She took a deep breath, lifting her head to look Klaus in the eye with a bitter determination.
"I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of him," she continued, her blue eyes darkening with an intense hatred. "My dad’s name was Lord Varhem. He had an elite forward operating base out here in the Winterlands... but a few weeks ago, he was killed in cold blood, along with every single guard in his camp."
She clenched her fists until her knuckles turned white.
"The local authorities said it was monsters, but I know the truth. It was the Cult. They slaughtered my father and stole everything he owned."
The silence that fell over the frozen clearing was too much.
Mirela froze, her hand hovering over the wooden jar of ointment with her blue eyes widening in sudden terror as she looked at Klaus.
Klaus didn’t move a single muscle.
His face remained locked in a mask of total indifference but internally, the thudding nuclear furnace of his divine core seemed to skip a beat.
His heart literally felt like it crawled to a complete screeching pause.
He didn’t remember being attacked by Lord Varhem... He clearly remembered walking into the noble’s base, casually slaughtering the guards to test his stats, gutting Lord Varhem like a fish, stealing his elite carriage, hijacking his mountain bears, and cooking dinner out of his dried beef.
He was currently standing next to Lord Varhem’s carriage... He had Lord Varhem’s bear hitched up front and he was currently healing Varhem’s daughter and she had somehow convinced herself that the Witch Cult had done it.
’Fuck...’ Klaus thought to himself, staring down at the grieving girl. ’I really am the villain.’
Klaus stood frozen in the knee-deep snow, his eyes searching the girl’s face.
Still, he couldn’t be completely sure based on a broken story and a half-frozen stranger.
"What’s your full name?" Klaus asked, his deep voice cutting through the whistling wind.
The blue-haired girl wiped a mixture of melting ice and grime from her pale cheek, shivering as she drew her torn furs closer around her shoulders.
"I... I’m Tasha," she rasped out with her throat still rough from the cold. "Tasha Morningstar. My father was Lord Varhem Morningstar."
Klaus let out a soft, almost imperceptible sigh through his nose with a plume of white steam drifting into the sub-zero air.
’It really is her.’
Looking at her now, the resemblance was undeniable.
She had the exact same ice-blue hair, light azure eyes, and sharp noble jawline as the man Klaus had killed back at that operating base.
In the original lore of Artemis Online, Tasha Morningstar was a major character.
She was destined to be one of the key Heroines that Neo... the game’s original protagonist would eventually win over.
Her father, Varhem Morningstar, wasn’t just some random high-born mob either... in the game’s grand timeline, he was supposed to play a pivotal role during the upcoming Academy Arc, performing a heroic stand that would elevate him to a celebrated war hero throughout the kingdom.
Except Varhem was never going to become a war hero now.
He was currently lying six feet under the Winterlands permafrost probably while his soul was harvested and sitting inside Klaus’s internal domain and his stolen carriage was parked just twenty feet away.
For one of the first times since embarking on this crazy ruthless path of survival, a sharp pang of genuine guilt pierced Klaus’s chest.
’Fuck,’ he thought bitterly, staring down at the shivering pale girl who had almost bled to death in the snow. ’I really went from an irrelevant mob character to a straight-up narrative villain.’
He looked at her innocent grateful expression.
Would she still be looking up at him with those wide trusting eyes if she knew the truth?
If she found out that the breathtaking, silver-haired warrior who just saved her life was the exact same monster who had slaughtered her father, bankrupted her family line, and turned her comfortable noble existence into a living desperate hell?
Probably not. In fact, she’d hate him with every fiber of her being... She’d swear a blood oath to carve his throat open.
And strangely enough, Klaus couldn’t even blame her for it.
If someone did that to his life, he’d hunt them down to the ends of the earth too.
He was a realist, not a sociopath. He accepted the weight of his actions, even if those actions left a sour taste in his mouth.
"I... I am truly grateful for your help," Tasha said, breaking the silence.
