I WAS Humanity's HOPE-Chapter 44: The Pact

Skip to the next Chapter. I messed up my upload and I can’t edit the Chapter now.

The strike-wagon rumbled across the fractured runway, its rune-lanterns hissing in the damp Berlin dusk. Meredith Blackwood—Astrid, by the mission manifest—sat sideways on a metal bench inside, helmet resting between her knees. Through the open rear doors, the grey carcass of Tempelhof Airport blurred past, a derelict titan swallowed by weeds and graffiti.

Rain slicked the cracked tarmac, fine mist rising like spirits from the ground. Meredith watched the droplets bead and roll, the motion grounding her against the nervous weight gathering inside her ribs.

Her first mission as an S-Rank. Her first time leading a live clear.

Across from her, Dieter Neubauer, their Assault specialist, slapped a magnetic rune onto the wagon’s door with a grin. "First dance as an S, Sternchen. Don’t blink, or you’ll miss the fun."

Meredith smirked. Her German was decent enough, and sarcasm needed no translation. "I’d worry more about you, Dieter. Wouldn’t want you tripping in front of the newbie."

The rest of the team chuckled. Yasmin al-Souri, the Illusionist, winked. "If the new S can’t save us, maybe I’ll conjure a decoy corpse or two."

Beside her, the Kočí twins, known only as Tick and Tock, mirrored grins and knocked fists together. Their time magic crackled faintly around their hands, unnoticed by the others but not by Meredith’s heightened senses.

Father Anselm, the team’s Cleric, traced a quiet blessing over his chest and murmured, "Save your jokes for the feast. Let’s earn our exit first."

Despite herself, Meredith smiled. She liked this team. Experienced, tight-knit, confident. Maybe a little too confident. Her gut itched with the warning, but she swallowed it down.

Tonight, the mission was a ’routine’ sweep: an A-Rank dungeon that had outstayed its welcome. The Mage Guild’s Berlin Chapter wanted it purged before it cracked into the city proper.

Routine, she told herself again.

The wagon screeched to a halt before the tunnel’s gaping maw, headlights spearing the mist. The portal crouched inside, an oily oval, framed in stonework. Pale turquoise runes crawled along its edge, flickering weakly.

Yasmin frowned. "Wasn’t the glyph colour amber during the last survey?"

"Cycling hues before collapse," Anselm murmured. "Harmless—if you’re lucky."

Tick laughed. "And if not?"

"Pray," Anselm said simply.

Meredith tightened her gauntlets and stood. "Standard wedge. I take point."

No hesitation. S-Rank moved first.

She stepped through the veil of the portal—and the world swallowed her whole.

Inside: The Götterhalle

The air inside was dry as old paper. Stone stretched endlessly ahead, massive colonnades disappearing into shadow. Braziers guttered on sconces, their blue flames casting sickly light over bronze statues: hooded figures kneeling in perfect lines, faces pressed to the cold floor.

It was too still.

No dungeon she’d ever cleared felt like this.

Dieter whistled low. "Looks like a cult had a budget."

Tick and Tock darted forward, scattering to opposite walls. Anselm began marking the stone with chalk sigils, each one pulsing faintly after his touch. Yasmin’s illusions spread ahead, shifting ghost-forms that tested the ground for traps.

"Any readings?" Meredith asked quietly.

"Nothing," Yasmin answered. "No wards, no mana distortions. Just... statues."

"Statues that moved," Tick muttered, barely audible.

Meredith’s skin prickled. She tightened her grip on her wand.

They advanced slowly. Twice, the Kočí twins swore a door they’d passed had vanished. Once, Yasmin cursed—she was sure a corridor shortened behind her. But the instruments said nothing.

In the distance, somewhere deep within the hall, something exhaled—a low, almost human sigh.

They found the reliquary shortly after.

Reliquary

The altar stood in the center of a wide rotunda. A bowl of polished obsidian rested atop it, brimming with shimmering silver dust. The dust moved—not with the breeze (there was none), but as if breathing.

"Core artefact," Meredith said, lifting her hand. "Standard capture. Anselm, ward it."

The cleric murmured his litanies. A violet sphere flared around the bowl, locking it in stasis.

Dieter approached with a gravity clamp.

Tick, reckless as always, flicked a throwing knife against the stasis field. "Little gift for the rookie..."

The ward cracked.

The obsidian shattered.

The Götterhalle exhaled again—louder, colder.

Manifestation

The world bent inward.

Where the altar had been, something unfolded. A shape, tall and thin, human in outline but wrong—its joints too flexible, its movements too smooth, like watching a marionette played by too many hands.

It spoke in flawless High German, each word dragging goosebumps up Meredith’s arms.

"So small a theft for so loud a crash. Shall we see what else breaks?"

