Chapter 139: Retreat and the Shadow in the Night

Ethan broke free.

The moment the crushing gravitational pressure dissolved, he lunged sideways across the pavement. His left arm shot out, grabbing Daisy by the waist, and with a desperate flicker of his spatial authority, he pulled her straight into the safety of the Survival Space.

He was left standing alone on the shattered street, surrounded by swirling dust and the dying echoes of the drake’s roar.

He knew better than to teleport directly back to the underground air-raid shelter. If the Blackscale Drake possessed even a lingering trace of sensory tracking that could lock onto his departure coordinate, leading a Quasi-King Rank beast directly to the vulnerable women in that cramped bunker would mean absolute slaughter.

Instead, Ethan locked his consciousness onto the second Space Anchor Point he had established earlier~the isolated balcony of Victoria’s villa in Century Skyline.

The moment his spatial energy surged, a blinding ring of white light enveloped his battered frame.

Across the street, the Blackscale Drake violently shook its horned head, tearing Daisy’s psychic threads from its consciousness with a savage snarl. The localized spatial suppression snapped back into place almost instantly, but it was a fraction of a second too late.

The microscopic gap in the barrier was still open.

As the dimensional distortion swallowed him, Ethan caught one last glimpse of the beast.

The drake’s golden eyes blazed with apocalyptic fury. It lunged forward with terrifying speed, its colossal front claw descending like a falling boulder straight onto the spot where he stood.

BOOM!

The pavement caved inward under the devastating kinetic blast, sending pulverized asphalt and concrete raining down in all directions. A fresh crater half a meter deep smoked in the morning light.

Yet Ethan was already gone.

A flash of pale white light flared in the sheltered corner of the second-floor balcony at Victoria’s villa.

Ethan stumbled out of the spatial rift, his boots skidding across the dusty marble floor. The sudden kinetic deceleration jarred his shattered right wrist, sending white-hot agony shooting up his arm, while the deep lacerations across his back tore open once more.

Warm, dark blood immediately soaked through the remnants of his shirt, dripping steadily onto the cold stone.

He staggered against the balcony railing, his vision swimming with dark spots. Clenching his jaw, he forced his trembling hand to maintain focus, opening the dimensional gateway to his Survival Space and pulling himself inside.

The instant he crossed the threshold into the vast expanse of dark soil and green light, the absolute quiet of the haven washed over him.

Nearby, several women were gathered near the wooden cabin, speaking in hushed, anxious tones.

At the sound of his ragged breathing, they turned toward him.

The casual atmosphere shattered in an instant.

"Ethan!"

Debbie’s face drained of every drop of color. Sofia dropped the basket of clean bandages she had been sorting, her hands flying to her mouth, while the others rushed forward in sheer panic, staring in horror at the gore coating his body. Further away, Rose remained motionless and comatose on her clean medical cot, peaceful and undisturbed by the chaos.

Ethan raised a trembling, bloodstained left hand, his voice raspy, strained, and barely audible over the roaring in his ears.

"Quick..." he forced the words past his cracked lips. "Help me heal. Both of you."

His dark eyes settled directly on Debbie and Tessa.

Both women froze for a split second, an involuntary, faint blush rising to their cheeks as they understood the nature of his request and the close, intimate contact required for their support abilities to stabilize his shredded meridians. But looking at the bone visible in his fractured wrist and the necrotic acid burns eating into his chest, neither hesitated for another heartbeat.

They rushed to his sides, wrapping their arms around his waist and shoulders to take his heavy weight. Together, they supported his stumbling steps into the private bedroom of the cabin and pulled the heavy wooden door shut, cutting off the frightened murmurs of the others outside.

Two agonizing, silent hours slipped past.

When the cabin door finally clicked open, Debbie and Tessa stepped out into the open air of the Survival Space. Both women were breathing shallowly, their faces flushed a delicate crimson and their hair slightly disheveled from the intense exertion, though their eyes held profound relief.

Inside the quiet room, Ethan leaned back against the sturdy wooden headboard of the bed.

