Ethan stayed outside the barrier and kept listening.
The Starlit Market was loud—vendors shouting across stalls, players arguing over exchange rates—but the thoughts he skimmed were quieter. Tight. Careful. Everyone here watched their words.
Because everyone here understood one rule:
This market belonged to Greedy Wolf.
“Ten thousand Contribution Points just to walk through the gate,” someone thought bitterly. “A hundred thousand if you want a stall. And if you don’t pay on time, they toss you out like trash.”
Another mind was worse.
“Don’t pick a fight. Don’t even look like you’re thinking about it. White Lion is on duty today.”
White Lion.
Greedy Wolf’s enforcer. A Tier 3 monster wrapped in a human name. The images that surfaced in passing thoughts were messy—blood on ice, a roaring shape with a lion’s head, a player’s scream swallowed mid-sentence.
Ethan sorted the fragments.
The Star Harvester Alliance ran the market in Greedy Wolf’s name. They collected fees. They maintained the barrier. They punished anyone who broke the rules.
And Greedy Wolf… hardly showed his face anymore.
Why would he?
At godhead fusion 800, he didn’t need to personally crush insects. A glance from “the heavens” was enough.
Some players whispered about his Talent—authority over celestial bodies. How he’d turned chunks of orbiting rock into weapons. How he’d once dragged a flaming “star” down into New Star’s atmosphere just to make a point.
Others talked about his origin, the part that made him truly dangerous.
“He’s a reincarnator,” one mind insisted. “He didn’t climb from nothing like the rest of us. He woke up with his old world’s knowledge already in his skull.”
That old world wasn’t the Player World. It was a dead one—alien invasion, last-stand bunkers, a civilization that burned itself out under siege. Greedy Wolf had come from that apocalypse with hatred intact… and the System had handed him a new body, a new ladder to power, and a new target.
New Star.
Ethan’s expression stayed calm, but his stomach tightened.
New Star wasn’t exaggerating. They weren’t being dramatic.
Greedy Wolf really did want to erase them.
And New Star really was desperate enough to invite everyone else into the blast radius.
He backed away from the barrier and let the noise swallow him again. The pieces were enough. He could move.
***
Back in the Player World, the day passed in a strange, quiet tension.
Ethan didn’t rush to report anything. He didn’t make promises. He just kept the information where it belonged—inside his own head, where no bureaucrat could turn it into a bargaining chip.
Night fell.
Game Cycle 16 ended.
The familiar pull hit his spine like a hook, and the Player World snapped away.
***
November 2.
Game Cycle 17.
The Endless Sea returned in a rush of salt air and cold wind.
Rhine opened his eyes at Sun City’s harbor on Glory Island. Autumn had arrived here—low clouds, damp air, and a sea that looked like tarnished steel.
Beside him, Morningstar adjusted her coat and scanned the docks with the instinct of someone who never stopped measuring exits.
Their destination wasn’t another island.
It was the Royal Capital.
The clue that pointed to Nightmare’s true body wasn’t a map, or a prophecy, or a heroic “quest.”
It was a coin.
Nightmare Coins—tokens circulating under official authority, used like currency across the kingdom. They weren’t supposed to exist in daylight. They were a Lava Lord’s medium, a bridge for a monster to touch the world.
Yet the coins were everywhere.
So Rhine boarded a massive passenger liner with Morningstar, letting the ship’s horn swallow his thoughts as the harbor shrank behind them.
***
Hours into the voyage, Rhine sat in his cabin and tried to feel the Nightmare Coin through his glove.
It was cold. Too cold. Like holding a piece of metal pulled from a corpse’s chest.
A soft rustle came from the bed.
Silvermoon was sitting at the edge of it like she belonged there, legs crossed, posture relaxed. Her eyes held the pale glow of moonlight on deep water.
Rhine didn’t bother asking how she’d gotten in.
“Living like this,” he said dryly, “you’re going to get bored to death.”
Silvermoon smiled. “A goddess doesn’t die of boredom.”
“You’re in my room.”
“And you’re in my ocean.” Her tone was light, but her gaze sharpened. “I have news.”
Rhine’s hand paused over the coin.
Silvermoon spoke without theatrics this time. “The Weave Mother and I followed the thread. Nightmare Coins didn’t ‘spread’ by accident.”
Rhine waited.
“Nightmare is already inside the royal court,” Silvermoon said. “He’s controlling the Crown Prince—and most likely the entire royal family.”
For a moment, Rhine heard only the ship’s distant groan and the whisper of waves against hull.
That explained too much.
How Nightmare Coins became “official.” How island governors received them in sealed shipments. How the kingdom’s institutions kept treating a curse like money.
Rhine let out a slow breath. “If the Crown Prince is his puppet… then the whole Endless Sea is just a channel.”
“That’s the direction he’s pushing,” Silvermoon confirmed. “Corrupt the court. Corrupt the law. Turn the sea into his feeding ground.”
Rhine’s eyes narrowed. “And Am?”
Silvermoon’s smile faded. “That’s the other bad news.”
“A Lava Lord can sense players,” she said. “Am has been influencing the royal family from the shadows for a long time, using methods even I don’t fully understand. Nightmare noticed him.”
Rhine felt the coin’s chill seep deeper. “Is he alive?”
“We don’t know,” Silvermoon said. “He’s vanished. No trace. No contact.”
The cabin felt smaller.
Outside, the liner kept cutting forward—toward the Royal Capital, toward Nightmare’s nest.
Rhine closed his fist around the coin.
“Then we make him show his hand,” he said.
Silvermoon’s eyes gleamed. “Good. Because he’s already moving.”