Royal Reboot: Level up, Your Majesty!

Chapter 85: Root Cause (3)

Root Cause

3

“Elias is a shapeshifter, one who can alter his very molecular structure. Not just mimic faces or forms, but become anything.”

Chimera.

That was the name stitched through every thread of the Ravens’ trap.

The one who leaked Natalia and Tiffany’s duel to the media. 

The one who extracted personal records of Athena, Theo, and Astra. 

The one who sold them anonymously to the Ravens just days before everything fell apart.

Chimera’s goal wasn’t part of any self-righteous ideology, nor was it revenge. It was very simple: crypto. Because crypto was untraceable, untaxable, and it had supposedly evolved to a level that even quantum codebreakers couldn’t crack.

Supposedly, because the Obsidian Legion cracked it. Once.

Thomas had heard of Chimera through his Fixer network. ‘Specialists’ whose job was to ensure consequences only applied to the poor. They erased files, delayed hearings, rewrote truth. Always for a fee.

One of them mentioned a name. Or a myth.

Chimera. A black-hat hacker so elusive some doubted he existed at all. There were rumors that he was less a person and more an abstract scapegoat the rich used to deflect their messes onto someone else.

No confirmed affiliations. 

No documented history. 

No digital trail.

Most believed he worked alone.

Astra disagreed.

According to her, Chimera was part of the Obsidian Legion. Technically. Maybe. “Loosely affiliated” was probably the better word. They weren’t a proper organisation so much as a loose confederation of dramatic idealists with advanced coding skills and an allergy to moral clarity.

Too philosophical to be mercenaries. 

Too cynical to be revolutionaries.

Somewhere in between.

They claimed to fight for the “greater good.” But as Astra once muttered: “What good is your ‘greater good’ if it needs one corpse per moral dilemma?”

Eydis had disagreed, of course. Quietly. Philosophically. But it was also, inconveniently, a hot take. In several senses of the word.

It was the kind of statement that made her want to kiss Astra. Or debate her for three hours straight. Or both, ideally in that order.

But anyway…

Chimera didn’t take orders from the Legion. He did whatever he wanted. Including working with the Fixers.

He. Yes. Chimera was a he, someone who had broken into a high-security archive requiring precise retina scans and stolen the hard copies of the student council’s profiles. The Ravens had read the report. It included not just ability listings, but academic evaluations and performance scores.

And Eydis had a fairly good idea who he was. She had taken an educated guess, and it turned out…

She wasn’t wrong.

Now, she leaned against a twisted willow, arms loosely folded, half in shadow. “Tell me, Adam,” she said calmly. “Did Elias join the Obsidian Legion because of you?”

Adam paled instantly. His gaze flitted to Astra, then back to Eydis, too fast to hide the panic.

“How could—what does that have to do with anything?”

She shrugged. “Between you and Elias, one of you is Chimera. You already know that.”

Adam flinched. Sharply.

Oh, he knew.

“I think we’re done here,” he snapped, taking a step towards the door.

“Are we?” Eydis pushed off the tree with a lazy grace. “That’s a shame. I thought you cared about Elias.”

He scowled. “I guess you don’t want to help.”

“Oh, we do,” she said. “We’re just not running a charity.”

“So you’re asking for payment. Blackmail, basically,” he retorted, the polished schoolboy tone finally cracking. “Not that I’m admitting anything. Or that Chimera’s even real. The Obsidian Legion isn’t some criminal ring.”

“Aren’t they?” Eydis tilted her head.

His usually gentle blue eyes hardened. “It’s decentralised. It’s just a forum, an idea. You can’t trace anything back to one person. And you definitely can’t prove I was ever part of it.”

“Of course not,” Astra said, her voice colder than Eydis’s. “Just some encrypted forum full of ghosts. Nothing to see, nothing to trace.”

“That’s called circumstantial. And I’m still underage. No hard evidence, no case. So no.” Adam’s eyes sparked with confidence. “You don’t have leverage.”

Eydis’s lips curved with amusement. He was clever, and he knew his rights. Maybe that was why he hadn’t hesitated to admit his connection to the Obsidian Legion.

Charming. 

Useful.

“I have to admit,” she mused, “the structure was elegant. Whoever set it up knew what they were doing.”

Astra gave a single nod. “Distributed tasks. Minimal exposure. And you’re seventeen. Gifted. Elite. Worst case, you get grounded.”

Adam visibly relaxed.

