Chapter 100: How to Move Forward

Chapter 100: Chapter 100: How to Move Forward

The Continental Association Headquarters stood tall in the center of the capital. Its gleaming silver-and-white towers usually made people feel safe.

Today, it felt like a bunker bracing for a war nobody saw coming.

Inside the grand council hall, dozens of top leaders sat around a massive round table.

Holographic screens hovered over the polished metal, flashing red warning dots, casualty lists, and emergency pings from across the globe.

Yesterday had broken humanity’s safety net. Thousands of heroes were dead, hospitals were drowning in wounded, and entire raid teams had been wiped out when easy dungeons suddenly turned into slaughterhouses.

And nobody knew why.

The Continental President sat at the head of the table, flanked by regional commanders and top directors. Director Elena Voss sat a few chairs down, carrying the medical files and the notes Felix had asked her to bring.

Beside her sat Felix Valerius. He had traded his bloodstained pajamas for a clean black suit, but the heavy memory of yesterday hadn’t faded.

He could still hear the beeping monitors, smell the burnt flesh, and feel the cold wrists of fighters who had died before he could reach them.

A senior official tapped his screen, pulling up a map of the continent covered in glowing red markers.

"Let’s put the raw numbers on record first," the official said, his voice flat. "Yesterday, dozens of rifts suddenly jumped rank mid-raid. B-rank gates spiked into A-ranks. A-rank gates turned into S-rank meat grinders. The shifts happened in seconds. Our strike teams had no time to pull back."

He paused, swallowing hard. "In our region alone, confirmed hero deaths have already passed four hundred. That number will rise as rescue crews dig through the rubble."

A woman across the table rested her forehead in her palm. "Four hundred dead... in just one morning."

"And that’s just our backyard," another director said grimly. "Overseas reports are worse. Some branches lost entire elite guilds. Others are still fighting monsters that broke into the streets."

A regional commander slammed his hand onto the table. "Then we need to freeze all operations! Shut down every gate until we know what caused this!"

"We can’t do that," another commander snapped back. "Half those gates are on day nine of their timer. If we don’t clear them, the bosses break through into civilian cities. We’d trade an ambush inside for a massacre outside."

"So your plan is to keep feeding our fighters into death traps?!"

"Enough," the President said.

His voice wasn’t loud, but the room went completely quiet.

"Arguing won’t fix anything," the President said, leaning forward. "Our first job is finding out why the gates mutated. Director Voss, you brought the casualty report, and you asked for Felix Valerius to join this council. Does he have something to say?"

"He does, Mr. President," Elena said. "What he saw yesterday matches an incident he handled last week."

All eyes turned to Felix.

Felix sat up straight, resting his forearms on the table. "I don’t think yesterday was a natural accident. I think someone caused it."

A murmur broke out.

"Explain," the President ordered.

"A few days ago, my squad cleared a B-rank rift," Felix said, keeping his tone calm and steady. "The dungeon boss had power it shouldn’t have had. It was a B-rank beast with the speed, armor, and output of an A-rank. When I examined its core, I found foreign energy wedged inside like a chemical fuse. It had been artificially pumped up."

A lead researcher pushed his glasses up his nose, frowning. "Artificially enhanced? That makes no sense, Doctor Valerius. A monster’s rank is determined by the size and density of its core. You can’t just inject something and force a breakthrough."

"It wasn’t a real breakthrough," Felix replied.

"That was the tell. Its core didn’t evolve naturally. The drug forced the core to dump all its energy at once, tearing the creature’s mana veins apart from the inside. It was temporary, destructive, and completely man-made."

"Did you log that core?" the researcher asked.

"Yes. I submitted a priority report to the local branch that same day," Felix said, looking directly at the council. "I flagged the foreign residue and warned that someone was making enhancement drugs for monsters."

The President’s eyes turned to Elena. "Was that report followed up?"

"It was cataloged and sent to regional labs,"

Elena answered smoothly. "At the time, we thought it was an isolated experiment inside one dungeon. We had no evidence anyone could trigger that effect across an entire continent."

"I thought the same thing," Felix added. "Until yesterday. And that wasn’t the only time I saw it."

The room went still. "Go on," the President said.

"During the same mission, we ran into a squad of rogue dark elves. Their leader was an S-rank with two affinities: Lightning and Blood. He had black pills on him. When he swallowed one, his combat power spiked straight into SS-rank territory."

Gasps echoed around the round table.

"An S-rank jumping to SS-rank?!"

"That takes mountains of mana!"

"Did it hold?"

"No," Felix said. "Just like the monster, his body couldn’t take the heat. His channels started bursting, and his energy turned wild. We killed him before his body tore itself apart. But the drug gave him enough raw power to nearly wipe out my entire squad."

Silence hung over the council.

