Not long after Luca and the others exited the gym, a large number of police officers arrived outside Celephais High School, starting a meticulous search of the surrounding area.
Luca and the others didn’t idle around either. They began to comb through the campus inside and out.
Initially, they had thought it would take quite a while to find the Abyssal Node that had appeared somewhere. However, they soon learned from Yuel, who had caught up with them, the exact location where the puppet spiders had appeared.
The school cafeteria. Inside the cafeteria, a chaotic pile of tables and chairs was scattered across the floor. A black wormhole, about a meter in diameter, floated in the middle of the ceiling, releasing tendrils of dark Demonic energy. This node was smaller than the one at Black Mountain, which explained why so few monsters had appeared so far.
“This is the node?” Yelling, who was seeing a Spatial Node for the first time, asked curiously. “Doesn’t seem that special…”
Before he could finish his sentence, the Spatial Node suddenly fluctuated. Immediately afterward, a puppet spider creaked and twisted its limbs, crawling out from the wormhole.
“Hiss—!” Sensing something, the spider’s head abruptly twisted 80%, and it fixed its hollow gaze on the group. From its empty eye sockets came a hissing sound, reminiscent of a snake flicking its tongue.
But before the puppet spider could launch an attack, a gleaming long blade sliced through the air. The spider froze, and its head was severed, falling to the ground and rolling to Yuel’s feet. The young girl screamed in fright, jumping up instantly.
Luca wasn’t particularly startled by the monster, but Yuel’s scream did catch him off guard. He couldn’t help but laugh, though a little helplessly. “If you’re this scared, why are you still following us?”
Donlow and Melania both looked at him in confusion. Shouldn’t that be a question for her?
“Curiosity and fear aren’t mutually exclusive!” Yuel replied, still patting her chest to calm her racing heart, giving Luca a cheeky wink.
“True, they’re not mutually exclusive.” Luca chuckled. This girl might be young, but her mental resilience was impressive. She had almost died just a moment ago, yet here she was, already recovering her composure.
At that moment, Quagmire turned to Luca and asked, “So, what do you think? Can this place be sealed?”
Luca glanced up at the node on the ceiling and nodded slightly. “No problem.”
With his current strength, sealing such a small node wouldn’t take much effort.
“Sealed? What do you mean?” Yelling and the other two team leaders looked at the group, bewildered, unsure of what they were talking about.
Quagmire’s team knew that Luca possessed the secret technique to seal nodes, but Yelling and the others were unaware. The news about Black Mountain had been sealed by Morning Star, otherwise, Zahilter and the others wouldn’t have come here in person.
The group didn’t explain it. Luca extended his hand, his eyes glowing with violet light, and intricate symbols began to form in the air. Before long, a complex sealing secret technique was drawn out.
It was the Runes Golden Seal Array, the very same technique he had used to seal the Black Mountain node.
“Shit! A high-level secret technique?” Yelling and the others were stunned as they looked at the sealing array in Luca’s hand. The difficulty of learning secret techniques was well known, yet here Luca was, using one—no, a high-level one! How was this even possible?
Quagmire chuckled and said, “Don’t rush, this is nothing. The real show is still to come.”
Luca didn’t pay much attention to the curious gazes from Yelling and the others. He was about to cast the Runes Golden Seal Array on the node to seal it, but as his gaze casually swept over the Spatial Node, he suddenly froze.
Through the wormhole of the Spatial Node, Luca could see the scene in the Abyssal Demon Realm. The sky was covered in dark clouds, with a blood-red moon hanging ominously in the distance. Beneath this sky was a vast, desolate white plain.
At first, Luca thought it was a snowy field, but upon closer inspection, he realized that it wasn’t snow—it was an endless expanse of bones!
The area was boundless, stretching far and wide!
But what truly captured Luca’s attention wasn’t the bone-filled wasteland.
It was what stood at the farthest end of this vast plain—the towering black mountains.
Although they were far off in the distance, Luca could still make out their towering height and imposing presence. From a distance, the five peaks rose at varying heights, arranged in a natural, staggered formation, resembling five fingers reaching up from the earth, piercing the sky.
The tallest of these mountains, positioned like the middle finger, was shrouded in gray mist. Though Luca couldn’t see clearly what lay beyond the fog, an overwhelming chill emanated from it.
“So, it’s the White Bone Plain and the Mountain of the Dead…” Luca muttered under his breath, his eyes flashing with intrigue.
He had initially been wondering how to find the Soulgrass to treat Fratis’ amnesia. He never expected to find a node leading to the Mountain of the Dead here.
This discovery both thrilled and disappointed him. If this were a game, he might have come up with some way to extract the Soulgrass from the Necromancer King’s coffin.
But the problem was—this was the real world! Even in his past life, very few had dared to enter the Abyssal Demon Realm. For him to go there now to harvest Soulgrass? That would be suicidal!
