Vanguard

"Caught you."

Those words alone made the young man frozen in place. He sweated coldly, and his heart beat erratically.

Slowly, he tried to turn around to find the voice's owner. But before he could do it, he felt light in the head. When he realized it, he found himself flying after getting kicked.

Ammund felt his nose warm as blood poured from it.

The sensation of his nose breaking didn't last long. A second later, he crushed the tree at high speed.

"Guaggh!"

Dropping to the ground, Ammund screamed out of his lungs as he curled up in pain. His bones were crushed after the impact, resulting in internal bleeding.

His ambusher, Niveus, walked toward him slowly with a sword. The blade flashed when the moonlight showered it, creating an ethereal aura effect.

However, if one looked closely, it was an actual aura of a swordsman.

*Crunch, crunch*

The footsteps of death were getting closer and closer.

At that moment, Ammund's heart beat faster. Then, when the sound was only one step away, Ammund lunged at Niveus with a knife he pulled out from his clothes, attempting to ambush the knight.

"You call yourself a knight?!"

Indeed, knights have always held justice and honor highly. But that only applied to a traditional knight.

Expecting a surprise attack, Niveus dodged with minimal movements.

"I'm not just your ordinary knight," Niveus said before kicking Ammund in the stomach, sending him flying again like a ragdoll.

CRUSH!

Niveus walked menacingly, stopping and sticking his sword's tip into the snowy ground behind Ammund.

Ammund's breath came in ragged gasps as he tried to drag his battered body away from the figure towering over him. The snow beneath him was stained red, a chilling contrast to the cold, white blanket that covered the forest floor.

"I'm a Vanguard," Niveus had said, his voice as cold and unyielding as the steel he wielded.

"Hiikk?!"

Those words echoed in Ammund's mind, fueling the terror that gripped his heart. He knew what it meant—everyone in the kingdom did. The Vanguard of Chrysantheus were no ordinary knights. They were something else entirely.

The Vanguard was the reason a small kingdom like Chrysantheus, despite its limited resources, had managed to avoid being completely obliterated by the Empire and had instead become a vassal state.

Handpicked from the fiercest warriors, the Vanguard operated outside the law, answering only to the highest authority in Chrysantheus.

They were trained not just in combat but in the dark arts of assassination, subterfuge, and psychological warfare.

Unlike traditional knights who fought with honor, the Vanguard did whatever it took to win. They were mercenaries in spirit, bound not by ideals but by the cold, hard currency of results. Victory was their only goal, and they achieved it through any means necessary.

With the emergence of the Global Alliance, the Vanguard's role had shifted. They were now known as a squad that raided Monolith under the royal family's orders or at the commander's discretion.

Still, their dark legend persisted throughout Aetheris. Many had heard the tales, and it was no surprise that some were aware of their origins.

These days, they were known as the Knights of Glacend—half of them, at least.

Few knew that the knights stationed far from the capital were once the kingdom's most feared squad.

Ammund had heard about the Vanguard from a wandering bard, and one saying had stuck with him: "When they announce they are a Vanguard, then say goodbye to your life."

Ammund tried to crawl away, the pain in his shattered bones making every movement agony. But he knew it was futile. The Vanguard didn't leave any survivors, so he heard.

They were the kingdom's dark hand, sent to silence those who threatened its stability, which he was about to do. And now, that hand had come for him.

"Don't kill me, please, don't kill me..."

Niveus watched Ammund struggle, his expression unreadable—hidden by the mask.

He raised his sword, the blade shimmering with a deadly light.

"The Vanguard is fate. Once we set our target, there will be no mercy. We are also judges. If we declare you guilty, then you are. Your judgment day has been set for tonight."

Ammund barely had time to process the words before Niveus's sword came down, ending his life in a flash of steel and light.

The forest fell silent once more, the only trace of the encounter the blood that seeped into the snow, quickly covered by the falling flakes.

Niveus cleaned his blade with a practiced motion and sheathed it, turning away from the lifeless body. There was no triumph in his eyes, no satisfaction.

As he walked back to the frozen river, something glimmering caught his attention. It was a ring forged from an unknown material.

The embedded mineral was also unidentified.

Niveus tried to ask Nono but the Beacon couldn't identify the material the ring was made of nor the embedded mineral.

"Are you sure you can't identify it?"

["Yes. There's no record of them in my database."]

"Then, that means..."

Nono was the most advanced Beacon version that only Niveus possessed. Nono knew almost everything about the world of Lunara and the Monolith's realm.

So, when Nono said she couldn't identify an item it made Niveus surprised.

Despite the Monolith's realm being a part of another world, Nono could still have information about it. But, why couldn't she do it with the ring?

There was only one answer.

Nono had said she knew everything that had a record or history, which meant the ring hadn't had any history.

"...is this item from the future?" Niveus wondered. "But how?"

At that moment, Niveus caught Nono chuckling.

"What? Why are you? Do you know something?"

["No. I was just amazed by your wild assumption."]

"Huh? Don't joke with me, Nono. Are you serious about not knowing anything about this item? Are you being honest with me right now? What are you hiding?"

["I said I'm just amazed, my dear host. And I assure you I'm always honest with you."]

Although skeptical, Niveus let Nono away given the time they had been around and the proof that she had always been there for him. Nono was the reason why Niveus was alive and survived the incident. If not for Nono, his story would end before it could begin.

In the end, Niveus pocketed the ring, knowing anything could be of value.

With a final glance at the forest, Niveus disappeared into the night, leaving behind the scene of his latest judgment.

With the perpetrator named Ammund who tried to accelerate the arrival of the Frozen gone, Niveus could now focus on his task, clearing the Monolith.

"Might also count that as a warm-up for tomorrow."