Chapter Six: Rowena Lucius

First Layer

Inner pit

Pitland AKA "The Pit"

Continent of Zenithan

The air still crackled with the ghost of Astral energy, residual sparks flickering like dying embers in the silence. The battlefield was eerily still, save for the slow, rhythmic pulse of the Spirit Beast's corpse—a fading echo of the power it once held. But my focus wasn't on the dead beast.

It was on him.

That Ranker—if he even was one.

I stood frozen, knuckles white against the hilt of my psionic blade, my visor feeding me data that no longer mattered. Numbers flickered across my HUD, calculating power output, impact velocity, and Astral core density—but they were meaningless. Because what I had just witnessed should not have been possible.

A single strike. One clean motion. An execution. The beast had been Tier one Titan-class, nearly as formidable as the Titanbone Serpent, its Astral Core dense enough to be considered a strategic resource. It should have taken all of us—a coordinated assault, precise tactical synergy—to bring it down.

Yet… he had done it alone. Effortlessly. And that wasn't what disturbed me the most. No—what truly unsettled me was the presence lingering behind him. It had been a moment. A flicker at the edge of perception. But I had felt it—an abyss coiling beneath his calm, indifferent exterior. A weight that hadn't been fully unleashed, yet even in restraint, it had pressed against my psyche like the edge of a blade against bare skin. A warning.

"You just made an enemy for yourself. I hope you understand what that means."

I had spoken the words, gauging his reaction. A test. A challenge. He had only smirked. Not with arrogance. Not with defiance. But with amusement. Then, just like that—he was gone. A phantom dissolving into the Pit's abyss, swallowed by the eternal dark.

I exhaled, lowering my blade as the last remnants of Astral discharge dissipated into the air. The Syndicate forces were retreating, my team, regrouping, their movements sharp but shaken. They were still looking—staring at the ruined corpse of the Spirit Beast, trying to reconcile what had just happened.

"Captain?" Alric's voice cut through the quiet, hesitant yet steady. One of my best men, but even he couldn't mask the unease in his tone. "Orders?" I took one last glance into the abyss where he had vanished.

"Who are you?" The thought echoed in my mind, but I pushed it down, and buried it beneath duty. I turned away.

"We finish the hunt."

****

Outer Pit – Cognis Outpost Omega

Pitland AKA "The Pit"

Continent of Zenith

The outer lands of the Pit were nowhere near as chaotic as its deeper layers, but even here, survival meant staying vigilant. Cognis ruled this sector, using it as a launching point for expeditions deeper into the Inner Pit. Rankers, scientists, and military personnel moved in carefully coordinated patrols, ensuring the region remained under their influence.

Our outpost, Omega, was one of the largest Cognis footholds in the Outer Pit, a heavily fortified structure built from high-density alloy, reinforced with psychic barriers. The facility housed Rankers, researchers, and military-grade Astral Tech, making it one of the most secure locations outside of Cognis' mainland territories.

The return trip had been uneventful. I barely spoke. The mission had been a success, but my mind… it kept drifting. Back to him.

"Captain Rowena, your report?"

I barely heard the request as I handed over the Astral Shards we had collected, my focus shifting toward our quarters. I needed a moment.

No—I needed clarity.

-

The sound of running water echoed through the dim confines of my personal chamber, steam curling around the sleek edges of reinforced glass. Droplets cascaded over my skin, tracing paths through the remnants of battle—dust, sweat, the lingering residue of Astral energy. The warmth should have been comforting, the heat soaking into sore muscles, unraveling the tension coiled in my body. But I wasn't relaxed. Because his image wouldn't leave my mind.

Who are you?

I shut my eyes, pressing my forehead against the cool surface of the shower glass, fingers dragging through wet strands of hair. I had faced nightmares birthed from the Pit and stared into the abyss of psychic aberrations that shattered weaker minds into dust. I had crushed Syndicate warlords beneath my heel, matched blades with rogue Espers who thought they could defy Cognis, and stood next to beings that were monsters.

And yet, he unsettled me in a way nothing else had before. Not because of his strength—raw strength alone didn't impress me. It was what lay beneath it. That pressure. That presence. That something lurking beneath the surface. He had been holding back. I knew it. I felt it. In that one instant before his blade severed the Titan-class Spirit Beast's core, I had caught a glimpse—a whisper of something far older, far deeper, than mere psychic power.

It wasn't just strength or power. It was something else. I exhaled, watching the condensation bloom across the glass, my reflection hazy beneath the mist. A slow, unfamiliar smirk curled at my lips as I rolled my shoulders, a thrill slithering down my spine.

"Interesting…"

I had spent years following Cognis' path, climbing its rigid hierarchy, maneuvering through the power plays of the six ruling families. Obedience. Efficiency. Control. These were the virtues drilled into us. And yet—there was always something more, something beyond the endless cycle of missions, authority, and measured ambition. Something that made me yearn to carve out my own path.

I wasn't satisfied with the way the current system was. There was ambition in my veins, a hunger for something beyond orders and duty—something that belonged to me alone.

And something about him…Something about him told me he wasn't bound by law. A force of destruction. A shadow that slipped through the cracks of the Pit, untethered, untamed. He answered to no one—not to the Syndicates, not to Cognis, not even to the brutal law of the Pit itself.

He belonged to nothing.

I had never known hunger. Not in the way ordinary people did. Born into the Upper World, where wealth and power paved the streets in silver and steel, I had never needed to fight for anything. My desires, my whims, my ambitions—fulfilled with a single nod or the push of a button. Effortless. Predictable. The world had always bent to my will, not because I demanded it, but because it had been designed that way.