“What trouble did you run into?” Melania asked, confused.
“It’s nothing,” Luca snapped out of his thoughts, shaking his head. He then proceeded to use the Runes Golden Seal Array to seal the node. While he couldn’t enter now, he could always check it out once the game arrived.
Golden runes floated into the air, drawing a sealing formation in the sky that quickly sealed the Abyssal Node.
It was only then that Yelling and the others understood what Luca had been doing. They stared at him, wide-eyed.
“You can seal nodes?” Yelling was stunned. Although he had seen documentation in Morning Star’s files about the possibility of sealing nodes, he had never encountered such a situation, even in the game.
And yet, here in the real world, he had witnessed a player casually use a secret technique to seal a node, and it looked like Luca had done it effortlessly.
This left him and the other Morning Star members questioning whether they were still in a game or in reality. It was just too surreal!
“Hahaha, how about it? My team member is amazing, right?” Quagmire, puffing on his cigarette, grinned proudly, as if he had sealed the node himself, not Luca.
Yelling and the others nodded in agreement, eyes filled with envy. If their team had someone as monstrous as Luca, they probably would’ve been smiling in their sleep.
Luca stretched lazily and said to Kanade and the others, “Mission accomplished. Afterward, have Coarmy send someone to check if any monsters managed to escape. I’m going back to catch up on some sleep. Call me if anything comes up.”
Yesterday, he had attended a meeting, fought with Zadownlow in the evening, then fought with Susie afterward. This morning, he had already been saving people and sealing nodes.
Even though Luca’s physical fitness and energy were far beyond ordinary humans, he was starting to feel the strain.
“Alright, go get some rest. We’ll handle things from here,” Kanade said, understanding that Luca hadn’t gotten much rest over the past few days. He immediately approved Luca’s request.
Luca wasn’t like the average Morning Star member. He had certain privileges in many matters, something everyone, including Drumph, Coarmy, and Quagmire, knew without needing to speak of it.
After bidding farewell to the others, Luca didn’t linger around Celephais High. He left the campus, waved at Coarmy outside, and was about to head back.
To his surprise, that round-faced, short-skirted girl from earlier had followed him out.
“Senior, let’s go home together. My house is in the villa district as well.” She panted as she ran up to him, her face flushed, skirt fluttering, and her eyes sparkling as she looked at Luca.
“Your house is also in the villa district?” Luca was a little surprised. He hadn’t expected that they were neighbors.
“Of course! That area was developed by my family’s company. Didn’t you know, Senior Luca?” Sona seemed a bit surprised too.
She had always assumed Luca already knew who she was. It wasn’t vanity, after all—she was one of the most popular girls at Celephais High, and her father was a renowned wealthy man in the area.
Plus, they had met during the freshman orientation, so if Luca had paid even a little attention, he should have remembered her.
“Uh… I forgot about that. Thanks for letting me know,” Luca said, scratching his head. He had tried to recall, but there was nothing in his memory about Sona. He awkwardly brushed it off.
To Sona, they might have occasionally crossed paths at school, but to Luca, it had been nearly ten years since he last set foot in Celephais High. Aside from a few people, most of his classmates and teachers had long been discarded as information clutter in his mind. Why would he remember an unfamiliar girl he hadn’t interacted much with?
Even if the girl was attractive and had money, Susie had been in his face every day since childhood, sharpening Luca’s sense of aesthetics to a degree far beyond the average person. Naturally, he wouldn’t pay attention to someone like Sona.
Sona didn’t notice the subtle change in Luca’s expression. Instead, she became excited and was about to call for the driver when a black Maybach suddenly pulled up at the school gate. A middle-aged man, slightly overweight but still showing signs of past handsomeness, hurriedly got out of the car, his expression anxious.
He scanned the crowd and finally locked eyes with Yuel, letting out a long sigh of relief. He quickly walked toward her.
“Daughter, you really scared me! Are you hurt? Those thugs didn’t do anything to you, did they? If you’re feeling unwell, tell me, I’ve already arranged for the best doctor from Celephais…” The man asked in concern, his teeth clenched with anger as he mentioned the thugs.
Luca noticed the resemblance between Yuel and the man, and he deduced that he must be her father. Yuel’s words confirmed his suspicion.
Yuel had a cheerful personality, and despite the earlier danger, she didn’t dwell on it. Instead, she smiled and reassured the middle-aged man, saying, “Oh, Dad, I’m fine. Don’t worry. They were just a group of social terrorists, but they didn’t hurt me.”
“However, I wouldn’t have made it without Senior Luca’s help. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be here to see you.”
Because of Morning Star’s confidentiality agreement, the issue with the monsters had to be kept secret, at least from the public, to avoid causing panic. So, the official explanation was that the attack had been by terrorists.
“Luca?” Yuel’s father, Stormlook, paused for a moment upon hearing the name. He seemed to recall hearing about this young man before.