Chapter 53
The timer hit zero without sound.
No trumpet. No warning.
Only a pressure in the air, like the world inhaling.
The fortified campsite sprawled across nearly four hundred meters of flattened grassland carved from the forest's edge. Earth walls rose in jagged layers, 3 meters high, reinforced with stacked shipping containers hauled through the rift from Earth, their insides packed with stone, scrap metal, and mounted weapons. Old construction cranes stood frozen like skeletal giants, their arms repurposed into elevated firing platforms. Floodlights powered by jury-rigged generators cut through the dusk. Razor wire and gravity traps formed uneven rings outside the walls.
Inside: chaos held together by planning.
Machine guns bolted onto concrete slabs.
Rift-tech cannons scavenged from failed drops.
Boxes of ammunition beside crates of bottled water.
Barricades built from buses, armored vans, and steel beams dragged through from Earth's side.
They hadn't built a fortress.
They'd built a lifeboat.
And now the sea was coming.
Priya Malhotra's voice cracked over comms."Rift surge detected… multiple emergence points… this is not a single wave"
The forest split open.
Noids poured out like wounds in reality. Twisted bodies of chitin and bone, some crawling, some running, some dragging too many limbs behind them. Five hundred in the first wave—then silence.
Then, seconds later, they burst out again, from the grassland this time.
Kaelin Navaro tightened his grip on his rifle. "Different locations… they're rotating spawn points."
Rhea Calder climbed the container ladder to the west tower. "They're testing us."
The civilians saw them first.
Twenty-seven un awakened, business magnates in tailored coats, merchants clutching glowing data slates, politicians with frozen smiles, smugglers licking their lips like this was profit instead of death.
One screamed.
Another dropped to their knees.
"They're not here to save us," a merchant whispered. "They're using us as shields."
Elena Ro snapped, grabbing him by the collar. "Move. Now. Or you die here."
"Wave one incoming! East breach!" Tess Wren shouted.
"Hold formation!" Victor Rudd barked.
Mira Holt vaulted the barricade, twin electro-blades slicing blue arcs through the dark. "Don't bunch up! They swarm when they smell panic!"
A Noid lunged, Tomas Reed stepped forward, shield generator flaring, the impact throwing dust into the air like a bomb went off.
Ilya Voren fired from above. Gravity-assisted rounds crushed skulls inward without exploding.
Nara Quin lifted both hands. Wind howled, shoving broken limbs and shattered stone away from the defenders.
Owen Park planted charges with shaking precision. "Blowing now, three, two, "
The blast turned the front line into a firestorm of dirt and monster parts.
Selik Juno blinked in and out of existence, yanking wounded cleaners out of danger before teeth could finish them.
"Extraction complete! "He vanished again.
Then the another wave came.
From behind.
The civilians panicked.
"THEY'RE HERE!"
Lyca Rodollf dropped from the wall, slicing through two Noids with a plasma blade. "Get them back to the center!"
Marcus Vale kept talking in comms, voice steady like a lullaby. "Breathe. You're alive. You're still alive. Follow the lights."
Dr. Lian Shang knelt beside a wounded cleaner, hands glowing."Don't close your eyes. Pain means you're winning."
By the fourth wave, the grassland burned.
By the sixth, the walls cracked.
And still the Noids came from the trees, from the sky, from holes that shouldn't exist.
"Why aren't we pushing out?" one politician screamed. "Why don't you kill them all?!"
Alexa stood atop the inner wall, blood streaked across her armor. "Because that's how we die."
Sylas Bell reloaded beside her."Our goal isn't victory. It's survival."
Kaelin shot a Noid mid-leap."Twenty-four hours. That's it. We don't trade lives for kills."
Rhea Calder watched the tree line shift."They're randomizing spawn time now."
Priya's voice trembled."Eight waves confirmed… total count… two thousand five hundred."
Silence followed.
Then:
"Wave two emerging."
Fear lived among the civilians now.
A smuggler hid behind a supply crate.
A merchant wept into his data slate.
A politician prayed to a god that didn't exist here.
They weren't warriors.
They were weight.
And still, the cleaners fought.
Blades flashed.
Wind screamed.
Explosions ripped holes in the night.
Teleport lights blinked like dying stars.
By wave eight, the camp was barely standing.
Walls cratered.
Containers bent.
Weapons overheated.
But the lifeboat still floated.
Tess Wren whispered, staring at her visor." They are dead."
" we survive!"
daed noids lay everywhere.
Breathing echoed through helmets and open mouths.
Twenty-four hours had just begun.
And none of them knew from where the next nightmare would crawl out.
The air hung heavy with smoke and the tang of scorched earth, but within the camp, a strange order emerged from the chaos. Alexa moved among the wounded, her hands glowing faintly as she manipulated energy to accelerate tissue regeneration. Beside her, Lyca Rodollf and Sylas Bell coordinated extraction of unconscious cleaners and civilians alike, making sure no body was left unattended. Rhea Calder and Tomas Reed worked in tandem to stabilize critical injuries, their kinetic and wind-based powers keeping debris from collapsing onto the wounded. Dr. Lian Shang moved efficiently, alternating between traditional medical procedures and regenerative tech, while Priya Malhotra and Tess Wren monitored rift fluctuations and enemy positions to anticipate any further strikes.
Victor Rudd walked through the camp, scanning the battlefield with sharp focus. His eyes flicked over every individual, awakened or otherwise, noting their abilities, physical condition, and morale. He observed Alexa manipulating the massive energy barriers, shaping them like a machine, and his brow furrowed. "Rank B… impossible," he muttered under his breath. He knew power rankings, knew how strength was measured, and yet here she was, holding the front line against forces that should have overwhelmed even elite combatants.
A sudden understanding settled in him. Magnus. That was the only explanation. Every shield, every precise deflection of an enemy's strike, every perfect synchronization in movement—it wasn't just skill. Magnus was amplifying her, weaving his presence into her abilities. He was the unseen hand turning her into a barrier-generating machine, making her power exceed even Rank S thresholds. Victor's mind raced: this was why the Director insisted on protecting her. The connection with Magnus gave her influence far beyond what the world deemed possible. The destruction she and her team had wrought, 8,000 Noids eliminated, was proof of something far greater than ordinary Rank S capability.
And yet, despite the clarity of that revelation, there was no time to linger. The forest trembled again. From two separate directions, distant rumbles vibrated through the ground, warning the camp of what was coming.
Kaelin Navaro shouted, "Two directions! Get to your stations!"
Rhea Calder barked orders, pointing to the breached east wall. "Reinforce! Wind barriers, debris containment!"
Tomas Reed planted his kinetic shield and crouched, ready to absorb the impact of the first wave.
Alexa adjusted the energy field, her eyes narrowing as the faint shimmer of the rift's influence played across her vision. Her hands moved in precise arcs, folding the energy, layering it like armor over the camp. "Everyone stay close," she commanded, her voice steady but carrying the weight of urgency.
Marcus Vale moved among the civilians, pushing them into makeshift shelters, whispering encouragements, while Elena Ro guided them away from the most dangerous sectors. The non-awakened pressed against the walls of containers, their fear palpable as the ground shook beneath the approaching assault.
The first wave hit the eastern flank: towering Noids, larger and faster than before, smashing into the earth barriers with brutal force. They were joined almost immediately by a secondary wave from the northwest, smaller, more agile, but equally relentless. The camp erupted into chaos as alarms blared, weapons fired, and the awakened combatants moved like a single organism.
