Chapter 171: Releasing The Rescued Captives, An Uknown Vigilante Shakes The World

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The Giants nodded silently behind Riven as the rescued people sighed in exhaustion. Some of them even begged him not to send them away so quickly, but Riven did it anyway. He simply did not have the time to worry about or take care of so many people at once. He had rescued them, he had healed them, and that was already more than enough. At the end of the day they were not his personal responsibility, as cruel and cold as that might sound. With so little time remaining before the pruning of the Earth, Riven could not afford to waste a single moment.

Noir helped him without needing to be asked. The shadow hound emerged from the underground and opened a huge black portal that swallowed the entire group of survivors. Noir opened the black portal carefully, teleporting all the people directly in front of the waiting police.

The police officers panicked at once, stepping back in alarm as dozens of people emerged one after another until the entire area was completely filled.

The black portal yawned open like a wound in reality right in the middle of the ruined restaurant’s back alley, just beyond the yellow police tape.

Emergency lights still strobed red and blue across the shattered windows and overturned tables. The air still smelled of ozone, scorched wood, and the faint metallic tang of residual spiritual energy.

Half a dozen Central City Hunter-Division officers and regular precinct cops were still photographing the crater that used to be the private dining room when the shadows themselves ripped apart without warning.

"Contact! Dimensional anomaly—south alley!" Sergeant Silvester Voss barked into his radio the instant the swirling void appeared. His hand went instinctively to the grip of his standard-issue mana pistol. "All units, fallback positions! This is not a standard Gate!"

Noir’s massive shadow-wreathed form remained just inside the portal’s edge, completely invisible to mortal eyes, while the first of the captives stumbled out into the night air. Then another followed. Then ten more. Within thirty seconds the narrow alley was overflowing with more than sixty men and women of every age.

Some still wore torn servant robes, others the ragged remnants of business suits or ordinary street clothes. Many blinked against the bright streetlights as though they had not seen real sky in months. A few dropped to their knees and wept the moment their feet finally touched ordinary concrete.

"Hands where I can see them! Nobody move!" a younger officer shouted, his voice cracking with tension. His partner already had a containment barrier relic ready to activate.

The captives froze in place. Some raised empty hands. Others simply stared ahead, too exhausted or too grateful to care about the weapons pointed at them.

Riven watched everything from the deepest pocket of shadow twenty meters away, his cloak drawn tightly around his body. His eyes narrowed as he observed the scene in complete silence. Label, the four ninjas, and Noir stood with him, perfectly still. None of them stepped into the light.

Sergeant Voss lowered his weapon a fraction when he finally saw the true state of the people. His eyes widened as he realized they were all captives who had likely been kidnapped for a long time. They carried no weapons and showed no aggressive auras despite being low-ranked Awakened. Most simply had hollow eyes and the kind of bone-deep fatigue that only long captivity could produce. He keyed his radio again, his voice tighter now.

"Command, this is Voss. We have approximately sixty civilians exiting an unauthorized shadow-type portal at the former Yakuza-linked restaurant site. They appear to be rescuees, not hostiles. Requesting full medical and victim-support teams, and a Class-B anomaly lockdown. Notify the Hunter Association liaison immediately. This matches the profile of the missing-persons cluster linked to the Yakuza and perhaps the Yokai Guild."

Sirens began to multiply in the distance. More black-and-white units and two armored Hunter vans were already rolling toward the block at high speed.

One of the older captives, a woman whose wrists still bore faint rope scars, spoke first from within the crowd. "We were... we were taken. By the Yakuza people. They kept us in that place, the Living Castle. They fed some of us to... to things. A man and his companions saved us. They healed us. Then they brought us here."

"What man?" Voss pressed, already recording every word. "Name? Affiliation? Hunter rank? Who saved you? Where is he right now?!"

The woman shook her head helplessly. "We never learned his name. He wore a dark cloak. There was a black dog made of pure shadows... and others with him. They never showed their faces. They just said the police would take care of us and that we were free now."

Murmurs of agreement rose from the other captives. A few pointed vaguely toward the already-closing portal, but by the time the officers swung their flashlights in that direction, the black rift had sealed itself with a soft thump, leaving only ordinary night air behind. It was completely gone.

Riven exhaled once in quiet satisfaction. "That’s enough. Let’s go."

Noir melted silently back into the ground. Shadow Travel folded around the entire group like a thick curtain made of pure night. In the space between one heartbeat and the next they vanished from the alley, reappearing three blocks away atop a quiet rooftop. The city lights glittered below them. There were no cameras or witnesses nearby, and no residual signature strong enough for the Hunter Division’s scanners to track, because Riven had also layered Veil of Invisibility together with Noir’s Shadow Travel.

Once they were far enough away, Riven took out his car from his inventory and invited everyone inside. The vehicle was barely large enough to fit them all, yet he drove back home with a calm and relieved smile on his face.

The sun had already descended, and the night had fully taken over the city. The lights of the streets illuminated everything around them, creating a genuine sense of freedom that they had not felt in a long while.

It was a complex mixture of lingering fear and quiet excitement, coupled with deep relief... and also a lingering uncertainty about what would come next.

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