Dieter fired instantly. His gravity lance shrank to a pinpoint mid-air and blinked out of existence.

The twins triggered a time skip—the air shimmered—and the entity reached, plucking the missed seconds from their bodies like threads from cloth. Both collapsed, twitching, mouths gaping in silent agony.

Yasmin vanished behind an invisibility weave. The entity turned its eyeless face toward her hiding place and reached. A strangled cry—then nothing.

Father Anselm sang a warding hymn, his voice iron. The notes reversed, became gibberish, and the old cleric’s chest caved in on itself as his heart spasmed into stillness.

Four dead in seconds.

Meredith stood alone.

Astrid’s Stand

No time to think. She unleashed her strength.

Lightning blasted from her palms, ripping through statues, burning black scars across the marble floor. She poured molten rock beneath the entity’s feet—lava erupted, turning stone to glowing slag.

The entity stepped sideways, untouched, as if causality were a courtesy it did not require.

It observed her like a child watching an insect struggle.

Its hand extended—impossibly slow—toward her.

She cast a ward; it shredded like cobwebs. Agony burst across her ribs, unseen wounds bleeding her magic dry.

Her mana pool dipped into the red. Storm Avatar was out of reach. Escape spells, depleted.

The entity spoke again, voice a velvet whisper inside her skull.

"You burn prettily, child of thunder. Yet your spark misbehaves. I offer a bargain. Life—for a tribute."

Meredith’s mind flashed to home: her mother’s hands planting roses, her father’s heavy boots stomping muddy footprints, her brother’s laughter—vivid, vital, and untouchably distant now.

She swallowed the iron taste in her mouth.

"What tribute?" she rasped.

"Names," it purred. "All the names you hold most dear."

Her heart spasmed in rebellion.

But she saw the bodies. Dieter. Yasmin. Tick. Tock. Anselm.

Not one more.

She nodded on

selm.

You have slain a Palehorn Warden (S-Rank). You have levelled up!

Richard huffed as he watched the last monster fall.

Come to think of it, I’ve used all of my mirror steps for today. That was perhaps not the wisest thing to do.

Shaking his head, Richard turned to look at his sister.

"Are you alright?" he asked, scanning her for any injuries.

His sister nodded, though her breathing was more ragged than his.

"I’m fine," she managed between breaths. "Just... need a moment to recover."

Richard nodded and, not for the first time, wondered about the stupidity of entering the dungeon so unprepared.

"We should find shelter soon," Meredith suggested, glancing at the still-bright sky above them. "We can’t keep wandering around and killing stuff."

Richard raised an eyebrow at that. "Can’t we?"

"Yes, we can," Meredith replied, rolling her eyes. "And then we’ll both collapse from exhaustion. Great plan, brother."

Richard sighed, knowing there was some wisdom in her words. They needed to be smart about this if they wanted to survive.

Why did it have to be a damned S-Rank dungeon? God only knows how much time has passed outside, Richard thought bitterly.

The time dilation in black dungeons was notorious; there had been some pretty bad cases. One group of hunters had been stuck in one for a whole week, only to find that a year had passed outside.

"How much time has passed outside, do you think?" Richard asked Meredith suddenly.

She closed her eyes and said, "The best scenario would be if time here passes faster than in the outside world, but with your luck, brother of mine? I’d be very content as long as it didn’t flow slower."

Richard shook his head. What’s with people and calling me unlucky? I’m just like everyone else, with a normal amount of luck.

At that moment, Meredith’s earlier spell faded away, and Richard felt a sharp, cold assault on his senses.

A shiver ran down his spine, and he said, quite loudly, "Mer?"

"On it," she said quickly, already raising her hands to cast another warming spell. The cold retreated almost instantly as her magic washed over both of them.

As before, when they moved away from the falling snow, a weight seemed to lift from their shoulders.

"The snow seems far too ominous," Richard muttered, studying the thickening curtain of white around them. "Something’s causing it to affect us this way—I’d bet there’s a monster behind it somewhere."

Meredith didn’t know what to say and kept quiet.

Eventually, they moved to the perimeter of the ruined town and went inside an enormous shell of a building, half-buried by ice.

Its walls leaned outward, but the ceiling was mostly intact, stitched with spiderweb fractures.

"This will have to do, at least for today. I just hope there’s nothing for the damned System to take more levels from us. I just got back to level eighty-eight," Richard said, voice tight with cold as he kicked aside the loose snow at the entrance.

Inside, it was dim and eerie, but at least the snow didn’t fall here. The ancient floor was cracked but dry, and remnants of crystalline furniture stood scattered about like skeletal relics of another age.

Richard quickly began moving the shattered furniture and clearing a space in the middle.

