"Move left—no, your other left!"
Aiden’s voice cut through the courtyard as his foot slamd into the concrete. