The other side

"Why?"

"Why?!! You have the audacity to ask me why?!"

With his sword still poised at her jugular, threatening to slice it at any passing moment, Noah leaned in close to Sophia, and with his expression twisted from disgust, he started.

"You b*tch! I created this guild. Do you honestly think I'll allow it to fall in the hands of someone like you??!!" He yanked her hair to the side, sending her crashing to the blood-stained ground.

"THUMPP"

Then, he delivered a swift kick to her body, making her roll across the hard floor.

Meanwhile, as the grim scene unfolded before his eyes, the vice guild master remained stoic and unmoving.

Sophia couldn't understand. Why? Why had it ended up like this? Where was all of Noah's resentment coming from and why had he gone to the point of killing her friends and now he was trying to take her life?

Their guild was now thriving and both of their lives were going well.

They weren't billionaires, but they were comfortably well-off and their health was in robust condition.

Sophia really couldn't figure out why her friend, with whom she had shared so many beautiful and important memories, could betray her.

However, the other side of the story painted a different picture.

Back in university, when they first met each other, Noah immediately fell for Sophia. Her vibrant red hair and infectious smiles brightened his days and he was determined to win her heart.

Over the passage of time, they developed a close friendship, but Noah never mustered enough courage to confess his feelings.

Amidst the tests and the onset of their professional lives, they lost touch.

Then, a few years later, the catastrophe struck and Noah was among the first to awaken as a warrior.

When he accidentally found her curriculum scrolling through possible candidates to make a good, non-fighter member of the guild, he immediately saw it as an opportunity and gave her the position of vice-guild master, believing that showcasing his strength and bravery would finally win her affection.

But that didn't happen as they remained friends for over four months. Just as Noah was a couple of steps away from asking her out, something unexpected happened.

Sophia awakened as a rare {Fiery Fighter} class.

Noah took it really well and was happy, he even thought that in the future they could both fight alongside each other, which would only strengthen their bond.

He shared the guild master title with her, and together, they started gathering even more members to aid them in expanding their guild.

But as she began to develop, he realized the wide gap that stood between his common class and her rare one.

She was growing quickly, catching up to him as swiftly as an arrow.

He didn't want to be left behind, so he trained, trained himself till the point he fainted, and perfected his swordsmanship until he could cleanly cut a falling feather. Finally, almost two years after the catastrophe, he reached C-Rank.

It was an incredible achievement, one he wanted to show off and boast about with Sophia.

As he ran into her room to inform her of the news, a powerful aura emanated from inside, making his face pale along with that, shattering his self-esteem.

Opening the wooden door, he watched the red-haired woman standing on the floor as she stared down at her hands, before turning around after hearing the sound of the door.

She smiled and watched Noah before joyfully exclaiming, "I… broke through"

Her enthusiasm this time, however, was not welcomed by Noah, who just thought of her like a monster.

Day by day, his sense of inferiority dragged him into endless nightmares and horrible thoughts.

But in front of the others, he acted normal.

Every single night, he filled his stomach with sleeping pills in the hopes of closing his eyes for three or four hours at the very least and wore makeup during the day to seem normal.

No one noticed it and neither did anyone care about it.

It was when Sophia broke through the middle C-Rank, that his psyche finally snapped.

Consumed by his sense of inferiority which had been feeding off his soul like a parasite, envy finally took control, making him plan the betrayal of the guild and the assassination of his once friend, Sophia.

He convinced one of the two guild masters, an extremely materialistic person, promising him the position of the guild master and cut off all means of communication with Sophia's squad, making them fight off against the monsters, thereby tying them with the battlefield they would enter because of their stupid sense of justice. This way, he didn't have to plan in case they escaped.

He wanted to wear them down, before personally piercing their hearts with his long sword.

However, the monsters turned out to be stronger than Noah had anticipated, resulting in the death of most of Sophia's team, despite her emerging victorious.

"I'm lucky that those weren't your run-of-the-mill monsters," Noah mused from his hiding spot, observing the fight between Sophia and the giant wolf beast.

Considering her ability to take down such a formidable opponent, a standard boss wouldn't have posed much of a challenge for her.

But now, with Sophia being both physically and mentally drained, it was the perfect opportune moment for Noah to ambush her.

Noah and the vice guild master walked towards them as if nothing around mattered to them, aiming for a sneak attack before the start of the fight.

And just as planned, Sophia fell right into the trap, not even suspecting anything sinister, while her loyal vice guild master, who managed to pick up some strange feelings from them was immediately taken out by Noah's blade.

Now, facing imminent death, Sophia could only resign herself to sadness and regrets, she couldn't do anything but surrender as the steel sword quickly approached her neck.

In those fleeting moments that she perceived as countless minutes, she made a deathbed decision to bet her future to survive and activated her last card.

An artifact, one of the only rare rank artifacts that existed at the time, or maybe more than an artifact, it would be better to call it a cursed object.

Sophia had managed to retrieve this artifact during a D-Rank gate raid in the cave of an elite monster and had kept it hidden from the others to prevent chaos from spreading among the members who wished to get their hands on it; it was the artifact: Raging Phoenix's Feather.

{Raging Phoenix Feather (Rare Rank)

Description: A feather of a phoenix nearing the end of its life who decided to burn its chance of rebirth in order to avenge the death of its child.

Effect: When infused with mana, it will unlock powers way beyond the holder's capabilities, however, after that, for two entire years it will be impossible for the wielder to level up.}

Her almost drained aura slid into the feather that was resting in her pocket, lighting it up.

Soon, an incredibly fierce torrent of aura poured out of her flaming hot feather before engulfing her body and enveloping her red hair in a blazing fire.

Driven by instinct rather than any reasoning, she just picked up the great sword that belonged to Albert and launched a ferocious attack on Noah.

Caught off guard, Noah jumped back with his sword in hand.

'It's, it's hot, could it be …"

He blinked and when he reopened his eyes, Noah couldn't find Sophia's body, it was as if it had vanished.

But the next moment, he saw her dash towards him.

Not even having been given the time it took to blink once more, Noah saw the great sword that was already befalling him.

In that flash of a moment, an extremely powerful slash sliced his body into two halves.

And like a ferocious tiger, after letting Noah lifelessly fall on the ground, Sophia brought her attention to the vice guild master who couldn't even manage to last more than three hits before ending up splattered onto the concrete.

Mad, confused, angry and sad.

A storm of emotions was gushing in her mind, making her unable to reason.

Even though there hadn't been any feud among the members, the guild was still divided into two sections, red and blue, controlled by Sophia and Noah respectively.

That night, Sophia entered the blue section's dormitory and unleashed her wrath by razing the building to the ground, leaving nothing but dust and bones behind.

She had fought like a wild beast and gave birth to her now renowned {Fiery Great Swordsmanship}

During the time of the feather's effect, Sophia's power had effectively reached B-Rank, placing her in the top ten awakened in the world.

However, after what she had done, she didn't dare to look anyone in the eyes and spent all her personal money to cover up the matter and prevent rumors about her personality from spreading and tarnishing her reputation.

Maybe because one of them had saved her life or because she had no other means to grow at the moment, she became extremely obsessed with artifacts and started gathering as many as she could.

In the following few years, she managed to find trustworthy people whom she could entrust the guild with while she remained cursed but she was never able to completely trust any of them and always kept surveillance on their every move and action.

Even after the curse was lifted and the ability to level up returned, this obsession didn't leave her.

From that night, whatever artifact she set her eyes on could not escape from her greed.

And even this time, she thought that she would be able to take the gold ring away from Hans as well.

But the situation took an unexpected turn.