Chapter 375: First Public Incident

By the time they returned to Nexus City, the sun was already beginning to set.

From above, the city looked even larger than it had when Kai first arrived. Cars filled the elevated roads, airships drifted between floating platforms, and Hunter teams moved through the districts below.

While massive screens on the sides of buildings flashed news, advertisements, Disaster reports, and Hunter rankings. It all looked normal, almost peaceful.

Kai leaned back in his seat and let himself relax for the first time since Aegis.

Then Gabriel’s communicator rang, and her expression changed the moment she looked at the screen.

Sera noticed. "What happened?"

Gabriel sighed. "We have a problem."

Kai opened his eyes. "What kind?"

Gabriel turned the screen toward them. A news article was already spreading across Nexus.

ANCIENT RUIN ACTIVATED: MYTHAL’S CITY LEADER AMONG FIRST EXPLORERS

WHAT DID KAI FIND IN AEGIS?

RANK ONE HUNTER DISCOVERS SECOND ANCIENT SITE

Kai stared at the headlines. "That was fast."

Lily checked the view counts. "Very fast."

Sera leaned over and smiled. "Oh, this is going to be fun."

Kai looked at her. "For who?"

"For me."

Gabriel laughed. "You should have expected this."

"I was hoping everyone would be too busy with their own lives."

Sera shook her head. "You’re the Rank One Hunter who survived three Disasters, and you just came back from one of the oldest ruins on the continent."

Kai frowned. "I didn’t ask for any of that."

"That’s never stopped the news."

Lily kept scrolling. "It gets worse. They’re calling you..." She paused. "The Aegis Hunter."

"No," Kai said.

Sera burst out laughing. "Oh, that’s terrible."

"I don’t like it."

"I love it."

Gabriel smiled. "Be grateful they didn’t choose something worse."

"Give them time," Kai muttered.

"Apparently, several media companies are already arguing about what your connection to Aegis is," Lily said.

Kai sighed. "I don’t have a connection to Aegis."

Sera looked at him. "You walked into an ancient ruin."

"Yes."

"The ancient creatures recognized you."

"Yes."

"A ruin called you a Candidate."

Kai paused. "Yes."

"And an ancient statue that looked like you reacted to you."

Kai stared at her. "...You aren’t helping."

"I wasn’t trying to."

The moment the airship landed, Kai understood how much things had changed. Thousands of people were waiting outside, held back by security barriers that had already been set up around the platform. News vans lined the street, camera drones filled the air, and reporters pressed against the barriers.

When Kai stepped off the airship, the crowd erupted. People shouted his name and his titles, called him the Hunter who cleared the Six Calamities, and fired questions at him about Aegis and whether the ruins had woken up because of him.

Kai stopped, and Sera walked past him, looking completely amused. "You’re famous."

Kai slowly turned to her. "I was already famous."

Sera grinned. "Not here."

"I was recognized when we first arrived."

"Recognized?" She looked around at the crowd. "This is different."

Kai looked at the cameras, and she was right. When they first arrived, people had recognized him as the famous Hunter from Mythal, but this wasn’t about what he had done. It was about what seemed to happen around him. Ancient ruins had awakened after he arrived, Aegis had recognized him, stone warriors had knelt before him, and now another ruin had been found with Kai standing right in the middle of it. People weren’t just asking who he was anymore. They were asking what he was.

A reporter pushed forward. "Kai! Is it true that the Aegis ruins identified you as a Candidate?"

Kai glanced at Sera and kept walking.

"Did you know Aegis was connected to the Three Disasters?" another reporter shouted.

Kai paused for half a second, because that question was dangerous. He turned his head. "The ruins contained historical records."

"Did those records identify the Third Disaster as the King of the Sky?"

Kai said nothing, and the reporter’s eyes widened. That silence was all it took.

The cameras went wild, and questions came from every direction. Did he know? Was Bahamut the Third Disaster? Why hadn’t he told Nexus, and was Mythal hiding information from the rest of the continent?

Gabriel stepped forward. "That’s enough."

Her voice wasn’t loud, but it didn’t need to be. The Archbishop’s authority silenced the reporters closest to her.

"This investigation is ongoing," she said. "The information recovered from Aegis has not yet been verified."

One reporter raised his voice anyway. "But did the ruins recognize Kai?"

Gabriel glanced at Kai, then back at the cameras. "Yes."

The crowd erupted again, and Kai looked at her.

Gabriel gave him an apologetic smile. "I wasn’t going to lie."

"I know."

"Why did they recognize him?" someone shouted.

