Chapter 239: Wartz
The sound of crumbling concrete and the distant, howling wind of Sector 9 faded into silence.
Hide's consciousness slipped away gently. There was no sensation of falling, no lingering taste of honey on his tongue, and no smell of sulfur or burning asphalt. For a long, indeterminate span of time, he existed as nothing more than a suspended thought adrift in an ocean of void.
Then, consciousness struck him like electric shock.
Hide's eyes snapped open.
Instantly, an agonizing glare assaulted his retinas. He instinctively raised a hand to shield his face, his teeth gritting hard.
There was nothing to see.
It was an overwhelming, infinite expanse of absolute, immaculate white. There was no sky, no horizon, no walls, and no floor beneath him that he could visually distinguish. Every single cubic inch of space around him was drenched in an unblemished, pure white radiance. Other colors simply did not exist here. The stark, monochromatic brilliance burned against the back of his eyes, sending sharp, throbbing spikes of pain directly into his temples.
Unable to bear the sensory overload, Hide squeezed his eyelids tightly shut, seeking desperate comfort in the familiar darkness of his own mind.
He took a slow, deep breath, forcing his erratic heartbeat to stabilize. 'Calm down,' Hide thought coldly, his combat instincts taking over. 'Assess the surroundings.'
He focused inward, attempting to extend his sensory net. Even with his physical eyes closed, his passive traits and heightened perception should have allowed him to "see." Through True Sight, the world had always revealed itself to him as a vibrant tapestry of mana flows, thermal signatures, and biological outlines.
He waited for the familiar pulse of energy.
Nothing happened.
Hide's breath hitched in his throat. He pushed his senses harder.
Still no response.
There was no mana. Not a single drifting particle of mana. The entire dimension was a sterile vacuum—a place where the fundamental laws of magic and energy simply did not apply. It was as if the concept of mana had been scrubbed clean from existence.
A cold prickle of panic scraped against Hide's spine. He was in a world without mana!
'Was there something in that sweet?' The grim, sickening thought surfaced unbidden in his mind. A heavy, bitter ache settled in the pit of his stomach. The memory of the trembling woman from the bunker, her tear-stained eyes, her humble bow, and the warm, golden honeyed pastry flashed across his memory. Had it all been a meticulously crafted trap? An advanced neuro-toxin engineered to paralyze his nervous system?
To think that something like this could happen. Not in his own carelessness, but in the cruelty of a world that would weaponize genuine kindness—threatened to drown him in cynicism.
"Hello, dear boy."
The voice shattered the void without warning.
It was cheerful, smooth, and utterly calm, echoing from the empty space directly behind Hide's right shoulder. Yet, despite its melodious tone, the uncanny stillness of the voice sent a terrifying shudder down Hide's spine.
Driven entirely by raw, ingrained muscle memory, he violently kicked off the invisible ground, leaping three meters backward through the air. He landed in a low, disciplined crouch, his center of gravity braced, fists raised in an immediate defensive combat stance. His silver hair whipped across his forehead as his glowing blue eyes snapped open, locking onto the source of the voice.
Standing where Hide had been a fraction of a second ago was a figure that defied human comprehension.
He looked like a statue stepped straight out of an ancient mural. The man was tall, strikingly handsome, and exuded an effortless, breathtaking charisma. Long, silky strands of radiant golden hair flowed loosely down his shoulders, shimmering as if catching the rays of an invisible sun. His eyes were a mesmerizing, molten gold, completely devoid of pupils, holding a depth that felt older than the mountains. His skin was smooth and as pale as a ghost, contrasting sharply with the immaculate, flowing robes draped elegantly over his tall frame.
The golden-haired man looked at Hide's raised fists, tilted his head slightly, and offered a bright, friendly wave with one pale hand.
"Hello there, boy," the angel chuckled softly, a warm, disarming smile curving his lips. "It's been a while."
Hide's eyes narrowed into slits. His fists remained rigidly raised, knuckles white, his mind racing at a frantic velocity to process the anomaly. There was no killing intent radiating from the stranger, but the complete absence of mana made it impossible to gauge the entity's strength.
"Who are you?" Hide demanded, his voice a low, hostile growl that vibrated across the sterile silence.
The golden-haired man tilted his head further to the side, tapping a slender finger against his chin in apparent contemplation.
