Chapter 773: Past Feuds

Moon glanced across the valley, where the scattered remnants of the Mountain Stalker pack were being hunted down by his team, the gate appearance and its ruler dead at Honeybun’s feet.

The clearance was essentially complete. All that remained was cleanup, and then they would enter the gate and return back to earth with another B-Rank cleared, another haul of Lives and loot and contribution points banked.

He walked over to Honeybun, still standing proudly atop the fallen golden Stalker, and rested a hand on the turtle’s shell.

"Good work, buddy. You earned every bit of that." He glanced at the massive golden corpse, the dense hide and powerful frame worth a fortune in materials.

Honeybun nestled against his hand, content, and Moon surveyed the valley one last time, deeply satisfied with how easy clearing the B-gate was.

Of course, Moon also knew that this wasn’t just any gate, it was a really powerful one. One with a Surpasser boss, something that wasn’t common among normal B-Rank gates.

The path forward was clear, and it inevitably led towards greater strength.

????

Alaric and his team stood over the fallen body of a spirit, their faces tight with worry rather than triumph.

They had killed it, yes. But the cost of the fight, and what it implied, hung heavy over all of them. The spirit had been far stronger than anything they’d anticipated, and it had taken a lot of skills to finish it.

"Was that... a normal spirit of this pavilion?" Emma asked, her voice low, wiping blood from her twin daggers. "Because if that was just a regular, just one of however many this place holds... then we’re in serious trouble."

She looked up at her partner, eyes grim. "Alaric, the success of this whole operation rests on you. If the pavilion’s defenders are all that strong, the rest of us can’t carry the weight. It has to be you."

Alaric nodded, his expression solemn, the newfound fire that had driven his training these past weeks now tempered by the gravity of what they faced.

The spirit pavilion that had swallowed Surpassers whole, that had turned an entire off-zone into a graveyard, was proving every bit as deadly as the intel had warned. And this was only the beginning. One spirit down, and already the fight had tested his team to the pinnacle of their prwoess. If this was the caliber of the pavilion’s weaker residents, then whatever ruled it, the Pavilion Spirit itself, would be something else entirely.

Alaric slid his sword back into its sheath, his gaze sweeping across the pavilion’s gleaming white marble, calculating.

"Understood," he said quietly. "If it comes to it, I’ll shoulder what I have to. That’s why I’ve been pushing myself. For exactly this." He turned to the team. "But we don’t take unnecessary risks. This place has killed everyone who came before us, including Surpassers."

Then his eyes flicked toward the depths of the pavilion.

"Let’s move," he ordered, his voice hardening. "Before the pavilion’s backup arrives. We don’t want to be caught in the open when reinforcements come. Find defensible ground, regroup, and assess before we push deeper."

The team gathered, weapons ready, and moved away from the fallen spirit, Alaric at their head.

????

At the gate’s entrance, the command post was alerted to sudden activity as the instruments registered a change in the mana coming out from the gate.

The Surpasser in charge recognized the alert immediately, and a broad smile spread across his face. He rose and made his way out of the command tent, preparing to welcome Moon and his team back from their expedition with open arms.

Another clearance that beats every other team’s timing, the Surpasser thought, admiration coloring his thoughts. No matter which gate he’s assigned to, it shoots straight to the top of the clearance leaderboard. Fastest clears, consistently, consecutively. The boy’s a real phenomenon.

Moon’s reputation was no exaggeration. Gate after gate, he produced results that left veteran Evolver clearance teams looking sluggish by comparison, and the Association had taken notice. His contribution points toward the Sacred-Rank art were climbing at a rate no one else could match.

As the representative walked toward the gate, another Surpasser who’d been standing beside him fell into step.

"I’ll come with you," the man said casually.

The Association representative nodded reflexively, not giving it a second thought. The man was one of his friends, after all. They’d been chatting idly moments ago, passing the time while they waited, and there was nothing unusual about a colleague tagging along to watch a famous young clearer emerge from a gate.

So the representative thought nothing of it, the two of them walking side by side toward the swirling gate, waiting to greet Moon and his team.

His gaze was fixed on the gate’s shimmering surface, waiting for the figure who would step through it.

The gate rippled, the mana surging, and the first figures began to emerge from the crimson light.

Moon and his team emerged from the portal, broad smiles on their rain-dried faces after another successful clearance, and were greeted warmly by the Association representative, who congratulated them on yet another record-breaking time.

Once the pleasantries were done, the other man, the one Moon’s eyes had settled on the moment he stepped through, walked forward and extended his hand.

"Arthur Richter, headmaster of the Richter Group. A pleasure to finally meet you, your reputation precedes you."

Moon looked at the extended hand, a small grin tugging at his lips. The name Richter struck a deep, specific chord in his memory, dredging up something from his earliest days as an Awakener.

He didn’t shake the hand.

He simply let it hang there in the air, meeting Arthur’s eyes with that grin, and the silence stretched. Everyone around them, the representative, Theo, Garrett, Priya, Dmitri, immediately felt the awkward tension bloom, exchanging uncertain glances at the open snub.

"Richter Group," Moon said slowly, as if recalling the memory. "You know, I remember back when I was just a fresh Awakener, with no power or any real backing. A big, buff Evolver approached me one day. Called himself Oliver. Said he’d been sent by the Richter Group." He tilted his head. "As the headmaster, do you happen to know anything about that?"

Arthur’s smile twitched, and he shook his head quickly, slowly lowering his unshaken hand.

"Really? I’m afraid not. Perhaps there’s been some mistake, a confusion of names, maybe. I don’t recall hearing of any such incident."

Moon’s grin widened at the denial.

"Hmm. I see. That’s strange, because I remember it quite vividly. Hard to forget, really. After all, Oliver made it very clear to me that rising talents without a group backing them tend to meet... mysterious deaths from time to time. He was quite emphatic about it, actually."

Everyone’s reaction to Moon’s words were the same. Looks of disgust were shared between them, their eyes flicking between Moon and Arthur.

They believed Moon’s words, not because he was talented or powerful, but because he had no reason to lie. It was clear that this was the first time they met, and Moon had no reason to implicate a random person.

Which only meant one thing, his words were true, and that incident had indeed taken place at some point in time.s.

The Association representative, who had brought Arthur along without a second thought, suddenly looked deeply uncomfortable, the realization dawning that his casual friend had an agenda he hadn’t known about, and that whatever history existed between the Richter Group and Moon, it wasn’t friendly.

Theo understood. They tried to strong-arm a new Awakener into joining, and made it clear what happened if he refused.

And now that Awakener had become the rising star of New Avalon, a genius with ties to a Sword Saint and an Ascender, standing in front of the very group that had once threatened his life, refusing to shake the headmaster’s hand.

Arthur Richter’s smile had frozen on his face, the confidence of his approach curdling into something more wary.

He’d come solely to strike a connection with the famous young talent. He clearly hadn’t expected to be confronted with his own group’s past misdeeds, thrown back in his face in front of an Association representative and a full gate team.

’Damn it... his memory is quite sharp.’

Arthur had naturally known about this very incident, because it was the common tactic that he used to recruit new talents. Usually, it worked, but this time around, luck wasn’t on his side and he had failed miserably.

One of the reasons why he had taken so long to meet Moon was because he was waiting for the young man to forget about the incident, but it seemed like his memory was still fresh.

The tension in the air did not diminish everyone waiting to see how the headmaster of the Richter Group would respond to being so openly called out by the very person his organization had once marked for a mysterious death.