Drex slumped against the cold stone of the inner wall, sliding down until he hit the dirt. His chest was heaving, but a wide, breathless grin was plastered across his face. The adrenaline from the shadow-dive was fading, leaving behind the hollow ache of mana exhaustion, but the thrill was still electric in his veins.
"That... was... wild," he wheezed, laughing quietly to himself. It felt like someone had scooped out his insides with a spoon, but the rush of dodging death by becoming a literal shadow? Totally worth it.
He fumbled for the rigid case at his belt, his fingers shaking—not just from weakness, but from the residual tremors of the high. He pulled out the mana injector.
It looked like a piece of alien machinery.
It was a jagged cylinder of brass and glass, filled with a neon-blue fluid that seemed to squirm inside the tube. At the tip was a needle that looked far too thick for comfort. Drex hesitated, staring at it.
Reading about these things in the webnovel was one thing; actually holding the device against his own skin was another.
He took a breath, aligned the device against his thigh, and pressed the trigger.
Click-Hiss.
Drex winced, a shudder running up his spine. It wasn't exactly painful, but the sensation was deeply wrong. It felt like cold sludge being forced into his muscle, a heavy, uncomfortable pressure that made his leg twitch involuntarily. The cold spread quickly, replacing the exhaustion with a buzzing, artificial energy.
Movement flashed to his left.
Lucianna vaulted over a pile of rubble, landing in a crouch. Her silver armor was scorched, and the tip of her spear dripped with monster blood. She wasn't unharmed—there was a nasty gash on her cheek—but her eyes were sharp. She scanned the plaza, relaxing only slightly when she saw the millipedes were dead.
"Status?" she asked, breathless.
"Alive," Drex managed to rasp, rubbing the sore spot on his leg as he pushed himself upright. "Sai flattened them."
"Right," Lucianna muttered, wiping her blade with a cloth. She looked up at the gatehouse.
Sai dropped from the high wall. Just before impact, he slowed abruptly, the air rippling around him as he utilized a flight skill from his archive. He landed without a sound, his coat settling around him.
He looked fresh. While Drex was rubbing his thigh and Lucianna was bleeding, Sai looked like he had just taken a stroll. His coat was thrown open, letting his fat stomach stick out over his belt, completely undisturbed by the battle or the jump.
"Shoot up," Sai said, tossing a higher-grade injector toward Drex. The liquid inside this one was a deep, rich indigo.
Drex caught it, but he stared at the device with undisguised misery. He rubbed his thigh, where the muscle was still twitching from the first shot. The thought of jamming another needle into the same bruised spot made his stomach turn, but he knew he didn't have a choice.
He then looked over at Lucianna, stifling a yawn. "Speaking of which—did your men find it yet?"
"The Merchant Quarter," Lucianna replied, pressing a hand to her earpiece to check the latest report. "They confirmed the location ten minutes ago. The mana density is spiking near the old market."
"Lead the way," Sai said, waving a hand lazily. "Let's get this over with."
The walk through the city was grim. The Arbalest soldiers were sweeping the alleys, their crossbows thrumming as they put down the stragglers, but the main streets were empty.
Drex walked with a bounce in his step that shouldn't have been possible for someone running on fumes. He was trying to work out the stiffness in his hands, but also the lingering, nausea-inducing weirdness of his last transformation. His body still felt slightly wrong, as if his internal organs were still solidifying after melting into the darkness. It was a sensation no human biology was meant to experience—the feeling of losing his mass and becoming something intangible—and he felt like he was still reassembling himself.
He scanned the wreckage, a strange, dissonant sense of déjà vu washing over him.
He had read about the "Beginning Of the End Times" in the prologue of the book back on Earth. The text had been specific about the timeline. First came the Goddess Seed—a divine light that integrated with humanity, granting them the iconic System and confusing the hell out of the entire population. No one knew what the skills or the "stats" meant.
Then, while the world was still reeling from the confusion, the Rifts started opening.
The monsters poured out, and the "game" became a war for survival. Since that day, humanity has been forced to live with this reality. But reading the words on a screen in his bedroom was one thing; seeing wrecked buildings and smelling the death in the air was another. He wasn't looking at a "setting" anymore. He was staring at raw, unmitigated destruction. The descriptions in the novel hadn't prepared him for the sheer scale of it .But Drex didn't feel the crushing weight of sadness. He felt the rush of reality.
He had only been in this world a few days, but the weight of a decade of war was pressing down on him.
"There," Sai said, stopping in the middle of a wide intersection.
The Rift dominated the street.
It was a jagged, vertical wound in reality, tearing through the air between two collapsed shops. It pulsed with a sickening brown light, the edges snapping with unstable energy. The air around it felt wrong but strangely contained.
A perimeter was already established. A heavy squad of Arbalest Knights stood in a shield wall facing the tear, their backs to the city.
"Lady Lucianna!" The Knight Captain barked, stepping forward. He looked terrified, sweat beading on his forehead despite the calm weather. "We've secured the area. No leakers yet."
Lucianna nodded, her expression grim. "Maintain formation."
"And keep it tight," Sai interrupted, stepping past them. "Form a hard seal. Once we're in, nothing comes out until the Anchor is destroyed. If we fail, you hold the perimeter as long as you can until other help arrives."
The Captain paled, looking to Lucianna for confirmation. She gave a sharp nod. "Understood."
Drex stared at the tear. The brown energy swirled opaquely, hiding whatever world lay beyond. It looked like a painted stain on the air, completely separating the interior dimension from the street.
"Standard clear," Sai said, addressing Drex and Lucianna without looking at them. "We go in, we find the Anchor Curio, we break it. The Curio powers the bridge; you break the battery, the door slams shut. Simple."
"Be ready for anything, this could be the heart of a metropolis, a desert, or a bottomless pit. I'm taking point." Sai said, staring into the brown void.
He stepped toward the Rift. The brown light washed over him, and for a second, his silhouette flickered like a bad transmission before vanishing.
Lucianna took a deep breath. She tapped the butt of her spear against the ground—a nervous tick—then steeled herself and followed him.
Drex was the last one left. He sensed his reserves. He was recovering, and the injection site on his thigh throbbed with a dull, heavy ache, but the pain just made the moment feel sharper.
Let's go, he thought, a spark of reckless energy cutting through the exhaustion.
He didn't hesitate. He jumped into the light.
The humidity of the city vanished. The air was sucked out of his lungs, replaced by a shock of sub-zero wind that bit through his clothes like needles.