Chapter 61: The Wasteland

Chapter 61: Chapter 61: The Wasteland

Monday morning brought chaos to the Hero Association’s main headquarters.

An SS-rank gate had torn open about a hundred and fifty miles outside Valemont. An SS-rank rift was rare enough on its own to sound every alarm in the country, but the wild, unstable readings bleeding through made the directors panic.

The Association immediately assembled a joint strike force: two teams, thirty-one elite heroes, led by one of the oldest veterans still taking the field.

The briefing hall was packed when Aria’s squad walked through the doors.

Felix spotted the unfamiliar faces right away: five S-ranks, fourteen A-ranks, and standing in the center like an iron pillar was a towering man.

He stood well over two meters tall, with broad shoulders, short gray hair, and a face covered in scars from decades of combat.

Garrick Draven.

Forty-eight years old, SS-rank, and carrying two elemental affinities: Fire at Ultra II, and Titan at Ultra I.

His body was hardened by Titan mana to an absurd degree, while his fire gave him enough destructive force to wipe out an army. He could take hits that would flatten ordinary S-ranks and barely blink before punching back.

He had served twenty-five straight years on the front lines, and to him, Aria and her team were just promising kids.

Garrick looked over the group, his gaze stopping directly on Felix. He stared for a few seconds.

"So you’re Valerius."

Felix offered an easy smile. "That’s me."

Garrick nodded. "I’ve heard about you."

"Hopefully the good parts."

A few hunters nearby chuckled, and Garrick let out a rough laugh. "You’re the healer who keeps running into fistfights."

Felix shrugged. "Someone has to hit back."

"I like you already," Garrick said, before turning to Aria.

"Commander," Aria greeted him with a respectful nod.

Garrick waved a broad hand. "No need to be stiff. I know all of you. You’re the most promising talents the Association has right now." His eyes moved down the line, stopping on Ryan. "Broke into A-rank, did you?"

Ryan straightened his back. "Yes, sir."

"Good. Let’s see if that’s enough to keep you alive out there." Garrick turned toward the main screen and tapped a control. "Listen up."

The room went dead quiet as the central holoscreen lit up with a massive image of the gate. Even Felix’s smile faded.

The portal was enormous easily three hundred meters across, its surface pitch-black and churning with violent waves of raw mana.

Arcs of dark lightning sparked around the rim.

Kael whistled under his breath. "That’s massive."

"It is," Garrick said flatly. "And we have almost zero data on what’s waiting on the other side. Standard drone probes failed because the mana interference is too dense. We know the atmosphere is breathable, but that’s about it."

Aria crossed her arms. "What’s the plan?"

"Recon first," Garrick replied, tapping the blank map. "We don’t go in swinging blindly. Once we step through, scouts fan out immediately. We figure out the terrain, find out what kind of monsters live there, map any settlements, track down the high-rank threats, and locate the boss. Until we know what we’re dealing with, nobody picks unnecessary fights."

Aria nodded. "Understood."

Thirty minutes later, the massive Association transport shuttle was tearing through the sky.

Felix took a window seat, with Seraphina sitting quietly beside him. She stared down at the passing clouds, hands resting flat on her knees.

"First SS-rank gate?" Felix asked softly.

She turned to him. "Yes."

"Nervous?"

A small, faint smile touched her lips. "No."

She didn’t add anything else. But watching his calm expression, she didn’t need to. As long as he was there, she felt like she could walk into hell without shaking.

Felix smiled back. "Good. Stay close once we’re down."

She gave him a firm nod and looked back out the window, quietly keeping her thoughts to herself.

The shuttle touched down on a barren plateau half a mile from the rift. Up close, the gate was terrifying. It towered over the landscape like a black tear in reality, humming with a sound that vibrated straight through their boots.

Felix stepped onto the dirt, looking all the way up to the swirling crown of the portal. "Damn."

"Officially the scariest gate I’ve ever seen," Kael muttered, checking his gear.

"Quit gawking," Garrick barked, marching past them with his broadsword strapped to his back.

