Night fell over Cloud City, but the skyline refused to go dark.
On the rooftop of the Cloud City International Mall, Greedwolf leaned against the railing and looked out across a sea of light—neon signs, office towers, traffic lines like glowing veins.
Behind him stood two shadows that didn’t belong on a civilian rooftop.
X kept his hands in his pockets and his posture loose, like he was trying to look harmless.
White Lion stood a step farther back, quiet as a statue, the kind of calm that only came from someone who’d already seen what screaming got you.
Greedwolf didn’t turn around. “A world that wastes this much electricity…”
He breathed in, as if he could taste it. “Healthy.”
X glanced at the haze hanging over the city. “Healthy is one word.”
Greedwolf laughed softly. “Look at you. You survived the Falling Moon and you still don’t know how to enjoy a safe place.”
X didn’t answer. His definition of safe had shrunk down to ‘not currently bleeding.’
Greedwolf tipped his chin up toward the sky.
The stars were there—somewhere. But the city lights and the dirty air chewed them into nothing.
His voice went quieter. “I used to watch them.”
X arched an eyebrow. “Stars?”
“Before I became a player.” Greedwolf’s gaze stayed fixed on the empty sky. “Back when I was just… nobody.”
He didn’t sound embarrassed by it. If anything, he sounded nostalgic.
“My world had a sun that started to die.”
The words came out plain, like a report. But X could hear the weight behind them.
“It dimmed, year by year. Crops failed. Winters dragged on. Governments promised fixes. Then they promised miracles.”
Greedwolf’s fingers drummed on the railing. “They built ships for fifteen years. Massive ones. The kind that only shows up when a civilization is desperate enough to bankrupt itself.”
“When the first launch day came, they picked the lucky ones.” He finally glanced back, his eyes sharp. “Thirty percent. Not the poor. Not the sick. Not the loud.”
White Lion’s expression didn’t change, but X felt his own jaw tighten.
Greedwolf continued, “They told the rest of us not to worry. The ship would reach a new star, build a foothold, then come back for the remaining seventy percent.”
“People believed it. They had to. Belief was cheaper than riot.”
His smile turned ugly. “The ship never came back.”
The city wind pushed against them, carrying distant sirens and the smell of exhaust.
“As the sun dimmed further, the lies cracked. The return plan had never existed. The first launch wasn’t a rescue. It was an escape.”
“Then came the riots. The purges. The wars over scraps of warmth.”
Greedwolf stared at the lights below. “A world ends slowly… until it doesn’t.”
X finally understood why Greedwolf hated ‘weak’ worlds. He’d watched one collapse from the inside.
Greedwolf exhaled. “And somewhere in all that, I tried a virtual game. Endless Sea.”
He let the name hang in the air like a hook.
“I thought it was just a distraction. A place to forget the cold for a few hours.”
“Then I woke up in a different world with a System in my ear, a player number stamped on my soul, and 999 other idiots who thought they were immortal.”
His tone was flat, but X caught a flicker of something underneath—old, buried exhaustion.
“They died.” Greedwolf said it like weather. “All of them. One by one.”
“Some died to monsters. Some died to each other. Some died because they couldn’t accept that there was no reset button.”
Greedwolf’s eyes narrowed. “And I lived.”
X didn’t know what to say to that, so he said nothing.
Greedwolf turned back to the sky. “That’s why I came here.”
“A world this stable… it doesn’t happen often. If it stays like this for twenty years, it could grow into a Tier-3 civilization.”
“Maybe Tier 4,” White Lion murmured, almost to himself.
Greedwolf nodded, satisfied. “Exactly.”
X felt his half-Godhead shift inside his chest, heavy as a stone in his ribs.
He didn’t like the way Greedwolf talked about worlds like lab rats.
And yet… the part of him that had been trapped under a curse for months couldn’t help thinking of the people he’d like to pay back.
Greedwolf finally looked at him. “You’re thinking too loudly again.”
X froze.
Greedwolf’s smile returned, thin and amused. “Relax. It’s not a crime. Not yet.”
…
While Greedwolf stared up at a sky that refused to show him stars, the Institute spent the night staring at their own screens.
They’d been hunting stowaways—hard.
Not out of righteousness, but out of hunger.
Stowaways came from other worlds. Other civilizations. Other weapon trees. In a universe where the path to the extraordinary was steep and bloody, stolen technology was a shortcut no organization could ignore.
But after the Cycle shift, the street-level reports dried up.
Surveillance filters ran at full intensity for an entire day and found nothing: no mismatched clothes, no panicked strangers, no people who moved like they were still waiting for a blue prompt to appear.
It was as if nobody wanted to stow away into this world anymore.
Huang Yanyan was the first to say it out loud.
“What if it’s because Player 0067 repaired the world?” she asked in the meeting. “Third-world disconnection… and stowaway routes getting locked down. It would fit.”
To Huang, that sounded like good news.
To the Institute, it was a win and a loss at the same time. Less danger on their doorstep… and fewer chances to steal what came with it.
By evening, Huang’s mood had sunk into something complicated.
X still hadn’t appeared.
If X had broken free of the Immortal Walnut, he might not be able to stow away into the Player World anymore—but nothing stopped him from slipping into the Endless Sea next Cycle.
And if he did that, Huang could think of exactly one reason.
Revenge.
Official players who’d dealt with him before would be his first targets. And Huang herself would be at the top of that list.
She sighed, staring at the polluted night sky through her office window. “…I hate this.”
The Institute leadership dismissed her worry. They called X’s odds of escaping the curse microscopic.
Some even argued that if X really did show up in the Endless Sea to lash out, it would become an opportunity—a chance to capture him properly the second time.
That logic made Huang’s skin crawl.
Late that night, she hesitated, then decided to ask the only person who’d actually stood face-to-face with the problem and walked away.
Player 0067.
She reached for her Firebrand Pearl.
Before she could light it, the pearl sparked on its own.
A letter slid out, still warm.
Huang unfolded it and scanned the handwriting.
Player 0067 confirmed the Player World’s ID… and added a new suspicion: X had been planning to break the Immortal Walnut for a long time.
Huang’s eyes narrowed.
New clues. New holes in the story.
She didn’t waste another second.
She gathered the letter, stood up, and headed straight for the Institute’s higher-ups.