"Well, you might not remember me," the angel began cheerfully, his tone taking on the breezy cadence of an old friend making small talk. "You were unconscious when I visited the last time. Ah, let me think... how many years has it been? Like six or seven human years, I think? I do not reckon the exact time, honestly. The concept of time is rather hard to grasp when you constantly work with the dimensional folds, you see. And above all else, mortals measure things in such rigid, fleeting increments like days and birthdays, whereas we usually observe entire evolutionary cycles from a macro perspective—"
Hide stared at the man with a deeply skeptical, irritated expression. The angel was rambling endlessly, waving his hands about with flamboyant, theatrical gestures as if Hide understood the shit.
"Stop..." Hide bellowed, his voice carrying enough sharp authority to physically cut through the monologue.
The angel flinched slightly, blinking his golden eyes in mild surprise, before turning his full attention back to Hide.
"I asked you: who are you?" Hide repeated, his tone icy and deadpan. "And what is this place?"
"Oh, right! I forgot," the golden-haired man admitted with an unapologetic, silly grin, playfully tapping his forehead. "Pardon my manners. I am Destracious O Wartz. An angel of the Wartz Household."
He swept an arm outward, gesturing broadly to the boundless, white emptiness around them.
"And this place," Destracious continued smoothly, "is the Eternal Room. Though, looking at your memory index, I see you have never once touched that convenient little feature called the Virtual Adaptation Space. This is it."
Hide froze.
His mind completely stalled.
Wartz Household? He had never heard of such a faction in all of human history. Not in the National Exterminator Agency databases, not among the legacy assassin clans, and not in the ancient archives of Rilth.
But it was the second name that struck Hide's chest like a physical hammer blow.
Virtual Adaptation Space.
The words echoed inside his head. That exact phrasing was an option permanently embedded within the interface of the Universal Adaptation System—an ignored tab that had sat in the corner of his translucent blue screen since the day he awakened in the hospital!
This entity knew about the System.
In fact, the creature spoke of the System's features not as a mystery, but as an everyday utility.
A wave of profound, suffocating realization washed over Hide, draining the color from his face.
Standing in this empty white room, completely stripped of mana and active skills, Hide realized the bitter, undeniable truth: he was utterly powerless. Fighting this being with bare fists was as absurd as an ant trying to challenge the sun.
Slowly, deliberately, Hide lowered his fists and straightened his posture. He forced his breathing into a flat, steady rhythm, masking his internal shock behind a stoic, unreadable facade.
Destracious stood quietly, watching Hide's internal struggle with an amused, knowing smile, as if reading every single calculation running through the boy's head.
"So..." Hide finally broke the silence, his voice steady despite the existential weight pressing down on him. "...did you bring me here?"
"Uh, yes. You could certainly say that," Destracious replied with a light shrug.
Hide looked directly into those molten golden eyes, a lingering concern from earlier surfacing in his throat. "The lady who gave me the sweet... she didn't have anything to do with this, right?"
Destracious blinked, his golden brow furrowing in comical confusion. "Lady? Sweet? No, I haven't the faintest clue what lady or sweet you are talking about. Your biological vessel was simply extracted when the dimensional tether reached synchronization."
Hide let out a long, quiet exhale through his nose, a rare flicker of relief easing the tightness in his chest. 'Good. She was innocent.'
"And why exactly have you brought me here..." Hide paused, deliberately butchering the pronunciation with a flat stare, "...Mr. Detrassion?"
"First of all, it is Destracious," the angel corrected, puffing his cheeks slightly in mild annoyance before immediately regaining his flamboyant composure. "And second, you haven't been brought here for my amusement, boy. You have been summoned by Lord Wartz."
"Who is..." Hide started to demand, stepping forward.
"Get ready," Destracious interrupted smoothly.
The angel didn't move. He simply closed his golden eyes and blinked once.
"Wait! Wait!" Hide shouted, his instincts screaming in alarm. "Get ready for what?!"
Before the words could fully leave his lips, the absolute white of the Eternal Room violently fractured. Hairline cracks of brilliant, cascading prismatic light shot across the void in every direction. The silent fabric of the dimension shattered like thin glass, and the ground beneath Hide's boots dissolved into a swirling vortex of infinite, roaring geometry.