Black Moon (3)
"The signal's gone dead."
"What?"
The heavy silence shattered as a man pushed through the door. At his words, the figure slumped over the desk with his arms folded looked up.
Dark circles hung heavy beneath his eyes. The red-haired man whose bloodshot gaze had finally returned to normal — Azod — shot to his feet.
"They've all been taken out, it seems."
"They lost even with a Grade Three Relic?"
"When we arrived at the scene…"
The Black Moon Cult disciple delivering the report faltered, lips working soundlessly for a moment before he managed to find his voice again.
"They were already dead. Every last one of them. The bodies were so mangled we could barely identify them… but the traces of the Relic being used were unmistakable."
"…Then where is the Relic?"
A beat of silence. The disciple quietly shook his head. They hadn't recovered it.
"So someone took it."
"Yes."
"Hah."
Azod bit down hard on his lip, then tipped his head back with a sigh. He glared at the ceiling through eyes thick with shadow before turning his gaze back down.
"Was it the Luen Order? Did those people have any connection to them?"
Azod assumed it had to be the work of the Luen Order, the faithful of the Light Goddess. The state religion of the Empire, devoted to the Light Goddess — without the power of a force that size, no one would dare lay a hand on a Relic sealed by binding arts.
His scowl deepened as he began tapping the desk with one finger. Tap. Tap.
Then, as if a decision had settled into place, he spoke.
"No choice, then. We hit their headquarters. And take a Grade One Relic with you, just in case."
"Sir? You're preparing for all-out war? But… the oracle hasn't even descended yet. And mobilizing another Relic on top of that…"
"We can't just hand over a Grade Three Relic. Especially not if those people are with the Luen Order. I don't know how they ended up joining forces, but still."
"But continuing to draw on His power when the vessel isn't fully filled yet… the Saint may take offense."
Fear and unease threaded through the disciple's voice, growing quieter with every word.
Azod didn't yield an inch.
"It's fine. Even if we use it, it'll only be once. And showing our power was something everyone already agreed on."
The disciple's expression remained dark, unease still clinging to it.
But after a moment's hesitation, he said nothing more. He knew Azod's fiery temper all too well.
This whole operation had been Azod's own plan. Now that it had fallen apart, his rage was driving him to go after the Luen Order itself. The fact that he was marching straight for the clan's headquarters said more about a man consumed by fury and the hunger for revenge than any rational calculation.
Of course, it wasn't that the Luen Order frightened them — but openly making an enemy of a force that vast before the oracle had even descended was clearly a fool's move.
I just have to hope it wasn't the Luen Order who helped them…
If it wasn't them, there was still a way to clean this up.
Thinking as much, the disciple bowed his head.
"…Understood. I'll pass the word to the brothers."
"Make it fast."
Ross had been waiting for Ren and Pria, who had gone off to verify the strange rumors circulating among adventurers of late.
They'd headed for a city in the Empire's central region, so he'd expected it would take some time before they returned — but a few days ago a letter had arrived instructing him to prepare for a Calamity-class dungeon raid, and he'd been moving nonstop ever since.
A Calamity-class dungeon raid was something they'd put off for a long time.
Calamity-class — short of the Apocalypse-class dungeons already deemed impossible to clear — was the most brutal difficulty that existed. A place where hundreds of elite fighters could be wiped out in an instant.
The factors that had to be accounted for before a raid were piled mountain-high.
But there was another headache just as complicated: the problems that unfolded outside the dungeon itself.
First, the matter of alliances with other parties and major clans.
There was no such thing as simple cooperation with them. Every faction moved according to its own calculations, and the division of spoils was always a subject of fierce negotiation. Given the scale of a raid like this, even a small misunderstanding before the assault began could easily explode into deep conflict.
And it wasn't just that. Every one of these movements was tangled up with the Imperial Court, the noble houses, and the religious orders as well.
Whatever ancient weapons or forbidden knowledge might sleep inside a dungeon did not belong to adventurers alone.
From Calamity-class onward, dungeons were directly tied to national security and managed at the Imperial level rather than by the Adventurers' Guild. Clearing one required the Empress's permission.
Even the religious orders that regarded dungeons as symbols of blasphemy took a keen interest in Calamity-class raids.
The power struggle over a single dungeon was fiercer than any battlefield. It wasn't a simple dungeon clear — it meant stepping onto the board of politics itself.
And with Dungeon Breaks growing more severe of late, everyone was even more sensitive about it.
So from the moment the letter arrived, Ross had been moving without rest.
Today, having finished another round of busy work and returned to the clan headquarters, he was writing a letter to report on their progress.
But even that much calm was not granted to him.
The door slammed open and a clan member burst in, breathless.
"Ross, get outside — now!"
"What's going on?"
"People are gathering outside the building. A lot of them. Looks like they're here to attack us."
"…They're hitting this clan's headquarters? In broad daylight, out in the open?"
Ross set down his pen and rose to his feet.
With heavy steps he walked out of the building — and saw them. Figures in black robes massed before the clan's central hall.
Clan members who'd heard the news were gathering at Ross's side one after another.
"Aren't those bastards Black Moon?"
"How many creeps dress like that, honestly?"
"Yeah, but lately the only ones who've been picking fights with us are them."
For people who'd come out armed, there was a strange ease in the clan members' tone.