“But,” Eydis added, “Elias is nineteen. No elite status. And his fingerprints as Chimera go back years. He’d be the one they’d come for.”

That landed. Hard.

Adam’s face darkened. There was static beneath his fingers, as if he instinctively activated defensive mode. Behind Eydis, even the willow tree seemed to hold its breath.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Adam said. His voice was lower now. “You don’t know who Chimera is. Or what Elias has or hasn’t done.”

“Doesn’t she?” Astra asked. “Do you really want to find out?”

Eydis’s grin sharpened. “People slip, Adam. No one’s flawless. Even the ones who think they’ve erased every trace.”

She stepped closer and leaned in just enough to make him flinch. “And I happen to be very, very good at finding flaws. Especially those who think they’re safe in the shadows.”

Astra’s lips twitched. “Would you like to see how the International Vanguard Watchers handle a nineteen-year-old hacker with a confirmed link to Fixers and black-market networks?”

“The Council is methodical, I imagine?” Eydis turned to her.

“They’d analyse him first. Then they’d build a cell,” Astra shot a sharp glance at Adam. “Custom-fit to his Gift.”

Eydis didn’t blink. “But once they start studying him… they might realise a cell isn’t necessary.”

Adam froze.

They all knew what she meant.

Shape-shifting wasn’t rare. Rare was too weak a word. It was the kind of Gift that rewrote rules simply by existing. A body that could become anyone, anything.

The system, the machine designed to track, tag, and classify, had no idea what to do with someone like Elias.

Maybe that was why he always asked for coin, enough to vanish when he needed to. Or maybe it was greed. But Eydis didn’t think so.

Then why was he here? Still here. Exposed. Pretending so hard to pass as a Nature Gift. Aligning himself with an idealistic hacker group. Turning himself into a willow tree.

Her gaze flickered back to Adam.

All of it pointed in one direction. Too many lies orbiting too specific a truth. A single person.

Eydis blinked. Oh. Life does like to surprise you.

“You’re bluffing,” he said quietly, as if still trying to convince himself. “If you really knew who Chimera was, you’d have already handed him over.”

“That’s the thing. I could,” Eydis shrugged. “Assuming I cared about moral clarity.”

Adam looked up. “Then what are you interested in?”

“Like you said, the Obsidian Legion members aren’t strictly black hat or white hat. They weren’t trying to burn the world down.” Her eyes turned thoughtful. “Most of them… just wanted to change something. Anything.”

Her voice lowered. “Even if it was just a little.”

Eydis could feel Astra’s gaze land heavily on her. But she didn’t return the look. Not yet. Because she knew Astra could read between the lines. And she wasn’t ready for that kind of honesty.

Adam’s eyes shimmered with conflicting emotion. Eydis could sense it: distrust, fear… and something quieter. Like understanding.

“You’re telling me this instead of turning us in because you want something,” he murmured. “Hypothetically.”

He shut his eyes, took a deep breath. Then opened them again. “What are your terms?”

Eydis smiled. “Now we’re making progress.”

He held his breath, waiting for her to name the terms, the conditions, the price.

Instead, her gaze turned mischievous.

“And since you’ve been so transparent,” she said, staring into Adam’s eyes, “perhaps we’ll return the favour. A secret for a secret.”

Astra’s eyes widened in visible surprise. “Eydis—”

Eydis didn’t break eye contact. She gently pressed a finger to Astra’s lips, light and lingering, just enough to make Adam straighten where he sat on the bed.

For a moment, all conversation stopped.

When Astra’s lips parted slightly beneath her fingertip, a thought crossed Eydis’s mind. A thought she should not have entertained. A temptation she didn’t question.

Her fingertip pressed a fraction deeper, dipped just past the edge. Heat met skin. Softness, slick and startling. Astra exhaled, a breath she hadn’t meant to hold slipping free.

Dangerous.

Then Eydis withdrew, her finger dragging gently as it left. She brought it to her own lips and tapped once.

Almost absentmindedly. 

But not quite.

It tasted faintly of cherry lip balm. Her heart quickened.

Astra blushed. 

Adam groaned. 

Eydis grinned. “Now, where were we? Ah. The virus.”

Adam looked confused. “A virus?”

“The one affecting Elias. The one spreading globally.” She waved a hand. “You were right. It’s not a seasonal cold.”

“Eydis,” Astra warned again.

