The atmosphere at the apex of the Babel Tower was thick with a suffocating tension.
Normally, the grand penthouse of the Freya Familia was a sanctuary of decadent luxury, a place where the Goddess of Beauty lounged on velvet cushions, looking down upon the city of Orario as if it were her personal chessboard.
Today, the chessboard had been flipped.
Freya stood by the massive glass windows, her back to the room.
Her silver hair caught the afternoon light, but her usually flawless, composed expression was marred by a sharp, dangerous intensity.
She held a silk handkerchief to her face, dabbing at a single, thin trail of blood that had leaked from her silver eye.
The heavy mahogany doors of the penthouse opened.
Ottar, the Level 7 King of Orario, stepped into the room.
The massive Boarman knelt immediately, bowing his head.
“Lady Freya.
You are bleeding.” “It is nothing, Ottar,” Freya murmured, a twisted, breathless smile slowly forming on her lips as she lowered the handkerchief.
“I looked too closely at the sun, and it burned me.” Ottar remained kneeling, his massive frame perfectly still.
“I observed the anomaly.
He was situated at a cafe in the third commercial sector.” “And?” Freya prompted, her voice dripping with a dark, intoxicating curiosity.
“He has no Falna, my Goddess,” Ottar replied, his deep voice carrying a rare trace of disbelief.
“His soul is completely unmarked.
Yet, when a group of Level 3 adventurers attempted to intimidate him, he did not use magic or weapons.
He caught the vanguard’s steel gauntlet with his bare hand and crushed it, pulverizing the bones beneath.
He then shattered a broadsword with the back of his hand, launching an armored man thirty feet through a barricade.” Freya’s breath hitched, the smile on her face widening into something both beautiful and terrifying.
“Without a Falna,” she whispered, her eyes turning back toward the city below.
“Shall I test him, my Goddess?” Ottar asked, his grip tightening on his greatsword.
As the strongest adventurer in the world, his pride demanded he face this unknown threat.
“No,” Freya commanded, her tone instantly hardening into absolute authority.
She turned to face her strongest child, her silver eyes glowing.
“You are strong, But the strength of this city comes from the grace of Heaven.
That boy…
he has bypassed Heaven entirely.
Observe him.
Track his movements.
But do not draw your sword.
Deep beneath the city, in the subterranean chambers of the Guild Headquarters, a different kind of calculating tension had taken root.
The Guild existed to manage the Dungeon and regulate the Familias.
But the ledger sitting on Royman Mardeel’s desk was threatening to shatter that order entirely.
The Guild Director, an obese and usually greedy elf, was sweating profusely.
“Explain this to me again,” Royman demanded, pointing a trembling finger at the incident report.
“A Level 3 adventurer was crippled, a cafe was destroyed, and the perpetrator paid for the damages with…
this?” Royman gingerly picked up the solid gold coin sitting on his desk.
It wasn’t the standard valis currency of Orario.
It was heavy, ancient, and stamped with the profile of an arrogant, foreign king.
The sheer purity of the gold was staggering.
“Yes, Director,” the terrified Guild receptionist replied.
“The witnesses say he was a teenager with no Falna.
He dismantled three veterans without standing up from his chair.
He is currently residing in the grand suite at the Starfall Inn.
He paid entirely in raw gold bullion.” Royman dragged a handkerchief across his brow.
A Level 0 with the strength of a high-tier adventurer and the wealth of an emperor.
He immediately descended the spiral staircases into the deepest, darkest levels of the Guild, seeking the founding God of Orario.
He found Ouranos sitting upon his massive stone throne, surrounded by the eternal flames of the braziers.
The God of the Sky sat leaning forward, his hands clasped tightly together, his glowing blue eyes narrowed in deep concentration.
“Lord Ouranos!” Royman called out, panting as he approached the throne.
“We have an unregistered anomaly in the city.
A mortal without a Falna who possesses Level 4 strength—” “I know,” Ouranos interrupted, his voice booming through the chamber.
It carried a weight that made Royman flinch.
“Every divinity in this city felt the shockwave when he crossed the gates.
A presence that rejects the very concept of our authority.” “What should the Guild do?” Royman asked frantically.
“You will do absolutely nothing,” Ouranos stated, his blue eyes unblinking.
“The Guild governs the children of the lower world.
That boy is not a child.
He operates entirely outside the system we have built.
If you attempt to bind him with our laws, you will find out very quickly how fragile those laws are.
Keep the Guild out of his way, Royman.
Let the other Gods play their games with him if they wish to risk their immortal lives.” While the highest authorities of Orario calculated their moves, the anomaly in question was currently deeply annoyed by a completely different issue.
Ren stood inside a high-end antiquities and bookstore in the noble district.
The shop smelled of old parchment, expensive leather, and magical herbs.
He had come here looking for a comprehensive history of the world to pass the time while he drank his afternoon tea.
However, he found himself staring at the shelves with a look of profound disappointment.
“Is this it?” Ren asked, his voice cold and flat.
The shopkeeper, an elderly gnome with thick glasses, flinched.
He had recognized the wealthy teenager from the rumors already spreading through the merchant class.
“Y-Yes, my lord,” the gnome stammered.
“Those are our finest historical records.
Bound in wyvern leather, penned by the scholars of the—” “They are fairy tales,” Ren interrupted, casually flipping through a heavy, expensive tome.
“This book claims the Dungeon was created because a God sneezed.
The geography section is missing half the continent.
The magical theory is rudimentary at best, reading like a child’s primer.” Ren closed the book with a dull thud.
In his universe, he possessed access to the deepest, most heavily guarded magical libraries of the European associations.
He was used to scholars who understood the fundamental physics of the world and the conceptual laws of reality.
This world, however, was intellectually stunted.
The Gods had descended and handed the mortals power on a silver platter via the Falna.
Because of that, human ingenuity, science, and scholarship had completely stagnated.
They didn’t need to understand magic; they just needed to level up.
“You have no texts on spatial dimensions?
No research on the conceptual boundaries of the soul?” Ren asked.
“M-My lord, such things are the domain of the Gods.
Mortals do not study such…” The gnome trailed off, unnerved by the absolute boredom radiating from the teenager.
“I see,” Ren said softly.
“A world of dependent children playing with swords.
How disappointing.” He didn’t bother buying the books.
He turned and walked out of the shop, the bell above the door chiming softly.
He stepped back onto the cobblestone streets, the afternoon sun casting long shadows across the pristine architecture.
It was a beautiful city, but beneath the surface, it was entirely stagnant.
Ren sighed, adjusting the cuffs of his dark silk coat.
If the literature was this lacking, he could only hope the dinner reservations he had made for this evening would compensate for it.
He began the walk back to his luxury inn, entirely oblivious to the three elite Guild watchers tailing him from the rooftops, all of them sweating in sheer nervousness every time he so much as turned his head.
His vacation was proceeding perfectly.
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