VIRGIN DESTROYER 10

CHAPTER TEN

I thought getting information would be a pain in the ass.

Turns out, just like I needed him—he needed me too.

Alric leaned back against the cold stone wall, exhaling through his nose. “My name is Alric Nightwell,” he started, then smirked slightly. “Yeah, yeah, I know. I already told you that. But if I’m going to explain everything, I might as well start from the beginning. It’ll be easier that way.”

I nodded, shifting to get comfortable. If the old man wanted to tell a story, I wasn’t about to stop him.

“I came to Shadow Land when I was around twenty” he continued. “Back then, this place wasn’t the pit of rot and misery you see now. It wasn’t exactly a paradise either, but it had promise. It was a land of opportunity. If you were clever, if you were willing to work, you could carve out a life for yourself.”

He ran a hand over his jaw, where faint scars lined his skin. “I started as a farmer. Did some fishing. Hunted game. Anything to get by. Nothing glamorous, but honest work. Then I met Maria.” His voice softened slightly, just for a second. “She was… something else. Stronger than me, in more ways than one.”

He didn’t linger on that. I could tell he wasn’t the kind of guy who wasted words on grief. Instead, he moved on.

“She got sick. Something the healers couldn’t fix. And when you love someone, you don’t just sit around waiting for fate to decide how things end. So I went looking for another way.”

His expression shifted, like he was replaying an old memory in his head.

“Alchemy saved me. Or maybe it just gave me something to focus on. Either way, I learned. I experimented. Became good at it. By the time I lost her, I had two daughters and a business that meant something. Nightwell Alchemy wasn’t just a shop—it was a name people trusted.”

I’d been there. Met the goth babe behind the counter—Aveline Nightwell. Figured she might be related when he first dropped his last name.

Alric’s expression darkened. “But power draws attention. The wrong kind of attention. And that’s where the Moores come in.”

Finally, a name. Something concrete. I straightened slightly.

“They were always around,” Alric admitted. “A business family, controlling trade and more. We had our rivalries, but that’s how commerce works. I didn’t hate them. Didn’t trust them, either, but that’s just common sense.” His fingers tapped absently against his knee. “Then, about six months ago, everything changed. They stopped playing by the rules. Started forcing people out. Beatings. Arson. Even murder.”

His voice was calm, but I caught the tension in his shoulders.

“They came for me eventually. Shut down my shop. Branded me a traitor, accused me of conspiring against the city. Lies, all of it. I had no power to fight them. One day, I was a respected man. The next? I was down here, digging in the dirt with the rest of the forgotten.”

I let that sink in.

What would change the behavior of NPCs? That was the question.

Because let’s be real—NPCs in this game were too damn real. And if Shadow Land had functioned normally before, something must have flipped the switch.

And what could force an entire city into submission? Easy.

Players.

I exhaled through my nose, my mind already connecting the dots. “And what about Valen?” I asked. “That Level 68 bastard. Was he always here?”

“No,” he said after a moment. “He wasn’t here before. He arrived around the same time the Moores started changing.”

Bingo.

I leaned my head back against the cold stone wall, exhaling through my nose.

Alright. Let’s connect the dots.

Valen shows up. The Moores go from typical cutthroat businessmen to full-blown tyrants. The entire city falls under their control. And now they’re running a damn slave camp, forcing both players and NPCs to mine diamonds like some medieval cartel.

And I just so happened to get thrown into the middle of all this.

I thought back to everything that had happened since I arrived in this game. Step by step.

First, there was the guy outside the city—waiting on the road back from the wolf quest. The one who tried to shake me down for five gold just to re-enter. A tax. Just to walk inside. That wasn’t normal.

Then there was the shady bastard who handed me a package. Told me to deliver it to the Noble District. Didn’t tell me what was in it.

And then there was Lord Mortreign. The guy I actually gave the package to.

So they all belong to the Moores.

Which meant…

I frowned, a new realization hitting me. “The Moores. They started paying attention to me right after—”

Elisabeth.

I turned to Alric. “Your family,” I said. “They knew the Moores, right?”

Alric’s expression didn’t change, but something in his eyes sharpened. “Of course,” he said. “We were business rivals for years. Why?”

I hesitated for just a second. “Because I met them.”

For the first time, Alric actually looked surprised. “You what?”

“Yeah,” I said. “They’re fine. I mean, I didn’t know who they were at the time, but… yeah. I met your daughters.”

Alric stared at me like I’d just told him the sky was green. “You spoke with Aveline and Elisabeth?”

“Not just spoke,” I said. “I helped Elisabeth look for her mom.”

His expression darkened. “Her mother is dead.”

“Yeah, I know i know ” I muttered. “But that’s what she told me. She was in the market, crying, saying she was looking for someone named Mirabel. Later on she asked me to take her to Nightwell Alchemy.”

Alric exhaled sharply, shaking his head. Not in surprise. More like… frustration.

I frowned. Something about this wasn’t adding up.

“She wasn’t actually lost, was she?”