"Move into standard breach formation. S-ranks up front, A-ranks in the middle, support and vanguard covering the flanks. Move!"

The thirty-one heroes snapped into rank. Felix stayed near the center, Seraphina right at his elbow, while Aria took point alongside Garrick.

Garrick raised a fist, then dropped it forward.

"Cross over."

They stepped through the black veil, and the noise of their own world died instantly. The silence on the other side was eerie.

Felix planted his boots onto dry, cracked dirt and looked around. Wasteland. Endless, reddish-brown wasteland stretching as far as the eye could see.

There were no trees, no grass, and no water, just flat, fractured ground broken by jagged stone cliffs and black mountains far in the distance. The sky above was a pale, sickly orange, and the mana hung over the plains like heavy, suffocating fog.

Aria raised a hand. "Scouts out. Sweep the immediate perimeter."

Orion didn’t wait. Blue static flashed around his boots, and he blurred into the distance. Two other S-rank scouts darted toward the ridges, while Mira opened a small spatial tear beside Aria and stepped through, vanishing without a sound.

The rest of the strike force held their ground with weapons drawn. Ten minutes passed in tense silence before Orion reappeared in a crackle of static, skidding to a halt in front of Garrick. He was breathing hard.

"Report," Garrick said.

"Barren plains for at least twenty miles," Orion said, wiping red dust from his cheek. "And we’ve got monsters. Big ones."

"Ranks?"

"Reptilian types. Armored scales, four legs, long tails. I clocked a dozen of them two miles out." Orion paused, his jaw tightening. "They’re all B-ranks. I didn’t see a single C-rank or lower."

The second scout dropped down from a nearby boulder, nodding grimly. "Same here. Tracked three packs. Nothing under B-rank."

The group went still.

Darius frowned deeply. "If B-rank is the bottom of the food chain here..."

"Then the top is going to be a nightmare," Ryan finished.

Before anyone could say more, a soft pop echoed through the air. A spatial rift peeled open, and Mira stepped back onto the red dirt, her face dead serious.

Aria stepped toward her. "What did you find?"

"Territories," Mira said directly. "Not civilized settlements."

Garrick walked over. "Lairs?"

"Nesting grounds and hunting dens," Mira explained, pointing toward the rocky ridge to the north. "The biggest concentration is carved into a massive canyon about thirty miles out. The monsters gather there in packs, purely based on raw instinct and strength. The weak ones get pushed to the outer ridges, and the strongest claim the deep caves."

"Civilization?" Kael asked, brow furrowing. "So they’re just wild beasts?"

"Pure predators," Mira confirmed. "Massive reptiles. They don’t build; they conquer. And that canyon is divided into four distinct hunting grounds."

Aria’s gaze hardened. "What holds the ground?"

Mira hesitated for a second, glancing at Garrick.

"Four alpha beasts. Each one radiates mana on par with a true S-rank. They rule by brute force, keeping hundreds of B- and A-rank reptiles in line beneath them."

"Four S-rank beasts?" Felix asked.

Mira met his eyes. "Four distinct apex signatures. And that’s just the surface level of the canyon."

The air around the team turned cold. Four S-rank monsters in one territory, surrounded by a horde of ravenous A- and B-ranks, was a meat grinder waiting to happen.

Garrick looked out toward the orange horizon. Instead of backing down, his scarred face broke into a hard, dangerous smirk.

"Territorial alphas," Garrick muttered, rolling his shoulders until they popped. "Simple predators. Good. That means if you kill the biggest one in the yard, the rest will scatter or turn on each other."

He turned back to the thirty heroes staring at him.

"We don’t charge into a four-way feeding ground on day one," Garrick told them, his voice cutting through the dry wind. "We move north, take the high cliffs above the canyon, and scout their borders. We learn their patrol patterns, and we find out what’s sitting at the top of the food chain above those four alphas."

He drew his broadsword an inch from its scabbard, the heavy steel clicking into place.

"Move out."

The joint strike force fell into marching formation, pushing deep into the red dust.

Behind them, the gate pulsed quietly.