The President turned to the chief researcher.

"Have our labs ever seen a substance like that?"

"Never," the researcher admitted, looking uneasy. "We have stimulants that give hunters a short boost, but nothing that can jump a combatant an entire tier, let alone a monster. If one formula can mutate beasts and hunters alike, someone has developed dangerous, high-level mana alchemy."

"Or they’re pumping that catalyst directly into the rifts," Felix said. "If you dump that chemical into a dungeon’s mana stream, the whole ecosystem drinks it. The monsters mutate, the environment turns toxic, and the gate’s threat level spikes through the roof."

The room grew chillingly quiet.

If dungeon gates could be poisoned from the outside, then every gate humanity thought it controlled was a loaded gun waiting to go off.

The President leaned back, his jaw set.

"Director Voss, gather every scrap of evidence from that dark elf raid. The pills, the core samples, the lab logs. Hand it directly to the Continental Research Division."

"Understood, sir," Elena said.

"Mr. Valerius, stay close to the research team. If they need your firsthand account, you assist them."

"Understood," Felix said.

"Until we have hard proof, we keep this quiet," the President warned the table. "If the public hears that someone is sabotaging gates from the shadows, panic will tear the cities apart before the monsters do."

Nobody disagreed. The first half of the crisis was settled at least on paper.

Then, a silver-haired senior director sitting two seats to the President’s left cleared his throat.

The man had sharp, cold eyes behind rimless glasses, and his stare had been locked onto Felix for the past twenty minutes.

"Now that we’ve heard the good doctor’s theory on the dungeons," the director said, his voice dripping with smooth, polite venom, "perhaps we should talk about the doctor himself."

Elena stiffened beside Felix.

Felix didn’t flinch. He leaned back into his chair, meeting the silver-haired man’s cold gaze.

"Director Vance, isn’t it? Something on your mind?"

"Several things, actually," Vance said, clasping his hands on the table. "Yesterday, Doctor Valerius single-handedly stabilized three dying S-rank heroes in under five minutes. Then he healed dozens of A-ranks and B-ranks at the same time, without a single rest break."

"He saved lives," Elena cut in, her voice sharp.

"Over a hundred people are breathing today because of him."

"I am not questioning his results, Director Voss," Vance replied smoothly. "I am questioning his power. No known S-rank healer in Association history has ever demonstrated that level of output, range, or cellular reconstruction. Not even the veterans in the Central Ward."

Vance turned his gaze back to Felix, his eyes narrowing.

"You don’t just close wounds, Felix. You alter mana flow. You strip foreign magic out of human bodies. And behind the sealed doors of Acheron Deep, you are running private ’rehabilitation’ on the most dangerous criminals on the continent including Vesper Cruz and Seraphina Veyr."

A few other council members shifted uncomfortably in their seats, whispering among themselves.

"My investigators visited your facility yesterday," Vance continued coldly. "Your patients refused to answer basic questions about your training methods. They showed complete, blind loyalty to you and zero loyalty to the Association."

Felix’s green eyes turned frosty. So Vance was the suit who had tried to interrogate Seraphina.

"Are you accusing me of something, Director Vance?" Felix asked, his voice dead calm. "Or did you just want to waste everyone’s time while people are dying in triage?"

Vance’s face darkened, but he kept his voice steady. "I am pointing out that an awakener with your unique mana, growing influence, and private access to rogue S-ranks is an unaccounted variable. The Association needs complete transparency. We need to know exactly how your power works and whose orders you actually follow."

The air in the room grew heavy. Several directors looked at Felix, waiting to see if the young S-rank would lose his temper or back down.

Felix didn’t do either.

He rested his chin on his knuckles, a slow, dangerous smirk tugging at the corner of his lips.

"Whose orders do I follow?" Felix chuckled, the sound echoing through the tense silence. "I’m a doctor, Vance. I answer to the people bleeding on my stretchers. If you want to know how my healing works, you’re welcome to hop on a table and let me break your ribs. I’ll give you a live demonstration."

Vance bristled, his face flushing red. "You insolent—"

"Enough," the President’s voice cut through the room like iron, shutting Vance down instantly.

The President looked at Felix, then back at Vance.

"We are standing in the middle of the worst crisis in fifty years," the President said, his eyes hard. "Felix Valerius just gave us the first real lead we’ve had on who attacked us, and the blood on his coat belongs to the hunters he pulled back from the grave. We don’t interrogate our best assets while the house is burning down."

He turned his attention back to Elena. "Find out who is manufacturing those pills. That is your sole priority."

?"Understood, sir," Elena said, giving a firm nod.

While the orders settled over the room, Felix never broke eye contact with Vance. A slow, chilling smirk formed at the corner of his lips: a quiet promise that their little conversation was far from over.

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