Chapter 193: Past Level 100

Evren lowered his phone with a grim expression on his face.

"What is it?" Calista asked immediately, sitting upright on the padded therapy bench. "Was that Grand Arbiter Kincaid?"

"Yeah," Evren said, slipping the phone into his pocket. "The probe cluster finished mapping the pocket dimension. The rift isn’t shrinking. The beasts are sacrificing themselves to feed a massive hatching cocoon at the center."

Amber and Zephyra stepped closer, their expressions instantly hardening.

"A cocoon?" Amber asked, her hand instinctively resting on the hilt of her dragon sabers. "What kind of beast is inside?"

"We don’t know yet," Evren replied. "Kincaid wants every high-rank combat unit at the Citadel command bunker right now."

He turned his gaze toward Calista.

"Calista, we need to go," Evren said gently. "You’re safe here in the Meridian Tower. Dr. Elena has already left, and I’m putting the entire building on automated defense lockdown. Walter’s men are still around too if you need anything."

Calista looked up at him with clear, determined silver-blue eyes. She reached out and squeezed his hand firmly.

"Don’t worry about me, Evren," she said softly. "I can stand on my own feet now. Go with Amber and Zephyra. Protect the city."

Evren nodded. He activated the master console on his phone, locking down the 80th-floor Sky-Palace and engaging the automated security wards across all seventy-nine lower floors.

Five minutes later, Evren, Amber, and Zephyra were inside an armored military transport, racing through the empty, sirens-wailing streets of District One toward the Citadel.

When they entered the subterranean command bunker, the atmosphere was thick with suffocating tension.

Dozens of radar operators and tactical officers were shouting across their terminals. At the center of the room, Grand Arbiter Kincaid, Commander Walter, and Silas Drake stood around the main holographic projection table.

"Evren, you’re here," Kincaid said, gesturing toward the blue holographic light. "Take a look at this."

Evren, Amber, and Zephyra stepped up to the table.

The projection displayed a complete three-dimensional scan of the 30-mile pocket dimension. In the middle of the cavernous abyss, suspended above a sea of swirling cosmic dust, was an enormous black-and-purple cocoon. It pulsed steadily like a giant mechanical heart.

Thousands of void beasts were swarming around it, throwing themselves into its outer shell and dissolving into raw purple energy.

"What’s the energy reading?" Evren asked, studying the swirling data.

The chief technical officer wiped cold sweat from his forehead. "Chairman Evren... the compressed mana signature broke our sensor limits ten minutes ago. It’s climbing past Level 100."

The entire room seemed to drop several degrees.

"Level 100?" Amber breathed. "That’s... SSS-Rank."

"An extinction-class entity," Walter growled, his knuckles white against the table edge. "There has never been an SSS-Rank emergence in history. If that thing breaks out into the open sky, District One’s ground shields will shatter in seconds."

"How long do we have?" Silas Drake asked, his sharp golden eyes fixed on the timer in the corner of the screen.

"Ninety minutes," Kincaid replied grimly. "If we wait for it to hatch and come out, the capital is gone. Our only choice is a pre-emptive strike. We go into the rift, fight through the abyss, and destroy the cocoon before full emergence."

Silas Drake folded his arms, nodding slowly. "Agreed. Personal rivalries don’t mean a thing if there’s no city left to stand in. Solar Crown’s elite S-Rank strike wing is ready to deploy under my command."

"Good," Kincaid said. "Here is the division of forces. Commander Walter, Iron-Thistle Guild, and all mid-level hunter units will anchor the Citadel surface. Your job is to secure the rift perimeter and eliminate any beasts that try to leak out."

"Understood, General," Walter saluted firmly. "Nothing gets past my shields."

"The incursion strike team will consist strictly of hunters A-Rank and above," Kincaid continued, looking at Evren and Drake. "Forty high-rank combatants in total. You will take the direct path mapped by Probe Cluster Delta."

Two military aides stepped forward carrying metal supply cases, distributing rugged matte-black tactical wrist-pads to every member of the incursion team.

Evren, Amber, and Zephyra strapped the military-grade units securely around their left forearms.

A technician tapped a key on the console, and a glowing green vector line appeared on the holographic map, tracing a safe route across a series of floating rock plateaus.

