Chapter 250

A suffocating silence settled over Monitoring Team 159. Other than the sounds coming from the screens, the room stayed so quiet that even the drop of a pin would have sounded like thunder. The team members watched without even remembering to breathe as Do-Jin rushed toward the place where the final stage would unfold.

“Oh my...!”

The silence finally broke when someone let out a strangled gasp that sounded almost like a scream. The moment Do-Jin’s golden circuits tangled together with Sion’s, the atmosphere snapped tight.

That was when the real fight had begun. For a brief window, Do-Jin wielded the Archmage’s power, and he handled high-tier spells with a precision that made it hard to believe he had only just gained access to them.

Whispers slipped out from every corner of the room, but the word that echoed the most was still the same.

“Please...”

When Do-Jin dove through the air in acrobatic arcs and hurled himself into dangerous charges to land decisive blows, other reactions mixed into the tension.

“Holy shit...!”

Then Aurora detonated and the fragment housing the black mist shattered. The World Devourer finally took enough damage that it could no longer hold its shape as a celestial body.

“Wooooah!”

Cheers exploded all at once. The team leaped to their feet like engineers watching a rocket launch, shouting without restraint.

The Team Leader, who had been watching more anxiously than anyone else, clenched a fist and swallowed the roar building in his throat. Nope. Not yet. It was still too early.

“Quit making noise and focus on your damn work! You think the rewards are gonna calculate themselves? Start running projections on what this quest’s payout’s gonna be! And figure out how much we can actually influence the reward pool! Also, the Fate calculation formula, damn it...! Hell, do I have to spell everything out? You all know what you’re supposed to be doing, so move!”

He rambled, got himself worked up, and ended up barking at the room all on his own. However, none of the team members looked tense or intimidated by him. Absolutely nobody tiptoed around him. They were all smiling as they watched their Team Leader because he was the one who was grinning the widest.

“Fuck it, no more acting hard,” he admitted.

“I will start preparing the system message, Team Lead.”

“Yeah, go ahead.”

He answered with a crooked smile and looked back at Do-Jin, who floated through space like a lost astronaut, completely exhausted.

Damn, he looks absurdly good right now.

Today, the world’s fate had been pushed back from the brink. And a lot of things were about to change.

***

After Do-Jin stepped beyond the world, everything that had happened until now started to look like nothing more than a trailer.

The Rift crisis escalated even further, so the frequency of new Rifts spiked, and every other indicator climbed alongside it, threatening not only the players but also the NPCs who lived throughout Lostania. Since most Rifts appeared in monster habitats, where mana pooled heavily, major metropolitan areas suffered only minor damage.

However, people without strength or money had no choice but to live in dangerous regions. For them, the threat to their lives became immediate and real. If the players had followed the early public opinion and simply waited for things to calm down, a catastrophe would have spread unchecked.

Yet a single post from Do-Jin shifted the tide. Many players chose to stand and fight instead of watching from the sidelines.

[Title: A Rift just opened at the Lv. 30 hunting zone Azure Salamander Habitat.]

[We tried to handle it ourselves, but our party is Lv. 50 and still got wiped by the boss. You’ll need at least a Lv. 60 party. Honestly, probably Lv. 70.]

└ You’re telling me even Lv. 30 zones are getting that kind of brutal Rift? Damn...

└ I’ll handle this one. I’m Lv. 120, so I should be able to solo it.

└ Rift cleared. Please add (Cleared) to the title.

└ Thanks. Updated.

[Title: It’s a high-level zone and we can’t close the Rift. What should we do?]

[The hunting ground is high level, but there’s a small village nearby. If we leave it alone, people are gonna die. Trying to figure out how to get help.]

└ Try reporting it on a major guild homepage. Or contact a streamer.

└ The fastest responders right now are the Spear Guild. If you send them the Rift coordinates, they’ll probably dispatch a squad.

Regular players, streamers, and guilds all started working together. Every time a Rift opened, someone reported it, teams mobilized, and people jumped in to contain it.

[Title: We’ve had events like this before]

[Back then it just felt like an extension of an EXP farming event, but this time it actually feels like the world’s in danger. Fighting a disaster together makes it feel like even someone like me has a role to play, and honestly... it’s fucking epic.]

└ For real, lol. I went to close a Rift in a low-level hunting ground and died doing it, but I wasn’t even pissed. Weirdly enough, I just felt proud.

└ I literally took a PTO. Saw Do-Jin’s post and didn’t even think twice. Signed up for a raid a streamer was recruiting for, and now I’ve been running crisis response nonstop.

└ Same here. People who used to bark at each other on the forums every day are suddenly working together like an emergency response team. It’s kinda overwhelming in a good way.

Players banded together, standing shoulder to shoulder against crises that no one person could handle alone. Of course, not everyone fell in line. A few idiots who never learned how to function in society tried to stir shit up.

[Title: lol who the hell does Do-Jin think he is telling us what to do?] 𝘧𝓇ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝘣𝓃ℴ

[What, are we all dying? It’s just a damn game, ffs. And all you clowns acting like it’s cool and losing your minds over it, bubbling over like a pot about to spill... It’s honestly pathetic. You can tell these losers have nothing in their lives besides games.]