Eydis continued anyway. “Hallucinations. Mana disruption. Impaired judgment. It behaves like a virus. Just smarter. And digital.”

She turned her eyes to Astra, expectantly, hoping Astra understood where she was going.

And to Eydis’s delight, she did.

Astra exhaled, resigned. “A digital virus. We think it was hidden in common file formats: videos, PDFs, maybe even previews. Subtle enough to slip past standard filters.”

Adam frowned. “That still doesn’t explain the hallucinations. Or the mana instability.”

“Hypnotic code,” Astra lied without blinking. “Pattern triggers. Audio layering. Visual flickers. The kind of thing the brain processes before you’re aware of it.”

Eydis resisted the urge to applaud. Or revisit the earlier distraction involving cherry-flavoured lip balm and Astra’s mouth. She was a Queen. Not a hormonal teenager in a magical coming-of-age novel.

She refocused. “It doesn’t affect everyone. But when it does take hold, people stop doubting. They see things that aren’t there, hear voices, feel things. Even the nonsense starts to feel like revelation.”

Adam looked increasingly uneasy. “That sounds insane. But… given the scale of this ‘flu’…”

Eydis’s smile widened. “Stranger things have happened, haven’t they?”

Adam ran a hand through his black hair. “If it’s spreading online, we might still have time to contain it. But if it was downloaded locally…”

“It is online,” Eydis cut in. “It was never designed to corrupt machines. Just people.”

Astra followed smoothly. “A virus triggered by sight would spread fastest through what people watch, not what they click. My guess.”

Adam perked up. “Videos. Previews. Autoplay. That would explain embedded frame patterns.”

Eydis met Astra’s eyes. There was something quiet in the look. Not quite fondness, but close. “Precisely.”

Adam nodded slowly. “If we find the source, we just delete it. Kill the virus at the root.”

Eydis didn’t answer right away. She could’ve told him it wasn’t that simple.

“You could,” she said. “But purging it outright would be unwise.”

Adam frowned. “Why?”

Because if Lust had truly embedded itself in the network, if it had learned to feed through signals and impressions, then purging it outright wouldn’t kill it.

It would simply displace it.

And cornered too quickly, it might retreat. Slip past the net and reappearing somewhere else. Then, it would start again.

But Adam didn’t need to know that.

What he needed was direction. “It’s adaptive,” she said instead. “Possibly autonomous. You’re dealing with something that learns. Something that reacts when threatened.”

Astra shot her a curious look. As if wondering whether she’d said too much. Eydis ignored it.

Adam leaned forward. “Are you saying it’s… an AI virus?”

“Exactly,” Eydis said.

He rubbed his jaw. “Then… hmm…”

“If we make it feel cornered too soon, we lose it,” Eydis continued, gently nudging. “But if we guide it, gently, toward a space of our choosing…”

Astra picked up the thread. “We can isolate it. Force it onto a contained physical server. Cut it off from the net. Shut it down manually.”

“A honeypot server?” Adam blinked. “That… actually could work.”

Eydis thought so too.

She leaned into Astra, her shoulder brushing gently against hers. Astra leaned back. It was a quiet way of answering, and it made Eydis want to reach out and lace their fingers together. But she let the thought hang for now, and turned to Adam.

“So?” she asked, almost hopeful. “Can you and the Legion do it?”

Adam hesitated, frowning. “Maybe. I could draft a mission vague enough to catch interest. But the internet’s massive.”

He paused, then muttered, “Hypothetically.”

Eydis rolled her eyes.

“Even if we narrow it down, how would we isolate it?” Adam asked.

“I believe we should focus on one website,” Eydis replied. “Quality over quantity.”

“Assuming we’re right,” Adam said, sighing. “How do you stop it from escaping? Even if the Legion overwhelms the site, the virus could copy itself during the attack. Piggyback off a user session, dump itself into a local cache, or migrate to another domain before we lock it down.”

Eydis and Astra exchanged a look.

Then Astra asked, “What about someone more skilled? Could a higher-tier hacker pull it off?”

Adam shook his head. “Not unless you want to trip half the world’s cyber-defense systems. You’d trigger red flags across civilian and military networks. And unless I give the Legion something clear and motivating to aim for, they won’t touch it.”

Eydis barely understood the technical jargon. But the last thing she wanted was to attract attention, and that very much sounded like she would.

Well. That was a problem.

She glanced at Astra, who seemed deep in thought. A quiet exchange passed between them.

It seemed… for now, they were stuck.