Insomniac Player

Hamari found Damien by following the trail of expensive blood.

That was how she described it.

Doctor Smoke described it as arterial risk, internal damage, and evidence that Damien should not be permitted to make decisions without supervision.

She knelt beside him with a medical kit while Daria removed Silas’s sword from reach. Naked Nun inspected the dead swordsman and then the Level 30 Damien lying beside him.

"Did you fight him alone because you wanted to?" she asked.

"No."

"That makes it less romantic."

Doctor Smoke tightened a pressure seal over Damien’s shoulder. "If you make him laugh, I will use pesticide on you."

Hamari crouched on his other side. "Can pesticide treat stab wounds?"

"Tonight it can do anything."

Daria examined the pattern of cuts across Damien’s body. "You were strong enough to kill him sooner."

"I hesitated."

"Because he was human?"

Damien looked at Silas.

"I thought that mattered to him."

Hamari’s humor faded. "What do we call people when it doesn’t?"

"Skinwalkers," Damien said.

Doctor Smoke paused over the pressure seal.

"That is not a System designation."

"It’s mine. Monsters wearing human skin. If we leave them alive, they keep hurting humanity."

Doctor Smoke held his gaze for a moment. "We will discuss what killing him did to you after you have enough blood to form complete thoughts."

Damien did not argue. The word was not meant to remove the weight of what he had done. It was meant to make sure hesitation did not choose the Skinwalker’s next victim.

Daria looked across the nest. The last egg beds had been treated. Level 1 locusts still covered the dead fields, but without the Queen and Conductors they moved without purpose. Agricultural drones created a chemical boundary around the surviving crops.

A local notification appeared above Greenfall.

➤[Emergency Assignment Completed.]

➤[Golden Locust Queen eliminated.]

➤[Artificial swarm redirection network disabled.]

➤[Greenfall Agricultural Belt preserved: 71.4%.]

The number was not a victory to celebrate. Nearly three tenths of the region’s living crop had vanished in hours.

It was still above thirty.

Across Earth-69, other regions adopted Doctor Smoke’s pesticide method. Civilian agricultural departments reopened warehouses that had become irrelevant after the System. Crop dusters returned to the sky. Players hunted Level 30 Conductors while ordinary workers killed Level 1 locusts by the millions.

For the first time since the patch began, the global decline slowed.

➤[Global Event Status.]

➤[Active Agricultural Production Remaining: 72.83%.]

➤[Loss rate decreasing.]

Doctor Smoke looked at the message and returned to Damien’s wound.

"The System should award me a title."

"Queen of Pesticide," Hamari suggested.

"I will shoot the title."

Martin’s reinforcements reached Greenfall nine minutes after Silas died. Military medics took over Damien’s treatment. Investigators secured the prisoners, transmitters, and Neva equipment.

Imran arrived through a command projection rather than in person. His image appeared above Silas’s recovered field terminal while technicians broke its encryption.

"You were ordered not to engage him alone," Martin told Damien.

Damien lay on a stretcher beneath three medical seals. "He engaged me."

"That distinction will not survive the report."

"It was meaningful at the time."

Martin looked as if he understood why John occasionally broke walls.

The terminal opened.

Neva’s records did not describe Silas Vane as a commander. His official status was provisional field leader. Every surviving member belonged to Entry Cell Forty-Four. Their Summer Collection operation had been assigned as a confirmation mission before full membership.

One line drew complete silence from the command group.

➤[Operational Grade: Beginner.]

➤[Senior Oversight: None.]

➤[Escalation to ranked personnel: Prohibited without verified interference.]

Naked Nun read it twice. "They prohibited strong people from coming?"

Imran nodded. "Neva did not want important members exposed over a minor supply operation."

Hamari pointed at Silas’s body. "Their minor supply manager was Level 61."

"Which tells us more about the people above him than it does about him," Martin said.

The files revealed the mission’s objectives. Entry Cell Forty-Four had been ordered to redirect locusts toward public crops, raid weakened stores, and acquire physical grain before prices reached their peak. They were never expected to cause the Devouring Summer. They merely intended to profit from it and weaken government reserves.

