As soon as it was time to clock out, Alice bolted out the door like a bullet.

    The place her steps led to was none other than the Western Labyrinth, where the ghost had last appeared.

    Despite what had happened just yesterday, she was already back on the trail without taking a day’s rest.

    For Yuria, the person involved, Alice’s relentless pursuit was nothing short of obsessive.

    Yet truthfully, Alice hadn’t intended to go this far.

    Initially, Raven—acting on Victor’s request—had taken charge of investigating individuals directly connected to the ghost, while Alice had been relegated to a minor role: gathering rumors and information from the back alleys.

    Considering that Alice was practically a “hollow shell” with little to offer beyond fighting, the smartest choice would have been to stay out of the way to avoid causing trouble.

    Though she wasn’t particularly bright, she wasn’t foolish enough to be unaware of this.

    But that was all true until yesterday.

    She had let the ghost slip away at an agonizingly close distance—so close, she could’ve touched them if she’d fallen forward.

    The sheer frustration was enough to make her momentarily abandon the diet she’d recently started to curb her belly fat; she ate half a bowl more rice than usual.

    “They don’t seem like a bad person... but they totally played me. I can’t just let this go.”

    Alice was half convinced by now that the ghost wasn’t a villain.

    After all, what kind of evildoer would fight vampires so fiercely, shedding their own blood in the process?

    Still, the fact that the ghost wasn’t bad didn’t erase the humiliation of letting them escape right in front of her.

    For Alice, who had been thoroughly outplayed, there was no choice but to track the ghost down and teach them a lesson.

    “Wait for me, ghost. I’m going to rip off that white cloth with my own two hands!”

    Alice had a competitive streak.

    No, to be precise, when she wasn’t distracted by cute things, Alice could be incredibly tenacious.

    She was the type to thrash about against her limits, working to break through any obstacle in her way.

    Of course, in front of a certain silver-haired girl, she often ended up looking like a clumsy mess, but that was merely her way of venting stress.

    When she got serious, even Raven would shake his head in exasperation, unable to stop her stubbornness.

    Unfortunately for the ghost, they had unwittingly caught the attention of someone this persistent.

    “Let’s go a bit deeper this time. The bounty from the Black Liquor Guild on the ghost is particularly concerning.”

    With that, Alice strode fearlessly into the depths of the Western Labyrinth.

    For someone as striking as Alice, the underworld was a place where trouble was practically guaranteed to find her. To avoid unnecessary hassles, she usually avoided walking around so openly.

    But now, the tables had turned.

    “Hey, look over there. That pink-haired swordswoman.”

    “Is that... the monster who cut down endless waves of zombies yesterday?”

    “Ahem, best not mess with her. Not that I’m scared or anything...”

    Thanks to her remarkable display during the Bloody Night incident, rumors about Alice had spread widely.

    The riffraff of the underworld kept their distance, and her steps remained unhindered.

    “Excuse me. Could I ask you something?”

    “Y-Yes...! What is it...?”

    “Do you happen to know anything about the ghost? Even something trivial is fine.”

    Approaching anyone who stood out, Alice interrogated them for information about the ghost, collecting every scrap she could find.

    She focused on things like the times the ghost typically appeared, shared traits among their victims, or details of their involvement in the Bloody Night incident.

    Of course, most of what she gathered turned out to be information she already knew or was otherwise unhelpful.

    The ghost had a knack for vanishing without a trace. Even in the underworld, there were only a handful of people who had seen them directly, aside from the events of the previous day.

    “Listening to these rumors, it’s like they really are ghosts. If I hadn’t seen them myself, I’d think it was all exaggerated too.”

    So far, no one had glimpsed what lay beneath the cloth, nor heard the ghost’s voice.

    Their mere appearance left people unconscious for inexplicable reasons, and anyone who crossed their path risked losing all their possessions.

    The meticulousness with which they erased their traces left Alice deeply troubled.

    “Elder, do you know anything about the ghost?”

    “Hmm? Are you a bounty hunter, young lady?”

    Those who had been aided by the ghost reported glimpses of their body, confirming they were undeniably human—and a child, no less.

    The timing of the ghost’s disappearance coincided precisely with Yuria starting work at Greg’s shop.

    On top of that, Yuria was a complete unknown: no identity, no past, and no known connections.

    Given the circumstantial evidence, failing to link Yuria and the ghost would’ve been downright strange.

    “But... there’s an alibi.”

    Despite all this, it remained nothing more than circumstantial evidence.

    Too many unanswered questions lingered.

    If the ghost was truly connected to supernatural abilities, why had they only appeared now, long after the Nexus Project had supposedly ended?

    How had someone subjected to experiments with survival rates in the low single digits—if not fractions—emerged both physically and mentally unscathed?

    And, most puzzling of all, how had the ghost—reportedly bloodied by Drakel—recovered to a pristine condition overnight?

    As long as luck and coincidence existed in this world, Raven couldn’t definitively prove that Yuria was the ghost without catching them red-handed and unmasking them.

    Frankly, though, there was no need to rush.

    Yuria was set to work in his office for about a month, giving him plenty of time and opportunities.

    And for Raven, what truly mattered wasn’t whether Yuria was the ghost.

    What mattered was whether Yuria was the result of the Nexus Project and whether she held information related to his missing sister.

    Those two questions were the crux of the matter, everything else secondary.

    “No need to poke the beehive unnecessarily. I’ll wait patiently and strike at the right moment.”

    Still, Raven was already half-convinced that Yuria and the ghost were one and the same.

    If he hadn’t been, he wouldn’t have let her wander the perilous streets of NightHaven alone.

    Even though Raven wasn’t the type to offer help unprompted, he wasn’t heartless enough to turn away someone who had asked for his protection.

    “Hm? An email?”

    He had been nursing his drink, lost in thought, when a notification popped up on his computer.

    The email’s content was as follows:

    An invitation to a party hosted by Nemesis, a leading cybernetic prosthetics company.

    The email stated that he, as a fixer, was welcome to bring up to two companions, and that all expenses would be covered by Nemesis.

    To someone who had survived countless battlefields, Raven immediately sensed the scent of danger.

    This was no ordinary invitation—it was bait, sweetly perfumed to lure prey into a death trap.

    It reeked of scheming and dirty tricks.

    “Smells dangerous. This should be fun.”

    Raven smirked.

    There was nothing he found more entertaining than giving troublemakers a taste of their own medicine.

    It seemed like the perfect opportunity to indulge in one of his hobbies after a long time.

    —

    Somewhere in NightHaven.

    In a cramped, dimly lit room filled with the hum of fans and faint electronic beeps, a man was hunched over a keyboard, surrounded by countless computers and monitors.

    Amid the overwhelming chaos of screens, the man muttered as he gazed at a blinking display.

    “...Found it.”

    The man was a code runner, a hacker of the new generation who operated within the cybernetic network.

    He stood up with purpose, stepping toward the window.

    Beyond the glass, the neon-drenched skyline of NightHaven stretched endlessly, its skyscrapers piercing the night sky.

    Staring at the tallest tower, the man spoke with quiet determination.

    “Reine, I’m coming for you.”

    On the glowing monitor behind him, a single word flashed repeatedly: Nemesis.

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