The World Is Mine For The Taking

I decided not to disturb Scarlet while she slept, so I quietly made my way to where the woman was being kept. The barn door creaked as I opened it, revealing her slumped in the corner. She wasn't even glancing at the food I had brought earlier. Instead, a string of saliva hung from her lips, her stomach growling like a beast trapped inside her.

She had been so defiant before, telling me she'd rather die than talk. But now? Her hunger had shattered that pride, leaving her utterly defeated by the mere presence of food. The sight was almost pitiful, if not a little amusing.

While I was thinking about how comical the situation was, I suddenly heard Gabrielle gasp in surprise.

"Angelica?"

I froze. Angelica... Of course. Now that I was really looking at her, she did resemble the magic knight who had disappeared. She was assumed dead, fallen in battle. She'd been attacked by Prince Julius during the King's Game, along with Robyn. This was Robyn's captain, the one in charge.

"She's really her?" I muttered.

"I'm not sure," Gabrielle whispered. "But I've known her since she joined the magic knights. She's only a year younger than me. Back then, she was in my unit. I never thought... never thought she'd end up as one of the Eclipse."

I shook my head. "She might've been brainwashed beyond repair. I don't think we can save her unless we figure out how to reverse whatever they did to her. And even then, her head could literally blow up if we try to undo it."

"I can't believe this. She never got what she wanted, and when she needed me the most... I left her."

Gabrielle's eyes lingered on Angelica, filled with a sorrow so deep it was almost palpable. The way she looked at her, it was like she was staring at a sister who had been lost long ago. Maybe it was the years they spent together that made her grow so attached, or maybe she had always seen Angelica as something more than just a fellow knight.

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"Do you want me to give you a minute alone with her?" I asked quietly.

"No," she said, her voice steady, though there was a crack just beneath the surface. "It's fine. I cut off all my ties to that unit long before I left. I'm happy with where I am now. Still, seeing Angelica like this... it's sad, in a way."

I didn't know Angelica well enough to grasp who she really was, and we hadn't even met properly. So, I couldn't fully understand why Gabrielle was showing this rare bit of sympathy.

I have no idea who Angelica was as a person, and we didn't even met properly to know things, so I couldn't understand why Gabrielle was showing such rare occurence of sympathy towards someone.

We stepped closer to Angelica, and the moment she sensed us, her eyes flicked up, burning with a cold glare. There was no flicker of recognition as she looked at Gabrielle, no trace of the woman she once was. It was like she was staring at strangers.

"Do you even remember me?" Gabrielle asked, her voice low but sharp.

Angelica's response was nothing but a feral growl, more animal than human.

"I can't believe you let yourself get brainwashed like this. And you had the nerve to call yourself a captain of a magic knight unit?"

Angelica couldn't possibly understand the weight of Gabrielle's words, but that didn't stop Gabrielle from spitting them out, like she needed to get it off her chest. It wasn't sympathy—it was more like a harsh reminder of what Angelica had become, almost mocking her.

"Who is this woman?" Angelica growled, her cold gaze shifting to me, as though I had the answers.

"She's with me," I replied, my tone even. "Now, how about we get to the point?"

We had tried grilling her about this so-called Great Darkness, but in the end, it was like talking to a wall. She was too far gone, lost in whatever twisted beliefs had been drilled into her mind. She clung to that shit so tightly, completely unaware that she'd been brainwashed. She didn't even know who she was anymore, just a hollow shell of her former self.

Eventually, we had to give up—it was pointless. Night had already draped its cloak over the sky by then.

"Nothing useful came out of her mouth," Gabrielle spat.

"It doesn't seem like she's trying to deceive us," I said. "It's like the idea of this Great Darkness is beyond even her grasp. She's so far gone, she can't even explain it."

That's how brainwashing works. They plant an idea so deep into someone's head that reality twists and bends around it. The people we've been interrogating weren't lying—they were just spitting out the garbage that had been fed into their minds. Each one saying the same thing over and over. It was frustrating as hell, and it was making this whole process a nightmare.

"I never gave a thought about cults," Gabrielle continued. "But I've got to admit, what Sesillian's pulled off is way scarier than I thought."

Sesillian had built the largest, darkest cult this world had ever seen—one that just kept spreading like a plague. And as its numbers grew, so did the threat it posed.

"Most people don't want to admit there's something wrong," I said. "Facing the truth scares them. It's easier to close their eyes and pretend the danger isn't real. No one wants to worry, so they just ignore it."

People were always turning a blind eye to reality. They didn't want to face the cold, hard truth—that this world was darker than they could ever imagine. Reality isn't some fairy tale. It's far worse. And that's exactly what the Eclipse wanted—this world drowning in shadow, swallowed whole by the darkness.

Suddenly, my phone buzzed with a call. It was Maya. Wait… there were a ton of missed calls—so many that the count had reached three digits.

"It's probably because the reception's terrible here," Gabrielle said. "That's why you weren't getting any of those calls."

Right. The signal in this village was terrible. So bad that it was nearly impossible to send or receive anything. But somehow, I must've stumbled into a spot where at least one bar of signal came through. And just like that, a call finally got through.

I answered it immediately.

"Master, it's an emergency!"