Blessed By A Yandere Goddess

Ronan found himself in the middle of a suburban neighborhood. He had the ability to turn invisible. Allysane didn't.

Right now, she was floating in midair, clinging to someone no one else could see. It made her look far more conspicuous, not less. So Ronan summoned Sebastian to scout one of the less ruined houses for threats.

The summon came back clean. Ronan carried Allysane inside, locked the door behind them, and finally set her down. He summoned another champion to guard the upper floors while Sebastian took the ground floor.

"We're safe for now."

"Forty-seven days of this, huh?" Allysane said, keeping her tone light to cut through the tension.

"Yeah." Ronan leaned against the wall, eyes on the boarded windows. "Forty-seven days. But for the first few weeks, at least I had a thousand people with me."

Allysane let out a short, humorless laugh.

"Right. A thousand hunters. That's supposed to make me feel better?"

"I'm worth more than a thousand hunters, so maybe, yeah."

She pulled her knees up to her chest, back against the cracked wall, and stared at the floorboards. The house they'd holed up in smelled like dust and rot, but it was dry and the doors still closed.

In Tartarus-B, that was practically a fortress.

The silence stretched between them, broken only by the faint creak of Sebastian's in the kitchen and the occasional skittering sound outside. Allysane was shivering, though not from cold.

"This place is kind of creepy, huh?"

"The great Allysane is scared of creepy-looking places?"

"I'm a hunter, not a horror movie protagonist."

She peered through a gap in the window coverings, spotting a skitter moving in the distance. Beyond it, a flesh golem lumbered between the ruined houses, less armored and far less menacing than the one from the broadcast where Verne and John had fought. But still unmistakable.

"Is this what the first expedition fought the entire time?"

"Even more. These are just the most common."

Ronan watched the streets through the gap in the window, counting the shapes moving between the houses.

Four skitters. One flesh golem. A pack of bone-faces further down the block, their pale bodies catching the sickly moonlight like wet bone.

The patrols were thinner than he remembered, but they were there, moving with that same patient, hungry rhythm. They knew something was in the neighborhood. They just hadn't pinned down where.

Allysane shifted beside him, her shoulder brushing his arm. She'd stopped shivering, but her breathing was still shallow, controlled in that way hunters learned after too many close calls.

"We could take them out. Problem is, I don't want to mess with anything after what just happened. I can't be sure this is the same Tartarus-B I know," Ronan said.

Tartarus-B wasn't a normal gate. That much was obvious with how it destroyed the expedition Ronan was in.

And the fact that the Abyssal Rift had transformed into it was proof enough of that. The last thing they needed was to pick a fight and find out the monsters here were even worse than the ones he remembered.

[Rewards Calculated]

[Gate Area: ERROR]

[Refreshing]

[Gate Area: Tartarus-B (West) Completed]

[Rewards distributed]

Both their eyes locked onto the notification.

Did the system just bug out and think they'd cleared a hellhole like Tartarus-B instead of the far simpler Abyssal Rift?

"Oh my—"

Allysane nearly yelled, her eyes going wide as she stared at her inventory. It was the look of a hunter staring at a billion dollars, or something far better than that.

Ronan glanced at his own notification, already bracing for the kind of reward that came from clearing something the system had never been able to classify.

[Rewards Recalculated]

[Gate Area: Tartarus-B (West) Completed]

[You have received: Aspect of the Drowned God (??? Rank Material)]

[You have received: 12,500,000 EXP]

[You have received: Skill Evolution Point x2]

[You have received: Title - Conqueror of the Sunken West]

[Title Effect: All stats +10% while inside gates connected to the Abyss]

[Title Effect: You are recognized by the Abyss as an invader. Hostile creatures may hesitate before engaging.]

Ronan's eyes widened slightly. Twelve and a half million EXP. Two skill evolution points. A material with question marks for a rank, and a title that actually mattered.

This was a reward worthy of clearing a section of Tartarus-B.

He opened his status.