Alexa's energy barriers glowed brighter, bending, folding, and deflecting massive limbs. Sylas Bell and Lyca Rodollf moved in tandem, cutting through enemy lines with precise strikes, while Mira Holt's twin electro-blades danced between attackers, arcs of blue light flashing with each swing. Ilya Voren's sniper rounds found weak points in the Noids' armor, the gravity-assisted bullets ripping through the invaders without disturbing friendly forces.
Victor Rudd scanned the battlefield, coordinating his team with measured precision. "Reposition! Move the civilians to the inner perimeter! Shield generators, hold east!"
Even as panic surged among the non-awakened, the team's cohesion and experience prevented total collapse. The energy fields held just long enough to redirect, isolate, and push back the initial surge, buying precious seconds to stabilize defenses.
And above it all, Victor's mind lingered on a single, unsettling truth: the power he had just witnessed in Alexa was unreal, magnified beyond comprehension by Magnus' unseen hand. If this was only the beginning, the next hours were going to test everything he knew about power, strategy, and survival.
The forest trembled again. The two-pronged attack was not finished. The next wave, even larger, even more unpredictable, was about to strike.
Somewhere Omega watched from a distance, his gaze fixed on his sister, now bound in the fragile body of a ten-year-old Zhaari child. The sight was jarring—not for him, but for the sheer intensity of what she had to endure. The War House of Vorthrex treated life as expendable, and for a young Zhaari, this meant being thrust into a system designed for obedience and survival, not care.
The Vorthrex family was immense: twenty male offspring, fifteen female, and three hybrid "vibe" children, each controlling vast resources, armies, and networks of slaves. Each member's command was absolute, and their servants, countless Zhaari and other enslaved races, were regarded as nothing more than tools, instruments of labor or playthings, easily replaced when broken. Priscilla, in her new form, was the lowest of these instruments: a mere child in a species whose life and growth was compressed in ways alien to humans.
The Zhaari were biologically remarkable, yet horrifyingly utilitarian in the eyes of their overlords. Their life cycle unfolded in only four stages: infant, child, adult, and mature adult. From birth to child, roughly ten Earth years passed, a time of rapid growth and learning, where they were mentally aware but physically small and fragile. Their adult stage, by contrast, lasted a century. It was their prime: the height of strength, cognition, and reproductive capability. Finally, the mature adult stage lasted only fifty years, when their bodies began to harden, slow, and prepare for the inevitable decline.
What made them particularly strange, and why the High Imperial viewed them as disposable, was their metamorphic growth. Unlike humans, whose development is gradual and continuous, Zhaari underwent sudden, transformative phases akin to butterflies or amphibians. Children grew almost explosively into adults during a controlled metamorphosis, during which their bodies completely restructured: bones elongated, organs expanded, neural pathways rewired for complex thought, and bioluminescent skin patterns shifted permanently. This transformation left them temporarily vulnerable, prone to injury, disorientation, or even death, but their society viewed it as normal, even necessary.
From an imperial perspective, this meant that children were a resource to be trained, shaped, and exploited: their fragility and rapid growth made them cheap and replaceable. They were expendable because the War House needed strong adults immediately, and the mortality of younger stages was irrelevant in a culture that measured worth by utility and obedience rather than individual life. A broken child could be discarded, a new one could be raised in its place in a fraction of the time it would take a human society to nurture equivalent strength.
Priscilla now lived in that harsh reality. Every moment of discomfort, every order she obeyed, every punishment she endured, was magnified by the biology that the Vorthrex War House considered nothing more than mechanics: rapid growth, high reproduction, and the physical resilience to endure pain—but no shield against cruelty. The Zhaari's fast aging, metamorphic vulnerability, and innate obedience made them perfect slaves, yet also perfect mirrors for the moral calculus of Omega's experiment: to understand suffering, freedom, and the weight of choice, one must first walk in a life that was considered cheap, fragile, and temporary.
From Omega's vantage, he could see every subtle fear, every hesitation, every flicker of hope vanish and return in Priscilla's expression. The experience was brutal, intimate, and deeply instructive, a lesson only a being like her, unbound from time, could fully comprehend.
The dawn on Khar'Zun broke harshly, filtered through the glass-and-metal spires of the Vorthrex War House, slicing the warped light across the hundreds of enslaved Zhaari who were already lined up in rigid formations. Priscilla, still barely ten, shuffled forward on her bound ankles and wrists, her small body aching from the chains that bit into her skin. The air reeked of iron, burnt oil, and fear—the staple diet of the War House.
From the upper balconies, the Vorthrex offspring surveyed the assembled children, adults, and other slaves like predators watching prey. The eldest male, Vorthrex Kallen, tall and muscled, stepped forward with a whip tipped in electro-conductive crystal. His smirk carried the cruel satisfaction of one accustomed to absolute power. "Move faster," he barked. "The weak die, and I will ensure you understand why."
Priscilla's first task was menial: hauling massive stone blocks to reinforce the eastern courtyard walls. Her tiny hands blistered instantly, the rough surface tearing at her palms. Beside her, older children—barely more than adolescents, collapsed under the weight, only to be struck by the whip or thrown into chains. Each crack of crystal on flesh reverberated across the courtyard, echoing in Priscilla's ears, hammering into her mind the lesson her brother had warned: survival in this world required not strength alone, but endurance, cunning, and submission.
She saw, for the first time, death up close. One of the older Zhaari, a girl perhaps fifteen, had attempted to help another carry a stone block that had slipped. Kallen's whip struck her back, then again across her legs. When she stumbled, the Vorthrex offspring didn't pause. They pushed her into the path of the moving siege wheels, machines designed to crush those who faltered. She screamed, and Priscilla felt the vibration of fear through her own chest. Moments later, silence. Another life snuffed out as casually as extinguishing a candle.
In the kitchens, Priscilla was tasked with preparing nutrient paste for the adult slaves, a paste designed to sustain laborers but not nurture. She watched cooks, chained to massive cauldrons, burn their hands repeatedly as they tried to scrape every last morsel from the boiling metal vats. Mistakes meant firebrand strikes, and failures meant disposal. A servant dropped a cauldron lid. The overseer, a female Vorthrex named Lysera, smiled coldly as a group of adult Zhaari were ordered into the incinerator chambers. The flames rose, the flesh smoked, and the wails of the dying burned into Priscilla's awareness. She couldn't move; she had no choice.
By mid-morning, she was dragged into the training yard, where the youngest male offspring were sparring. Each practiced cruelty as a skill, wielding energy blades and lash whips on the lower-ranking Zhaari. Priscilla was forced to dodge, to stagger, to feel the sting of light-edged strikes. A small slip could mean dismemberment, and she saw the consequences—the girl next to her lost an arm in a careless parry. Her scream was short-lived; the other Vorthrex children laughed, snapping the arm with a bone-crunching twist before discarding her into the mud.
Even meals were lessons in hierarchy. The strongest ate first, often stealing from the weak or throwing scraps into the dirt. A young boy tried to protect a smaller child; one of the Vorthrex daughters crushed his ribs with her foot, then laughed as he gagged in pain. Priscilla realized quickly that power here was not measured by ability alone, it was measured by cruelty, by willingness to dominate those below you.
By afternoon, a work detail was sent to the metal foundries. Priscilla's chains were removed briefly so she could lift ore into smelting vats. The heat was unbearable. A misstep, a stumble, and a fellow Zhaari was thrown into the molten metal by a laughing overseer. Their body melted before Priscilla's eyes, leaving only a skeleton blackened and dripping with molten residue. Each act of violence was framed as entertainment, education, or divine right by the Vorthrex family. Pain, suffering, and death were not anomalies, they were the curriculum.
