I reached for the loot. Because of course I did.

  It sat there on the pedestal, waiting. Being. Like some tragic little treasure fotten behind a wall of dullness and sadness. The M Spirit Amulet—simple, unassuming, and humming with a faint energy that sent a shiver up my spihe moment my fingers brushed against it.

  And then—because nothing could ever be easy—came the voice. “Stranger.”

  I stiffened.

  The priest’s tone wasn’t angry. It wasn’t shocked. It was worse. It was disappointed.

  My fingers curled around the amulet as I turned back toward him, suddenly feeling like a kid caught sneaking cookies from the temple pantry.

  e on man, I just had the grand temple theft and the only thing you say is stranger?

  “We are in the simple m home,” he tinued, his voice measured, his eyes locked onto me like he was willio feel guilty. “What did you do?”

  Yeah, okay. That wasn’t uling at all. I hesitated before pointing awkwardly at the pedestal. “Uh. This.”

  A pause.

  “The amulet,” I crified, lifting it just slightly. “I mean, it was just lying here behind a wall? ly prime relic security.” I gave him a sheepish grin, trying to ighe growing tightness in my chest. “I’ll put the [M Spirit Amulet] to good use, I promise.”

  The silehat followed was thick—the kind that made my stomach twist into a knot I had no hope of untangling.

  And then—finally—the priest reacted. His eyes widened, his calm mask crag, his hands trembling as if I’d just casually announced I was going to use the sacred relic to decorate my bathroom. “No!” His voice carried weight now, a sudden force that made the already-still temple feel like the air had been sucked right out of it. “Stranger... this... this is a relic of the church! You ot—”

  I pulled the amulet.

  His breath hitched. The shock, the horror—it wasn’t just e.

  It was grief.

  My throat tightened. I swallowed hard and exhaled slowly, the weight of the amulet pressing into my palm. “I take it,” I mumbled. “And I will.” I forced myself to meet his gaze, feeling something awful settle in my chest. “And I’m sorry for it.”

  He didn’t speak, but I saw it in his eyes—the disbelief, the heartbreak, the heavy realization that I was going to do this anyway. “I promise to give it back,” I added softly.

  A beat of silence.

  Then, quieter still — “…Eventually.”

  The shift in space was immediate—one sed, I was in a temple full of judgmental stares and crushing guilt, and the , I was standing at the edge of a breathtaking seaside cliff, the plete opposite of where I’d just been.

  The air here was different. It carried the st of salt and the crisp, sharpness of the sea. A steady breeze rolled in from the vast, open waters, carrying the rhythmic sound of waves crashing against rugged rocks below. It wasn’t violent, though—ning storm, no thunderous destru.

  Just soothing, like a song after fifth whiskey.

  The sun was warm but not scorg, casting a golden hue over everything. The sky stretched infinitely above, a brilliant blue with only the softest wisps of clouds zily drifting by. It was the kind of pce where time felt slower, where the world didn’t press in so hard.

  A, despite all that peace, I still had an angry prin my head. “Pretender.” His voice was heavier than usual. It wasn’t his usual brand of haughty amusement or barely tained irritation. No, this time, it was weighted—like he was carrying something just as heavy as the air between us.

  “From all that you have done… Why did you rob that temple?” I exhaled, rubbing my temples. I could already feel the iniure. “You could have chosen any temple, but you itted the worst crime.”

  And there it was.

  I turoward the sea, watg the waves break against the shore, trying to find a way to phrase this that wouldn’t make me souirely awful.

  “I… thought it would be empty,” I admitted, as if that somehow made it less bad.

  The prince scoffed, his presen my mind like a storm cloud looming overhead. “And you believe that makes it acceptable?”

  I ged. “No. But I did it for you.”

  Silence.

  A long, heavy silence.

  Then, finally, his voice came again—measured, slow, but unmistakably disbelieving. “For me?” I nodded, even though he couldn’t see it, watg the waves roll in, their endless motion a stark trast to the stillness in my chest.

  “There is nothing I want,” the prince tinued, his voice sharp as the cliff’s edge. “And nothing that could justify robbing a m temple.”

  I winced. Yeah, whe it like that, it sounded so much worse.

  I turned my gaze toward the horizon, watg as the sun dipped lower, its refle shimmering over the water. The sea didn’t care what I’d dohe waves would keep ing, the wind would keep blowing, and somewhere out there, a priest robably still standing in stunned disbelief at my grand act of spiritual theft.

  “…It’s fine, I will return it, but the looks sucked,” I muttered.

  The prince’s voi my mind was tight, mixed with somethiween disbelief and ht disapproval. “Pretehis is… If the priest had called the temple guards from the other room, you would not have survived even a sed. I am almost amazed you haven’t been smitten by the gods for this.”

  His words weren’t exaggerated.

  The temple guards were ridiculous—the kind of NPCs that made you question if bance eveed in this world. They weren’t just high-level warriors; they were divinely saned executioners. Eae had a detailed backstory about how they were chosen by the gods to wreck people like me.

  I shook my head, exhaling slowly.

  Yeah, yeah, overpuards, divine punishment, the wrath of a thousand grieving grandmas—I got it. But the thing was? It would’ve taken them a minute or so to even iigate before exeg me.

  Probably.

  [M Spirit Amulet]Quality: 7-RelicEffect: That which was lost may stand beside you once more, if only for a fleeting breath. Shadows given form, whispers made flesh—the past made present, but ruly yain.Huh, it’s a reliot legendary?

  And if the prince ever bothered to learn more about pyers, he’d realize that we didn’t care. We would rob anything that wasn’t bolted down—and sometimes even then.

  “Prinighty and resourceful,” I said, plopping down onto a ft sun-warmed rock. The wind ruffled my hair, carrying the st of the o—fresh salt, damp stone, and the lingering hint of something green from the cliffs above. “Do you know the differeween a legendary item and a relic?”

  “Don’t try to ge the—”

  “Just answer,” I interrupted, waving a zy hand as if dismissing his e. I wasn’t in the mood for another morality debate.

  Instead, I let my gaze drift toward the horizon. The sunlight danced oer’s surface, golden streaks shimmering across the deep blue expahe distant roar of waves colliding with craggy roations filled the air with a rhythmic pulse, steady and unbothered by mortal nonsense.

  It didn’t matter.

  The temple didn’t even know that stupid amulet was there. They wouldn’t know for a few years. When that happened in the game, I had rushed back to the temple oest servers, trying to exploit it. But…

  I frowned slightly, fingers absently trag the grooves in the rock beh me.

  It was hard. The fun was limited—frustratingly so. Even knowing what I did now, even having it in my possession, I wasn’t sure if I could make it work.

  The prince sighed, and I could almost feel the irritation rolling off him like a wave. “Very well…”

  “The differeween a relid a legendary item…” the prince began, like a professor expining something painfully obvious to the world’s most insufferable student—me.

  I smirked, leaning bay hands, letting the warm stohrough my fingers. The salty breeze tugged at my amazing clothes, the distant cries of… bird creatures mingling with the endless, rhythmic crash of waves against the cliffs below.

  If I was about to get lectured, at least it was happening in a postcard-worthy location.

  “A legendary item,” the prince tinued, “is born of mortal hands, but it asds beyond its ins. A bde fed by the greatest smith, a staff that hums with boundless magic—these bee legendary through their deeds, through the ones who wield them. Like me.”

  I nodded along, pretending to be fasated, when really, this was basiowledge.

  “A relic, however,” the prince tinued, and there was something different in his tone now—something almost reverent, “is not fed by man, nor beast, nic alo is a piece of the divine. Relics are shaped by belief, by worship, by turies of devotion woven into their very essehey do not simply exist. They endure.”

  A piece of the divine, huh?

  I tilted my head, watg the way the sunlight bounced off the water, how the seafoam curled areated like fingers grasping at the shore.

  “So basically,” I said, tapping a finger against my knee, “legendary items are from mortals, but relics? Relics are sacred and bound to gods. They’re not just things—they’re cepts made physical.”

  That could be why it was legendary on a test server. The gods didn’t have power there?

  The prince scoffed. “Crude, but accurate. A relic is tied to its faith. It ot be owned, only held. To steal one is to wound the god it belongs to—however small the cut may seem.”

  I groaned, dragging my hands down my face. “Ugggh. So what you’re saying is… I didn’t just it grand ry. I pissed off an actual deity?”

  “Yes, pretehat is exactly what I am saying.”

  I winced, my gaze drifting toward my bag, where the M Spirit Amulet was safely tucked away.

  Great. Just great.

  Not only did I rob a temple, but I literally injured some god’s pride in the process. That was bound to e bad bite me.

  “Okay,” I sighed, blowing out a breath. “But! terpoint—nobody k was there. If a relic falls behind a secret wall and no one remembers it existed, does it even t as stealing?”

  The prince was silent for a long moment. “You are the worst kind of heretic.”

  I grinned. “Oh, absolutely.”

  “Okay, time to do what I actually stole it for.”

  I cpped my hands together, figuratively dusting off the st remnants of guilt—not that there was much to begin with—and stretched, my grin widening. This was going to be fun.

  “Are you ready?” I asked the ring, my voice practically dripping with excitement.

  “Ready for what?” the prince’s voice came through, spiked with suspi. For once, he actually sounded nervous. “Pretender, you are sg me.”

  I snickered. “Oh, shut up. You’ll love it.”

  The M Spirit Amulet felt heavier as I pulled it from my bag, the weight of it pressing against my palm like a quiet warning. The smooth pendant pulsed ever so slightly, as if aware of what I was about to do. Or maybe just judging me for robbing its holy home.

  Well, too te frets.

  I looped the over my neck, the etal resting against my colrbone. “I have no idea how this works, but let’s hope it does.”

  A sharp inhale. A shift in the air. Then I focused, sending mana into the amulet.

  Uhe ring, which was temperamental and finicky like a spoiled he amulet drank my mana without hesitation. It was effortless, natural—like breathing, like exhaling a secret into the wind.

  “Pretender—” the priarted, his voice tight with something I almost mistook for panic.

  Too te. The moment my mana reached its peak, I ya the e between the amulet and the ring.

  Pop.

  The world tilted for a fra of a sed. My stomach lurched like I’d just stepped off a ledge, and then— He was there. A burst of energy swirled before me, coalesg into something solid, something regal, something unmistakably him.

  The prince.

  He stood o roext to me, no longer a disembodied voi my head but tangible, real. He was dressed in a royal hunter’s hide armor—dark, supple leather stitched with gilded thread, ated with faintly glowing are sigils.

  The armor wasn’t just prote. It was decration of his status, his power, his untouchable might. His high colr framed his sharp jawline, and the cape flowing from his shoulders gave him the air of a monarch who had just stepped onto the battlefield, ready to cim his due.

  His golden eyes, deep and a, flickered with disbelief as he gnced down at his own hands, flexing his fingers as if testing their reality.

  For a moment, he just stood there, his chest rising and falling with slow, deliberate breaths.

  I let the momele. “Hi.“ Let him drink it i him realize he was back.

  Then, with a sweet smile, I took a step forward—

  —and spped him.