He made quick work of arranging a makeshift camp, pushing debris into a rough circle that would give them enough room to settle.

Meredith settled against a jagged chunk of wall, exhaling visibly. She watched him for a while before murmuring, "You know... I’m kind of starving."

Richard chuckled, shaking out his cloak as he joined her. "You’re always starving."

"No, seriously." She patted her stomach. "I know, I know—S-Ranks and all that—we can survive without eating for months if we have to. But after burning this much magic? I’d kill for a sandwich."

Richard sat beside her, leaning back against the wall. The cold stone bit through his cloak. "Yeah... Well, don’t you carry food in your inventory?"

At that question, Meredith looked anywhere but at Richard.

"Are you serious? You don’t have anything?"

"Well... yes. I didn’t ever need to have food on me..." she murmured sheepishly, still not meeting Richard’s eyes.

Richard sighed and reached into his own inventory. "Well, lucky for you, I still have some dried meat from last week and... a bar of slightly melted chocolate..."

"I knew I could count on my big brother," Meredith said, perking up instantly as Richard pulled out a strip of jerky and tossed it to her.

"Thank you," she said between bites, then pointed behind him. "I was half-tempted to chew on one of those scrolls."

Richard laughed under his breath, the sound muffled by the stale, frozen air. "Oh, come on! Is it too early to ask for the meat back?"

Silence stretched between them for a moment, broken only by the soft, almost musical clink of falling frost against the outside walls.

"You think we’ll find anything edible here?" Meredith asked eventually, her voice quieter.

Richard closed his eyes briefly. "Monster meat, probably."

"Not exactly steak and potatoes," she muttered.

Richard opened one eye and looked at her sideways. "We’ll feast like kings when we’re out of this place."

"If we get out," Meredith said lightly, but there was a thread of real worry beneath her tone.

He didn’t answer. He didn’t need to.

Minutes passed. Richard caught himself feeling drowsy, the adrenaline of battle finally draining from his limbs.

"Hey, Rich?" Meredith’s voice was softer now.

"Yeah?"

"Do you think we should sleep?"

He glanced at her. She looked worn, the aftermath of channelling too much lightning magic in too short a span. He felt it too—an ache, deep and slow in his bones.

"We don’t have to," Richard said thoughtfully. "Our bodies restore themselves fast."

"Yeah, but..." Meredith pulled her knees up to her chest, her voice almost wistful. "When we do sleep, we wake up better. Stronger. Clearer."

Richard tipped his head back against the wall and shut his eyes, feeling the heaviness drag at him. "True."

"And this place..." she whispered. "It’s dangerous. We can’t be anything less than our best when fighting S-Rank monsters at every turn."

Richard cracked an eye open. He studied her for a long moment.

Outside, the snow continued its silent fall, cloaking the world in a false calm.

"We’ll take turns," he said slowly. "One sleeps, one stands watch. I reckon two hours should do the trick."

Meredith nodded, relief flickering across her face. "Who should go first, then?"

Richard offered her a wry smile. "You, of course."

"But first," he added, watching her tense shoulders, "finish that jerky."

Meredith grinned around her mouthful of food. "Fine by me," she mumbled, finishing the last tough bite of dried meat.

She wiped her hands on her trousers, then leaned back against the fractured wall, wand still loosely in her grasp.

Richard settled more comfortably against the opposite side of the room, daggers within arm’s reach. His eyes remained open, scanning the dim shadows and fractured edges of the building.

For a time, the only sounds were Meredith’s steady breathing and the muted hiss of snow against the ancient stone outside.

Richard felt the weight of exhaustion pulling at him—not urgent, not even necessary. His body would function at near-peak condition for days without rest.

He glanced at Meredith. She had already slipped into a light sleep, her chest rising and falling in a slow, steady rhythm.

Richard allowed himself a rare moment of stillness, simply listening to the silence.

His thoughts drifted back to his previous black dungeon experience as he mentally reviewed each of his kills.

I could have done much better. I’ve been relying too much on my abilities lately when I should be focusing on improving my own skill. Especially with the System being so ’weird’ lately.

Meredith twitched in her sleep, a soft whimper escaping her. Richard’s grip tightened on his dagger. Nightmares? Or memories?

Berlin. The word slithered into his thoughts. Apparently, she’d slept for three days after that dungeon. Woke up screaming, or so their parents told him.

"You’re brooding," Meredith muttered suddenly, her voice thick with sleep.

Richard startled. "Thought you were out."

"Can’t. Not fully." She rubbed her eyes, sitting up. "It’s like... my brain’s stuck on a loop. Spell arrays. Battle formations. That damned serpent’s fangs."

Richard hesitated. "When’s the last time you dreamed?"

Meredith stilled. "Dreams are for people who have time to waste."