The worst came as night fell. A group of adult Zhaari tried to revolt, attempting to smuggle weapons from the armory. The Vorthrex responded instantly: their energy blades ignited, their psychic whips lashed through the air. One by one, the rebels fell, and Priscilla saw bodies impaled, crushed, or disintegrated by containment fields. The survivors—if they were lucky—were enslaved again, branded, and forced into manual labor with even harsher punishments. Her own hands trembled as she realized: this was the cycle of this world. Strength was cruelty; survival meant inflicting pain or witnessing it constantly.
By the end of her first day, Priscilla was exhausted, bleeding, scorched, and terrified—but awake in a way she had never been in her immortal life. Pain, suffering, fear, helplessness: they coursed through her as raw, undeniable truths. She saw power as it truly existed here, absolute, merciless, and blind to morality. And she understood Magnus's words for the first time: to truly comprehend emotion, to truly measure human, or Zhaari, experience, she had to feel it firsthand, unshielded, unbound, and utterly mortal.
The night in the Vorthrex War House stretched endlessly, a suffocating chamber of pain and shadows. The metallic walls of the slave quarters reflected the faint glow of the molten forges outside, casting long, flickering silhouettes across the floor. Priscilla lay huddled in her corner, small and trembling, the chains around her wrists biting into her skin with every shiver. Her limbs were raw, bruised, and scorched from the day's relentless labor, and the sting of whipped flesh still throbbed through her body. The cries of her fellow slaves echoed through the corridors, a chorus of agony that would have been unbearable if she hadn't been forced to dull herself just to survive.
Every sound was a blade: the snapping of a whip, the snap of a bone, the laughter of the Vorthrex children as they tore through weaker slaves with practiced cruelty. Priscilla's stomach churned from hunger and fear, her ears ringing from the screams. She had seen entire rows of her fellow Zhaari crushed under the weight of stone blocks, burned alive in molten vats, and impaled by energy whips that sparked like lightning. The War House didn't merely punish; it celebrated suffering. Pain was a tool, a spectacle, a way of maintaining absolute control.
Even the air was thick with terror. The metallic tang of blood mixed with the iron scent of the chains that bound them, and the heat from the forges made every movement an agony. The children who had survived the day's labor slept fitfully, muscles twitching, murmuring pleas in their dreams, while guards patrolled overhead, their shadows slicing across the walls. Priscilla's small body shook not just from exhaustion but from the weight of fear, the fear of death, of pain, of being chosen next. Every clang of chains, every echo of boots on metal, sent her heart hammering in her chest like a drum of doom.
Her mind, once detached and godlike, now absorbed the raw, unfiltered terror of mortality. She felt the helplessness of her body, the futility of small actions, the constant calculation of when to act and when to remain still. Survival was no longer a concept, it was an instinct hammered into her through every lash, every push, every careless glance from a Vorthrex child wielding a whip or a blade. The moral complexity Magnus had spoken of was no longer abstract; it was palpable. She understood how cruelty and power warped choices, how those with authority often inflicted pain without thought, and how those without could only endure, evade, or perish.
And yet, just as a fragile rhythm of sleep began to touch her, the final moments of her 24-hour crucible arrived. The chains rattled faintly as she shifted, a tiny sound that seemed to echo too loudly in the silent room.
Vorthrex Kallen, the eldest male offspring, who had spent the day watching her every movement, stepped forward. His expression was cruel, vacant of reason, and his temper flared like wildfire. Without a word, he reached down, his massive hand closing around her tiny neck. The world tilted violently as she was lifted, struggling futilely, the chains tangling with her trembling arms.
With a brutal motion, he slammed her into the cold metal wall. The impact reverberated through her fragile body, snapping her spine against the unyielding surface. Pain exploded in every nerve, black stars flickering across her vision. Blood trickled from her nose and mouth, her body crumpling like ragged cloth against the floor. Kallen's hand didn't release her, but the chains did, bouncing off the wall with a harsh clatter that set his fury blazing.
It was over in an instant. Her ten-year-old Zhaari body, small and frail, was lifeless before she could even process the sound, the shock, or the betrayal of a world that had punished her for nothing more than existence and the innocuous rattle of chains.
Yet, in that precise, brutal instant, something shifted. Beyond the chains, beyond the flesh, beyond the mortal limitation she had endured, a pull on the fabric of reality itself yanked her consciousness outward. The pain, the fear, the helplessness, all of it, was absorbed into her awareness, compressed, and refined. She rose, not as a frightened child, not as a mortal slave, but as Perpetua. The weight of experience, the full, visceral spectrum of fear, suffering, and moral horror, was now her own, unfiltered and complete.
The War House remained behind, cruel and indifferent, its lessons of pain engraved into her soul. She understood fully now the scope of mortality, helplessness, and the bitter calculus of power that Magnus had promised she would feel. And she carried it with her, no longer as an observer, but as one who had walked through death, despair, and the merciless cruelty of the strong over the weak.
A pulse of raw energy flickered across the air as Perpetua's form solidified beside Omega, shimmering into existence with the weight of her recent mortal experience pressing against her godlike essence. Her presence distorted the space around her, a subtle ripple that bent reality slightly, betraying the enormity of what she had just endured.
Her eyes, though vast with cosmic awareness, carried a glint of mortal wrath, the deep, intimate fury of one who had tasted helplessness and fear in its purest, most relentless form. She turned to Omega, her voice low but charged with the power of creation and destruction combined.
"Brother," she said, her tone both calm and terrible, "I want these kind of races… erased. Every last one. But not in a swift or merciful way. They must feel every moment of the suffering they've inflicted, every torment they've visited upon the weak. Let them understand what it is to be powerless."
Omega's gaze swept the city below, where the high imperial race still roamed, nobles smug and untouched on a planet they enslave and used as a playground to do their vile acts, their soldiers keeping the surviving slaves in line. He could feel the threads of Perpetua's rage intertwining with his own cosmic will, the twin forces of time and the end of all things beginning to overlay their influence across the entire planet of Khar'Zun.
"Save the weak," she added, a strange, almost contradictory note in her command. "Those who have suffered and endured, they will be spared. But the oppressors… every blow, every lash, every cruelty they committed, I want it mirrored back upon them. Let them understand fear. Let them understand pain. Let them understand helplessness as I did."
Omega nodded, the faintest smile touching his otherwise emotionless face. "So it shall be," he murmured, his voice deep and resonant. The air seemed to thrum with anticipation as the first tendrils of their will began to manifest, bending reality in subtle but undeniable ways.
The city streets, already tense with fear and vigilance, quivered under the invisible weight of the cosmic forces now observing, and preparing to act. Soldiers froze mid-step. Nobles shivered despite themselves. Slaves glanced upward, unaware of the beings now standing just beyond mortal perception, yet sensing the magnitude of change about to sweep through their lives.
Perpetua's eyes, however, did not soften. She had walked in the shoes of the weak, endured their suffering, and absorbed their helplessness into her being. Now, armed with the knowledge of true vulnerability and the full scope of her own power, she was ready to reshape the scales of justice, or vengeance, without hesitation.
Her hand extended slightly, a subtle gesture, and a faint shimmer of temporal and cosmic energy traced along the air toward the oppressors. Omega mirrored her, his own influence amplifying hers, a silent partnership of unyielding will.
"Let them feel what it is to be nothing," Perpetua whispered, almost to herself. "And let the world remember what happens when the strong torment the weak."
The city beneath them braced, unknowingly, for the coming reckoning.
