Chapter 189: Good Morning!

Silence.

Absolute, suffocating silence settled heavily over the entire corridor.

Except for the faint, settling crumble of pulverized concrete tumbling from the gaping impact crater, everyone remained glued to the floorboards.

Max, Ash, Vivienne, Naomi, and Rhea stood frozen in place—speechless, wide-eyed, and frankly disturbed by Sophia’s utterly casual display of terrifying, destructive force.

Yet, despite her impulsive madness, Sophia apparently possessed enough basic human etiquette not to smash straight through the main door or shatter the drywall framing the bedroom itself.

She had deliberately avoided blowing open an angle that would expose whatever scandalous, tangled business had been unfolding between the bedsheets.

Instead, the wall she had effortlessly punched clean through belonged to the attached luxury bathroom.

Inside, expensive ceramic tiles had fractured, splintered, and crashed violently across the dark marble floor like hail. 𝘧𝓇ℯℴ𝓂

Because the inner bathroom door remained securely locked from within, there was zero risk of accidental peeping into the private sleeping quarters.

"W-What...?" Rhea stammered, her voice shaking as her boots dragged several frantic steps backward.

She stared in horror at Sophia, who was nonchalantly dusting fine white masonry powder off her knuckles as if she had done nothing more remarkable than clapping chalkboard erasers.

As the dust settled, her hand looked distinctly abnormal.

Layered over her pale knuckles and fingers was a dense, fibrous weave of dark, textured tree bark.

The botanical armor had formed an impenetrable wooden shell over her delicate skin to absorb the crushing impact.

Then, as she gave her hand one final, careless shake, the rough bark smoothly dissolved, receding right back into her milky-white flesh until her hand looked perfectly soft and untouched, like it had never even existed.

Max and Ash’s eyes bulged in unison, every ounce of their Awakened combat guards instantly screaming at full alert.

The dreamy, gentle fairy they had been drooling over barely five minutes ago had just unmasked herself as a lethal, front-line valkyrie!

Even with Max’s imposing bulk, specialized melee attributes, and recent level gains, he knew for a fact that he couldn’t dare assume he could replicate that feat.

She had made it look effortless, yet punching a hole through the thick, reinforced concrete masonry of an upscale hotel was nearly impossible for a human.

Doing it bare-handed—and through bathroom tiling on the other side—was a sheer display of monstrous brute strength.

"Sis..." Carmen sighed, rubbing her temples under her pink sunhat.

Even the perceptive eight-year-old hadn’t expected her sister to just say screw it and put her fist straight through the hotel’s infrastructure.

It was such an erratic, reckless move that not even an omniscient deity could have predicted it.

Yet, while insane, Sophia’s abrupt alarm clock worked absolute wonders.

Barely a handful of seconds later, a low, irritated rumble vibrated through the floorboards from deep inside Room 308.

Carmen’s eyes snapped toward the suite’s entrance. Her bright azure pupils flared with an intense, supernatural light as her perceptive senses locked onto the lethal mana spike surging on the other side of the wood.

"Uhm... all of you would really better move away from that door," Carmen warned urgently, her childlike voice tightening with dead seriousness.

The sharp warning was directed squarely at Rhea, Naomi, and Vivienne, who were still lingering awkwardly near the landing.

The three women didn’t spend a single second questioning the child’s advice.

While their combat instincts were far from polished compared to veteran Awakeners, every living creature still carried baseline survival instincts.

And right now, every single hair on their arms was standing on end, screaming at them to get clear of the blast zone.

They scrambled backward in a panicked hurry, retreating to the relative safety of the stairwell corner where Max and Ash stood.

The two boys were no longer slouching or gawking at the green-haired beauty like mindless fools; they had already squared their stances, hands resting on their weapon hilts.

And thank God that Rhea and the girls cleared the path when they did.

BANG!

In the very next heartbeat, the thick oak door was blown violently off its hinges, sent flying across the hallway by a ferocious, mana-charged front kick.

Stepping through the splintered frame like a wrathful specter, Rose emerged with a terrifying, bloodthirsty glint dancing in her shimmering pink eyes.

Her slender hands flexed slowly, her fingers elongating into razor-sharp, obsidian-black claws that scraped against the air with a faint, metallic hiss.

Thick demonic energy rolled off her skin in suffocating waves, dropping the corridor’s ambient temperature into a freezing chill.

"Rose is angry... Very angry," she hissed through clenched teeth, her voice dripping with sheer, icy venom.

She wasn’t wearing her signature crimson one-piece dress right now; throwing on something that intricate on two seconds’ notice was an impossible task.

Instead, she had thrown on whatever garments were lying closest on the carpet. She was clad in Jenny’s soft cotton tank top paired with Andrea’s tiny denim shorts.

Due to the massive, undeniable size difference between their bodies, Jenny’s comfortable tank top stretched so tightly over Rose’s chest that it looked more like a skimpy crop top.

It left her toned midriff completely bare, while her twin heavy melons strained against the thin fabric, threatening to burst the seams with every furious breath she drew.

Right behind her stalked Fredrinn.

His dark eyes held a deeply displeased, stormy gaze. While he wasn’t radiating outright murderous intent like his demonic partner, he sure as hell looked forward to delivering a brutal, bone-breaking beating to whoever had dared shatter their peace.

Clutched firmly in his right hand was his trusty broken sword, the jagged edge humming faintly with ready energy.

Draped haphazardly over his broad, bare torso was the oversized windbreaker jacket Rose had scavenged for him earlier, its zipper hanging wide open over his chiseled abs.

It was glaringly obvious to everyone present that the two of them had simply grabbed whatever random rags were within arm’s reach before rushing out to violently eliminate whatever threat was knocking at their door.

Max swallowed hard, a thick glob of nervous saliva sticking in his dry throat.

It wasn’t born from lust over Rose’s half-naked state, but from pure, unadulterated dread as her predatory, glowing eyes swept across the hallway like an apex hunter selecting a meal.

Yet, amid the suffocating, murder-laced tension that made seasoned survivors freeze... there was only one person present who wasn’t worried in the slightest.

"Oh, hey Fredrinn! Good morning!"