Royal Reboot: Level up, Your Majesty!-Chapter 101: Contingency (1)

Contingency

1

Elias hit the steel-cored door hard enough to jar his teeth. The frame barely shivered; his spine felt as if it had snapped in three places.

He forced the pain down and thrust both hands forward. Living vines erupted, cork-screwing through the violet haze, skimming past a sagging tangle of overhead cables.

They sliced the cloud into ribbons, cinched them tight and squeezed until they shuddered.

For half a second it seemed to work.

The fog darkened from orchid to burgundy. His vines blackened and flaked away. Fire streaked up his arms even though the vines were only hardened strands of his own hair.

The creature darted for his face.

He folded, twisted, let black fur tear through skin and cloth. The perforated aluminium tiles shrieked beneath his claws as he bounded across them, a midnight panther with fangs bared.

Smoke parted, regrouped, lashed around his throat.

“How delicious. A black panther.” The voice inside the mist sounded amused, almost wishful. “You awoke my nostalgia. Perhaps my favourite skin yet. My former bearer had taste.”

Bearer? That voice. Why does it sound like a memory I never asked to keep?

Elias tried to roar but only a strangled growl came out. “Who are you?”

“Me?” The noose tightened; blood flooded Elias’s amber eyes. “I am the wish you starve but never kill. I see everything you hide, even from yourself. Naughty, naughty boy.”

Lungs on fire, he transformed again. Panther to serpent: scales rippled, body thinning until he sluiced free of the noose.

He re-formed, human again, beside a ceiling-high rack. Cold air poured from the vent tiles beneath him, prickling naked skin.

How can I even fight this thing? he thought, heart pounding.

The smoke lunged. A lance of red mist darted along the floor.

Elias threw up a lattice shield. The attack hammered through, nicked his shoulder, shredded the shield to splinters.

Mist expanded, hunting him like a shadow.

He staggered backward. Think. You cannot strangle a vapor. You cannot slash fog. Cage it.

Elias flung both arms wide; vines shot in every direction, anchoring to server racks, aluminum floor grates, and ribbed ceiling tiles. The net contracted into a wooden sphere around the mist.

He thickened the walls, sealing every gap.

For a breath he dared to believe.

Then the core glowed bright violet, burned a perfect circle, and streaked for his heart.

He twisted; the beam sheared off his left arm below the elbow. freeweɓnovel.cøm

“Oops,” the smoke purred. “Sorry, love. At least you still have the right one for, well, everything.”

He dropped to one knee, clutching the stump, tears sizzling on his cheeks. The creature moved as he did, only faster, smarter, stronger. It slipped from flame to mist to shadow without limit.

Reading him like code on a backlit screen, it whispered, “You know, I’m beginning to think we’re made for each other. Voyeurism has its charm and efficiency, but I’ve always preferred something a little more… intimate.”

He spat blood. “What the fuck are you even saying?”

“Tsk. Such language,” it chided. “I once chased a girl glowing with fire and courage. She slipped away. You, though? You are deliciously dark.”

The creature coiled around his open wound, searing his nerves, humming a tune as he screamed.

“I see what’s inside you, Elias. You and I, we could reshape this decaying world. All your desires, every one of them, realised.”

“What—”

“Become one with me,” it interrupted. “Surrender, and your power will no longer know boundaries.”

And I’ll end up like Tiffany and Thomas? Elias wasn’t naïve. He had to run.

But how?

He could slip into mist and vanish through the door gap, but the server room’s airflow would shred him. Best case? A minute of survival before the wind peeled him apart atom by atom.

Try anyway.

Moisture danced along his fingers. The unfamiliar, almost reckless shift took time and finesse.

Time stretched just long enough for the creature to taste intent. It flowed to the door seams, inflating behind the frame, ballooning into every ventilation gap.

“Creative, aren’t you? But you are not the only one who knows how to fill a void.”

Fight drained from Elias’s shoulders. He collapsed to his knees.

“Now, do you accept?” it asked.

