The stables of the House Vance smelled of hay, horses, and coppery blood.
Elena pulled her hood up over her head as she entered the building through the side door, immensely relieved that the riding habit’s tailoring allowed her to avoid the mess of manure and horse droppings that littered the floor.
She found him in the last stall.
The man the groom had left there was curled up against the wall, his arm bent at an odd angle.
Elena’s stomach twisted at the sight of silver hair, long and tangled, clinging to sun-tanned face.
It was a different shade of silver than the nobles wore, streaked with ash and knife-scarred.
He didn’t move as Elena crouched beside him, her cloak brushing against the straw on the dirty floor.
“Hey,” she said, touching his shoulder lightly.
“Can you hear me?” Nothing.
Elena frowned and shook the limp figure.
His head lolled to the side, revealing youthful features, angular and sharp as a cathedral’s spires, hidden by the silver strands.
A slave’s collar of iron and rust dangled from his neck, the skin beneath it rubbed raw.
A slave, then, working in the stables.
A low-born, perhaps, or a captured nobleman who had learned to temper his pride.
Elena’s breath caught in her throat as she looked closer.
Not just any slave.
The eyes, thick-lashed and downturned, were familiar.
Familiar from the game manual, from the single image of the final boss, hidden behind a maze of CGs and a password protected chapter select screen.
Horns of living fire, wings of shadow, and eyes of crimson flame, slit vertically like a snake’s, burned with the power of three fallen empires.
A Demon King.
Elena pulled her hand back as if the man had bitten her.
No , she told herself, shaking her head.
Kael Vortigern doesn’t appear until the end game.
A hidden final boss, the ultimate test of the heroine’s skills–and the reason her route was so short and bloody.
The Demon King isn’t real.
He can’t be.
Golden filaments of light danced at the edges of her vision, resolving into words.
[ASSET DETECTED] [NAME: UNKNOWN] [STATUS: SLAVE–HOUSE VANCE [CONDITION: CRITICAL–INFECTION, MALNUTRITION, PSYCHOLOGICAL TRAUMA] [HIDDEN POTENTIAL: ???] [ANALYSIS BLOCKED] Elena blinked.
In all her years of playing this game, in all the wikis and forums she’d pored over, never once had a player encountered a hidden asset in the stables of House Vance.
The game didn’t work that way–the Demon King was a final boss, not a tutorial mid-boss.
Unless, Elena swallowed, her throat suddenly very dry.
Unless the world of Crimson Throne was bigger than the game, and bigger than the story she’d played through.
Unless the background players had stats and levels and hidden potentials, the way the main characters did.
“Okay,” Elena whispered to herself, “let’s see if this works.” She reached out again, this time touching the man’s hand instead of his shoulder.
In the game, the villainess had a skill called Golden Touch- an accessory ability that, according to the academy texts, made jewelry sparkle.
It was the reason Elena Vance had been mocked and ridiculed, the laughing stock of the court, the reason her betrothed had run away with the saintly heroine who could heal the sick and the wounded.
Elena had assumed it was a useless skill, a joke.
Unless, she thought, a slow smile spreading across her lips.
Unless the joke was on them.
Elena closed her eyes.
She thought of gold.
Not the metal, but the concept, the idea.
Of value, and investment, and time, and how a promise could be more valuable than the prize itself.
Of seeds and roots, of potential and promise.
Of the young man lying in the straw, and the promise of power that the system had just glimpsed in his veins.
Something warm bloomed in her chest, filling her with a strange sense of satisfaction, of investment.
Gold light spilled from her fingertips, brushing against the young man’s cheekbones, and for the first time since she’d entered the stables, Elena felt a rush of emotion- of pride, of hope, of promise fulfilled.
The young man gasped, his eyes flying open.
Amber shot through with gold bled from his irises, veins of shadow running through them like cracks, and for a long moment, Elena forgot to breathe.
[WARNING: SSS-RANK POTENTIAL DETECTED] [WARNING: CLASSIFICATION EXCEEDS MEASUREMENT PARAMETERS] [WARNING: HIDDEN IDENTITY–DEMON KING VORTIGERN (SEALED)] [CURRENT STATE: 0.03% UNSEALED] [ESTIMATED RETURN: 10,000x+] [10,000x+] [10,000x+] The text scrolls of interest notifications bled into her vision, bright red and gold and blinding.
Elena yanked her hand back, but the connection remained, the bridge of golden light arcing between her palm and the young man’s chest.
It wasn’t a contract, not exactly, Elena realized, more of an agreement.
A promise of value, of reward.
She was seeing him, really seeing him, investing in him, and in return the system- her system, her game- was returning the favor.
Ten-thousand times the value, minimum.
Elena smiled.
“At least my portfolio’s diversified,” she thought, as the young man’s eyes locked onto hers.
“You see me.” His lips formed the words, silent and soundless, but Elena could read the meaning in the movement of his mouth.
Not “Who are you,” not “Help me,” not even “Thank you.” “You see me.” As if that was the most terrifying thing that could happen to him.
The lights dimmed, the notifications dissolving into gold script at the corners of her vision.
Elena became aware of the fact that she was sitting in a stable, that her riding habit was ruined, that her father would most certainly kill her for sneaking into the stables in the first place, and that she had just used her ‘trash’ skill on the game’s final boss.
The young man’s eyes fluttered shut.
His breathing was evening out, the feverish tightness in his chest relaxing, and when Elena looked down, she saw that though the bone in his bent arm wasn’t healed, it no longer hung at an unnatural angle.
Elena sat back on her heels, her mind whirling, the implications of what had just happened settling over her like a storm cloud.
The Golden Touch wasn’t about jewelry, she realized with a start.
It never had been.
It was an investment skill, a powerful one, and she’d just made her first major investment in the most cursed person in the game.
“Well,” she thought, standing up and dusting off her knees, “at least my portfolio’s diversified.” Going back toward the manor, Elena made a decision.
She couldn’t just leave him here, not now, not after what had happened.
The grooms would beat him, or the wound would fester, or her father would sell him to pay off some tax debt.
She needed to get him out of here, to where she could monitor his healing and–and somehow claim his reward without losing her soul in the process.
The game world of Crimson Throne was vast, filled with secrets waiting to be uncovered, and somewhere out there, a second demon king was waiting to be discovered.
Elena Vance walked back toward the manor, her heart full, her soul alight with possibility, and the faintest hint of a death flag hovering at the edge of her vision.
[TICK: First SSS-rank asset detected.
Golden Touch skill true nature revealed.
Investment opportunity: ACCEPTED.]