Gabriel shook her head. "We don’t know."

Somehow, that answer made everything worse.

Sera leaned toward Kai as the cameras kept flashing. "You look miserable."

"I am."

"Good."

Kai looked at her. "You’re enjoying this way too much."

"Yes."

Lily caught up with them. "There’s another problem."

Kai sighed. "What now?"

She held up her tablet, where a live news feed was running with a new headline.

WHY ARE ANCIENT RUINS ACTIVATING AROUND KAI?

Beneath it were three images, Kai arriving in Nexus, the ruins of Aegis, and the stone warriors kneeling before him.

Kai stared at the last one. "...They got a picture?"

"Several," Lily said.

Sera studied the screen. "That one’s actually pretty cool."

Kai looked at both of them. "I’m surrounded by traitors."

Gabriel laughed as they finally made it past security and into the main building. Kai had hoped the attention would fade once they were inside, but it didn’t. People recognized him immediately. Some stared, some whispered, and a few Hunters came right up to him.

"Are you really the guy from Aegis?" one asked.

"Yeah."

"Did the ruins actually move when you went in?"

"Yes."

"Did you fight anything?"

"A few things."

"How strong were they?"

"Strong."

The Hunter stared at him. "That doesn’t help."

Kai shrugged.

Another Hunter stepped forward. "Is it true the creatures knelt?"

Kai hesitated. "Yes."

"Why?"

"I don’t know."

That answer followed him all the way through the building. He had been back for less than an hour, and the story had already spread everywhere, but Kai noticed something else too. The Hunter Association wasn’t treating him like a celebrity. It was watching him like a key.

The difference was subtle, but it was there. Senior Hunters went quiet when he passed, researchers stared at his equipment, and relic specialists studied him with open curiosity. Officials who had barely acknowledged him on his first visit suddenly wanted meetings. The ruins hadn’t changed his rank or his title. They had made him part of Nexus’s oldest mystery, and everyone knew it.

Sera noticed his expression. "You hate this."

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Because people are going to start asking questions I don’t have answers to."

Sera’s smile faded slightly. "You’re worried about the wrong questions. The real question is why the ruins know you." She looked at him. "You’ve been thinking about it since Aegis."

"I’ve been thinking about a lot of things."

"I know. And you don’t have to tell me everything."

Kai raised an eyebrow. "You’ve said that before."

Sera smiled. "And I still mean it."

Before Kai could answer, Gabriel’s communicator rang again. She listened, and her expression slowly changed.

"What happened?" Kai asked.

Gabriel lowered the communicator. "There’s another media group outside. They want an interview."

"No."

"I assumed you’d say that."

Sera laughed. "Do it."

"No."

"You might become even more famous."

"I don’t want to."

"Too bad."

Kai gave her a look, and Sera smiled innocently.

Then the doors burst open, and a reporter rushed inside with several camera operators behind her. Security moved to stop them, but she shouted across the hall before they could reach her. "Kai! Just one question!"

Kai looked at Gabriel, who shook her head. "We should leave."

But the reporter was already speaking. "Are you the reason the ancient ruins are awakening?"

The entire hall went silent.

Kai looked at her, then at the cameras, then toward the distant skyline of Nexus. He didn’t answer, because he genuinely didn’t know, and because deep down, he was starting to fear that the answer might be yes.

A low rumble shook the building, and everyone froze. A second tremor followed, the floor vibrating beneath their feet, and outside, people began screaming.

Kai turned to the windows as a massive crack split the street. Concrete broke apart, cars skidded to a stop, and people ran as the ground at the center of Nexus began to rise. Ancient stone tore up through the modern streets, and the surrounding buildings shook as something enormous pushed its way to the surface.

A tower emerged from beneath the city. It was impossibly old, older than the roads and the buildings around it, older than Nexus itself, and ancient symbols spread across its surface and began to glow one by one.

Lily stared through the window, and her face went pale. "No..."

Kai looked at her. "What?"

She pointed at the tower. "The symbols."

Kai’s eyes narrowed, because he recognized them too. They were the same symbols from Aegis, with the same ancient language, the same broken circle, and the same seven-point pattern.

The highest symbol on the tower lit up, and a voice echoed across Nexus City. It didn’t come through speakers or any kind of technology. It simply appeared in the air.

"THE SECOND POINT HAS AWAKENED."

Kai’s expression hardened.

Sera stepped beside him. "...Kai."

He looked at the ancient tower rising in the middle of the city.

"I think your problem just got much bigger," Sera said quietly.