"We are syncing the probe cluster’s navigation telemetry to your wrist-pads now," the technician announced.

Evren’s wrist-pad chimed softly as the screen booted up, displaying their real-time coordinates and loading the digital map of the first sector.

Ten minutes later, the forty high-rank hunters stood on the elevated launch ramp in the Citadel courtyard. Directly above them, the ninety-foot Sky Rift spun violently, its violet event horizon crackling with dark lightning.

Walter walked over to Evren and gave him a heavy clap on the shoulder. "Give them hell, Chairman. We’ll keep the door open for you."

"Hold the line, Walter," Evren replied with a brief smile.

Evren drew the S-Rank Frost-Bane Cleaver from his spatial storage ring. Amber unholstered her twin dragon-bone sabers, her crimson wings flaring slightly behind her. Beside them, Zephyra adjusted her shadow cloak, her violet eyes razor-sharp.

Silas Drake stepped to the front of the launch ramp, golden mana shimmering around his armor. "Strike team, move out!"

Forty high-rank hunters leaped into the air simultaneously, charging straight into the swirling violet mouth of the Sky Rift.

The transition was instantaneous. A blinding flash of purple light washed over Evren’s vision, followed by the sudden drop in atmospheric pressure.

A second later, his boots slammed onto solid stone.

They landed on a massive obsidian plateau, floating inside the vast, cavernous void. Above them, distant spatial cracks flickered like purple lightning. Below them lay a bottomless drop into dark cosmic clouds.

"Everyone on me," Silas Drake commanded quietly, checking his wrist-pad. "The probe vector points across this stone bridge. Stay in formation."

Following the green beacon on their wrist-pads, the hunters advanced swiftly across the wide land-bridge.

For nearly four minutes, they moved as a disciplined unit, covering almost a mile of ground across the floating islands. The air was dead silent, save for the crunch of their boots on stone.

Then, the void reacted.

Moving together in a tight group, the forty A-Rank and S-Rank hunters gave off a huge amount of concentrated human energy. This strange aura spread quickly into the dimension’s air, like ink bleeding through clear water.

Deep beneath the floating plateaus, a terrifying rumble echoed through the abyss.

"Watch out!" Evren shouted, his Kinetic Flow firing off a sudden burst of warning alarms in his mind.

Before anyone could react, a huge violet mana wave exploded upward from the depths of the chasm.

It hit the strike team like an invisible freight train.

The ground beneath them buckled, and a deafening spatial shockwave tore through the air, throwing every hunter off their feet. Spatial distortion fissures ripped open across the bridge, blinding their vision with swirling violet mist.

Evren hit the ground hard, rolling to absorb the impact. The violent rush of wind and pressure roared in his ears for several long seconds before slowly subsiding.

Evren pushed himself up, shaking the dust from his hair.

The wide stone bridge was gone. In its place was an isolated, fractured rock plateau suspended in thick purple fog.

Silas Drake and the forty guild hunters were nowhere to be seen.

"Amber? Zephyra?" Evren called out.

But nothing... no response, just silence.

Evren immediately reached out through his telepathic soul-bond. ’Amber? Zephyra? Can you hear me?’

Their mental connection felt distant, muffled beneath layers of dimensional static. A faint whisper of Amber’s voice echoed back, but the words were unintelligible, drowned out by the ambient humming of the rift.

Miles away, on another fractured stone ledge across the dark abyss, Amber and Zephyra pushed themselves to their feet with their weapons drawn, staring out into the empty fog.

Evren gripped the Frost-Bane Cleaver, his senses on high alert.

Suddenly, a strange golden line of text flickered in the corner of his peripheral vision:

[SYSTEM NOTICE: UNKNOWN DIMENSIONAL HARMONIC DETECTED...]

[ANALYZING FREQUENCY... RECOGNITION MATCH: 0.04%...]

Evren blinked, focusing on the text, but the golden letters dissolved into nothingness almost instantly, leaving no log behind.

Before he could dwell on it, a guttural screech tore through the purple mist ahead.

Multiple pairs of glowing crimson eyes opened in the darkness, and the thud of approaching beasts vibrated through the stone beneath his boots.

Evren raised his cleaver, cold blue lightning dancing across the blade, and stepped forward to face the swarm alone.