidden compartment, and swiftly pulled out the set of white bones. He fitted it over his left wrist with practiced speed.

The instant the bone set locked into place, that familiar, hair-raising chill swept over him again.

There was no time to turn.

Roland trusted his instincts and rolled across the floor.

Almost at the same moment, the wooden cabinet behind him gave a soft hiss, sliced open by an invisible blade.

Roland spared it no attention.

The moment he rolled into the corner, his thoughts raced. The surrounding Mana Elements gathered toward the white bones like a tide, then surged along the wrist pressed against them and rushed into the depths of his consciousness.

Just as the mana was about to touch the runes in the Consciousness Shoal, Roland raised his arm and snapped his head back.

What entered his eyes was not the white-robed figure.

It was a pair of vertical pupils glowing with golden ghostlight.

The pupils contracted. Ghostly light surged out, and stabbing pain tore through the depths of Roland's mind.

In an instant, the world spun.

When he opened his eyes again, he stood in a blood-colored wasteland. Beneath his feet stretched a thick, nauseating swamp of blood, and every step sank deep.

A twisted crescent moon hung overhead. Its dark red moonlight stained the entire world an eerie color.

Countless half-rotted arms stretched from the swamp. Sharp nails scraped over his pant legs with a tooth-aching sound.

"Come... join us..."

Hoarse whispers rose from every direction, mixed with the crackle of bones rubbing together.

In the distance, dozens of skeletons draped in rotting flesh staggered toward him. Green ghostfire flickered in their hollow eye sockets.

Worse, Roland discovered his own skin was decaying in front of his eyes.

First his fingers blackened. Then his arms. The stench of rot rushed straight into his nose.

Fear coiled around his heart, nearly choking him.

At the critical instant, an icy, solid power rose from the depths of his soul.

...

...

"Heh..."

The white-robed figure watched Roland stand motionless and lifted the corner of his mouth in contempt.

"His strength is passable, but in the end, he is only a mortal..."

"If you had stepped into the transcendent realm, perhaps you might still have had a chance to break free. Unfortunately..."

Before that thought could fade, the sight before him made his pupils contract.

The young man whose head had been hanging low suddenly lifted it. His unfocused pupils snapped clear, and his sharp gaze stabbed over like a blade.

"Impossible!"

A storm broke inside the white-robed man's heart.

"He broke free of the illusion in less than a breath? Even a true Transcendent Professional would..."

Reality gave him no time to think.

Dazzling firelight had already leaped to Roland's fingertips.