Chapter 199: Is It Wrong to Flirt in the Middle of an S-Rank Evacuation?

Chapter 199: Chapter 199: Is It Wrong to Flirt in the Middle of an S-Rank Evacuation?

After breakfast, we changed into the combat suits Giselle had prepared and took the private lift to the rooftop platform.

The morning air over Sector 5 was already warm.

Sunlight turned the glass towers into a field of white glare.

The city looked cleaner, sharper, almost ordinary until you remembered what waited beyond the commercial districts.

Draven stood beside a low-profile hover vehicle, phone to his ear.

He ended the call when he saw us and pocketed the device.

"Ready?"

I nodded.

Giselle answered by opening the rear door and sliding in.

I followed.

She sat closer than the spacious back seat required, thigh almost touching mine.

Once the doors sealed and the vehicle lifted, I let my hand rest on her leg, fingers tracing the reinforced fabric just above the knee.

She hit my hand hard enough to sting.

Fair trade.

Draven drove without commentary, weaving through restricted air corridors that ordinary traffic never touched.

Sector 5 in daylight felt denser than the night version I had seen from Giselle’s windows: more skybridges, more layered platforms, more visible security drones.

After twenty minutes, the skyline changed.

Buildings thinned.

Emergency beacons replaced advertisements.

Then the containment field came into view.

An enormous orange orb enclosed an entire satellite city, its surface rippling like heat haze given solid form.

’Whoa!’

The barrier rose higher than the tallest remaining towers and sank into the earth in a perfect circle.

Nothing living was supposed to cross it in either direction.

"S-rank protocol," Draven said from the front, finally breaking the silence.

"When a gate of this classification stabilises inside a population centre, the city is sealed and evacuated within the first hour. The field keeps the worst of the spill from reaching the next district while the guilds work."

Giselle’s voice was quiet.

"Casualties?"

"Lower than the last three. They got the warning out clean."

The vehicle descended through a controlled opening in the barrier.

Inside the orb, the light turned amber.

The streets were empty of civilians.

Abandoned ground cars sat at odd angles.

Dust and the faint ozone smell of mana hung in the air.

And in the centre of what had been a transit plaza, the gate waited.

It was red.

Not the supervised crimson of the academy exam portal.

This one looked wounded and angry, a vertical tear in the world that pulsed like a living organ.

Black veins of energy crawled across its surface.

The air around it warped.

Even from a distance, the pressure made the fragment under my ribs tighten in instinctive recognition of danger.

The car set down fifty metres from the perimeter.

Giselle snapped a sleek mask into place.

The suit’s collar sealed around it with a hiss.

She turned, took a second mask from a side compartment, and fitted it over my face before I could do it myself.

Her gloved fingers were efficient, almost impersonal.

"Don’t get lost."

I nodded once.

Draven stepped out with nothing: no mask, no visible weapon, coat still open.

He walked toward the working line as if arriving at a mildly interesting meeting.

At least fifty people moved around the gate in organised chaos.

Barrier technicians adjusted floating emitter pylons.

Analysts in reinforced coats studied readings on transparent pads.

A cluster of healers waited under a temporary canopy, hands already glowing with standby light.

Replacement hunters, front-liners held in reserve, stood in loose formation further back.

Supports were easy to spot by the way the combatants unconsciously oriented around them.

One man stood with five women in matching guild colours.

Two other men held smaller clusters of three.

Same insignia. Same guild.

They looked tired already.

I watched the gate breathe.

"Can we see what’s happening inside?" I asked.

Draven didn’t look back.

"No. We used to maintain visual and audio feeds. The newer gates changed frequency. Our equipment no longer matches what they emit. Once a team steps through, we wait for them to come out or for the gate to close."

So this was it.

The thing the system claimed would end the world if I didn’t build a strong enough network.

A single red wound in the air, held in check by an orange sky and fifty exhausted professionals.

For the first time since waking in this reality, the threat felt concrete.

Not political.

Real.

Giselle’s shoulder brushed mine as she took position slightly ahead and to my left—protective without making a show of it.

The fragment of her core pulsed once, steady.

I was still staring at the gate when it convulsed.

"Something’s coming."

A three-headed bull the size of a transport slammed out of the red surface and hit the nearest analyst before anyone could shout.

The man folded under the impact and did not get up.

"AGH—!"

Blood sprayed across abandoned pavement.

"COVER!"

"HUNTERS—MOVE!"

"BARRIERS UP!"

The creature’s six eyes swept the plaza and locked onto the healer canopy.

It charged.

The ground shook.

Two of the reserve hunters blurred forward.

A support snapped a glowing tether into place.

None of it would have been fast enough.

A thin gold line drew itself horizontally through the air.

It made no sound.

The building fa?ade behind the bull simply cracked along the same perfect line.

Swoosh.

The three massive heads slid off the neck in unison and hit the plaza with wet finality. The body took two more steps on pure momentum before collapsing.

Blood, almost pitch black, pooled rapidly around the corpse.

Draven lowered his hand.

The gold light faded from his hand.

He had never fully turned away from the barrier technician he was speaking to.

"As I was saying," he continued calmly, "keep the secondary emitters phased three degrees higher. The last fluctuation nearly took the east anchor."

The technician nodded on pure professional reflex, face pale.

Silence held for a beat, broken only by the gate’s organic pulse and the distant crackle of containment fields.

Then the organised noise resumed: healers rushing to the downed analyst, hunters securing the corpse, analysts frantically adjusting readings.

I realised my hands were clenched hard enough that the gloves creaked.

Giselle’s voice came through the mask.

"That is the gap between Draven and everyone."