The earliest order carried a timestamp.

Fourteen days before Patch 1.3.10.

Damien lifted his head despite Doctor Smoke’s warning.

"They knew."

Imran opened the attached briefing. Most of it had been removed before distribution to recruits, but one surviving image showed a piece of yellowed parchment covered in riddle-like lines.

It was not Damien’s parchment.

The wording differed. The handwriting differed. The final image of a sky learning hunger did not.

Neva had possessed another prediction.

Martin looked toward Damien. "How many Riddled Dungeons exist?"

"I don’t know."

"Who else knows about yours?"

Damien listed the people from the group call. Everyone present was trusted, but trust did not answer the more important question.

The Neva Order had started preparing before Damien returned from Murim, before he entered the Doppelganger Gate, and before Patch 1.3.10 appeared.

Their information had come from somewhere else.

Jeremy contacted him while the investigators continued.

The Stock Agent appeared beside the stretcher, saw the medical seals, and paused.

"Should this wait?"

"Is the corn gone?" Damien asked.

"No."

"Then it can wait."

Jeremy continued anyway, which meant the news mattered.

"All thirty-one storage sites are secure. The attempted breach failed. Current corn offers range between eight and twelve times our average purchase price, depending on region and delivery guarantee."

John had joined the channel from the western production belt. Locust wings covered his armor and mustache. He looked unharmed and deeply offended.

"Twelve?" he said.

"Peak offers," Jeremy cautioned. "We cannot liquidate the entire stock at that price. Attempting it would collapse local buyers, attract emergency seizure orders, and violate our distribution conditions."

"How much?" Damien asked.

Jeremy opened a conservative projection.

"If we sell through government relief contracts, livestock-feed agreements, and controlled private releases, our average realized multiplier should approach eight. After transport, taxes, my commission, and discounted emergency allocation, the combined holdings may settle near five hundred and fifty million Gold Coins."

John became very still.

"Profit?"

"Approximately four hundred and fifty million above the original capital."

Hamari slowly turned toward Damien. "Are you adopting?"

"No."

"Think before deciding."

Damien looked at Jeremy. "Food allocation first. Do not hold stock away from regions below the survival requirement."

"Already included," Jeremy said. "We can remain highly profitable without selling to the highest desperate bidder."

John’s mustache lifted. "We are rich."

"You were already rich," Damien said.

"Now I am correctly rich."

His expression changed when he noticed the blood beneath Damien’s stretcher.

"What happened?"

Nobody answered quickly enough.

John’s gaze moved to Silas’s body.

"That looked at you with ambition."

"Briefly."

"I gave one instruction."

"You gave several."

Martin ended John’s transport request before the giant could abandon the western belt and arrive through a wall.

By dawn, Greenfall’s surviving fields were protected. The locust event continued across Earth-69, but humanity now understood its basic rules. Ordinary pesticide handled the Level 1 swarms. Players eliminated the Level 30 Conductors. Governments searched for Level 50 Queens before new nests could spread.

The danger had become measurable.

Neva remained unknown.

Damien returned to the penthouse two days later under strict medical orders. John removed every weapon from the training room. He overlooked the book.

Damien sat on the floor with Walk of Night open before him.

He followed Xuan Wuye’s written instructions. He circulated mana through the paths described as the first foundation, adjusted his breathing, and attempted the opening movement.

Nothing happened.

He repeated it.

Still nothing.

After an hour, a System window appeared.

➤[Walk of Night.]

➤[Mastery: 0.00%.]

Not one step. Not one fragment. Not even an encouraging error.

Damien closed the manual.

His shadow skills had improved through repetition. His body had grown stronger through a pill. The Doppelganger Tower had forced him to change the way he fought.

Walk of Night refused every shortcut.

His communication window opened. Martin had sent the final recovered page from Silas’s terminal.

At the bottom of the Neva order, beneath the image of the second parchment, someone had written a single instruction:

Find the holder of the matching riddle before the next sequence begins.

Damien read it twice.

They had prepared for the locusts.

Now they were looking for him.

Visit and read more novel to help us update chapter quickly. Thank you so much!