The air was still burning when I registered the impact.
Extre heat from my own attack radiated outward from the point of contact, scorching the sinkhole walls on both sides. The lightning had carved deep grooves into the stone — glass-smooth channels where rock had lted and re-hardened almost instantly.
I floated in the silence that followed, breathing steadily, spear loose in one hand while dark and lightning energy still coiled around my forearm.
The darkness below was absolute. Whatever had been firing at had gone completely still, but I knew better than to lower my guard.
Then I heard it — a whisper of displaced air, thin and precise, cutting upward from sowhere beneath .
The red light returned, darker and stronger. That was when I saw it clearly for the first ti: an eye the size of a car, suspended in the darkness below, its pupil locked on while more beams gathered inside it like a storm behind glass.
"I don’t know what kind of monster you are," I said, already rocketing downward with dark lightning crackling along my spear, "but you’re going to have to try a lot better than that."
Beams chased , and one clipped my spear hard enough to send a sharp ring up my arm, though it didn’t matter — I was already inside its range.
I hit it dead center, driving the spear through the pupil, destroying it completely.
Or so I thought.
"How dare you destroy one of my eyes!"
The voice ca from everywhere at once. When I looked, the eye was still there — twitching, the puncture wound already knitting itself shut with unsettling speed. I didn’t give it the chance to finish.
"Fla of Nazareth."
Blue fla erupted from my palm in a concentrated torrent, and the wound I’d driven through its pupil tore back open imdiately, widening as the fire consud the tissue faster than it could rebuild.
The shriek that followed was nothing like the composed voice from before — involuntary, raw, pulled from the creature against its will.
"You will pay for this," the voice returned even as the flas died down, each word bitten off hard. "Once I recover my full body, I will personally kill you."
I watched the last of it char and disappear before resting my spear across my shoulder.
"Yeah, yeah. I’ll be waiting."
Although the thing was weird and creepy, I was strong enough now not to care.
With the imdiate threat gone, I headed further down to investigate.
The darkness thickened the deeper I went, and it wasn’t just the absence of light — there was a pressure pressing back against my senses.
Eventually, the sinkhole opened into sothing far larger — a cavern, natural or carved I couldn’t tell, its ceiling lost sowhere in the darkness above.
The walls looked like nothing natural: so parts perfectly flat, like tal sheets, others twisted and rough, like broken stone stitched together
"What the hell is that thing?"
They were massive, each as wide as a building column, threading down through the cavern ceiling and disappearing into the floor below. But the texture was too uniform for anything organic.
I floated closer to the nearest one and pressed two fingers against its surface, feeling the pulse push back against my touch, steady and strong.
These weren’t roots. They were veins.
Whatever had spoken to wasn’t just hiding down here — it was growing a body.
A full body, it had said.
If the creature was regenerating, where were the other parts?
All I could sense in the pulse of the veins was the eye — its tissue rebuilding, its energy consolidating.
Then it hit .
Maybe Mythical knew about this and had already made contact with the other fragnts in other cities.
If that was the case, whatever they were trying to bring into this world would be far stronger once it beca whole. It might even surpass the Monkey God I fought before.
Another complicated problem.
I spent another minute making sure to destroy all the veins.
A second casting of Fla of Nazareth, wider this ti, ate through every vein I could see until the cavern walls were black and the air tasted like copper and ash.
The veins didn’t fight back. They just burned, collapsing inward as the tissue lost whatever coherence had been holding it together.
I waited.
Then I pressed my palm flat against the scorched stone where the nearest one had been rooted, closed my eyes, and pushed my detection outward in a slow ring.
Nothing.
"Good."
I headed back to the surface and helped Shadow clear out the remaining monsters. We kept going until the situation was under control and people slowly pulled themselves together.
Thud!
Shadow landed in the capitol, where the governor rushed forward to greet us. The central area was not badly damaged, mainly because the walls protected it.
At the sa ti, the military forces were concentrated here, and the other guilds’ first instinct was to gather around the central area.
However, if I hadn’t stepped in, this area would not have lasted more than a day.
Governor Harrold stepped forward before anyone else could speak. He was in his late fifties, tall but slightly bent.
Thin streaks of gray ran through his neatly combed black hair. A sharp nose and deep lines around his mouth gave him a stern look. His suit was clean, though dust clung to the hem, proof he had rushed out without caring about appearances.
"Thank you, Mr. Ace. I heard from the military what happened. You did a great job saving the city."
"It’s nothing. In tis of ergency, we help each other. By the way, since I’m the strongest person here, I’ll take command of everything. Any objections?"
My words hit like a cold splash of water. Governor Harrold looked surprised, and the other politicians shifted nervously.
"I an, if soone else can handle this many monsters, feel free to reject my suggestion. But if a second wave hits, I’ll be enjoying coffee in my mansion instead of saving you all."
Governor Harrold held the silence for exactly three seconds — long enough to look deliberate, not long enough to actually be thoughtful.
"No objections whatsoever," he said. Relief showed on his face.
His shoulders dropped about an inch — the drop of a man who had been carrying a weight he wasn’t built for and had just been given permission to set it down. "Frankly, Mr. Ace, you’d be doing a considerable favor."
The politicians flanking him exchanged glances. A few looked like they wanted to object on principle, the instinct of n used to authority, but none were foolish enough to voice it.
Not with smoke still rising over other districts. Not with scorch marks and dead monsters as proof.
One younger man with an aide’s energy and a councilman’s badge started to open his mouth.
Shadow looked at him.
He closed it again.
"Good. Then here’s how it works. I give the orders, your military executes them without running up a chain of approval, and your administrators handle logistics—"
"— food, water, shelter, dical. That’s their job, not mine. I don’t want to hear about supply requisition forms. I want to hear about problems."
Harrold nodded. "Understood completely. Whatever you need. Personnel, resources, access — you have it."
"Good. You’ve got a good head on your shoulders, so you’re my representative now." I patted him on the shoulder, and things moved on with little disruption.
Harrold blinked, caught sowhere between flattered and mildly stunned — a man promoted and demoted simultaneously, unsure which feeling to lead with.
"I — yes. Of course. You have my word, Mr. Ace. I won’t waste the trust."
"See that you don’t," I said, not unkindly, and left it there.
Shadow fell into step beside as I moved away from the capitol steps.
"Representative," she said, "why don’t you do it yourself, Father? It would be more efficient. This isn’t the first ti you’ve led an army to victory."
"That war was different. The scale here is much bigger, and the monsters are endless. Before, I only had to deal with the enemy army."
"Why did he feel relieved? Does he have no backbone? You just stole his role."
"He was drowning and I handed him a job he actually knows how to do. Of course he was relieved."
Shadow said nothing further, which ant she agreed.
The following days dragged with the exhausting pace of a city trying to function.
Water treatnt facility was fixed in thirty-six hours. Temporary shelters went up across the outer districts. Supply lines reopened faster than expected, thanks to my dictatorship.
Back in Master Tang Mansion.
The Order stepped forward, one by one, finally showing themselves. Master Tang’s eyes widened when he saw leading with a dragon at my side, but he held his tongue — he knew better than to question .
I let my gaze sweep across them.
"If you want to survive this world-ending calamity," I said, my voice carrying across the courtyard, "you should worship as your god. I’m the closest to it by now."
Whispers ran through the group, but they didn’t challenge . They’d been waiting for soone strong enough to lead, and I was that soone.
"You probably already know this, but I turned Alexa and the rest of her team into a full-fledged S-Rank. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg."
"My base? Over 300 S-Ranks, and that number keeps climbing. I don’t need to explain the rest — follow , and you can reach the sa level of power."
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