[Level: 28 → 39]

Eleven levels in one notification. His stats had jumped across the board, and the familiar warmth of power settling into his bones made his fingers twitch.

"Ronan."

Allysane's voice had gone very quiet. And she didn't even bother using his codename 'Greystar' anymore.

"I just got a staff with question marks as a rank. Question marks! Do you know what that means?"

"Novels say it's an OP item."

"Exactly!"

The fear from Tartarus-B and the absurd rewards intermingled in a way that almost made the mood feel warm.

Ronan couldn't help but let a small smile tug at the corner of his mouth. Allysane's sudden shift from terror to giddy greed was so abrupt it broke through the weight pressing on his chest.

She stood, brushing dust from her legs, and looked around the ruined house with fresh eyes. The dread was still there, lurking beneath the surface, but the rewards had given her something to anchor to.

A reason to keep moving.

"Sebastian," Ronan called.

The summon materialized from the shadows near the kitchen, violet eyes glowing faintly in the dark.

"What do you sense?"

"A large presence moving toward us. It's still far, but it's coming from the city center. The others are circling, but they won't engage until it's close."

Ronan nodded, then reached into his inventory. The coordinate stone, he'd kept it all this time without thinking, too light to bother discarding after he'd returned to Earth. And somehow, it was still working, pulsing faintly in his palm as it pointed him toward a direction.

Toward the anchor stone.

Toward the exit portal.

Well, hopefully the exit portal. But it was the closest thing they got to an escape.

He stared at it for a second longer than he needed to, then let out a breath.

"I think I found the exit."

Allysane leaned in, peering at the faint glow in his hand.

"A coordinate stone?"

"Yeah. The one I used back then."

"You kept it all this time?"

"I mean... I was a porter. Hoarding things comes with the job."

Ronan's lips twitched at Allysane's expression, half disbelief, half reluctant approval. She looked at him like she couldn't decide whether to laugh or call him insane.

"A coordinate stone from the original Tartarus-B expedition." She shook her head slowly. "You really are a porter."

"The best one you'll ever meet."

He tucked the stone back into his palm, letting its faint pulse guide him. The pull was northwest, deeper into the gate itself. Toward the old forward camp. Toward the gate.

"Can I trust it?" Allysane asked.

"It's pointing to the anchor stone we had back then. The exit gate was near it. If this place is a copy of Tartarus-B, then the exit should be there, too."

"And if it's not a copy? If the Rift just... stole pieces of Tartarus-B and mashed them together?"

"Then we'll find out when we get there."

Allysane didn't argue. She checked her staff, the question-mark-ranked weapon she'd just received, and gave it a few experimental twirls. The motion was smooth, second nature, even with a weapon she'd never used before.

"Alright, west exit it is..."

"You sound afraid. Good. You'll need that to survive here."

Ronan gave Sebastian his orders: scout ahead, keep to the shadows, and report back anything that looked like an ambush. The summon melted into the darkness without a word.

Above them, the second summon, a Dark Champion Ronan had picked up in a shrine months ago, shifted on the upper floor, its heavy steps creaking on old wood. He left it there to watch their backs until they were gone, then dismissed it once they crossed the threshold.

The street outside was quiet.

Too quiet in the way Tartarus-B always got before something bad happened.

They moved from cover to cover, Ronan in front, Allysane right behind. The coordinate stone pulsed gently in his grip, nudging them down side streets and through the husks of old buildings.

At some point, Allysane started talking. Not much. Just the occasional whisper.

"You really spent forty-seven days in a place like this."

"Most of it, yes."

"How did you sleep?"

"Using the houses we just left, and before you ask, yes, I slept badly."

She let out a breath. "That's fair."

They reached the end of the street and stopped at a collapsed storefront. From there, the road opened into a huge highway, a straight path that likely led to another city where the forward camp hopefully was.

Ronan had almost forgotten how ridiculously huge Tartarus-B was.

"Ronan..."

Alyssane suddenly tugged at his sleeves.

"What?"

"Aren't those... snow elves?"

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