Chapter 258: Old Friends

Francis held his gaze steady, but the uncertainty behind it was visible to anyone paying attention.

He had met Adam before, back at Sector 418. He remembered that meeting clearly. That Adam had been talented, no question, but Francis had been comfortable standing in front of him. As a Heavenly Lord, Adam simply hadn't registered as a threat worth taking seriously. The gap between them had felt manageable.

What was standing in front of him now was something else entirely.

The power this Adam had just displayed wasn't Heavenly Lord territory. It wasn't even close. The way the domain had wiped the entire field clean in seconds, the supreme spirit, the sheer output of death affinity all of it pointed to something that would give even a Supreme Lord pause. The difference between then and now was so extreme it was genuinely disorienting.

So Francis needed to hear it confirmed.

The managers standing behind him were in the same position. They had filtered in from the edges of the field and now waited in a quiet cluster, arms at their sides, eyes fixed on Adam. They had questions too, and they were content to let Francis ask them first. Even the martial artists who had started moving to examine the zombie kills had stopped and turned back around.

Nobody cared about the bodies anymore.

Every set of eyes on that battlefield was on Adam, waiting to see what he would say. After all, the status of the so-called Saint Disciple had been unclear for a long time. Speculation had circulated for long, whispers that the mysterious figure tied to several major incidents was Adam, that he had survived what should have been unsurvivable. But speculation wasn't proof.

There had never been anything concrete. Until now.

Felecia glanced sideways at him, a small smirk pulling at the corner of her mouth. "Looks like the trouble you were avoiding still found you in the end."

Scott said nothing, but he shook his head slowly with the expression of someone who wasn't surprised at all. The two of them took a quiet step back, creating just enough space to let Adam have the floor. Ivy followed smoothly without a word, reading the room the same way she read everything else, calmly and precisely.

Remedy stayed exactly where she was. She settled at his side and gave him a single nod.

Then came the phones.

It started with one or two martial artists near the back of the crowd, screens lifted, streams going live. It spread quickly. Dead Man's Valley had been a trending topic all week, the scale of the rift, the casualty fears, the uncertainty around whether the field teams could hold. Every stream that had been covering the battle was already pulling significant viewership. But now the narrative had shifted entirely.

Someone had ended the disaster alone. Someone who was supposed to be dead.

The numbers climbing on those streams were moving fast.

Adam looked out at the crowd. At Francis. At the phones. At the martial artists packed in around him, none of them moving, all of them waiting. He exhaled once through his nose, quiet and slow, the same way he had exhaled before activating the domain.

Then he opened his mouth, and the pause stretched just a half-second longer than it needed to.

"Yes," he said. "I am Adam."

The crowd erupted.

****

The news spread like wildfire.

Major stations picked it up within the hour. Forums exploded before the streams had even finished processing their recordings. Adam the rising star from Sector 418, the martial artist declared dead after the incident in his own sector, was alive. Not just alive, but confirmed as the Saint's Disciple, the figure that had been the subject of speculation for months.

The clips circulated everywhere. The tear splitting open. The supreme spirit rising. The domain dropping every zombie on the field in seconds flat. Every platform had a version of it, and every version was pulling massive numbers.

The forum threads moved fast.

"Did you see the way he arrived? When I saw Miss Eve pull out that dragon I thought that was the peak, but then he shows up and ends everything that multiple martial artists couldn't finish with a single word. How is that even possible?"

"That's main character energy. Everyone else out there is just background.

Well, except Lady Eve. She's on a different level entirely."

"Okay but hold on. I just watched the clips back. He used a Domain. Aren't Domains reserved for Monarchs? Did Adam become a Monarch? I thought he was Supreme Master at most."

"Don't apply normal logic to Death King Adam."

"Death King Adam??"

"DEATH KING ADAM."

The forums were completely unhinged. But Adam wasn't watching any of it.

