The Anomaly's Path Chapter 143: Alice Scarlet

Alice Scarlet.

I knew her from the ga. Everyone who played The Hero Chronicles knew her.

She was a commoner prodigy who had clawed her way to the top through sheer talent and stubbornness, with no family na to back her up and no patron to smooth her path.

But there was more to her than that — secrets that the ga developers had hidden in side quests, details that most players missed.

She was a half-dragon, though she hadn’t known about this fact until later in the ga.

That was why her physical abilities were so absurd, and the reason she could swing a sword nearly as long as she was tall like it weighed nothing, why she never seed to tire no matter how long she fought.

Her draconic blood gave her strength, speed, and endurance that no normal human could match, and every ti she stepped into the arena, she reminded everyone watching why dragons were feared across the world.

The old man who had taken her in, the Headmaster of Aegis Academy, was the one who had found her after her parents died. He had raised her, trained her, and given her a place to belong. The other candidates didn’t know that. Most people didn’t know that.

But the old dragon had done it anyway, not out of pity, but because he saw sothing in her — a spark, a fire, a hunger that reminded him of himself. He thought of her as a granddaughter, though neither of them would ever admit it.

He was too proud. She was too stubborn.

And Alice?

She didn’t know the full story.

She thought he had taken her in because she was useful, because she was strong, and because she could kill monsters and earn the Academy money and fa. She didn’t know that he saw her as sothing more than that.

He had watched over her since she was a child, protecting her from the shadows, making sure she never had to face the world alone.

She would find out soday.

But not yet.

Her core was SSS-rank — one of the few in the world, and her path was called The Scarlet Reaver Path. Not because it was flashy or poetic, but because it was honest. The color of blood. The color of her hair.

The color of the path she walked.

Her affinity was not an elent like fire or water. It was a concept just like Arthur’s affinity.

Reave Affinity — to carry sothing away by force, to plunder, to steal. Every demon she cut down made her stronger. Every enemy she defeated left sothing behind for her to claim. It was dark and predatory, the kind of power that would have belonged to a monster in another life.

But it had a cost.

She could not grow stronger without fighting. She could not sit in a room and ditate like other cultivators. She could not drink potions or absorb mana from the air. She had to kill. She had to hunt.

She had to take power from the things she destroyed. That was a curse as much as a blessing. It pushed her to fight more, to take risks, to throw herself into danger again and again, because the only way she could get stronger was by killing.

And if she stopped killing, she stopped growing.

That fit her perfectly.

Alice Scarlet was not a patient girl. She was not soone who could sit still and wait for power to co to her. She hunted. She fought. She killed. And every ti she did, she took sothing from her enemy and made it her own.

The players on the forums had loved her for it. They made s about her. They quoted her insults in comnt sections.

They called her "the Crimson Curse," "the Unfiltered Storm," "the Queen of Salt" — and her favorite, "the Only Person in the Ga with No Filter." They admired her strength, her ferocity, her refusal to bow to anyone.

She was the character you wanted on your side and the enemy you feared facing alone.

But they also pitied her, sotis.

Her story was tragic — losing her parents, growing up in a world that didn’t care about commoners, learning to fight and kill before she had even learned to read properly. She had no family na to protect her, no patron to smooth her path.

She had only herself, her sword, and the dragon who had taken her in and taught her to survive.

She never joined Arthur’s harem, not really. She was his friend, his ally, his comrade in arms, but never his love interest. The developers had tried to give her a romance route once, the fans had rioted.

They said it didn’t fit her character. They were right.

...And now she was standing in front of , dusting herself off after walking straight into like I was invisible.

_

She was about my age, maybe a year younger, with wild crimson hair that fell in ssy waves past her shoulders and sharp amber eyes that were currently blazing with irritation.

She wore a fitted leather jacket over a simple shirt, dark pants tucked into combat boots, and a scowl that said she hadn’t woken up on the right side of the bed and wasn’t planning to. A heavy longsword was strapped across her back, the blade nearly as long as she was tall.

"What are you staring at, you bastard? You got a death wish or sothing?" she said, her amber eyes narrowing as she looked up and down. "Standing in the middle of the street like a goddamn statue. What, you think people are gonna walk around you just because you’ve got that stupid noble look on your face?"

"You walked into ," I said.

"So? Move next ti. Not my fault you were standing there like a lost puppy."

She hitched her longsword higher on her back and stepped around like I wasn’t worth another second of her ti. "Out of my way. So of us actually have shit to do and don’t have ti to stand around staring at buildings like tourists."

I watched her go, her crimson hair swaying with each step, and felt my eye twitch.

That’s Alice Scarlet for you. No filter. No patience. No give-a-damn about who you are or what your na ans. She’d flip off the Emperor himself if he got in her way, and she’d probably curse him out in words that would make his ancestors blush.

And honestly?

I respected that.

We made it to the registration hall without killing each other, which I considered a win.

The hall was even more massive on the inside than it had looked from the outside — a dod cavern of white stone and silver tal with rows of counters stretching across the floor like the aisles of a cathedral.

Candidates were everywhere, thousands of them packed into lines that snaked across the marble floor like rivers of flesh and fabric. The air was thick with nervous energy and the sll of too many bodies cramd into too small a space.

Alice and I joined the line. It was shorter than the general line but still long enough to make us wait — and neither of us spoke. The silence between us was tense but not uncomfortable. It was the silence of two people who had already said everything they needed to say and were content to just exist in each other’s presence.

When we finally reached the front of the line, we both stepped forward at the sa ti.

" first," Alice said.

" first," I said at the exact sa mont.

