Chapter 675: Power Increased?

Moon and his team were already gone.

Taking a wide route back toward their anchor point, giving the direct path a broad berth in case the white commander came out hunting rather than simply investigating.

Spotting Moon approaching, Nina looked up from where she sat on the back of a Grizzler.

"How did it go!? Everything according to plan?"

Moon shrugged, "Not sure. We’ll find out soon enough, I guess. Either the white commander bought it or it didn’t, and there’s not much we can do to change the answer now. But I’d say the odds are good."

He rolled his shoulders and looked north, "Let’s head toward the dark spire. Things should heat up over the next day, and I want us positioned to see it when they do. We should also set up a temporary shelter along the way. Somewhere defensible, hidden and safe."

The team nodded in agreement. They’d been on the move constantly since arriving, crisscrossing the frozen wasteland, never settling anywhere long enough to properly recover.

They set off, and after a while Marek voiced the question that had been sitting in the back of everyone’s mind.

"Hey. Do you think there are other spires? Out east and west? We’ve only gone north and south. What if there are four of these things?"

Vela shuddered visibly.

"I sincerely hope not. This gate is already a nightmare for a B-Rank. Two spires, two commanders, over two hundred beasts between them. If there are two more out there, with two more hordes, our lives become instantly harder."

Everyone nodded, the thought sending shivers down their spines.

Moon didn’t voice his own suspicion. He believed there were only two but he couldn’t be certain, and there was no sense adding to the team’s worries before they had reason to.

"One problem at a time," he said. "Right now, we have two spires and a plan to turn them against each other. Let’s see that through before we go looking for more trouble."

They pressed on toward the north.

Outside the gate, in the evacuated commercial district, the Evolvers and staff manning the command post felt a powerful shockwave.

It rolled out from the gate in an invisible wave of pressure that raised the hairs on every fighter’s arms and made the runic instruments across the command tent flicker.

Halvern stepped out of the command tent immediately, his eyes going to the swirling crimson-violet wound at the center of the plaza. A frown creased his brows.

"Measure its power again. Now."

A subordinate rushed to the specialized gate-reading apparatus, a runic array the Association called a Threshold Gauge, and ran the assessment. The device activated, its crystals cycling through colors as it drank in the gate’s output.

The subordinate stared at the result, then turned back with a pale face.

"It... it rose. Again, sir. The gauge is reading higher than the last measurement!"

Halvern’s frown deepened, he grabbed the Threshold Gauge, "Show me!"

Staring at the results, his eyes quivered for a moment, "Why is it still increasing?!"

The gate had been classified as peak B-Rank when the previous team died and it changed color.

That should have been its ceiling, the top of its tier. But now it was climbing again, the numbers pushing past where a B-Rank gate had any business sitting, and Halvern had no data to explain it.

Thankfully, it had not reached A-level otherwise...the losses would be immeasurable.

He stared at the gate, and a feeling of unease worked its way into his chest.

Something was happening inside that they couldn’t see. Something that was making the gate more difficult by the hour.

"Keep an eye out on the gate, and measure its strength in thirty minute intervals. I will inform the authorities of the situation." Halvern commanded before taking out his communication device and leaving with a massive frown on his face.

Inside the gate, Kayn couldn’t hold himself back any longer.

"How are you doing all of this?! Aren’t you a mage? You control beasts, you vanish into thin air, you fight with a sword better than fighters who’ve done nothing but train the blade their whole lives, you control so many elements. Just how much more can you do?"

Kayn’s words dripped with jealousy he’d been swallowing since the first battle. He’d heard the stories about Moon and the impossible feats he had done. But he’d dismissed most of it as exaggeration, the way storytellers always inflated things.

Seeing it in person, watching this fighter from another city casually do the impossible over and over, had cracked something in him. He couldn’t accept that someone could be this far beyond even other geniuses.

Vela’s head snapped toward him, her face twisting.

"Kayn. What are you doing? His methods are his own business. You have no right to demand answers about how another fighter fights."

Kayn didn’t back down. Vela taking Moon’s side, defending the outsider over her own, only made the pressure inside him burst.

"Yes, I do have a right. If he used everything he had, we could clear this gate today. But if he’s holding back, hiding what he can really do, then the rest of us are the ones left exposed when it matters. His secrets could get us killed." He seized on the excuse, wrapping his resentment in concern for the team. "I’m allowed to ask what the captain I’m trusting my life to is actually capable of."

Moon, who had let the exchange run in silence, finally spoke.

This time his voice carried none of the warmth it usually held before.

He walked up to Kayn slowly, his eyes locking onto the other man’s.

"Will you stop acting like a child throwing a tantrum, or do you need a spanking first?"

"W-what did you say?" Kayn stuttered, thrown off balance by the sudden bluntness of Moon.

He hadn’t expected this confrontational approach from someone who’d been calm through the entire operation.

"You heard me." Moon stopped directly in front of him, their eyes level, no space between the challenge and the man it was aimed at.