Perpetua was unbound, yet she had never once erased a world or unraveled a reality by her own hand, not because she lacked the power, but because she understood what such an act truly meant. Destruction was never just an ending; it was a theft of futures, a silencing of choices that had not yet learned how to be better. For that reason, she had always delegated that role to her brother. Not because Omega was violent, nor because he delighted in annihilation, but because when he came into being, his way of thinking diverged from hers at a fundamental level.
They were twins in origin, born from the same first fracture of existence, yet their minds were shaped by opposite necessities. Perpetua perceived time as a tapestry of becoming, every thread a possibility, every knot a lesson. To her, even cruelty was a data point in a long equation of growth. Omega, however, perceived reality as a sequence of conclusions. Where she saw evolution, he saw outcomes. Where she saw potential, he saw inevitability. He did not hate worlds; he simply understood when they had reached the logical end of what they could become.
Their difference was not emotional. It was philosophical.
Perpetua believed that suffering should teach. Omega believed that suffering proved failure.
To her, intervention was a question of guidance, when to nudge, when to withdraw, when to allow pain to shape wisdom. To him, intervention was a question of efficiency, when a system had grown so corrupted that its continued existence only multiplied harm. In this way, he became the executor not of rage, but of finality. He did not destroy because he wished to; he destroyed because, in his view, nothing more could be learned from what remained.
And so Perpetua had always stood at the edge of endings, never crossing them herself. She observed. She adjusted. She allowed civilizations to struggle, to fail, to recover, to change. Omega was the one who closed the book when the story had become nothing but repetition of cruelty.
But now, for the first time since their creation, Perpetua had lived inside the story she once only observed.
She had felt chains bite into flesh.She had heard laughter sharpen into weapons.She had died because a sound annoyed someone stronger.
What unsettled her was not the pain.
It was the clarity.
She now understood what Omega had always known in abstraction: that some systems did not produce growth from suffering, they produced refinement of cruelty. Pain did not awaken conscience; it trained efficiency. Power did not stumble into evil; it optimized it.
And standing beside her brother again, with mortal fear still echoing in her chest, Perpetua realized something that shifted her forever:
She had always judged worlds from the scale of time.
Omega judged them from the scale of victims.
That was why he ended them.
And that was why, now, she no longer asked him if a world should be punished,
Only how much of it deserved to remain.
Omega and Perpetua stood above the planet like principles given form—two infinities hovering beyond atmosphere and consequence. From that vantage, the world was only a pattern: continents like scars, cities like infections of light. The War House of Vorthrex was a statistical node. The enslaved Zhaari were an output. Suffering was measurable.
And yet—
Their other selves sat in the corner of a Dark Elven shop that smelled of burnt resin and bitter herbs.
Magnus and Priscilla—human-shaped, diminished, bound by locality—held chipped ceramic cups between their hands. The liquid inside was tea in name only, dark and oily, laced with poison meant to sicken them slowly. The shop owner had brewed it with care, hatred steeped deeper than the leaves. To him, they were intruders. To the city, they were irritants. To the watchers outside, they were anomalies that had not yet earned the right to be erased.
Dark Elf sentries lingered in the street, pretending to browse wares while their eyes never left the window.
The tea was tasteless.
Worthless.
They drank it anyway.
Not for nourishment.
For presence.
Magnus lifted the cup, inhaled once, and set it down without comment. His body processed the poison the way a mountain processes rain—without urgency, without acknowledgment. Priscilla mirrored him, though her hands trembled faintly. Not from toxin, but from memory.
Silence stretched between them.
No words were needed.
He knew.
She knew he knew.
Somewhere above them, in a layer of reality too wide for streets or ceilings, Perpetua had died as a child slave. And Omega had heard her scream across causal boundaries.
Magnus did not ask what she felt.
Priscilla did not explain.
Understanding moved between them without language.
She stared into the tea, watching the surface ripple as the shop's door opened and closed, as boots passed outside, as the city breathed in its cruelty like air.
"I see it now," she said finally, her voice low, almost fragile. "Why you walk so many worlds."
Magnus did not look at her. "Do you?"
"Yes." Her fingers tightened around the cup. "You don't search for beauty. You search for… thresholds. For the moment when a system proves it cannot change."
A pause.
"And?" he asked.
"And when it reaches that point," she whispered, "you don't destroy it out of anger. You remove it because leaving it alive is… endorsing it."
That made him turn his head.
Her eyes were different now.
Not brighter.
Heavier.
"I thought emotions were flaws," she continued. "Signals to be filtered. But now I see the duality. They are distortions… and measurements. They destabilize us, but they also reveal where meaning fractures."
She exhaled slowly. "I want to learn what you've learned."
Magnus's gaze was steady. "You already have."
"No," she said. "I felt it. That's different. And I hate it." Her jaw tightened. "It shakes me. It bends my perspective. I don't know whether to embrace it… or excise it."
Outside, a Dark Elf laughed. Somewhere else, a slave screamed. Somewhere above all of it, a world waited for judgment.
Magnus took another sip of the poison tea.
"Then you've reached the same contradiction I did," he said. "To learn is to fracture. To remain stoic is to preserve structure. You can't do both forever."
Priscilla lowered her eyes. "And you chose fracture."
"I chose coherence," he corrected. "With reality, not comfort."
She watched the liquid swirl. "So what am I choosing?"
Magnus studied her—not as a twin, not as Time, but as a consciousness newly burdened.
"You're choosing whether to become an observer who understands suffering," he said, "or a participant who accepts responsibility for it."
Her lips parted.
Outside, the watchers shifted.
Above, Perpetua and Omega stood ready to erase a War House from causality.
Inside, Priscilla sat in chains of memory, torn between two truths:
To remain untouched was to remain ignorant.
To understand was to never be clean again.
And for the first time since her creation, she realized—
Stoicism was not neutrality.
It was a decision.
And learning was not wisdom.
It was exposure.
The tea cooled.
The poison failed.
And between sips of bitterness, Time itself hesitated, wondering which path would make her less divine… and more just.
Priscilla turned her cup slowly in her hands, watching the dark liquid cling to the cracked porcelain."The part that always made me see life differently," she said, "was watching the ripples of what I have done. I could observe wars, extinctions, rebirths… but they were always patterns. Equations. Outcomes."
Magnus leaned back against the wall, eyes half-lidded. "Sister, you must look at pain and evil through the eyes of those who commit it. Not only the ones who suffer."
She frowned. "Why would I ever do that?"
"Because," he replied calmly, "evil rarely believes it is evil. It believes it is necessary. Efficient. Deserved. If you only see the victim, you will always react. If you see the perpetrator, you begin to understand the mechanism."
Priscilla's gaze drifted to the street beyond the window, where a Dark Elf noble passed, dragging a chained servant behind him."But look at those who suffer," she said softly. "When I came to Earth, humanity carried every pain imaginable, fear, grief, rage, loneliness. Entire histories built on it. And yet…"
She paused, searching for the right word.
"…there was something else. Small. Almost invisible. A microscopic resilience. A refusal to collapse completely."
Magnus's lips curved faintly. "Hope."
"Yes," she said. "Not the grand kind. Not destiny or prophecy. Just… persistence. The decision to keep breathing when logic says you should stop."
He nodded once. "That is what makes them dangerous."
"Dangerous?"
"To tyrannies. To gods. To systems like the War House of Vorthrex." He gestured vaguely at the city. "Hope is not power. It is continuity. It ensures that suffering does not terminate the experiment."
Priscilla's voice dropped. "Then why does it hurt so much to witness?"
"Because hope creates contrast," Magnus answered. "Without it, pain is just data. With it, pain becomes theft."
She closed her eyes briefly. Images flashed through her mind:The Zhaari child dragged away.The Springgan king bleeding beneath roots. Humans barricading themselves against a horde.A noble laughing while a slave died.
