The 1st of the 1st, 351 PA marked the first official operation led solely by the Head.

The Red Grin’s Headquarters were not their only asset that was struck. Various backwater hideouts involved in storage of illicit goods and people were met with the fullest might of the Head.

Gunfire cracked at every passing second, claiming the lives of countless Red Grin members. It was impossible to tell how far away the gunfire was. Even from a kilometer away it sounded like it was just a street away, instilling enough fear to entice the Syndicate members to surrender – only to be put down seconds afterwards like diseased dogs.

The Succubae under the command of ImpulseWorks had heavily infiltrated the ranks of the Red Grin’s operations. They were both involved as captured ‘healers’ who acted as stingers to reveal the precise locations of their hideouts, and as members to monitor contacts between the Red Grin and the Golden Middle.

Furthermore, it was not just the Red Grin who were faced with the immense might of the Head’s Black Wings. The Sector Renegades – a hired mercenary Syndicate was also under fire, and their parent Syndicate group the Gold City Mercs were quietly destroyed by the Head’s assassins – the Eclipses.

Therefore, the ten-kilometer exclusion zone surrounding the Red Grin’s Headquarters was not the only one currently active in D7.

It was a total showing of the Head’s utter control. The fact that they had infiltrated their ranks meant that they could have destroyed them at a much earlier date. Those stricken the hardest by the realization were immediately taken in as potential Repenters.

They’d serve well as living Nex batteries.

* * *

He ran and he did not stop running.

Zelvidor was the leading figure of the Red Grin and was personally supposed to conduct the auctioning with his most esteemed guests from dukedoms across Elysia. A massive payout and strengthened foreign relationships were seeded the moment they managed to get their hands on a healer.

This was of course during the last Atelier War, which had become widely coined as the Unification War. But the Cinder War was a very close second.

But little did the ill-ambitious man know was that he had never captured any healers.

They were all red herrings – a trap that he had willingly lured into the heart of his empire.

So he ran the moment he felt that something was awry, escaping through underground tunnels that led to the outside of his prized casino. And as his instincts would have it, the earth quaked as an onslaught of explosions rattled the air.

“Fifteen years will not go down in vain like this!”

He shed his crimson fur coat like the snake he was.

“How did they do it!? The Ateliers – why should they have to get involved!? The Potion Makers… were they not weakened by the war!? How could they already have found us!?”

The beams that erected the concrete foundation above scraped his skin, the uneven ground aching his feet, and the stray wooden splinters snapping in his wake. The fact that his pants and the nondescript clothing underneath were untouched meant that it was at least of Quality 3 Cloth.

It was the highest cloth available to be used as clothing and was reserved for the highly wealthy. Zelvidor was unsurprisingly one such man, which only further bolstered his above average strength.

His long, curly hair was colored red, and his build matched his above average powers.

“No matter. Grandis can wait. But Emvita will be problematic... Tch.”

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Precisely thirty minutes ago he had received a message from his patrons regarding the state of Emvita. Since the blackening of the Nexus many kingdoms had sought avenues to secure healers for their own. Most were kings and nobles, whilst few were the unsavory type.

“They couldn’t have expressed it any better than their scrabbles. The dimwitted fools.”

He desperately trudged through the slums he had buried with his ill-accumulated wealth. It was difficult for him to understand how the Ateliers had managed to funnel them into one place. Normally he worked on a client-by-client basis, cutting out the need for attention through an auction.

“The coins could have ridden this place of the filth. The Gifts could have been mine… Just this last transaction and I could have had it all!”

Greed had blind sighted Zelvidor. His upbringing was like most from Grandis – poor, filthy, but with ambitions to claw their way out of their rut no matter the cost.

Grandis was therefore infamous for betrayals even amongst family. Only one could ever reach the end goal, for the rest were seen as no more than steppingstones. Such was the way of life there, but in truth he was actually raised well despite how poor his village was.