A full week had passed since the zombie event, and the outside world was still in chaos. News cycles, press requests, heated online debates, all of it was still running hot. Adam had made a deliberate choice to let it run without him. The past stretch of days had been relentless, and he needed the quiet. So for now, Eden's manor was where he was staying.

Tonight that meant dinner.

The team had gathered around the table, food laid out, chairs filled. That much was normal. What was less normal was the fact that most of them had stopped eating entirely, their attention pulled to two specific people at the head of the table.

Remedy was sitting in Adam's lap.

She had made herself completely at home there, settled in like it was the most natural arrangement in the world, carefully feeding him between bites of her own meal. Adam, for his part, wasn't stopping her. The rest of the team sat in various stages of processing what they were witnessing.

Nobody had quite figured out when this had happened.

Felecia had decided the situation wasn't worth her energy. She leaned back in her chair with her drink in hand, sipping her alcohol with the relaxed expression of someone who had seen enough strange things to stop reacting to them. Ivy sat a little straighter, watching the two of them with a look that hovered somewhere between analysis and disbelief, quietly wondering whether this particular brand of shamelessness was somehow connected to the monstrous talent both of them carried.

Scott just kept eating. Completely unbothered. Fully committed to his plate.

Then the doorbell rang.

Ivy was the first to look toward the door, her eyes lifting from the table. "Who could that be at this hour?"

Felecia picked up her drink, considered it, then set it back down and glanced at Adam instead. "Probably another fan. You've been collecting those lately." She said it completely deadpan, like it was a normal problem to have.

Adam sighed. He looked down at Remedy, still settled on his lap, and carefully lifted her off with an apologetic look before pushing back from the table. Remedy watched him go with a mildly disgruntled expression, her eyes tracking him across the room like she was already calculating how long this interruption was going to take.

The manor had been busy all week. The first few days after the battlefield video spread had been overwhelming, crowds forming outside the gate, constant notifications pinging through the security console, people trying every angle they could think of to get inside. It had settled down since then, but visitors still showed up. Nobody had actually gotten through, though. Ivy's security system had made sure of that.

Adam reached the front door and pulled up the console on the wall beside it, checking the external camera feed to see who was waiting on the other side.

His eyes went wide.

"Small dick?"

Outside the gate, Dickson sneezed so hard he nearly dropped the bag he was carrying. Abigail turned to look at him, one eyebrow raised. "What's the matter?"

Dickson shook his head, rubbing his nose. "I don't know. I feel like someone just insulted me."

Abigail studied him for a moment. "Okay," she said simply, and turned back toward the gate. She tilted her head, looking at the intercom panel, then at the closed gate beyond it. "Do you think they'll even open it? It's been to long. He might not remember us."

Dickson crossed his arms. "I don't think he remembers us at all, honestly. We should probably just—"

The gate clicked.

Then it swung open.

Dickson stared at it. Then he stared at Abigail. She looked back at him with a slow, satisfied smile spreading across her face.

"You were saying?"

Dickson said absolutely nothing. He straightened up, adjusted the strap of his bag, and walked through without another word. Abigail followed, still smiling. The gate swung shut behind them with a heavy, definitive clang that echoed down the empty path toward the manor entrance.

The path leading up to the manor entrance was long enough to give them both a clear look at the full scale of the place before they even reached the door.

Dickson's head moved slowly as he took it in, the height of the walls, the grounds stretching out on either side, the sheer amount of space contained behind that one gate. He let out a low breath and shook his head. "And I thought you guys were rich."

Abigail rolled her eyes. She was a clan heir from the mid-tier regions, which meant luxury wasn't exactly foreign to her. She had grown up around large estates, private compounds, high-end everything. But even she had gone quiet since walking through the gate. This place was operating on a different level entirely, and she wasn't going to pretend otherwise.

Then she stopped walking.

It happened without a conscious decision, her feet just stopped. Dickson carried on for another two steps before he registered the absence beside him and pulled up short as well, turning to see what had caught her attention.

Adam was walking toward them from the manor entrance.