Chapter 409: The Bombshell Cissel Dropped!
"You can’t be damn serious, right?!!"
The news landed over the group like a bucket of ice-cold water, instantly extinguishing the celebratory sparks that had filled the base. The music seemed to sour, and the vibrant neon lights suddenly felt cold and harsh.
Even the newly joined members, Mond and Ben, felt the sudden shift in the atmosphere. They had been part of the RBM Club for far less time than anyone else, but they had already heard countless stories from Luke and Elena about the legendary bond between John and Cissel.
According to the whispers, the two were a pair of lovers who only lacked a private room and a soundproof bedroom to be considered a couple. To hear that Cissel had casually severed those ties left a deep frown on Mond’s face and an immense shock in Ben’s heart.
Luke was the first to move. His boisterous energy vanished, replaced by a nervous, worried stride as he headed straight for John. Ricky followed close behind, though his pace was slower, his gaze lingering on Cissel’s retreating figure with a swirl of conflicted emotions.
To Ricky, Cissel had always been someone special. There was a magnetic pull he couldn’t understand, a feeling that had only intensified when he learned the truth about their connection in her previous regression.
Deep down, he knew he stood zero chance as long as his rival was John. John was a force of nature, complete, resolute, and seemingly void of any weakness. And yet, the unthinkable had happened. Cissel had walked away, leaving a vacuum where their relationship used to be.
Logically, the path was now open for Ricky to make a move. But he didn’t, not yet.
Something felt profoundly wrong. The excuse she had given, that John had tried to backstab her, carried no weight of truth in Ricky’s mind. He knew better than anyone the lengths John had gone to for her.
The memory of John travelling vast distances, crashing through the Blood Carnage ritual, braving the Instant Dungeon, and ruthlessly hunting down Zockair just to save him was still vivid in his mind.
If he was willing to go to such lengths to save him, then he could only imagine what John would do for Cissel. In front of all this, her excuses felt hollow and made up.
Ricky decided to check on his friend first. He needed to show empathy and support to the man who had anchored them all. As for Cissel, he needed to grasp the underlying truth before he dared to step into the wreckage of her heart.
The night concluded with John speaking his heart to Luke and Ricky in low, hollow tones. Ben and Mond, sensing the private nature of the grief, decided to take their leave. Elena, meanwhile, shadowed Cissel, trying to get to the bottom of the sudden frost.
But Cissel showed her cold side even to Elena. Her expression was like a mask of carved ice. She didn’t offer new explanations; she only repeated the same words and the same flimsy excuse she had given John before shutting herself in her room.
Left with no other option, Elena returned to the boys, her face etched with frustration. She grilled John for every specific detail of what had happened back in the sparring building basement.
The incident had been glossed over due to the escalating events that happened since then till the war with the former Black Ares Club. But now, John repeated the story with agonising detail. By the end of the retelling, the group felt more confused and conflicted than before. It was as if two different realities were clashing: the one John lived, and the one Cissel remembered.
The gathering finally broke up as the weight of the day took its toll. John retreated to his room, his footsteps heavy on the floor.
Ricky found himself standing outside Cissel’s door a few minutes later. He raised a hand to knock, hesitated, and then let it drop. From everything he had gathered that night, he had reached the same conclusion as the others: Cissel was either suffering from a vivid delusion planted by Mark, or she was drowning in the resurrected trauma of her previous life, the life where he, Ricky, had been the one to betray her.
The second scenario terrified him the most. He couldn’t tell if showing up at her door would trigger the deep-seated hatred that was currently burning hot enough to incinerate even her love for John. If he were the face of her original trauma, his presence might only make the fracture permanent. He decided to give her time, opting to probe her feelings slowly over the coming days.
As for Luke and Elena, the two stayed up late into the night in their club base, whispering fiercely as they mapped out different scenarios and plans to bring the two back together. To them, the RBM Club couldn’t function if its heart was broken.
Meanwhile, behind the closed door of his room, John’s face finally contorted with the emotions he had been suppressing in front of the others. A suffocating sadness washed over him, a pain he had never felt before.
He hadn’t felt this when his life was at risk on Earth, facing the prospect of life in prison or a death sentence. He hadn’t even felt this when he was plucked from his world and dropped into this violent future, thrown in the middle of an ongoing brutal war, against his will.
It appeared that losing the person someone loved was far more devastating than losing one’s own life.
Mixed with the crushing weight of heartbreak, John felt an immense rage radiating toward Mark. The entire mess, the psychological trauma, the distorted memories, the fracture in his personal life, was caused by that digital parasite.
The enmity was no longer just a game of cat and mouse; it was rooting itself into something far greater, far more brutal. It was becoming an existential conflict, a zero-sum game where only one of them would survive, and the other would be wiped from existence.
John was also utterly confused. He had heard from his friends, especially Elena, how she had tried to reason with Cissel, explaining the truth of the basement incident over and over again. Yet, she had remained like a human carved out of stone or ice.
She hadn’t budged an inch. She hadn’t even shown a flicker of curiosity about the discrepancy between her memories and their accounts. She simply repeated the same mantra: they were now just friends.
John felt many things that night, but he never felt regret or blame. He didn’t regret his actions in the basement because he knew he had been under the severe negative effects of Mark’s illusions and mind control.
Recalling the sheer density of the black fog codes he had extracted from Cissel, he began to consider the high probability that she was still suffering from a lingering infection, a cognitive distortion perhaps that forced her to prioritise the false memory of his false betrayal over her actual love for him.
He didn’t blame himself. He knew he had taken extra care of her, treated her with absolute sincerity, and protected her with everything he had. Even the accidental attack in the basement was something that had occurred entirely outside of his conscious control. He never knew she was there; he had never intended to harm her in the slightest.
If she decided to break up with him based on a lie, then he would let her walk away. John discovered a new part of his own personality that night: he wasn’t the type to chase after a woman who had discarded him. He possessed a pride so great and stubborn that he refused to lower his head or beg for a second chance when he wasn’t in the wrong.
"If she wants us to be just friends, so be it," John muttered to the empty room, settling his mind into a cold, hard resolve. "From now onward, we are just friends."
Part of that decision was fueled by a defensive rage, a reaction to the sheer ingratitude of her behaviour after everything he had done for her. When he woke up the next morning, the mindset hadn’t shifted. If anything, the rest had only solidified his emotional armour.
However, he found he lacked the energy to interact with anyone. Since arriving in this world, he had been a whirlwind of activity, planning, fighting, working, and getting stronger every single day.
For the first time, he felt the crushing need for a day off. He didn’t want to lead, he didn’t want to train, and he didn’t want to fight. He just wanted to lie on his bed and stare at the ceiling, letting the silence swallow his thoughts.
While John remained locked away, his friends were like restless bees in a disturbed hive.
Early that morning, the members of the RBM Club gathered at the base as they had agreed the previous night.
The toll of the breakup was still pressing heavily on their spirits, casting a shadow over what should have been their first day as the dominant force in the department. Yet Luke and Elena had come up with a plan.