His mother was a baker. His father a fisher, and his brother a man who led the village even in times of droughts and famines. But he was nothing – he secluded himself from the rest, humiliated under the shadow of his kin.

Rivers were too salty to be used for farmland, so they relied on mages to tend to the crops – a mundane task that spawned boredom in the underachieving man’s mind.

He desired more than the mud huts of his home. Discontent with his life, he advised his brother to join hands with neighboring villages.

However, he later backstabbed them and pillaged their homes. The more heads there were, the less resources the individual gained. He saw new heads as unnecessary, but those that were strong replaced people who he had lived with for his entire life.

And yet he did not even remember their names.

Unsurprisingly, he had taken the life of all family members, leaving him as the sole leader of his group which later joined the Nex Megalopolis early into its lifespan.

He arrived at a dark clearing.

Light bled through giant gashes from above. Ahead was an underground reservoir where aquatic life thrived. Dalphins – a subterranean variant of the dolphin – were commonly used by inexperienced swimmers and cave divers due to their willingness to lend their fins indiscriminately.

They were happy creatures, with giant lovable eyes, and gentle fins that were long enough to clap whenever a child learned their first swimming strokes.

“To think monsters have become more reliable… Dammit… Bastards took everything away from me. When I was so close…”

His breath needed to catch up with him. He had sustained a sprint for over several minutes straight, and this was without [Body Enhancing] magic. Sweat dripped from every pore as he strode towards the underwater shores where only the blue, bioluminescent light from within the waters lit the world underneath.

“… to gaining my very own –!?”

“Seed?”

A voice spoke from within the waters. His blade was drawn in an instant in one hand, and flames in the palm of another. But no matter how hard he looked only the Dalphins swam up, greeting him with smiles despite his hostile stance.

“Who goes there!? Answer me now!”

“All of this for a tiny Seed?”

The voice mocked again. It was feminine, but heavily distorted. It did not belong to a human. Rather, it was more accurate to call it a monster that attempted to mimic the voice of a human.

“Who are you!? You speak like you know the worth of the Seeds. You – tell me now – are you with them!? Or are you like I!?”

His roar was deafening. Not a tinge of fear was carried by his voice. He was fully prepared to take on as many as it took to get out of here. With the escape still unguarded, he readied himself to make a sprint towards the water.

However –

“What if I answered with neither? Or yes to both?”

– Fear instantly gripped him in that moment.

“A Dalphin…? A talking Dalphin…?”

The Dalphin’s mouth parted. What were supposed to be bristles to feed on food particles and plankton were replaced with rows of human teeth. Seven tongues swirled within, each then slithering out to ‘walk’ the Dalphid onto shore.

“How rude of me~ It’s not particularly good to reveal myself like this. Dang it~” The entity spoke in a ditzy done, moments before it suddenly shifted to one lacking all semblance of emotion. “As a personal pet would say. But is she really a pet, or something more? Hey, you. You should understand me since you’re a leader too.”

“… Abomination – You’re – What are you…?”

“Isn’t it rude to be calling someone you just met an abomination? You and I – We’re not that different, don’t you think?”

The Dalphid’s form broke down into a vicious amalgamation of moving flesh. It was like a giant, rotten apple with a thousand worms writhing within, which eventually took the form of a human woman with pale hair and crimson eyes so red that he mistook them for blood.

His blood ran like ice. But he had yet to understand the predicament he was webbed into.

“Besides. I’m you. You just don’t realize it yet. Acedia. Pleasure to make your acquaintance.” She spoke in a deadpan voice as the buttons of her white shirt opened to reveal a vertical mouth. “It’s a shame, really. That you had to come all the way here. You ran so far. You tried so hard. But this is the end of the line.”

It sealed shut in the blink of an eye. But not before a tongue lapped the air as if to gauge his fear. He uttered something beneath his breath, and when he was ready –

“Absurd. That’s for you – Monster!”

– A [Fire Spear] connected with her face.