"I thought emotions were distortions," she whispered. "But now I think… they are lenses. They do not change reality. They change what reality means."
Magnus studied her. "You're beginning to see why I roam."
"To judge?"
"To measure," he corrected. "If a world can still generate hope under maximum cruelty, it has not collapsed into entropy. It is broken, but alive."
"And if it cannot?"
"Then it becomes like Khar'Zun," he said quietly. "Functional. Stable. Empty of moral motion. A machine wearing the skin of a civilization."
Priscilla's fingers tightened. "So when I freed the slaves… I introduced hope."
"You introduced choice," Magnus replied. "Hope followed. So did despair. That is always the trade."
She looked at him, something fragile in her expression. "Then what do I do with this feeling?"
Magnus met her gaze fully now. "You don't remove it. You refine it. You learn when to act… and when to let the consequence teach instead of you."
Outside, the watchers shifted again. Inside, poison cooled in forgotten cups.
Priscilla exhaled slowly. "Then humanity's resilience… that tiny refusal to disappear"
"is the proof they are still writing themselves," Magnus finished. "Even in suffering."
She nodded once .Not in agreement.
In acceptance.
And somewhere, far above, Omega's shadow stretched across a planet that had forgotten what hope looked like… while beside him, Perpetua no longer saw pain as a concept.
She saw it as a story still trying to end differently.
Magnus rose from his seat, the faint scrape of metal against stone echoing in the small shop. His gaze drifted toward the fractured skyline beyond the doorway, where spires and chains still ruled the horizon.
"This is the fourth day," he said quietly, "and we have not seen a single one of them step outside the Dark Elf way."
Priscilla followed his eyes. "I can remove the barrier," she said. "The one isolating this region. I can expose them to everything beyond it, truth, consequence, comparison."
Magnus shook his head once. "Let them be. Humanity is adapting well. There are far more reasons to help them than to intervene here. If a situation arises that truly demands correction, like what is happening now, then we act. But not before."
She frowned. "You sound… tired."
"I am," he admitted. "I made the primordial races believe they confide in me. That they were different. That wisdom would emerge if I waited long enough." His voice hardened slightly. "But seeing them repeat the same structures, domination, fear, hierarchy, it becomes pointless. Redundant."
Priscilla folded her arms. "So you are done teaching them?"
"No," Magnus replied. "I am done expecting them to learn."
A silence settled between them. Below, a chained procession crossed the street, watched by soldiers who believed themselves eternal.
Priscilla spoke again, softer now. "Then why not erase the barrier? Let them see what they are not."
"Because comparison does not create change," Magnus said. "It creates resentment. Collapse. Wars born from envy rather than reflection."
She looked at him, uncertain. "And humanity?"
"They suffer," he said, "but they question. They doubt their own systems. They fight their gods, their kings, and their histories. That alone makes them… interesting."
Priscilla's eyes lingered on the city one last time. "So this world remains as it is."
"For now," Magnus said. "Not because it deserves mercy. But because it has not yet proven it deserves extinction."
He stepped past her toward the street.
"Come," he added. "We still have one day left to observe what stagnation looks like when it thinks it is order."
And together, they walked back into a city that did not know it was being weighed.
Priscilla spoke coldly, her eyes narrowing.
"Ah… that annoying bug is still probing and reporting back to its master."
Magnus laughed softly. "To whom?" he asked. "Fate? Destiny? Or Law?"
She scoffed. "I can't really say it openly… but those three never pester me. It's the gods who do. I will take my leave for now, just to give you the moment you need. Being here might give that pest a reason to justify some foolish rumor about you and me."
Magnus chuckled. "You've changed, sister. You never worried about such things before."
She paused, then sighed.
"You're right. I hate it… and yet, I like it at the same time. The duality of emotion is peculiar indeed. I will see you when I see you, brother."
And just like that, Perpetua's physical manifestation beside Magnus vanished without sound or light.
Magnus remained standing for a moment. Then his form shifted. His divine presence folded inward, reshaping itself into a familiar disguise. He donned the uniform of the Omega Agency and turned toward the city gates.
Without haste, he walked out of the Dark Elf capital.
The soldiers who witnessed his departure stiffened in fear. Some whispered. Others immediately rushed to report what they had seen to the Four Council Elders.
Deep within the palace, King Finduilas Flameleaf emerged from seclusion.
For the first time in years, he wore his ancestral armor.
As he fastened the final piece into place, ancient power awakened within him, power passed down through his bloodline, forged for a single purpose:
To face the intruder head-on.
Suddenly, upon a jagged mountain peak overlooking the human fortified campsite, two figures stood in silence.
The mountaintop was barren and wind-scoured, its black stone cracked like old scars from ancient upheaval. Thin veils of mist drifted between broken spires of rock, and the air was sharp with cold and static, humming faintly with distorted mana currents. From this height, the vast forest below stretched endlessly, an ocean of dark green canopies swallowing the land in every direction.
At the forest's heart lay a massive circular clearing, nearly two hundred meters in radius, unnaturally smooth and stripped of trees as if carved out by divine force. In its center stood the Rift Gateway and the colossal sentinel terraforming structure humans called the Tower of Trial, a massive Propagator Transmitter System erected to stabilize and regulate the seven great rifts it had created. as it stood on the vast open ocean on planet earth that that high imperial will soon turn into another war planetary garrison like what happened to the planet Khar'Zun and its inhabitants the Zhaari .
From the mountain's edge, the distance to the clearing was several kilometers, yet the tower was unmistakable: a dark needle rising from the earth, glowing with shifting sigils and pulsing energy that distorted the sky above it.
Lieutenant Varrek Thane, leader of the Proving Spear Unit of the High Imperial forces stationed on the monitoring world of Khar'Zun, stood with his arms folded behind his back.
Beside him was Commander Kaelthrix Vorthrex, Lord of the Seventh War House and Bearer of the Pain Mandate.
Proving Spear Unit observed the human camp and searching for the so called anomaly with cold precision. their mission was simple: eliminate the disturbance that had ruined the latest harvest of mana crystals.
The High Imperials did not enslave worlds rich in magic. To them, such planets were far too valuable to rule through force alone. Instead, they were cultivated, treated as vast farms for mana extraction. Among the countless enchanted worlds of the Springgan Realm, this one was merely a single field in an endless empire of harvest.
The Dark Elven race, in High Imperial doctrine, were not rulers of this world.
They were merely caretakers.
And now… an anomaly had appeared within the field.
Something that did not belong and needed to be remove .
Lieutenant Varrek Thane and his ten soldiers was colossal mortal standards. but smaller than the elite high imperials warriors .
They all stood nearly two and a half meters tall, their frames not merely bulky but architectural, as though each skeleton had been designed first and flesh poured over it afterward. Their limbs were thick with layered muscle, yet their proportions were unnervingly precise, engineered for endurance rather than raw brute force. Every movement they made carried the deliberate weight of beings built for siege warfare.
Their armor resembled no single suit, but rather ten walking fortresses.
Plates of matte-black and ash-bronze alloy interlocked over their bodies in overlapping segments, shaped not like smooth knightly curves but like angular slabs of continental drift. Each plate bore faint geometric etchings, High Imperial sigil-logic carved into the metal not for decoration, but for structural reinforcement and pain-channeling. Dim crimson light pulsed through narrow seams between the armor layers, as if every suit possessed its own slow, mechanical heartbeat.
Unlike human war-plate, their armor did not sit upon them.
It merged with them.