Alric rubbed his jaw. “No. She wasn’t.” He hesitated, then admitted, “And I don’t know why she was crying.”

I stared at him. “Then what the hell was she doing out there?”

Alric was quiet for a moment. Then, slowly, he said, “If I had to guess… Aveline warned her.” He exhaled, his fingers tapping against the floor. “Told her that the Moores have eyes everywhere. That players helped them rise to power. That she needed to be careful.”

I thought back to that first day. The chaos. The panic. Other players losing their minds over the log-out button not working.

And then I remembered something else.

Those guys in the market.

The ones who had stopped me. Questioned me.

“How are you so chill right now?”

“We can’t log out, man! You’re just… walking around like it’s no big deal!”

I had brushed them off. Told them freaking out wouldn’t change anything. Then walked away.

And Elisabeth had been there.

Watching.

I ran a hand through my hair. “She wasn’t testing me. She was just scared. And when she saw I wasn’t a threat, she figured I was the best option.”

Alric’s expression was unreadable. Then, finally, he sighed. “And when you brought her to the shop… Aveline probably thought you were another player sticking his nose where it didn’t belong.”

CLANG.

A whip slammed against the bars, cutting the conversation short.

“Oi,” a guard barked. “Shut the fuck up and go to sleep. Tomorrow’s another beautiful day in paradise.”

Alric didn’t react. I just sighed, leaning my head back against the cold stone wall.

Yeah. Tomorrow was gonna suck.

After the guard shut us up, I didn’t bother trying to keep the conversation going. Wasn’t much else to say anyway.

I closed my eyes and tried to sleep, but my body wasn’t having it. My ribs ached. My stomach felt hollow. The stone floor might as well have been a bed of nails. And my brain? Yeah, that asshole was wide awake, flipping through random memories like a late-night TV marathon.

Stuff I hadn’t thought about in years.

Walking home from school with my mom, her hand warm around mine. Sneaking out to grab greasy burgers with my sister after midnight, laughing at nothing. Dumb, quiet moments that had no reason to pop up now—except maybe because they were the exact opposite of this hellhole.

Not sure if it was some kind of psychological coping mechanism. Like, my brain trying to balance out the sheer misery by throwing me a few good memories to cling to.

Didn’t matter.

Because after a while, I finally drifted off.

And if I’d known what kind of dream was waiting for me on the other side…

I think I would’ve rather stayed awake.

There was no warning. No slow descent into the dream. No flickering between sleep and wakefulness.

One moment, I was lying on the cold stone floor of my cell, ribs aching, stomach hollow. The next, I was in the mines.

But it wasn’t the mines.

Not exactly.

The colors were off—too sharp, too bright, like someone had turned the saturation all the way up. The rocks weren’t just gray, they were wrong, shifting between black and deep, bruised purple, like something rotting just beneath the surface. The air was thick, too thick, pressing against my skin like wet cloth, and the smell—

Jesus.

It smelled like burnt sugar. Like old copper pennies. Like the inside of my grandmother’s house when she used to boil fruit down into jam, the sickly-sweet scent clinging to the walls, mixing with the smell of mothballs and dust. It didn’t belong here.

Nothing did.

My fingers were sticky. Wet.

I looked down.

Blood.

Not sweat, not grime—blood, seeping from my palms, running in slow, lazy drips down the handle of the pickaxe I was holding. It oozed down my wrists, tickled the inside of my elbows. I tried to let go of the pickaxe, but my fingers wouldn’t listen. They stayed curled tight around the wood, knuckles locked, skin stretched so thin I thought they might split open.

I wasn’t breathing right.

Shallow, fast. Like a little kid trying not to cry.

I turned my head—just a little, just enough to glance around—and the other prisoners were there. But they weren’t moving.

They stood frozen, pickaxes raised, heads bowed. Silent.

No.

Not silent.

Their lips were moving. Murmuring something too soft to hear, repeating it over and over and over again, like a prayer or a curse.

My pulse slammed against my throat. I tried to take a step back, but my feet were planted in the dirt.

“IT’S YOUR FAULT!”

The words slammed into me, rattling inside my skull like a hammer against glass.

“YOUR FAULT!”

Valen stood over me, eyes hollow, his mouth stretched wide—too wide—his lips cracked and peeling at the corners, barely containing the writhing dark inside. His teeth shifted as he spoke, breaking apart and reforming like something alive, something hungry.

“THEY’RE GONNA DIE!”

I couldn’t move.

The sound of it crushed me, forced me down, down, down into the dirt. My chest seized. My ribs caved inward. My lungs refused to work.

He bent lower. Close enough that I could feel his breath—hot and wrong, thick like spoiled meat, like rot, like the smell of something too sweet.

His voice broke apart into layers, into echoes, each one slamming into me, each one filled with something worse than rage.

Accusation.

Condemnation.

Like he wasn’t just screaming at me—like he was naming me.

I tried to scream back, to tell him to fuck off, to fight, to do something—

But my throat locked.

The dark behind his teeth spilled outward.

And swallowed me whole.

I woke up choking.