One year had passed since the death of Sophia Douglas de Mondring.
For Lusian, that year had not really passed.
It had been an endless succession of nights.
Nights of training.
Nights of investigation.
Nights of blood.
And above all, nights of hunting.
From the day he had sworn to destroy the demon cult, Lusian had forced his mind to remember everything he knew about them.
Every temple.
Every hideout.
Every tunnel.
Every hidden sanctuary.
Every location mentioned in the game from his previous life.
But his memories were not perfect.
Years had passed since he had played that story.
Some locations were incomplete.
Others were barely fragments.
A mountain.
A forest.
A village.
A river.
A name that had appeared on a screen for only a few seconds.
None of that was enough to guarantee that he was remembering correctly.
And Lusian knew it.
That was why he went over every possibility again and again.
He spent hours studying maps.
Marking a location.
Discarding it.
Marking another.
Returning to the first.
Until his eyes burned and his head began to ache.
He could not afford to make a mistake.
Because behind every location there could be a temple.
And behind every temple there could be someone waiting for the right moment to get close to Elizabeth.
Finally, one night, he spread a huge map across his desk.
There were dozens of black marks.
Some were accompanied by names.
Others had nothing but a cross.
Lusian stared at the map for several minutes.
Then he picked up his sword.
He did not need to say anything.
Umber was already waiting by the door.
The enormous dark wolf raised his head.
His eyes gleamed in the darkness.
Lusian left the castle.
And the hunt began.
At first, no one understood what was happening.
There were no declarations.
No public orders.
No armies marching beneath Douglas banners.
Small temples in the outlying regions simply began to disappear.
One.
Then another.
Then another.
Some nights, they were found completely destroyed.
Other times, no one could even find the remains.
Only burned demonic symbols remained on the ground, along with dark stains on the walls.
The first reports reached the capital weeks later.
Messengers spoke of missing priests.
Cultists found dead.
Shrines destroyed.
And a figure no one could see clearly.
He always appeared at night.
He was always accompanied by an enormous black wolf.
And he always disappeared before dawn.
At first, the reports were treated as isolated incidents.
Then they stopped being isolated.
Because the attacks continued.
One week.
Then another.
Then months.
And eventually, people began to talk.
—The Duke of the North is hunting again.
The phrase began as a comment among soldiers.
Then it spread to merchants.
Then to farmers.
And eventually reached the taverns of the capital.
The rumors grew.
Some claimed that Lusian could turn into a shadow.
Others said he could walk through walls.
There were even those who claimed to have seen his eyes glowing in the darkness just before their companions disappeared.
But one rumor spread farther than the rest.
One much simpler.
And much more terrifying.
They said Duke Douglas killed anyone who dared to look at him.
No one knew where the rumor had originated.
But more and more people repeated it.
And the more it was repeated...
The more true it seemed.
The Douglas family had always had a terrible reputation.
For generations, they had been considered a family of brutal warriors.
Assassins.
Men and women who did not hesitate to shed blood to defend their territory.
Even within the kingdom, there was a well-known saying:
Never provoke a Douglas.
But now another one was beginning to appear.
A much worse one.
Never provoke Lusian Douglas.
Because according to the rumors, every generation had produced a monster.
And this duke...
Was worse than all of his predecessors.
The difference was that no one knew exactly why.
The heroes were different.
They appeared during the day.
With shining armor.
With banners.
With priests behind them.
Children admired them.
Nobles praised them.
Cities welcomed them as saviors.
They were the hope of the kingdom.
The ones sent by the gods.
The men destined to protect humanity when the next crisis arrived.
And then there was Lusian.
The Duke of the North.
Darkness.
Blood.
Decay.
While the heroes saved villages beneath the light of day...
Lusian went out at night.
While they received blessings...
He used dark magic to disappear into the shadows.
While priests spoke of hope...
The corpses of cultists appeared in his wake.
The difference was so obvious that the kingdom eventually turned them into opposing symbols.
The heroes represented what humanity hoped to become.
Lusian represented what they feared becoming.
And no one wanted to ask why the man everyone called a monster hunted.