And I had grown sick of it. Sick of the ease, the way my path had been meticulously carved out before me, polished to a shine. Prestige. Status. Legacy. All things I was expected to uphold, a cycle of power endlessly repeating itself. That was why I was here. Omega Outpost. The edge of civilization, where Cognis ruled but did not control. A place where the Pit's chaos scraped against the veneer of order, where something real could finally be found.

And yet—standing here, steam curling around me, water trailing down my spine—my thoughts weren't on the mission. They were on him. On the anomaly. The impossibility. I could still see it. That one moment before he struck. That flicker of something—something ancient, something untamed—coiling beneath his controlled exterior. He had suppressed it, leashed it, but I had felt it, like a whisper against the edge of my psyche. Not power. No. Something deeper. Something raw. And for the second time in my life—

I wanted.

Not a title. Not a weapon. Not the next rung on the endless ladder of Cognis' hierarchy.

I wanted him. Not as an ally. Not as an enemy. Not as prey. I wanted to unravel him. To understand what lay beneath the surface. To tear past the restraint, the false indifference, and see what he truly was. And if I found it to be as limitless as I suspected—

I wanted him to be mine. A slow exhale slipped past my lips, the heat of the water doing nothing to cool the pulse of anticipation curling through me. For now, he had disappeared, vanishing into the abyss of the Pit. But the Pit was vast, not infinite. And soon enough, our paths would cross again. And when they did…

I wouldn't let him slip away so easily.

The dull glow of the terminal bathed my visor in pale light, reflecting fragmented data across its surface. Rows of information flickered, shifting, reorganizing, searching for something—anything—that could explain him.

But there was nothing about the mysterious Ranker in the system. That kind of power should have left a mark. It should have rippled through Cognis' databases, triggering cross-referenced alerts across military networks, Syndicate archives, and Legacy Family registries.

And yet—nothing. No psychic imprint. No Astral Energy signature. That last fact gnawed at me like a splinter too deep to pull free. I had fought countless Espers. I knew the presence of Astral Energy—how it flared when abilities were activated, how it resonated around powerful individuals like a living forcefield. Even the weakest Espers left behind traces, however faint. A psychic disturbance. A residual energy pattern.

But him?

He had moved through the battlefield like a phantom—clean, precise, unstoppable—and left nothing behind. Not a whisper. Not a ripple. Just raw force. A sharp breath left my lips as I stared at the terminal, realization creeping into my thoughts.

"...No way."

He wasn't an Esper at All. The idea formed like a slow-burning ember in my mind. He wasn't hiding his psychic abilities. He didn't have any. He was something else.

A Deviant.

My fingers stilled over the console as the pieces began falling into place. Deviants. The outliers of evolution. They weren't like normal Espers. They were mutations—anomalies in the natural order of psychic awakening. Where Espers honed their power through Mind Core activation and Astral Energy manipulation, Deviants were born with something fundamentally different. They were freaks of nature.

Superhuman physical capabilities, reflexes, durability, and raw force that defied all normal understanding. They lacked the ability to channel Astral Energy, which meant they couldn't use the advanced Esper techniques that defined high-tier Rankers. No psychic equilibrium. No telekinetic reinforcement. No field manipulation.

But what they did have? Strength. Pure, limitless, unrestrained strength. And those who survived? They became monsters.

Because without Astral limitations, without the constraints of psychic burnout, a Deviant could push beyond the breaking point of human limitations—far beyond what any Esper could match in sheer destructive power.

And this man? He wasn't just any Deviant. He was something else entirely.

My fingers moved swiftly, adjusting my query parameters. If he wasn't classified as an Esper, then his trail wouldn't be in the standard Ranker logs. I needed to look elsewhere. I bypassed Cognis' main Esper databases and rerouted my search into low-priority archives, blacklist reports, and old Free Ranker entries—anywhere the system might have discarded unregistered anomalies. The screen pulsed as it processed my request. Then—a hit. My gaze narrowed as a name surfaced in the scattered data.

Maggot Crown.

A slow exhale left my lips. Of course. I tapped the screen, pulling up the historical records, surveillance data, and buried bounty logs.

There.

A few years ago. Some kind of incident in one of the Warlord dens. A massacre had occurred. There wasn't much information about it. Nothing about who was involved or responsible. All that was mentioned and even forgotten was that the only survivor was a nameless orphan. After that incident, there had been sightings of low-level disputes. Street fights. Survivalist encounters. Reports flagged, then buried, considered low-priority noise beneath the more valuable Esper cases. There wasn't even a psychic footprint of the orphan. No Esper classification. The orphan had become a ghost. A nobody. And yet—a survivor. My fingers tightened into a fist.

Maggot Crown.

The filth-ridden sector of the Outer Pit. A den of criminals, traffickers, failed experiments, and lost causes. The place where the unregistered, the unwanted, and the forsaken were discarded like trash. And somehow, he had crawled out of it. A Deviant raised in Maggot Crown, someone with no history, no place in the hierarchy, yet strong enough to challenge the highest tier of Rankers. My heart pounded. This was it.

"Now we're getting somewhere," I muttered.

The Hunger for Answers. I leaned back, exhaling slowly, letting the weight of the discovery settle into me. A Deviant with power beyond natural limits. A nameless ghost from Maggot Crown. A Ranker who operated in the depths of the Pit with no allegiance, no oversight, no record.

An anomaly.

Someone Cognis wouldn't know how to classify. And that thrilled me. I smirked, closing the console and pushing away from my desk, the glow of the terminal casting long shadows across the chamber. A nameless Ranker… who shouldn't exist. And yet, he did. Now, more than ever, I wanted to know what made him tick. I wanted to understand him.

To unravel him. To see just how far his strength could go. And when I found him—

Would I destroy him?

Or would I claim him for myself?

A slow, deliberate smirk curled at my lips. I wasn't sure yet. But I would find out soon. Very soon.