“And the price?”

“Just a trinket,” it said, almost bored. “Your soul. Hardly pristine, is it? You’ve tarnished it all on your own.”

The words bit deeper than amputation. Because they weren’t lies. They were the same thoughts he chewed on in silence, the same truths he never dared speak aloud.

A knock at the door.

“Feed’s gone dark. You okay in there, Ethan?” came a gruff, deep voice.

“Oh? I was fairly certain I looped that feed remotely.” It slithered to the door gap, inspected it, then drifted back toward Elias.

“A new flavour. A bit brutish for my taste, yet still serviceable. Shall we add him to the menu, darling? Appetiser… or voyeur?”

Elias held his breath. One wrong exhale and the man outside would die. But a thought coiled dark and deep in his chest:

A death might buy him time to run.

If Elias could outrun the man.

He might live one more day.

Another day behind the screens and aliases and firewalls. An infamous hacker too frightened to confess. Too frightened to tell Adam.

Why would he choose someone like me?

Elias had leaked those videos of Tiffany and Thomas, punching a hole that let this nightmare… online.

All my fault.

Wet laughter shook his ribs. “So I’m the villain,” he muttered bitterly. “Karma, right on time.”

He lifted a tired gaze. “Go on… finish it.”

You won’t own me.

The mist’s violet hue shifted to red again, as if in displeasure.

“Oh? That’s disappointing. After everything Adam did: joining the Obsidian Legion, giving you a purpose. He saw the cliff edge you were dancing on. He thought you were worth saving.”

A tear slipped from Elias’s eye before he could swallow it.

The voice turned velvet. “Do you truly believe he could stomach this version of you? Broken. Ready to quit.”

The question sounded almost kind, and that cruelty unlocked something inside him.

He was never a hero nor the idealistic dreamer Adam tried to believe in.

But this monster already knew Adam.

And if Adam was next…

The creature, sensing the shift in him, altered its tone. “You know, the trouble with watching so many at once is that I never got to go deep. Maybe it’s time I focused. One of your kind at a time… up close, intimate. A private rapture.”

Elias’s body shook. Realisation flared.

“Adam seems like a fine place to start now that you’ve made your choice,” the creature purred. “So, what will it be? Will you trade your life for his?”

Trade… my life?

Memories crashed over Elias: Elianna, brave and tear-streaked, pressing a goodbye kiss to his forehead and ordering him to hide. She never returned. He had clawed together coins and favours on the black market, chasing rumours of a girl who wore a thousand faces.

How do you honour someone who traded their freedom for your life?

And what had Elias done since? Hidden. Always hidden. Like the damn coward he was.

Blinking hard, he spotted his severed arm between the server racks, pale against the black mesh, right beside the torn fabric of his jeans.

Then the smartwatch on his remaining wrist beeped, an alarm he’d set earlier. Two minutes until Tweeter’s security systems recalibrated.

Did Elianna trade her life to protect some worthless trash like me?

Emerald light welled in his pupils. He dove, snatched the arm, still warm and still alive, and rammed the limb into the raw socket. Muscle knitted, bone aligned, nerves sparked.

“Didn’t know you could do that,” the creature said.

“Here’s what you don’t know.” Elias rose, fingers curling into a fist. “I never needed you to be strong. I don’t need to change the world. I don’t need your wish. My purpose was never about forcing myself onto someone who clearly isn’t interested. So no.”

Viridian fire burned in his stare.

“I refuse.”

The cloud’s seductive swirl froze. “How? Your desire… all gone?”

Elias took a slow step backward, blood trailing from his palm. “Because some things are worth giving that up for.”

“If that’s your answer…”

The mist lunged for his mouth and eye sockets, aiming straight for the core of him.

“…then you misunderstand. I don’t need consent, love,” it whispered. “The fun’s in the resistance.”

Elias clenched his jaw and hardened his skull to steel, sealing off his mind. But his mana grew too volatile. His body jolted, shifting to bark in a reflex.