We glared at each other.

"I was here before you," she said.

"You were not," I replied.

"I was!" she insisted.

"You literally walked into earlier," I said, keeping my voice flat while waving my hand in front of her face like I was dismissing a servant who had overstayed their welco. "That ans I was standing still before you were moving, and therefore I was here first. Now hush."

Her eye twitched so hard I thought it might spasm right out of her skull. "You absolute bastard, that’s not how it works!"

"It is now," I said. "I just decided."

The clerk — a tired-looking woman with grey hair and spectacles, looked between us with an expression of long-suffering patience. "Are you two together?"

"NO!" we both shouted at the sa ti.

The clerk sighed. "Na?"

Alice straightened her jacket and lifted her chin. "Alice Scarlet."

The clerk typed sothing into her console. "And you?"

I stepped forward. "Leo von Celestial."

The clerk’s fingers paused over the keys for just a mont. Her eyes flicked up to my face, then to my white hair, then back to her screen. I could see her mind working, putting the pieces together — the na, the appearance, the rumors.

"Leo von Celestial?" she asked. "The Celestial boy?"

I didn’t answer. I just t her gaze and waited.

The woman behind us in line gasped. Another voice whispered, "I heard he demanded a kiss from the princess." Soone else added, "And he insulted the Emperor to his face, he refused to kneel under Sovereign pressure. I heard he was bleeding from his ears and still wouldn’t bow."

The whispers spread like wildfire, crawling through the line like insects. I could feel the eyes on , hundreds of them, sharp and curious and hungry for a glimpse of the monster they had heard about in the rumors.

So of them whispered about Sylvia too — "Isn’t that the vice president’s brother?" — and others about the Celestial family, about the white hair, about the trial that was supposed to have killed .

I kept my face neutral, my eyes cold, my back straight.

Alice looked at , and her lips curled into sothing that wasn’t quite a smile. "Well, well," she said, her voice dripping with sarcasm. "The great Leo von Celestial. Should I bow? Kiss your ring? Call you ’my lord’?"

She put her hand on her chest and fluttered her eyelashes mockingly. "Is there anything the young master needs? Perhaps I could carry your bags? Shine your boots? Fan you with a large leaf while you lounge about?"

My eyebrow twitched and I could hear bastard Nova laughing.

The clerk cleared her throat loudly. "If you two are finished, I still need to process your registration."

We both turned back to the counter. The clerk typed sothing into her console, and two silver bracers materialized from a slot beneath the counter. They were sleek and cool to the touch, with small mana-crystal screens that glowed faintly in the dim light.

The clerk handed them over with the sa practiced monotone she had probably used a thousand tis before.

"These are your bracers. Wear them at all tis. They will track your vitals, your location, and the ti remaining. Use the ergency teleport if you want to live. Pressing it ans disqualification. Losing it ans disqualification. Damaging it ans disqualification."

She paused. "Now, you can go to the waiting room."

Alice snatched her bracer and slipped it onto her wrist without bothering to check if it fit. I did the sa.

"Good luck," the clerk said. "You’ll need it."

We both reached the waiting area.

The place was a massive open space at the end of the hall, a circular chamber with a dod ceiling that rose so high it disappeared into shadow.

The floor was polished marble, white and grey and black, arranged in patterns that seed to shift when you weren’t looking directly at them, and the walls were lined with benches carved from dark wood that had been enchanted to glow faintly in the dim light.

Candidates filled every available seat, hundreds of them, maybe thousands, and the air was thick with tension and the low murmur of nervous conversation.

"Lyra," I said without turning around, "go rest in the city. You can’t co with from here."

She appeared at my shoulder, her erald eyes scanning the crowd with the sa careful precision she always used. She nodded once and disappeared into the crowd, silent as a shadow, leaving alone among strangers.

I walked further into the waiting area, weaving between benches and clusters of candidates, and found an empty spot near the back wall where I could see the entire room without being seen myself.

My eyes swept across the room, searching for where the main cast was. Surely, they would also be here, though it would be a miracle if I saw at least so of them in this big crowd of students.

I was looking at the candidates when I found them.

There, near the front, was Cordelia Valerion with her strawberry-blonde hair and erald eyes, her hands clasped tightly in her lap and her posture stiff with nervous energy, dressed in simple travel clothes instead of the elegant gowns she had worn at the palace.

She was trying to look inconspicuous, trying to blend in with the commoners and lesser nobles, but her bearing gave her away, you could take the princess out of the palace, but you couldn’t take the palace out of the princess.

Further to the left, I spotted Riven Ashford leaning against his chair with his ash-blonde hair and steel-red eyes, his arms crossed and his expression bored, his posture relaxed despite the tension in the room.

He wore a dark shirt and black pants.

And of course, near the center of the room, surrounded by a small crowd of admirers who hung on his every word, stood Arthur Vale with his jet-black hair and golden eyes.

He was dressed simply, and he was speaking quietly with the girl beside him, Alia Nightshade, her midnight-blue hair pinned up and her silver-violet eyes scanning the crowd with the sa assessing look I was using.

My gaze drifted across the room, scanning the sea of faces, searching for soone I had seen in the ga but never t in person — soone who, if Arthur Vale hadn’t been chosen by the Goddess, would have been the hero instead.

Or maybe he still could be. Who knew anymore?

Where is he?

Then I found him.

Roan Sol-Valis stood near the far wall, the elven prince unmistakable even in a crowd of thousands, his long platinum hair falling past his shoulders like a waterfall of liquid silver and his storm-silver eyes crackling with an intensity.

There you are.