Thick, fresh rolls of sterile gauze wrapped tightly around his chest, shoulders, and back, smelling faintly of herbal antiseptics and clean cotton. His fractured right wrist had been set, wrapped in rigid splints, and bound securely. Yet even beneath the layers of clean dressing, a stubborn seep of dark crimson stained the center of his chest bandages, where the Blackscale Drake’s corrosive bile had bored deepest into his flesh.

Ethan stared down at his wrapped forearm, letting out a long, heavy breath that rattled against his ribs.

I’ll need at least three full days of absolute rest and biological recovery before I can even think of tracking that Red-Haired Monkey again, he thought grimly, closing his eyes against the throbbing ache in his bones.

This brutal clash had forced him to swallow a bitter, unavoidable truth.

His personal strength had grown immensely since the dawn of the apocalypse. Upgraded to Quasi-S-Rank Space Mastery and backed by three pinnacle powers, he was no longer the helpless salaryman who had to run from every low-tier ghoul. He had managed to bypass the drake’s iron scales, wound its neck, and successfully crack open an apex Space Imprisonment.

Yet the sheer, unbridgeable chasm between a Quasi-S-Rank human and a Quasi-King Rank mutant titan was still terrifyingly vast.

If Daisy had been half a second slower in deploying her peak A-Rank psychic needle, or if his one-second Time Stop had failed to freeze the creature mid-breath, he would be nothing more than a puddle of liquefied bone on that asphalt right now.

Ethan let his head rest back against the wooden wall, his breathing slowly evening out as exhaustion pulled him down into sleep.

Outside the pocket dimension, the cold morning sun climbed, peaked, and slowly sank beneath the western horizon. Twilight swallowed the ruined villas of Century Skyline, plunging the opulent neighborhood into thick, shadowy darkness.

----

Eight o’clock that night.

In the dark bedroom of the wooden cabin, Ethan’s eyes snapped open.

His heightened spatial perception~intertwined with the villa’s Space Anchor Point~had detected a faint, rhythmic vibration shifting the quiet air of the physical world.

Ignoring the dull ache flaring across his back, Ethan sat up smoothly and channeled a thread of mental energy. Before his eyes, a translucent, ethereal screen materialized, projecting a live spatial surveillance view of the dark grounds surrounding Victoria’s abandoned villa.

Under the cold, silvery wash of moonlight, a slender, dark silhouette was slipping through the overgrown ornamental hedges flanking the driveway.

Ethan narrowed his eyes, leaning closer to the glowing projection.

The figure belonged to a young woman, dressed in dark, fitted clothing that allowed her to blend seamlessly into the shadows. She moved with practiced, astonishing caution, pausing every few yards beside broken stone statues and withered palms to listen intently to the night breeze.

Moonlight caught the sharp, delicate contour of her side profile for a fleeting microsecond. She possessed a youthful, clean jawline and high cheekbones, her hair tied back into a tight, practical ponytail. She wasn’t wandering aimlessly like a dazed survivor searching for scraps of bread. Her footing was light, deliberate, and purposeful, as though she had memorized the exact layout of this estate long before the world collapsed.

After sweeping her gaze across the dark windows of the second floor, the mysterious girl bypassed the front entrance entirely.

She glided silently toward the narrow stone staircase on the eastern flank of the villa~the direct exterior entrance leading into the dark basement crawlspace.

Her footsteps were so feather-light that she barely disturbed the dust settling over the concrete. Within seconds, her slender frame ducked beneath the lintel and disappeared down into the pitch-black subterranean rooms.

Ethan sat in the dim light of the cabin, his brow furrowing into a deep, calculating frown.

Someone else is living in Victoria’s villa?

He stared at the empty doorway on the projection screen, the lingering fatigue in his chest instantly supplanted by cold, sharp suspicion.

Victoria had broken down in tears recounting the deaths of her husband, her brother, and her sister-in-law. Yet the moment he had offered to accompany her down into that exact basement to retrieve her belongings, she had nearly suffered a panic attack, shouting at him to stay on the balcony before fleeing down the steps alone.

Ethan’s eyes turned cold as the pieces clicked together.

So this is the secret she couldn’t bring herself to confess.