And it was just enough for a single wisp to slip through the soft wood.

His bright green eyes collapsed to ruthless violet. A scream escaped his mouth.

Another knock. “Open up or I call backup,” the security guard snapped.

He’d definitely heard Elias’s scream now.

“Tsk, what a pest.”

The smoke flung Elias across the room, his spine crunching against the edge of a server rack. A tendril punched his chest, blood spattered RAID arrays. Elias’s limbs twitched, eyes flickered violet-green-violet.

“I am not finished with you.” The mist turned to the door, wrenched it open, and yanked the startled security guard inside. Cold vapor sealed the entrance behind them once again.

“How rude,” it snarled, wrapping a tendril around the guard’s throat and squeezing. “Interrupting my meal.”

Seeing the guard’s eyes flick toward the aisle, the mist expanded.

Across the room, blood-slick and broken, Elias, back in Ethan’s face, had propped himself against a rack-mounted console. One hand trembled on the laptop. His pupils jittered, violet melting into brown, into Ethan’s irises. Then the blue light of the screen flared white, welcoming him in.

Click.

The SD card slid into place. Elias’s trembling hand tried to reach for the keyboard.

The mist snarled, claws coiling around Elias’s throat as it slammed him into the far end of the aisle.

“Naughty, naughty boy,” Lust hissed. “Now you’ve truly bored me.”

Elias laughed, a destroyed sound that leaked blood onto the floor. Mana writhed through him; his form stuttered, flickering between bark and flesh. His good hand twisted into a vine, snaking toward the Enter key.

“You’re right,” he rasped. “Do need my right hand for everything.”

Clack.

The mist melted the keyboard in a flash of heat. Too late.

Rage turned the mist crimson. A tendril lanced forward, punched through Elias’s skull.

His body jerked, his mouth froze. His brown eyes glazed over, but violet light still crackled in the irises, as if savouring the last trace of arcane energy.

The guard stood near the door, paralysed and wide-eyed.

Server fans droned, indifferent.

Elias slid down cold steel, a grotesque smear marking gravity’s path. He folded on the tile floor, still.

Dead.

Adam hit Enter and ran the script. Lines of code raced down the monitor in a rapid scroll. The server light blinked once, then held steady.

“What exactly am I expecting this thing to do?” he asked.

Astra shrugged. “Trust Eydis,” she said simply.

It was Eydis’s binding code, a contingency in case Lust became unpredictable. Experimental, yes, but precise. In the days leading up to their date, she had tested whether her sigils could trigger through digital channels. She started small with basic enchantments like bandwidth boosts, and they worked.

If Lust had vanished into the internet, Eydis reasoned, then it could be bound to it; in such a way that it couldn’t jump domains and they wouldn’t have to shut down half the internet just to lure it.

What lives in code must obey code.

With Adam’s help, she had fused Tweeter’s API with the geographic coordinates of Alchymia, designing a tether so specific that Lust could only pass through servers physically located within the city limits.

There were only two entry points:

One, the main data center, where Elias was now.

Two, this honeypot server.

Eydis had suspected there was a slim chance Lust might get curious enough to inspect the node in person. Just in case, she’d asked Elias to install the binding code that was meant to trap Lust inside Tweeter.

Once triggered, Lust would be forced to follow the trail straight to the honeypot, where Astra waited, ready to strike if it came to that.

Now, they could only wait for the sound of gears clicking into motion.

Adam tapped his headset. “You seeing anything yet, Elias?”

No answer.

He frowned, tried again. Still nothing. A flicker of panic passed through him. He spun back to the keyboard, fingers flying, and pulled up the live feed.

There was Elias, standing in the server aisle, hunched over his laptop, which he had placed on top of a rack-mounted console.

Adam’s fingers relaxed. “Maybe he’s just busy. Still sorting through the system.”

Beside him, Astra watched the feed, unease coiling inside her for reasons she couldn’t name. She pulled out her phone and began typing a quick message.