No one knew that behind every one of his hunts, countless lives were being saved.
Although to those watching from the outside, the way he did it was cruel, ruthless, and terrifying.
The first time Lusian killed was during the winter.
He had discovered a small temple hidden beneath an old abandoned house.
It did not seem important.
Until he discovered what was happening below.
There were children.
Orphans.
Some of them could barely walk.
The priest in charge was using them as sacrifices.
Lusian still remembered the sound of their chains.
He remembered the smell of blood.
He remembered the expression on the priest's face when he realized someone had discovered the place.
Lusian drew his sword.
The man tried to defend himself.
He did not last long.
The blade came down.
Blood spilled across the floor.
And the priest stopped moving.
Lusian remained motionless.
He looked at his sword.
Then at his hands.
They were trembling.
He had killed before.
But until then, his victims had always been monsters.
This time, they were not.
This time, he was hunting people.
He had chosen to do it.
Of his own free will.
No one had ordered him to.
Lusian took a step back.
His stomach churned.
He turned around.
And vomited.
For several minutes, that was all he could do.
That night, he could barely eat.
For the next few days, every time he closed his eyes, he remembered the exact moment his sword had pierced the priest's body.
He could not forget.
He could not pretend it had never happened.
But he could not stop either.
Because he knew something no one else did.
The cult still existed.
And one day, they would try to reach Elizabeth.
So he went out again.
In spring, he discovered three summoning cores in the Fractal Mountains.
This time, there were more enemies.
More priests.
More sacrifices.
Lusian entered during the night.
Darkness covered his body.
He became a shadow among the trees.
Umber moved a few meters ahead of him, silent.
There was no warning.
No negotiation.
Lusian appeared behind the first priest.
A thrust.
The man fell.
The second tried to cast a spell.
Lusian pierced his chest before he could finish.
The third tried to escape.
Umber pounced on him.
When it was over, Lusian stood before the altar.
He was breathing heavily.
He looked at the bodies.
He waited to feel the same thing as the first time.
The same revulsion.
The same nausea.
The same guilt.
But it never came.
It was still unpleasant.
The smell of blood still churned his stomach, and corpses still disgusted him.
But his hand remained steady.
It did not tremble.
He did not hesitate.
He did not look away.
In summer, the hunt spread toward the borders.
Lusian began attacking caravans involved in trafficking monsters contaminated with demonic mana.
Some were protected by mercenaries.
Others by mages.
Others by corrupt soldiers.
It no longer mattered.
The night belonged to Lusian.
Darkness covered the road.
Umber appeared first.
A flash of yellow eyes.
Then Lusian.
A shadow emerging from another shadow.
By then, his sword no longer trembled.
He did not stop after every death.
He attacked.
Evaluated.
Decided.
Moved on.
And every time, he became faster.
More precise.
Colder.
By autumn, something had changed permanently.
Lusian no longer thought of killing as an extraordinary decision.
It was a tool.
Like a sword.
Like a spell.
Like anything else he needed to use to achieve his objective.
That did not mean he enjoyed it.
He did not enjoy the blood.
He did not enjoy hearing the screams.
He had simply stopped allowing those things to interfere with his decisions.
One night, a cultist managed to survive a few seconds longer than the others.
He was lying in the snow.
Trembling.
Watching Lusian slowly approach.
The man had heard the stories.
He had heard the rumors.
He had thought they were exaggerations.
Until that night.
Lusian stopped in front of him.
The cultist looked up.
And began to cry.
—You...
His voice barely came out.
Lusian did not answer.
The man crawled backward through the snow.
—You're...
He swallowed.
—You're a monster.
Lusian watched him for several seconds.
Then he continued walking.
The man died without Lusian looking back.
Meanwhile, the training never stopped.
Lusian pushed his body to limits no instructor would have considered reasonable.
He ate meat and foods saturated with mana.
He consumed extracts designed to slowly strengthen the body.
But Lusian had no interest in doing it slowly.
He wanted more.
More strength.
More mana.
More speed.
More power.
His core adapted at an absurd rate.