└ Why is nobody leaving a comment on my post?

└ Are you all just going to keep ignoring me?

└ Hey, you clicked the post, so leave a fucking comment!

No one replied. Everyone was too busy trying not to die to waste time reading garbage like that. The trolls who sat there with their mouths open, begging for attention, eventually choked on the purest form of “do not feed the idiots” and disappeared.

└ In the Lv. 140 zone, the Poison Mushroom Hills party just got wiped. If any nearby squads can cover, get your asses over here.

└ Holy shit, the streamer SnoopCat raid just got completely annihilated. Even with stacked viewers and cracked builds, getting trapped in three Rift chains back to back was fucking impossible to handle.

└ Shilla Guild lost two main-unit parties already. The second unit has already lost like a third of their people too.

As more time passed, user casualties only got worse. The death count climbed at an exponential rate, and every new death meant one more piece of combat power disappearing from the field. Each individual loss might have seemed small on its own, but with so many players hitting game over, the overall force fighting against the Rift disaster dropped fast.

└ Fuck, Acid Rain Valley just got completely swallowed. The whole spot where the Rift used to be is blown wide open.

└ What the hell? Wasn’t Spear Guild holding that line?

└ Spear kept throwing bodies at it and finally said screw it and pulled out. The losses were too damn heavy, so they’re shifting to defend other regions instead.

└ That’s insane. Spear’s basically the number one PvE progression guild right now...

└ Number one is Do-Jin, dumbass. Who the fuck are you comparing?

└ Guild, idiot. Learn to fucking read.

The users who had been fighting the hardest on the absolute front lines started falling back toward lower-level regions. Twenty-four hours passed, then thirty hours, then thirty-five. As time dragged on, their losses kept stacking up while the Rifts and monsters only grew more aggressive.

└ At this rate the hunting zones are gonna get completely eaten alive.

└ Jesus... what the hell is even happening out there?

└ Why’s there no word from Do-Jin? When does this shit end?!

Everyone’s attention fixed on one thing: the end. They wanted this brutal grind of a fight to be over as soon as possible. They wanted Do-Jin to drop some kind of new update. They endured, held the line, and waited for that news to arrive, and when it finally did, it crashed in like thunder.

[Lostania has moved further away from the Ruin!]

[A single Regenian has achieved a mythic feat beyond the world!]

Nobody needed to ask who that “single Regenian” was.

└ It popped!

└ World message’s live! Anyone dead and locked out, jump into any stream right fucking now!

People who had been starving for good news started spreading the alert everywhere the moment the world message appeared.

[A being of immense energy has met its end in a space adjacent to Lostania.]

[The power it leaves behind will flow into Lostania and become nourishment for the world.]

[Fate and the world offer praise for this mythic feat!]

[The wounds inflicted upon Lostania are being healed.]

Just as the carcass of a fallen whale becomes food for countless creatures of the sea, the remains left behind by the fallen World Devourer flowed into Lostania, a nearby world that had avoided Ruin. Using that massive influx of power as fuel, Lostania began advancing its world phase into the next stage.

[You have crossed a branching point of fate!]

[The secrets of the sleeping world will begin to reveal themselves!]

[Hidden doors across the world that could lead to other realms are opening.]

It was the announcement of a brand-new region.

└ Wait, what? We haven’t even fully revealed the Central Continent map yet and now there’s a gate to another world?

└ Holy shit... so the Dimensional Rift invasion was a whole damn buildup for this?

└ Makes sense though. Why’re we the only ones getting invaded? It’s our turn to invade their asses too.

This was a development that had never existed in Do-Jin’s previous life. He had changed the future where the world would be torn apart by the World Devourer and had instead created a chance for Lostania to absorb an absurd amount of power. The storyline had shifted, and the future itself had warped. Nobody else knew that, but even so, Lotranet was already burning hotter than the core of the sun.

└ SCREAM IT OUTTTTT! DO-JIIIIINNNNN!

└ This is fucking insane, this is fucking insane, this is fucking insane!

└ Fuck, I’m actually crying right now. I was fighting in a Rift like ten seconds ago, and right before I died the world message popped and the Rift just vanished...

└ We did it. We actually fucking did it!

└ Players teaming up to stop an alien-level invasion... and we even unlocked a new region at the end of it...

└ This event high is fucking unreal!

└ Guys, that’s not even the main point... okay it kinda is, but look at the wording. It says “a single Regenian” achieved a “mythic feat” outside the world. That’s gotta be Do-Jin, right?

└ They’re talking about the Rift. Rifts count as other dimensions, so yeah, that’s technically outside the world.

└ What the hell is a mythic feat anyway? The world itself praising him... I’m already hyped wondering what crazy shit he pulled off.

There were too many reasons to feel proud, too many reasons to celebrate, and too many reasons to look forward to what came next. People shouted over one another, cheering without any sense of order. The cheers reached their absolute peak when another world message appeared some time later.

[World-level contribution calculations and reward distribution will begin for all Regenians who stood against the catastrophe threatening Lostania.]

The virtual reality spaces and internet communities, which had already turned into a massive festival fueled by adrenaline, finally reached a breaking point. Ecstatic, half-unhinged screams filled every corner as players lost their minds in pure hype and joy.