Cables like sinew ran from the backs of their necks into their cuirasses, disappearing beneath the plates. Along each spine, a raised dorsal ridge housed a breathing engine and mana-pressure regulator, exhaling thin plumes of glowing vapor with every measured breath. Their shoulders were crowned with broad, slanted pauldrons that did not flare outward like ceremonial crests, but downward like shields meant to deflect artillery fire.
Their helmets were elongated, faceplates split vertically by narrow, luminous slits of pale red light, their only visible "eyes." The shapes were neither skull nor human visage, but something between insect and execution mask, giving the entire unit the appearance of judges designed by machines.
Their weapons, mag-locked across their backs, were longer than a man was tall, Proving Spears modified into hybrid lance-rifles. Each shaft shimmered with internal energy veins, and each blade tip was not sharp so much as geometrically final, like the end of an equation.
Yet what made the Proving Spear unit truly unsettling was not their size, nor their armor.
It was their stillness.
When they stood, none of them shifted their weight. None fidgeted. None breathed loudly. They simply occupied space, as though gravity itself had been instructed to acknowledge them.
Where human soldiers looked like men wearing armor, the Proving Spear unit looked like weapons that had learned how to walk.
From the jagged ridges of the distant mountain, Varrek Thane and his nine Proving Spear lieutenants observed the chaos unfolding across the open clearing. The 200-meter-radius glade at the forest's heart had become a scarred battlefield: earth torn into jagged gullies, splintered trees impaling fallen Noids, and scorched patches where molten mana or kinetic impacts had erupted. The air shimmered with heat and energy, the smell of ozone and blood mixing with the thick, humid scent of trampled foliage.
Their crimson-tinged optics followed the humans moving within the fortified campsite. Even from this distance, it was clear the battle plan of the occupants was precise. They weren't chasing glory. They weren't hunting kills. They were holding, waiting, enduring. Each movement, each strike, each barrier deployed was part of a meticulous dance, and the non-combatants were its unsung pivot points.
Healers worked seamlessly with combatants, their glowing hands patching wounds almost before they happened. Constructs of earth and metal were shifted into defensive positions by those with manipulation abilities, forming temporary bastions that redirected Noid charges. Every weakness of every soldier was instantly covered by another human, arrows intercepted mid-flight, falling trees turned aside, and exhausted fighters propped up long enough to continue their defense.
Varrek Thane's mechanical "eye" scanned patterns of damage and recovery. He admitted, almost silently, to himself, that the Dark Elf concern about humans was justified. The High Imperials had been right in selecting this species as the next trial for conquest. Their adaptability, their ability to coordinate under duress, and their capacity for learning in real-time, even with limited experience, made them disturbingly like the Proving Spear unit itself, if not for their lack of raw durability and endurance.
"The humans… they are resourceful," Thane finally said, voice like the grind of steel, as the others' optics scanned the clearing in agreement. "They lack discipline now, but give them time. Pain, suffering, and structured conflict… they will evolve. They will learn to survive at our level."
At the edge of the treeline, Magnus appeared, just within the limit of the forest's shadow, his presence barely disturbing the wind. He observed the fourth wave of Noids advancing, a tangled swarm of five hundred hulking creatures, each more erratic than the last. Dead Noids littered the ground from earlier waves, some crushed beneath the weight of their own momentum, others riddled with piercing arrows, or charred by the gun turret sentry fire. The earth trembled as the stampede barreled forward, scattering debris and forcing the front ranks to falter.
Inside the fortified camp, Alexa and her teammates were a living machine of coordination. She moved with quiet precision, laying down barriers to redirect charges and shielding wounded civilians from straggling Noids. Kaelin, Rhea, and Sylas struck in tandem, cutting down Noids with coordinated flares of elemental energy. Lyca manipulated kinetic currents to prevent falling timber or debris from crushing their own lines.
Mira Holt slashed with her twin electro-blades, sparks illuminating the faces of panicked civilians who froze in awe and terror. Tomas Reed held the kinetic shield against an unrelenting flank, grunting with effort as his body began to tremble from strain. Ilya Voren's sniper bolts pierced Noids from above, assisted by gravity pulses that pushed the heavier creatures off-balance. Nara Quin used gusts of wind to redirect projectiles and falling debris, constantly adjusting her microcurrents to maximize protection. Owen Park's explosives tore swaths through clustered enemy groups, each detonation carefully timed to avoid friendly casualties.
The non-combatant civilians, 27 in total, were corralled and guided by Elena Ro to sheltered positions, but the human element proved pivotal: their data and tactical awareness allowed the combatants to anticipate surges, redistribute energy, and minimize losses. Every moment was a combination of fear, exhaustion, and adrenaline, the heat of noon pressing down, hunger gnawing at them, yet no one faltered.
Magnus could sense it all. He knew Alexa and her team were physically and mentally strained beyond their limits. Wounds had been patched, energy burned, and yet courage and determination did not waver. Even in her exhaustion, Alexa's thoughts drifted briefly to him, not for commands, not for strategy, but for a quiet connection. She whispered into the wind, barely audible: "I miss you…" No name was spoken, no plea for help, just recognition of presence across distance.
The Noid attack came in waves from two directions this time, creating chaos in the outer perimeter. Force powered gun turret and fortifications slowed them, but the swarming horde forced the humans to prioritize defense over offense. Explosions, barriers, and elemental bursts shredded the forest edges, trees snapped like twigs, and the ground shook under the relentless pressure. Fear rippled through the civilians, some paralyzed by terror, others crying out in desperation. Yet the human combatants held them steady, each action precise and deliberate, like clockwork in the storm of violence.
Far above, Varrek Thane and the Proving Spear unit continued to observe silently. Eleven High Imperial soldiers, entering the isolated rift, were known to be on the way, an additional nuisance that could disrupt even the humans' carefully calculated survival strategy.
Magnus' eyes narrowed at the swarm, knowing full well the toll the ongoing 24-hour endurance test had taken. This was the fourth day, and tomorrow, he would finally decide on his next move, assessing not only the humans' survival, but their capacity to adapt, endure, and rise in the face of relentless trial.
The clearing had become a crucible, and the humans, tired, hungry, and wounded, were proving that in the right hands, strategy, cohesion, and determination could outweigh raw numbers and brute force.
From their vantage atop the jagged mountain ridge, Varrek Thane and his eleven Proving Spear soldiers watched the human camp below with a mixture of boredom and detached curiosity. The clearing stretched roughly 200 meters across, its perimeter marred by cratered earth, broken trees, and splintered logs from the ongoing Noid attacks. From this distance, the chaos seemed almost… quaint.
"Those Noids are low rank," Thane said, voice a low rumble like steel grinding on stone. "These humans, even with their awakened abilities, are only facing Level 5. On Khar'Zun, we train against Level 15. Creatures like that would be dispatched in minutes, and the civilians would be long gone before the first volley landed."
One of the lieutenants, a broad-shouldered warrior with a dorsal ridge glowing dimly under his armor plating, chuckled softly. "Yet they survive. That much I cannot deny. Coordination is… efficient. And they've even fortified the perimeter."
Thane's luminous eye slit narrowed. "Fortifications and traps? Amusing. The humans are resourceful enough to learn fast. But this is beneath us. My orders were to eliminate the enemy if deemed necessary. And yet…" He gestured vaguely toward the writhing mass of Noids below. "…these creatures hardly warrant engagement. This battle is theater."
Another lieutenant, the one whose faceplate was streaked with crimson light, added dryly, "The ones who interest me are the humans. Observe how they work together. Combatants, healers, civilians… each is assigned a role with remarkable precision. Even the non-awakened are deployed intelligently. That is rare in any species."