Each new level made the next one more difficult to reach.
And Lusian simply increased the pressure.
Emily sometimes found him completely unconscious at night.
She had seen him break swords after hours of training.
She had seen him train with his hands covered in blood.
She had seen him collapse into the snow and get back up minutes later.
And every time she managed to convince him to rest, she used her light magic to stabilize the wounds he had inflicted upon himself.
But even Emily understood that she was treating a problem that was not physical.
She could heal his muscles.
She could repair his mana channels.
She could stabilize his core.
She could not heal whatever forced him to keep moving forward.
Lusian did not want to rest.
Because resting meant remembering.
And remembering meant thinking about Sophia.
Thinking about the cult.
Thinking about Elizabeth.
Thinking about the future.
So he trained.
And hunted.
And trained again.
By then, his level had reached ninety.
A level no hero had reached yet.
A level that made Lusian something entirely different within the kingdom.
But he did not celebrate the achievement.
He looked at the map again.
There were still marked locations.
There were still temples.
There were still cultists.
So he continued.
Meanwhile, people kept talking.
The heroes were hope.
Lusian was darkness.
The heroes were sent by the gods.
Lusian seemed to hunt down anyone who crossed his path.
The heroes protected the people.
Duke Douglas appeared at night surrounded by corpses.
Every new story made the legend grow.
And no one knew how much of it was true.
But the cultists knew.
They did not need rumors.
They had seen reality.
They had watched entire temples disappear.
They had watched priests die before they could cast a spell.
They had tried moving their shrines.
They had changed passwords.
They had sent scouts.
They had created false routes.
Nothing worked.
Because Lusian did not fight like an army.
He did not announce his arrival.
He carried no banners.
He did not need to conquer territory.
He simply appeared.
And when he left...
The temple no longer existed.
One winter night, a small group of cultists ran through a forest north of the kingdom.
Snow covered the ground.
Their breath formed white clouds in front of their faces.
—Faster!
—We can't stop!
—He's following us!
None of them dared look back.
Because they had all heard the same story.
If the Duke of the North appeared...
There was no escape.
The youngest member of the group stumbled.
He fell into the snow.
—Help me!
One of the men turned back to lift him.
Then the darkness moved.
A shadow passed between the trees.
The man disappeared.
The young cultist screamed.
Something fell into the snow.
A sword.
Silence returned.
Then Umber appeared.
The enormous black wolf slowly emerged from between the trees.
His paws barely left tracks.
His eyes glowed in the darkness.
The cultists backed away.
One raised a staff.
—Stay back!
Umber bared his fangs.
The man tried to cast a spell.
A shadow pierced his body before he could finish.
The corpse fell.
The others froze.
Then Lusian stepped out of the darkness.
He simply appeared.
His black mana blended with the night.
His sword rested in one hand.
His face remained completely expressionless.
One of the cultists began to tremble.
—The... Duke...
Lusian advanced.
Another raised his sword.
He never got the chance to attack.
Lusian disappeared.
A moment later, the man fell into the snow.
The others tried to escape.
Umber pounced on one.
Lusian caught the second.
The third dropped his weapon and fell to his knees.
—Wait!
Lusian stopped.
The man raised both hands.
—I can give you information!
Silence.
—I know where the next temple is!
Lusian looked at him.
For the first time that night, his expression changed slightly.
—Talk.
The cultist began to cry.
Because he had realized something.
The monster described in the rumors was not a creature that killed without thinking.
He was worse.
He thought.
He knew exactly who he was hunting.
He knew exactly where to strike.
And he had enough power to do it.
The cultist pointed east with a trembling hand.
—The temple is... two days from here.
Lusian remained silent.
Then he sheathed his sword.
—Umber.
The wolf raised his head.
—We're leaving.
Lusian began walking.
Umber followed.
And the two disappeared into the shadows.
Behind them were the dead.
Ahead of them, another night of hunting.
And far away, in the capital, the rumors continued to grow.
The heroes were hope.
The gods were salvation.
And in the far north of the kingdom...
Darkness had a name.
Lusian Douglas.