She tried to pull herself upright, her legs shaking with exhaustion. "You saved my life, and your companion even treated my wound. But as I said... I have no money to compensate you. It wouldn’t be right for me to burden you any further... You can just let me loose here. I’ll make my own way."
Mirela immediately stepped forward, her goat ears twitching as she frowned disapprovingly.
"Are you crazy? Look around! A severe blizzard is already kicking up. You can barely stand on your own two feet, and you want to walk into a storm by yourself? You won’t make it two miles before freezing to death or getting eaten by snow-crawlers!"
"I don’t have a choice!" Tasha argued defensively, a stubborn glint of aristocratic pride flashing in her eyes. "I can’t pay for your carriage ride or your food! I am a Morningstar, I won’t beg for charity from strangers—"
"Shut up and get inside," Klaus interrupted, his deep voice carrying a calm authority that instantly cut her off.
Tasha blinked, taken aback. "What?"
"You’re staying," Klaus stated plainly, crossing his broad arms over his chest. "I’m carrying you back to civilization... I’m not going to watch you drag your half-frozen ass into a blizzard just to die fifty yards out and leave your mother completely alone in the world."
The moment the word ’mother’ left his mouth, Tasha’s stubborn posture completely collapsed.
Her shoulders slumped, and her face darkened with a quiet sadness.
The thought of her grieving mother sitting alone in an empty, bankrupted estate hit her harder than any cold wind.
She bit her lower lip, swallowing her pride, and bowed her head deeply toward Klaus.
"I... I understand. Thank you. Thank you so much. If... if I cannot pay you with coin, please let me work for my passage! I can act as your maid during the journey!"
"No," Mirela interjected instantly, puffing out her chest and placing her hands on her hips, her tail flicking behind her with authority.
"I am the Master’s maid. That position is strictly occupied."
Klaus almost chuckled at Mirela’s possessiveness, but he kept his expression flat. "Come on. Let me get you all out of this wind."
He turned toward Lord Varhem’s restored carriage, walking alongside the group.
As they reached the steep wooden steps leading up to the cabin doors, Klaus noticed Anya struggling slightly to hop over a high snowbank.
With a gentle, natural movement, he reached down, cupped his hands under the six-year-old Shinigami’s arms, and easily lifted her up the stairs.
Anya tried her best to maintain her usual, clinically emotionless expression, but a very obvious light pink blush bloomed across her pale cheeks as she settled onto the top step.
’I know about the spiritual experiments Papa conducted last night,’ Anya thought to herself with her small hand tightly gripping the fabric of his sleeve before she let go. ’He could have involved me... I am far more qualified to assist in soul restructuring than a ghost or a fairy.’
"I’m going to head straight to the control room to get us moving," Klaus announced as they all piled into the warm oak-scented interior of the main cabin.
"Understood, Master," Mirela replied, already pulling a fresh fur blanket from the storage crate to wrap around Tasha’s trembling shoulders.
Outside, the wind violently picked up with the snowstorm beginning to slam against the heavy glass windows with loud rattling thuds.
Mirela glanced nervously toward the front window. "Master... will the bear be alright pulling us through a storm like this?"
"The bear will be fine," Klaus assured her smoothly.
"Its biological metrics have been drastically upgraded," Anya added deadpan, adjusting her blue dress. "It is currently operating as a high-density armored unit."
"What is she even saying...?" Tasha muttered meanwhile Klaus sighed.
’So she knows? Haah...’
Anya’s subtle nod toward Klaus made her blush again, secretly holding a tiny grudge that she hadn’t been invited to witness the bear’s transformation process.
Suddenly, a bright high-voltage blue spark zapped near Klaus’s collarbone.
BZZZT!
Sparky materialized with a noisy, energetic buzz of her plasma wings, fluttering around Klaus’s silver hair before coming to a hover in the center of the cabin.
Tasha, who was currently sipping hot water from a wooden cup Mirela had handed her, suddenly gasped.
Her eyes widened as she stared intently at the chibi-sized Lightning Fairy.