Thane inclined his head slowly. "Indeed. That is why we wait. This is a test not for the Noids, but for the humans. The Tower's design is… clever. Observe how the awakened use barriers and attacks without exhausting themselves. How the healers preserve their allies. And how the civilians contribute to survival rather than interfere. A primitive species, but with potential. Pain, suffering, and discipline… we might yet mold them."
A pause settled over the group as the next wave of Noids began to stir below, the forest trembling with their approach. The humans fought tirelessly, their weapons firing, barriers shimmering, and elemental attacks slashing through the charging creatures. Yet Thane's team remained motionless, their towering frames like statues of war, observing every detail.
"These humans, if they endure, if they adapt, they might yet become worthy subjects for training. But for now…" Thane's tone was both dismissive and calculating. "…entertainment only. A display of resilience, nothing more."
He leaned slightly forward, the pulsing seams of his armor reflecting the midday sun. "Remember this, comrades: we are not here to interfere. Let the Noids test them, let the humans struggle. Watch how they survive under duress. Their weaknesses, their strategies, and their determination… all are data to collect."
From far below, the battle raged on, explosions, the clash of steel, elemental surges, and the shrill cries of terrified civilians, but from the mountain, the Proving Spear unit saw only patterns, probabilities, and potential. And while some amusement lingered in their observation, their pride and arrogance remained unshaken; to them, this was still beneath the level of warfare they had trained for, yet far more revealing than any drill or simulation back on Khar'Zun.
Varrek Thane's luminous eye slit narrowed as the rhythm of the battle below shifted.
The fourth wave had begun like the others, an ugly flood of Level 5 Noids spilling from fractured rift tears in random arcs around the clearing. The humans responded as they always had: barriers rising, turrets roaring, wind shearing through the trees, gravity snapping bodies to the ground. Efficient. Predictable.
Then the pattern broke.
From one of the newly opened rift scars, low to the ground, pulsing with a deeper violet glow, something stepped out instead of surged.
Not a swarm.Not a beast among beasts.
A singular presence.
Varrek Thane straightened slightly."So… the sentinel releases its champion."
The creature that emerged dwarfed the others not by sheer bulk, but by density, as if space itself bent tighter around it.
The Level 20 Noid stood nearly five meters tall when fully upright, though it rarely stood straight. Its body resembled a fusion of centipede and executioner's golem: a segmented torso plated in obsidian chitin, each plate etched with glowing runes that pulsed in rhythm with its movement. Six thick limbs supported it, each ending in hooked claws that split into smaller jointed talons like branching knives.
Its head was wrong.
Not a skull. Not a face.
It was a vertical split of mandibles, opening and closing like the pages of a book made of bone. From within, strands of luminous violet flesh writhed, sensory organs and feeding tendrils intertwined. Where eyes should have been were three floating nodes of light, orbiting slowly around its head, tracking targets independently.
Mana poured off it in visible distortion, warping the air like heat over steel.
"A Level 20," one of Thane's soldiers muttered."Placed randomly among fodder," another added. "To fracture morale."
The Tower had done this before on other worlds.
A predator dropped into prey.
Below, the human camp reacted instantly.
"CONTACT, SINGLE HEAVY!""Barrier front, now!""Gravity lock, missed, shit, it's phasing!"
The elite twenty-four agency combatants surged forward to intercept it.
And were immediately punished.
The Noid moved like a collapsing building learning to run. Its front limbs slammed into the earth, releasing a concussive pulse of compressed mana that shattered the first line of earth walls. A second later, it vanished, not teleporting, but slipping into a distortion fold—and reappeared inside the perimeter.
It did not slash.
It rammed.
One agent was crushed into the ground so hard his armor bent inward like foil. Another was flung into a container wall hard enough to crack the steel. A third was skewered through the abdomen by a tendril that erupted from the Noid's chest, lifting him screaming into the air before flinging him aside like waste.
Varrek Thane observed coldly.
"Power profile: physical reinforcement, spatial displacement, mana compression, multi-axis perception," he assessed."Conclusion: a proper test creature."
Down below, Alexa raised her arms.
Her barrier flared—Tier 3, hexagonal layers of blue-white light locking together in front of the beast as it charged.
For a heartbeat, it held.
Then the Noid struck the barrier with its head.
Not a punch.
Not a blast.
It drove its mandibles forward like a living battering ram.
The shield screamed.
Fracture lines raced across it like glass under a hammer. The air detonated outward. Alexa was thrown backward, skidding across the dirt, blood already spilling from her nose.
Her barrier, rated to stop RPG-class force, shattered.
"Alexa!""Healers, now!""Fall back, fall back, no, it's targeting the center!"
Varrek Thane watched the humans scramble to reform their lines, wounded being dragged behind cover while others stepped in without hesitation.
"They endure," he admitted."But this one will break them unless they evolve… or intervene."
And Magnus watched too.
From the treeline.
His perception was constrained—his awareness localized, his presence reduced to something the world could tolerate. To the battlefield, he was merely a Rank SS maverick cleaner, not the End of All Things.
He felt Alexa's pain when the barrier broke.
He felt her lungs struggle.
He felt the strain in her will.
And he did not move.
Yet.
Because this was what he needed to know.
Could they win without him?
The Silver Owls, the Noid Reapers, the Horizon Guard—could they overcome something meant to be unwinnable?
The Level 20 Noid roared—not with sound, but with pressure. Trees bent outward from it. Loose debris lifted into the air and spiraled around its body like orbiting knives.
It turned its three light-nodes toward Alexa.
And began to advance again.
Varrek Thane folded his arms.
"Interesting," he said."The anomaly forced the sentinel to escalate early."
One of his soldiers asked, "Shall we eliminate it, commander?"
Thane did not answer immediately.
He watched the humans regroup.Watched the healers throw themselves over the wounded.Watched Alexa force herself upright despite shaking limbs.
"They are starving. Exhausted. And still standing."
He paused.
"Let us see if they deserve to survive this wave."
Below, the monster lunged again.
And Magnus's fingers twitched.
Tomorrow, he would decide.
But today,
He would let them fight.
Because this battle was no longer about survival.
It was about proof.
Alexa did not retreat.
Even as her barrier collapsed and her body screamed in protest, she forced herself upright, boots sliding through churned mud and blood-darkened grass. The world rang in her ears, every breath scraping through her ribs like broken glass, but her eyes stayed fixed on the towering thing advancing through the smoke.
Magnus felt it.
Not as sound. Not as sight.
As a rupture inside himself.
Fear, raw, unfamiliar, corrosive. Anger, hot, instinctive, irrational.
Two emotions colliding where only detachment used to exist.
He hated them both.
And yet… he did not turn away.
The Level 20 Noid surged forward again.
It did not run.
It collapsed space.
The ground beneath it folded inward as its mass shifted, and in a single violent bound it crossed the remaining distance. Its front limbs slammed down, releasing a shockwave that tore apart the last intact earth wall. Containers stacked as barricades tipped and burst open, spilling weapons and rock like bones from a cracked ribcage.
Alexa raised her arms.
Not to block.
To slow it.
Her barrier flared weakly, fractured, unstable, barely holding its shape. The Noid struck it with the full weight of its charge.
The impact sounded like thunder trapped inside a bell.
The barrier shattered instantly, fragments of blue light disintegrating into sparks. The force carried through her body without mercy. Her arms bent the wrong way under the pressure, bones fracturing with dull, muffled snaps. Her ribs took the rest, cracking inward as she was hurled backward through the air.
She hit the ground hard enough to carve a shallow trench in the dirt.
Her breath left her in a wet gasp.
The Noid did not stop.
