PATH OF THE STAR HUNTER

Just the amount of technology and magic employed to protect the headquarters from all manner of attacks and intrusions would give even the best arcanists headaches.

Security only became higher as one entered the vast city that floated in space. One could only wonder where the hell the association got the resources to build a place like this.

Among the few people who had access to the association’s secrets, one man, in particular, was currently having a headache while looking at a strange report that had come to his office. Amid the darkness, the red-eyed man had a grim expression as he read.

<New mission request record.>

<Applicant: Elaisa Rossi Etvretka.< p>

Associate Hunter: Desmond Astrid.>

<Mission Log: 156048-GHX-87435.>

Even for a man with such a busy schedule, the name Desmond Astryd was not unknown, perhaps because that was the name of the hunter he had recently sent to capture because of his ties to Titania, that crazy woman. The problem was that Desmond Astryd was supposed to be dead. At least he had lost contact with his hunter’s book since that encounter where he was presumed dead.

.....

It was precise because he left him for dead that the man in the dark room didn’t keep checking the issue. After all, Desmond didn’t mean much to him; he was just a little hunter who could have been useful but wasn’t. Even now, he had only seen the mission request log by chance.

Intrigued and annoyed, the man in question read the logs about Desmond’s mission. As vague as the details were, it was even strange that the association would agree to record a mission like this, which caught the eye of the red-eyed man. However, the small interest of the man in question turned to complete disbelief when he saw the spatial coordinates of the place Desmond had been sent to.

“What the hell is going on here? That place is…”

Before he finished his sentence, the red-eyed man was interrupted by a flash of silver that was accompanied by the voice of a woman complaining. “You could have at least warned me that you would use a teleportation ability through multiple dimensions and magical barriers; that trip nearly scared me to death.”

Somehow, two people had done the impossible, breaking into the association’s protected grounds. Beyond that, these people had even used spatial displacement magic, which should be impossible. Inside the association, the space had been completely sealed off. It was only possible to enter and exit through the access points at the teleportation ports.

However, it was not the intrusion of the two people that most caught the man’s attention; what stunned him was that he knew both women. The first was a woman with white hair and eyes that seemed to contain a thousand suns, someone the man recognized as Katya, the Archangel of Balance, someone he had fought centuries ago; she was supposed to be dead after the cursed wound he inflicted on her back then.

The second woman had silver hair and blood-red eyes, eyes identical to the man. She was Lilith, that woman who had defeated him thousands of years ago, against whom he conspired and imprisoned to rot in solitude. More importantly, he had stolen the potential-filled blood from that woman and used it to strengthen himself.

In the split second that the man’s daze lasted, Katya fixed her eyes like suns on him and gave an order. “Lilith, immobilize him; I need at least a second.”

Reacting with speed, Lilith unleashed a powerful blood curse on the man. The man smiled, dismissing both women indistinctly; he had beaten them both in the past, and he could do it again.

Contrary to what the man had expected, Lilith had not only strengthened to an impressive level, reaching Lunar class, but her blood curses had become incredibly advanced. Even though the man was in the final phases of the Moon class, his body was still paralyzed by the blood curse custom designed by Lilith to use against him.

His face twisted in rage and madness, and the man tried to mobilize his vast stores of arcana, completely destroying the curse. Still, his reaction was delayed by a second, which was all Katya needed.

As Lilith looked forward to seeing her sworn enemy brutally put to death, Katya’s next move was far different than she thought it would be. Katya did not draw the powerful crystal spear from her or use any of her other devastating powers; instead, she simply pushed her opponent away, placing a tiny golden crystal on his chest.

The confused expression on the faces of the red-eyed man and Lilith hadn’t finished manifesting when something forced a breach in space. Unlike the special method Katya used to get to this place, where she moved through the veil of fate, someone had actually violated all of the association’s security measures and barriers, creating a breach in space.

Without even having a chance to resist, the man was dragged through the gap by an unknown power. A second later, the gap closed, leaving Katya and Lilith alone in the room.

Ignoring the stunned Lilith, Katya walked over to the man’s desk. She placed some sort of disk in front of the holographic interface the man had used earlier. At a speed that would put any quantum computer to shame, the disk hacked into the association’s database using the recently kidnapped man’s authority to gain access that would be impossible to obtain by other means.

In addition to stealing an absurd amount of information, the device also destroyed a lot of information within the association’s central database. Most of it was destroyed randomly, but that was just to hide the real target of the hack. 90% of the information destroyed was there only to mislead.

Interestingly, many minor records related to Desmond were altered in the background, erasing the records of his last mission and some previous irregularities and keeping all the information related to the people who accompanied Desmond from other worlds, such as Kyuru, Cecilia, and Sasha.

While this occurred, the entire association headquarters went on high alert due to a violation of space sealing and security protocols. Unfortunately, the one who had attacked the association was not only powerful to the point of being absurd but also had an incredibly high level of dominance over space that managed to hide the source of the security breach very well. However, this was the headquarters of the hunters’ association, and it was only a matter of time before they tracked down the breach.

Finally coming out of her daze, Lilith glared at Katya with fury and confusion. She just didn’t understand what the hell was happening; none of this was like what she had in mind.

As if reading Lilith’s mind, Katya met her eyes and released a huge bomb that nearly made Lilith spit blood. “You weren’t expecting us to fight him, were you? As I told you before, that man is a difficult opponent for me, being almost immune to the powers I mastered. Since trying to fight him myself is nothing more than an elaborate suicide, I sent him to a place where a better opponent awaits him.”

From the start, Katya had never intended to fight this man; the realization had just struck Lilith. On second thought, it made a lot of sense. Katya herself had admitted that she was basically a glorified punching bag when she fought that man, so it wouldn’t make sense for her to go through so much trouble just to come and take a beating.

Even though she understood, Lilith was still furious, she had been shamelessly used to track the man, and she hadn’t even been able to watch him die. In fact, she wasn’t sure he was going to die.

At that point, the disc had finished its work, so Katya took it before taking Lilith’s hand. “It’s time to go, don’t worry; I’ll take you so you can see that man’s death.”

Once again, Lilith felt her insides tremble and churn, an uncomfortable side effect of the special teleportation used by Katya. A second later, Katya and Lilith appeared in a huge throne room, apparently made of black obsidian-like metal.

Sitting on a black and gold throne was a woman with black hair so dark it seemed to devour all the light around her, a woman whose beauty transcended the realm of the physical. The woman’s eyes seemed to be a whirlpool of thousands, if not millions, of metallic particles of different colors and properties.

In front of the woman, a few meters from the throne, was a grotesque and macabre-looking glass statue of a creature full of red eyes and mouths covered with sharp teeth. Even now, a deep madness could be felt emanating from the figure, something that spoke volumes about the nature of the creature that died in its creation.

Seeing the bored smile of the woman on the throne and the statue, Katya commented. “Titania, I see that you acted quite quickly.”

Titania, the queen of fairies, just nodded and answered. “This thing was very rude as soon as it arrived, so I lost interest in playing the game.”

Upon hearing the fairy queen’s childish response, Katya felt quite helpless; she did not understand Titania even a little despite having been allies for many years. As if that weren’t enough, there was still the subject of Lilith. Realizing that she would have to deal with both women for at least a few more hours, Katya’s armor of stoicism crumbled.