"An elemental...!" Tasha murmured, mesmerized. "My father... he used to possess a lightning spirit very similar to that one. Though his was just a raw unformed blue ball of light. He used to talk about how beautiful and majestic lightning spirits were... how they were the ultimate partners in battle..."
She showered Sparky with compliments, her face brightening with genuine admiration.
Klaus went entirely rigid with his heart leaping into his throat.
’Oh fuck,’ Klaus thought.
In the original game lore of Artemis Online, Sparky and Tasha were destined to be linked.
That raw blue ball of light in Varhem’s containment vessel was supposed to be inherited by Tasha after her father’s War Hero title, eventually becoming her signature high-tier spirit companion.
Sparky was that spirit.
Klaus braced himself for the worst.
If Sparky recognized Varhem’s bloodline and started blabbing about how Klaus had murdered her previous owner and reconfigured her soul, the entire secret would blow wide open right here in the cabin.
Sparky hovered in the air, her glowing blue eyes locking onto Tasha. She listened to the girl’s compliments with her tiny arms crossed over her woven tunic.
Then, Sparky’s spiky yellow hair bristled with violent aggressive blue static.
"Shut your stupid mouth, you bratty, flat-chested noble human!" Sparky shrieked at the top of her lungs, pointing a tiny sparking finger right at Tasha’s nose. "Who asked for your opinion?! Don’t compare me to some weak unformed ball of static! I am an elite physical atmospheric hazard! Go cry in a corner!"
Tasha instantly deflated with her jaw dropping as she shrank back into her fur blanket, thoroughly insulted and utterly bewildered by the fairy’s unprovoked hostility.
Klaus let out a silent breath of relief with his internal panic evaporating instantly.
’Well... thank fucking goodness,’ Klaus thought, a smirk nearly breaking across his face.
"Sparky, behave," Klaus scolded lightly, though there was zero weight behind his words.
He reached up, pinching the back of her tiny tunic, and looked back at the girls.
"Make yourselves comfortable and stay warm. I’ll handle the driving."
He turned and stepped through the reinforced iron door leading into the front control room, closing it firmly behind him.
Sparky flew in right behind him before the door clicked shut.
The moment they were inside the compact control cabin, Klaus raised his right hand.
A thin highly concentrated layer of white Soul Mana spread across the iron door and walls, creating a completely soundproof barrier to ensure no sound from their conversation could bleed back into the main cabin.
Klaus settled his massive frame into the plush leather captain’s chair.
He placed both of his large, calloused hands flat against the polished iron dashboard, tapping directly into the thudding furnace of his divine core.
VWOOM!
Pure white Soul Mana flooded the control system. Outside, the transparent, rotating dome of spiked Soul Mana snapped back into existence around the entire carriage, spinning like a colossal invisible chainsaw to pulverize the mounting snowdrifts and ambient monsters.
Simultaneously, Klaus pushed a surge of spiritual energy directly through the four magical reins linked to the giant mountain bear’s collar.
Up front, the massive, bone-plated monstrosity let out an armored roar.
"GRAHHHHHH!"
Its reinforced muscular legs churned through the deep snow pack, hauling the heavy oak carriage forward with a sudden massive burst of breakneck speed that sent white powder flying fifty feet into the air.
Klaus sat back in the leather chair, looking out through the frost-cracked windshield as the landscape blurred past.
He let out a long breath, staring at his hands.
"Well... fucking hell," Klaus muttered quietly to the empty room.
From top of his head, a sharp pulsing node of crimson energy flared. Valeria, the chibi Crimson Sharpshooter, materialized out of his silver hair.
She didn’t hover in the air this time... she dropped down, wrapping her tiny, ethereal arms tightly around his forehead, leaning her cheek against his scalp.
"My King," Valeria spoke softly, her voice echoing in his mind.
On his shoulder, Sparky landed with a soft bzzzt.
The Lightning Fairy looked at Klaus’s sullen contemplative expression with her glowing blue eyes narrowing.
"Are you seriously sitting here feeling guilty about everything, Boss?" Sparky asked.