Chapter 269: Lemme Touch You...

The screeching of the Astoria horde shattered what little sanity remained in the clearing.

They were not mindless beasts, and that was what made them terrifying. Their movements were coordinated, calculated, and driven by an ancient, cultural hunger. These were warriors of Cansita- dark, towering monstrosities with gaunt frames, double-jointed limbs, and rows of razor-sharp teeth lining their elongated jaws.

Their skin was black yet translucent, showing dark, pulsating veins filled with black bile, and their crimson eyes gleamed with the terrible intelligence of a race that had turned cannibalism into a divine art.

"Protect Silas!" Alpha roared, his voice cracking under the suffocating pressure of Swef’s aura.

The team, despite being battered and exhausted, snapped into battle formation around Chloe and Silas’s bleeding frame. There was no time for panic; survival was the only currency left.

Alpha shifted his posture, and his body seamlessly dissolved into the ambient light and shadow of the clearing, leaving no trace behind. A second later, two Astoria vanguard warriors had their throats cleanly slit from behind by invisible blades, black blood spraying into the dirt before his footprint even pressed into the soil.

Right beside him, Neil locked his eyes onto the faint disturbance in the air where Alpha had vanished. Neil’s body flickered, his own physical presence melting away as he copied the same technique, stepping into the fray alongside Alpha to deliver synchronized, unseen strikes against the advancing cannibal horde.

"Clear a path!" Damien thrust both hands toward the dense cluster of approaching Astoria, bending the physical forces around them.

A crushing, localized gravitational field slammed down, flattening five Astoria warriors into the dirt with a sickening crunch of breaking bones. But these were threats born from a culture of extreme violence.

One of the larger Astoria, a four-armed executioner covered in tribal scars, fought through the crushed earth, crawling forward on all fours with a guttural, terrifying laugh as its jaws snapped inches from Damien’s boots.

Godfrey stepped directly in front of Damien, slamming his massive tower shield into the dirt. A translucent, golden barrier flared outward, catching the charging Astoria executioner mid-stride.

The impact rattled Godfrey’s entire skeletal structure. Holding off warriors of this caliber was an agonizing ordeal for him. He coughed up a glob of dark blood as the golden barrier cracked under the relentless pounding of clawed fists, but he planted his heels into the mud and refused to yield a single inch.

"I... I can hold them! Get the healers to Silas!"

Natalia and Rihanna scrambled toward Chloe.

Natalia’s hands glowed with an intense, pale green aura as she pressed them directly into the grisly crater in Silas’s chest, attempting to force his heart to keep pumping through pure biological acceleration.

"His vital organs are shredded! I can’t regenerate this fast- the necrotic energy in his wound is eating my magic!"

Rihanna slammed her wooden staff, which she’d just conjured from mana, into the ground, commanding the surrounding plant life to sprout thick, thorned vines from the soil. The roots wrapped tightly around Silas’s torso, acting as a makeshift tourniquet for his severed arm and torn wing.

"We’re just patching a broken dam! He needs a high-tier elixir, or he’s dead in minutes!"

The Astoria horde swarmed the perimeter like a tide of pale death.

Alicia let out a feral roar as her body expanded, her bones cracking and reforming into a massive, crimson-furred dire bear. She launched herself into three Astoria warriors, tearing through flesh and bone, but the cannibals didn’t fear her size- they salivated.

Two of them drove their bone daggers deep into Alicia’s flanks, biting into her shoulders and tearing away chunks of her flesh mid-combat. Alicia shrieked in agony, the trauma forcing her back into her human form as she collapsed in a pool of her own blood.

Christian immediately sprouted four arm-like appendages of hardened bone from his spine, weaving a storm of strikes with six blades at once to keep the cannibals off Alicia’s fallen body.

Peter manipulated the crimson fluid pooling on the ground, drawing it upward and hardening it into lethal, needle-like spikes that impaled dozens of advancing cannibals. But as his own blood spent itself to maintain the constructs, his face grew deathly pale, his vision blurring from severe blood loss.

Victor desperately tried to manipulate the mineral deposits in the earth to construct a cage of iron around the healers, but an Astoria warrior smashed through the thin metallic plates with a single blow, driving a jagged claw straight through Victor’s shoulder and tossing him aside like a ragdoll.

Emma melted into the dark patches beneath the trees, emerging from the shadows behind the cannibal elite to sever their hamstrings, while Rihanna commanded the forest floor to tangle their legs with weeping roots.

Yet, for every Astoria that fell, three more lunged forward, driven by the smell of high-tier human blood. The team was being systematically dismantled. Bones were breaking, flesh was being torn, and severe, life-threatening injuries were compounding by the second.

Through it all, Chloe remained on her knees, holding Silas’s unmoving body.

Her tears had stopped, replaced by a cold, hollow abyss. The mana within her core began to twist, turning volatile as she watched her teammates bleed out around her. She didn’t look at the horde. She looked up at Swef Ashi, who was watching the carnage with the satisfied expression of a king overseeing a harvest.

***

Far beyond the realm’s shattered boundary, outside the floating castle grounds, the massive scrying screens suspended over the central plaza of New Liberty flickered violently before locking onto the live feed of the clearing. Everyone in their homes, offices, schools- were all viewing the same thing.

The entire city of New Liberty- and the grand organizers of the Academy Selection Tournament- were watching. Silence, total and suffocating, fell over the grand arena. ℯℯ𝘭.

The organizers, high-ranking government officials, and elite guild masters who had arrogantly arranged this tournament as a mere spectacle of power were frozen in absolute horror.

They had treated the Astoria threat as a controlled variable, an exaggerated fairy tale to test the younger generation. They had ignored the warnings, believing their defensive wards and the children’s talent would be more than enough. To the people, the Astorias were just a myth of a race some decades ago.

Now, broadcast live across the entire nation, they bore witness to the horrific consequences of their ignorance.

There was no heroics on the screen. There was no glory.

The citizens of New Liberty watched in utter terror as their brightest, most talented students of the current generation were butchered like cattle. They saw Alicia’s torn body, Godfrey’s collapsing barrier, Peter bleeding out on the dirt, and worst of all, Silas- their new S-Rank prodigy- lying completely broken, his hand gone, and his chest caved in, floating on the edge of death in the arms of a weeping Chloe.

In an office, the Tournament Director dropped his glass. It shattered against the marble floor, the sound echoing in the dead quiet room. His face was devoid of color, his hands shaking uncontrollably as the realization crushed his soul:

They hadn’t sent the students into a test. They had handed the future of the nation over to a race of ancient cannibals. And no one was coming to save them in time.

***

Chloe was just a few seconds from exploding and doing something stupid when Silas’s weak voice entered her ears.

"Lemme touch you..."

"Wha-..."

[Resonance Activated!]

[Emergency Cupid Ability Activated!]

[Resonance Summoning!]

[Summoning Marked Partners!]

[Summoning Anna Montreal...]

[Summoning Gromda Ashard...]

[Summoning Echidna...]

[Cupid Ultimate Ability Unlocked!]

[Manifesta-...]

That was all Silas saw before he lost consciousness for real. At the same time, a suffocating presence pressed down on the entire world, in and out of the tower. The whole of New Liberty could feel it... something incomprehensible was coming...