And for good reason. This was the headquarters of the Deep Night Clan, founded by Ren — a gathering of some of the strongest adventurers alive. Few forces could challenge them lightly.
Ross, too, snorted at the sight of people moving so openly.
"They've lost their minds. Just in case, send word to the Yellow Dragon Captain. Do those fools even know who we're connected to?"
A Calamity-class dungeon was something even the Imperial Court had its eye on.
The Deep Night Clan already had direct and indirect lines of contact with the Court, and they'd been promised that if any troublesome situation arose before the raid, the Empire would step in and handle it.
But the clan member who'd been told to pass along Ross's words gave no response at all.
Ross understood why almost immediately.
A sensation that iced his spine swept through his entire body.
A chilling presence rolling across the whole of the clan grounds.
It was something felt through the skin before any warrior's instinct could name it.
He still didn't know exactly what was happening, but Ross looked around at his people and spoke — his voice lower and heavier than before.
"…Everyone, prepare for combat."
The words had barely left his mouth before the clan members drew their weapons as one.
Even so, the figures in black robes still stood just outside the grounds, not taking a single step forward.
"We don't approach them first. That might be exactly what they want."
As the members moved busily into formation, Ross carefully stepped forward himself, wanting a closer look at the enemy's movements.
And in that moment, he felt something alien he couldn't name.
"Kh — what is this…?"
The others felt it almost at once.
"Ross? Something's wrong."
"My body… what the hell…"
Their steps had grown unnaturally slow.
Lifting a foot felt like carrying a weight across the whole body; advancing was no easy thing. They could force themselves to move if they tried, but the pressure crushing down on them was only growing stronger by the second.
Did they cast some kind of spell?
Ross realized then that this was the true nature of the chilling sensation he'd felt on his skin earlier.
He opened his mouth to warn the others —
"…"
"…"
No sound came out.
It was the same for everyone around him.
They all worked their mouths in silence, eyes wide with confusion.
Something was going wrong. Something here was taking things from them, one by one. Their movement. Their voices…
And only then did the black-robed figures take a step. Slowly, deliberately, they crossed the boundary of the grounds.
As if they'd been waiting for this exact moment.
Ross and the members of Deep Night recovered from their panic with practiced speed, scattering to their positions without a single signal.
Even in silence, they knew their jobs.
Their movements were sluggish, but the formation locked into place quickly.
The enemy had only just set foot inside the grounds. Watching them approach, there was still enough time to respond.
Ross shot a sharp look at the member beside him, signaling him to alert the captain of the Yellow Dragon Knights.
The man understood at once and fell back swiftly.
Those who remained were the ones who would fight.
Swords drawn. Spells prepared.
Every last one of them pulled up their mana as one.
And that was where the real problem began.
Slowed movement. No voice. Those were things seasoned experience could overcome.
But being unable to control one's mana —
That was a crisis of an entirely different order.
In an instant, panic spread through the entire clan's fighting force like a plague.
They couldn't even share the chaos or help each other through it. No one could speak.
A few began to flounder, the movements of even veteran adventurers tangling together — and before that panic could be stamped out, the black-robed figures pushed in from the front.
Some of them carried swords. Others hung back, chanting at a distance.
The difference was that they were using mana perfectly normally.
Ross scanned the battlefield in desperation.
He studied them one by one, but none of those leading the charge looked to have the skill of a high-rank adventurer or above.
The mana rising from their blades was of a lower realm than Ross's own.
Not a single one among them could manifest an Aura Blade. All of them charged with nothing more than wavering Aura Swords in hand.
And yet the members of Deep Night fell helplessly.
Shhk. Shhk.
The only thing cutting through this uncanny silence was the sound of flesh being carved.
The faces revealed beneath the black robes held no emotion whatsoever. Blood sprayed, and not one of them so much as blinked.
Inferior blades punched through comrades' chests, tore open their guts, sliced through their throats.
The screams his people tried to loose made no sound at all.
Not one of them managed a real fight before they went down.
This wasn't a battle.
It was a slaughter.
In that silent abattoir of a battlefield, Ross felt a rage fit to burst, veins standing out on his face as he clenched his teeth hard enough to crack.
He tried every way he knew to seize control of his mana and force it up. It was useless.
Right before his eyes, friends and comrades died one after another, and Ross could only stand there, denied even the right to resist.
With every passing second, his movements only grew slower.
At this rate, he was simply waiting for death. Soon he, too, would be a butchered corpse collapsed on this red floor.
The front line before Ross crumbled in an instant.
The ground was soaked in blood, the stain spreading wider and wider.
Ross felt his whole body trembling. It was instinct. His fists were clenched so tight the skin broke and bled, but his body shook and his teeth chattered against each other.
Rage and powerlessness, terror and despair twisted together, devouring his consciousness.
While the chaos gnawed at his mind, an enemy with that same empty face had already closed the distance to stand right in front of him.
Even the will to raise his sword, even the will to fight, was fading to a thin thread —
when something slammed down into the heart of the battlefield.
BOOM!
The earth split under the colossal impact. Dust and debris exploded outward in every direction.
A violent wind tore through the field like a storm.
And as the dust slowly cleared —
on the cracked ground, standing at the center of the battlefield as if cast down from the sky itself, was a man with long, faded white hair.