Chapter 28: Twilight Directive

Chapter 28: Twilight Directive

Continuation of the Guild Tournament Arc

"Match Over — Victory: Fallen Halo!"

The system's announcement echoed through the virtual stadium, followed by thunderous applause from the thousands of players and NPC spectators watching the broadcast. Fireworks bloomed in the sky, showering the floating battlefield with celebratory light.

But Zaphro didn't raise his hands in triumph.

Instead, he exhaled slowly, letting his sword vanish in a wisp of black mist. Beside him, Accel did the same, his obsidian wings folding back into his armor like shadows returning to dusk.

The fight had pushed them to their limits.

Amaterasu, leader of Black Pantheon and an elite Sniper class, had nearly turned the tide with her deadly precision. Backed by her guild, made up of 80% gunners and a handful of advanced mages, they had given Fallen Halo a fight worthy of legends.

But strategy had won out.

With Ayana deploying high-field summons to draw enemy aggro, Verillion locking down elemental flanks, and Aryus shielding the backline as a Holy Knight, Fallen Halo had weathered the storm. Shion, shifting between armor forms mid-combat, had intercepted Amaterasu's final kill shot on Zaphro. Slicer's wild melee pressure kept the enemy's gunner trio pinned, while Jin, Erenir, and Erik controlled the map zones through elemental control and swordplay.

Even the usually sarcastic sniper AR002 had earned a rare guild cheer with his triple headshot on the enemy mage core. And Xavier and Great_Kai, the elf hybrid duo, disrupted Black Pantheon's comms with blinding AoE bursts and sound-based magic.

Fallen Halo had proven why they were no ordinary guild.

And now, they stood at the peak of the leaderboard.

---

In the victory room, Zaphro and his guild stood atop the marble platform beneath the floating golden crest of Enigma.

A prompt appeared:

> Guild Battle Complete

Winner: Fallen Halo

MVPs: Zaphro (Dark Angel) & Accel (Dark Angel)

Guild Title Unlocked: [Twilight Vanguard]

Next Tier Tournament Invitation: Granted

Ayana gasped. "Twilight Vanguard?! That title's supposed to be locked behind dev events."

Verillion frowned. "Wait… this isn't on the tournament rewards list. This is… something else."

Zaphro's eyes narrowed. "Check the description."

Accel opened the prompt, reading aloud:

> [Twilight Vanguard] – Title granted to guilds whose members have touched the dying echoes of the First Core.

Your path now intersects with the remnants of forbidden data. Prepare.

The room fell into silence.

Shion slowly said what they were all thinking.

"…Was this really just a tournament?"

Zaphro clenched his fist. "No. Someone's testing us."

AR002 scoffed. "Of course. Leave it to Enigma to hide plot triggers inside PvP leaderboards."

Zaphro stepped forward, gaze locked on the platform's edge. "Vault Residual 8x…"

The floor shifted. Runes appeared. The ground beneath them opened like a flower of black crystal and admin data, revealing a descent.

> [Twilight Directive – Phase 0: Echo Access Granted]

But before they could descend—

The system glitched.

A crackled static overtook the UI, like corrupted memory bleeding into live code.

> [Unauthorized System Access Detected…]

[WARNING: Administrative Interference – Unknown Source]

[TRACE_SIGNAL: ???]

"Guys…?!" AR002 backed up, rifle drawn.

Then it came—a visual tear in the air itself, jagged like torn parchment, splitting the very code of the victory room.

From the rift stepped a figure.

A man wearing half-melted GM insignias across his tattered coat. His face flickered like an unstable texture—GM command lines bleeding from his eyes. His presence bent the space around him. His voice was corrupted but still carried terrifying clarity.

"And so, the pawns reach the edge of the board."

Aryus stepped forward. "That voice—"

"GM Rowan," Zaphro said coldly. "The rogue."

"Surprised? I thought the Chaos Angel would've sensed me sooner." Rowan raised one hand.

And in his palm spun a black cube—jagged, glitching, trembling violently.

> [CHAOS_CORE_V2 – Status: UNSTABLE]

A red alert pulsed across their HUDs.

"Impossible," whispered Erenir. "That thing was deleted during the beta shutdown."

"No," Rowan said, voice glitching. "Version One was. This is mine. Version Two. Purged from the dev logs. Rebuilt from Vault Echo scraps and corrupted admin backups. They abandoned it. I perfected it." He laughed. "And now... it's almost ready."

The CHAOS_CORE_V2 pulsed. The space around it distorted, as if the game itself rejected its presence.

Zaphro summoned his blade. "You used the tournament. You used us."

"I observed," Rowan replied calmly. "And I learned exactly what I needed. The new angels. The new code seeds. The last stable fragments of the Crimson Tree…"

He raised his arm and pointed toward Zaphro and Accel.

"…And you will all burn in the next cycle."

> [Vault Residual 8x – LOCKED]

[Protocol Interruption: Admin-Level Override Engaged]

[ERROR – CHAOS_CORE_V2 BREACH IMMINENT]

"Everyone get back!" Aryus barked.

But Rowan didn't attack.

Instead, he turned toward the growing crack behind him—a portal bleeding corrupted code into the arena's edge.

"Phase Zero was the test." His eyes gleamed. "Phase One begins now."

He stepped backward into the rift, dragging the core with him.

"See you in the shadows of rollback."

And with that, the rogue GM vanished.

---

The platform closed. The victory room fell still. Only the floating message remained:

> [Twilight Directive – Phase One: Shadow Protocol Begins Soon]

Zaphro turned to the team. "We're not just climbing a leaderboard anymore."

"No," Accel said. "We're heading toward the source."