Chapter 99: Controllable Chaos

"..." Neither of the Nios has said a word to the other since they woke up. Nioh has things she wants to say — she could talk about Typhon’s manipulation, about the twisted half-truths, about what she actually felt.

She could speak her side, defend herself. But the fear mixed with jealousy and rage keeps Nioh from saying the things that might make Nio see the manipulation more clearly.

After all, Nio knows she’s being deceived by Typhon in some ways, but she also feels deceived by Nioh, who never said anything about the past.

Meanwhile, Nio — out of a mix of pride, selfishness, and hurt — asks Nioh nothing and doesn’t try to explain anything either. Their relationship was already cracked from the moment Nioh tricked her into laying an egg, and now, with what Typhon said, that crack has been laid bare.

It’s driven the two of them into a fight with each other, at the worst possible time. Night has already fallen, and according to Nio’s schedule, all the crystals are about to activate and Raid attacks will happen en masse in several places.

She should be focused on that, but her attention is fragmented between what she learned from Typhon, her fight with Nioh, and her goal.

While they sit in that strange, silent standoff, black portals with silver centers appear in the sky over every place where a Raid was active.

The populations of those kingdoms look up as the portals slowly expand, opening wide for the Raid to begin. The System sends a timer to every adventurer and soldier who chose to take part.

The counter shows one hour until full activation, which puts everyone on edge — not just because Stelaria was right, but because this thing interacted with the System, something never seen before.

Since everyone received a concrete time for the supposed attack to begin, they spend the next few minutes gathering into groups and debating what might actually happen when the timer runs out.

"What do you make of it, Aster?" A man in silver armor asks Aster. His armor is sturdy, like a silver war tank, and he’s quite tall even accounting for the bulk of the armor.

"Gin... National Rank of the Empire... how did you know it was me?" Aster asks, curious that Gin recognized Aster even in a new body. Almost no one can recognize Aster when "he" switches bodies.

"You know I’m very old. I’ve seen you pull that trick a few times. So you picked a girl this time? I figure she must have magical talent if you chose her. So... how about we skip the boring talk? What do you make of that thing in the sky?" Gin gestures toward the portal above.

"What can I say, Gin... hmmm... there’s a lot of magic, but it doesn’t seem to be made of magic specifically. It looks more like a fissure opening from one point to another, like a portal. It means something from the other side is going to come through. It seems one-way, so there’s no going in," Aster says, sounding uninterested.

"Shouldn’t you be with the Emperor?" Gin asks, confused that the Empire’s strongest mage isn’t defending the Emperor at a time like this.

"The Emperor is safe even without me nearby. And we don’t know the threat level. Besides, I was interested in taking part in this. You—" Aster glances at the counter and notices it dropping absurdly fast, shattering the adventurers’ calm. The time quickly drops from forty minutes remaining to zero in just thirty seconds.

"..." Aster looks at the adventurers below from the rooftop, complaining that this makes no sense. But Aster sees it from another angle.

"Something just accelerated the counter until it hit zero, deliberately breaking the implicit rules," Aster says to Gin while grabbing a staff and preparing for whatever comes out of the portal.

"What do you mean?"

"When the counter appeared, we all expected the attack to happen only when it ended. That kept everyone calmer until the time came. But now the time ran out abruptly. Something sped it up on purpose, and I think—" Before Aster can say anything else, creatures start falling from the portal, dropping to the ground.

Along with those creatures, black spheres fall and split open when they hit the ground, revealing beings that look like wolves but extremely deformed, with countless eyes and mouths across their bodies and spiny fur.

All of them in the most varied shapes, some extremely grotesque. And because the portal is in the middle of the Empire and only appeared a short while ago, there wasn’t time to simply pull people back — so there are civilians in the middle of all this, even with the Emperor’s relocation orders in place.

Monsters begin attacking everything in sight while Gin leaps from the rooftop to the ground. When he lands, everything around him cracks and some nearby houses crumble. He charges forward in a rush, going head-on against the monsters.

"..." Aster keeps watching, seeing monsters he’s never seen in his life appear.

"They seem weak, level 15–30 at most... I can see two level 35 monsters, but nothing beyond that... though the enemy numbers will be a problem if they keep appearing." Aster looks down and sees a group of adventurers being killed by something that looks like a muscular humanoid toad that dismembers and devours them.

The thing looks at Aster and fires a purple slime that hits the barrier around Aster. With a single swing of the staff, countless ice stakes pierce every nearby monster with impressive mastery and precision.

"That’s mid-level magic... if they’re losing to that, then there’s nothing to worry about... but the portal..." Aster glances at the System. There’s no indicator of when it ends.

’We have to close the portal ourselves? Killing monsters won’t help if they keep coming... I think I’ll attack the portal.’ Aster spins the staff in his hands, building up magic.

"High-Level Magic Spatial Damage Amplification, High-Level Magic [Death Ray]" A purple-black beam that distorts the space around it is fired at the portal, killing every monster in its path and creating a blur in the sky. But instead of shrinking, the portal grows larger, and more monsters pour out.

"Level 40... level 50... level 55... Tsk..." Aster regrets what he said. Stronger monsters just appeared — thousands of them poured out of the portal before it closed. The monsters start gaining the advantage through their unexpectedly massive numbers.

"There are at least three to four thousand of them, most around level 30, but still, there are at least one hundred level 50 monsters and thirty level 55 monsters... looks like I’ll have to take this seriously... at least the portal closed. Could be worse." Aster starts flying with magic while searching for National Rank adventurers to group up with against the stronger monsters.