“The worst-case scenario...”

Silence folded around Stini like a heavy cloak; her questions froze and fell away.

The room’s air sagged like a low sky before thunder; everyone knew what “worst-case” meant.

Which, honestly, proved something—our master’s patient coaxing over the past year had taken root. The Hero Squad didn’t parrot the mainstream “cut down all evil” and call it good enough.

Thinking in the dark, touching the dark, they were also learning to acknowledge the dark.

Fear first, then caution: when you fight demons, watch you don’t become one; when you stare into the abyss, the abyss stares back. Sun‑King Nietzsche said that, and he didn’t mean the popular version—probe the unknowable, and the deeper you go, the more you rot. It’s not that simple clockwork.

The truer sense is this: what you challenge and what you study will rinse your self‑image, again and again, until you wear the shape the crowd expects—even if, inside, you swear you aren’t that.

You become the person you hate most. The meaning lands about there.

Dread wraiths, children of the Ocean of Darkness, wield power just beneath the Demon King, stand with the Demon King in rank, and drift closer to the source—more chaos, less order, like tidefoam around a black reef. Sometimes, from shards of that chaos, they glimpse a sliver of truth—if their minds can name what they see.

So Vega once, out of nowhere, caught a flicker: someday, that professor who haunts the opera house for Parsifal, brow knotted like brambles, won’t be the Sun‑King Nietzsche our master rambles about. Yet the chord is near identical; both souls buck the harness.

“As the line goes—God is dead. The Deity of Justice is dead...”

A maid with short black hair and a delicate face let the faintest curve ghost her lip; behind that shell, something deep and unnameable chuckled in the dark. The Hero Squad argued on, blind to the echo.

“I think—maybe—no. Forget it.” Stini pressed her lips; the words curdled, then sank.

“Say it. If you’ve got a thought, spit it out.” Vega’s voice steadied like a staff on stone. With Andor gone, and the captain’s call out of reach, she couldn’t help borrowing his tone, his motions, trying to shoulder the squad.

But she wasn’t Andor. Doubt clung to her choices like mist to pine; she lacked that burn‑the‑bridge resolve. That marked trait kept her from being a pillar.

“No—if I say it... you know...” Stini’s breath hitched like a snagged thread.

“Uh... this...” Elina’s hand floated, then fell, like a leaf unsure of wind.

“Our view... useless.” Gloria’s eyes turned with stiff, mechanical clicks; her first words were cold knives, cutting what Stini had swallowed.

“The Heretic Inquisition thinks... useful.”

“I know. I know all that. But what can we do?”

“Maybe... trust?”

Gloria’s eyes rolled twice more, slow orbits like moons, as if weighing silt and star.

“Or... run.”

“Run? Why run? Did we do anything wrong?”

Gloria’s gaze emptied; she snapped back to statue.

“Gloria, keep going.”

Stini grabbed her shoulders and shook. Gloria’s patience frayed like rope.

“Decisions. Matter.”

“Decide what?”

“Stini. Knows. Only—asking. Shouting. No result.”

“Stini, breathe. Quiet down!”

“Then tell me, Raven—what do I do? Elina—what’s right?”

“I... I don’t know...” Elina’s voice thinned, a blown reed in rain.

A pointless Dispute.

Not every talk finds resonance; that’s the usual rhythm. Most of the time, we just keep the topic afloat, paddling for a surface‑level “we understand” and calling it good.

Thinking has weight and sting and almost no coin‑back. It drains like winter.

So some people borrow other minds’ views, wear them like hoods, and give up the hard walk of thought.

So some teach others what’s right and wrong, handing out their thoughts like bread, hoping the loaf is eaten and spread.

Andor was neither. He had that coarse temper: “Do what you want—it’s just not my business.” Yet, for the few he truly watches, he waits. Patient as a mountain. Patient as a lantern before dawn. He lets them answer themselves.

He poses questions, gives frames; he doesn’t hand out answers. Divine Beings, sages—those who hold a broad goodwill toward “humanity”—meet fools’ questions with the same stance.

Even when he explains, straight or crooked, he rarely gives the “correct solution” outright.

“I don’t even know why we’re yelling here! What’s the point?”

“Damn it! If it were Andor—wait!” Raven slapped her palm; light lit her eyes. “Vega, where is Andor now...?”

Elina and Stini turned, hope bright as sparks.

Really that hungry for an answer?

No.

Our master saw this scene coming. But this time it’s about him; he couldn’t hide behind talk and tricks. Hence the feigned death, the slip away.

Vega bowed, smooth as ink on rice paper.

“That’s exactly my question. My master has been missing for twenty‑seven hours. Important appointments are in double digits. Do any of you know where he is?”

She adored that single‑breath plunge—the mood tumbling, hope dropping like a stone in a well.

Crushing hope, grinding expectations—that’s one of Vega’s small pleasures. Truth be told, she doesn’t much like humans; she even misses the taste of human flesh the way one misses smoke after rain.

Her master banned it a century ago, for peace with humankind. No exceptions.

A master’s word is iron law, a rule carved in bone. Vega’s soul and mind were kneaded to that shape. Aside from an occasional hunger for sex and flesh, she’s content with her post and place.

“You don’t know either...” Raven seemed to age in a breath; her skin lost its sheen like fruit left on the sill.

“Correct. My master is a touch... secretive. He loves ‘time and space only I know’. Not for a reason, really—just for that feeling of ‘sole enjoyment’ and ‘self‑rule’. Or call it freedom? Some choices and moves, he won’t report. He bears them alone. That’s about it.”

It’s a setup—to match Andor’s habit of slipping out to play the World Saving Demon King. The timeline needs a lid.

It fits the “hero” mold, sure. Maybe heroes and villains share habits. Who can say.

On a normal day, if Vega started a little lecture on their master’s quirks, these girls’ eyes would sparkle and questions would flock like swallows. In this dead‑air corridor outside the temple ward, the flat response left Vega bored.

Far off, Vega‑5658 and Vega‑4821 skimmed the script, crossed out the “if someone asks about personality” branches, and fed the edits back to the core.

“Seems none of you know. That’s fine. I doubt my master would just die in the wild.”

Honestly, the build says it too: Shadow Sorcerer plus Warrior—high Agi, high damage, front‑liner. Great starting stats, modest growth. A godsend in the early game, then lagging behind the Hero Squad’s tempo later. Combat experience aside, he’s not even stronger than Elina, agent of a Divine Being.

They waited a bit more. Time ticked like sand. Joke—she already had the ping. Feedback from the multi‑thread body downstairs. Vega coughed, a soft double thud.

She walked toward the ward and spoke over her shoulder:

“I’ve got other matters stacked up. If my master’s out, the chores bury poor me. So, please allow me to visit Catherine, then I’ll take my leave.”

“Hold up, Vega! The Divine Healer said we can’t go in now.”

By the time “allowed” arrives, it’s already too late.

Vega made as if she didn’t hear, opened the door anyway. Elina and Stini hurried after her—and saw everything inside.

The window stood open. A figure in pitch‑black robes. Steel claws like hooked moons. One gauntlet branded with an oath‑seal. A face so featureless it slipped the eye. He crouched on the sill, mid‑spring, but their gaze caught him, and he froze like a stag in torchlight.

Heretic Inquisitor. Long time no see.