It pivoted, its three luminous nodes locking onto the camp's heart, and drove forward again—this time through the broken perimeter.
And the horde followed.
Level 5 Noids poured through the gap like insects through a broken window.
"THEY'RE IN!""Close the breach!""Back line, fall back now!"
Kaelin teleported in flashes of light, dragging wounded clear. Rhea slammed her palms into the ground, raising jagged slabs of stone to slow the tide. Sylas fired until his rifle overheated, then switched to gravity rounds, pinning clusters of Noids to the earth.
But panic spread faster than tactics.
The non-awakened civilians screamed as the creatures spilled into the outer lanes of the camp. Merchants dropped their data slates and ran. Politicians stumbled over fallen bodies. Smugglers and prospectors tried to hide behind overturned containers, clutching pistols they barely knew how to use.
The Level 20 Noid rampaged through the defenses like a siege engine given teeth.
Its tendrils lashed out, smashing turrets from their mounts. Its claws tore through barricades as if they were rotted wood. Each step it took crushed the ground, sending vibrations that knocked fighters off their feet.
Alexa tried to rise.
Her arm refused to answer.
She rolled instead, coughing blood, forcing herself onto one knee.
Her barrier was gone.
Her body was broken.
But she did not scream.
She looked at the breach.
At the civilians.
At her team.
And she pushed.
Not outward.
Inward.
Magnus watched her do it.
And something inside him fractured more painfully than her bones.
He felt the terror of losing her. He felt the fury at the thing that would take her. He felt the helplessness of restraint.
These were not cosmic emotions.
They were human ones.
And they burned.
The Noid roared again, lifting its head and unleashing a pressure wave that flattened what remained of the protective wall. Level 5 Noids surged past it, leaping into the camp, claws scraping against armor, teeth snapping at exposed throats.
The perimeter was gone.
The fight was no longer outside.
It was inside.
And Alexa, broken and bleeding, still tried to stand between them.
Magnus's hands trembled at his sides.
Not with power.
With decision.
And for the first time since binding himself to this form, he did not know if he could endure watching much longer.
Magnus stepped out of the treel ine.
He wore the Omega Agency uniform, black and gray plates fitted close to his body, insignia dulled by dust and ash, but nothing about him looked like a man in armor. Each footfall landed with a weight that did not belong to flesh. The earth cracked under his boots in spiderweb fractures, rippling outward like the surface of a struck drum.
The Noids felt him before they saw him.
Their shrieks faltered. Their charge stuttered.
One by one, the remaining creatures turned away from the broken camp and faced him.
Magnus did not raise a weapon.
His bound energy leaked from him in visible distortion, bending the air around his shoulders and arms, making heat shimmer along his silhouette. It was not the vast, annihilating power he once commanded, but it was dense, compressed, and angry.
The Level 20 Noid roared and lunged.
Magnus moved.
Not fast.
Certain.
The creature's first tendril snapped toward his chest. Magnus caught it in his left hand.
The impact tore a trench behind him as the force pushed him backward half a step. Bone met chitin. Muscle met void-flesh.
Pain exploded up his arm.
Real pain.
Not simulated.Not abstract.
His fingers dug in and felt resistance, texture, heat.
The tendril spasmed as he tightened his grip—and tore it free from the Noid's body in a spray of black ichor.
The sensation hit him like lightning.
Pressure.Tearing.Feedback through nerves.
Magnus exhaled sharply.
"…So this is it," he murmured. "The difference."
The Noid slammed into him, shoulder-first.
They collided like two trains meeting head-on.
Magnus was driven back through the broken wall, skidding across the churned mud. His boots carved furrows. His ribs rang like struck steel.
The pain was exhilarating.
Not because it was pleasant, but because it was informative.
A weapon ended things at a distance.
But this…This taught him force.
He planted his feet and swung.
His fist connected with the Noid's lower jaw.
The sound was not a crack.
It was a detonation.
The creature's head snapped sideways, armor plating fracturing outward like shattered rock. Magnus felt the resistance give way under his knuckles, felt the density of the thing, felt the shock recoil into his own bones.
He hissed through his teeth.
"Good."
The Noid retaliated, slamming both claws down. Magnus crossed his arms and took the blow directly. The impact drove him into the ground up to his knees, stone and dirt exploding around him.
His muscles screamed.
His joints protested.
He laughed once, short, sharp, disbelieving.
"This is what you call strength?"
He surged upward, lifting the Noid with him by its forelimbs. The creature thrashed, tendrils lashing, slicing his shoulders and back. Pain flared across his skin in lines of fire.
Magnus twisted.
The Noid's torso split with a wet, thunderous rip as he tore it in half.
Both halves hit the ground in different directions.
The remaining Level 5 Noids hesitated.
Then charged.
Magnus met them bare-handed.
He caught one by the skull and slammed it into another, crushing both. He drove his elbow through a chest cavity and ripped free a glowing core. He stepped through claws and teeth, every movement simple, brutal, efficient.
Each strike taught him something.
How momentum carried through muscle.How resistance changed the angle of force.How pain sharpened awareness instead of dulling it.
This was not destruction.
This was contact.
And for the first time since binding himself to mortal form, Magnus understood something new:
Weapons ended battles.
But hands…Hands made them real.
Behind him, the camp watched in stunned silence.
The Noids fell back, bodies piling where they had once surged.
Magnus stood among them, chest rising and falling, blood, both his and theirs, dripping from his knuckles.
He turned slightly toward the camp.
Toward Alexa.
His voice carried low, steady, and edged with something newly born.
"Stay down," he said."I will finish this wave."
The pain Magnus felt was exhilarating.
It was nothing like wielding a blade, nothing like channeling force through a tool or construct. A weapon separated cause from effect. This did not. Every strike fed directly back into his nerves, impact, resistance, fracture, recoil. He could feel the density of the Noid's hide collapse beneath his knuckles. He could feel his own bones protest and adapt in real time. Pain was no longer an abstract signal.
It was proof of contact.
He twisted, catching a lunging Noid by its horned skull and driving it headfirst into the broken wall. The creature burst apart against the stone like a sack of wet clay. Another leapt, Magnus stepped into it and drove his fist upward through its torso, the force folding its body around his arm before he flung it aside.
Each motion was crude. Each result was final.
From the mountain ridge above the clearing, Lieutenant Varrek Thane watched without blinking.
His single luminous visor slit narrowed, internal sigils recalculating.
"That one," he said calmly.
The eleven Proving Spear soldiers shifted their stance, their armor plates subtly reconfiguring as targeting logic awakened.
"He does not fight like a mortal," Varrek continued. "Yet he is constrained to mortal scale."
Data streamed across his helm, force output, impact vectors, regeneration signatures. The numbers did not align with any known category assigned to this world.
"He is not part of the test," one of his subordinates reported.
Varrek's tone remained even."He is the disruption of it."
Below them, Magnus crushed another Noid's skull with both hands, the shockwave rippling through the mud. The remaining creatures hesitated, their swarm logic stalling in the presence of something that did not fit their threat hierarchy.
Varrek Thane's gaze locked onto him.
"Confirmed," he said. "Anomalous entity. Combat profile inconsistent with rift-native life or human awakening patterns."
A faint, grim interest entered his voice.
"This is the one interfering with the harvest."
The Proving Spear unit stood at the edge of the mountain ridge, watching as the anomaly fought bare-handed in the killing field, unaware that his battle had just been classified not as resistance…
…but as a variable worthy of High Imperial attention. even if magnus who was in Omega outfit constantly lowering his power usage to not gain addition attention , he set a limit with the scope of his chosen powers his ability was set to only at a level of the awakened S rank.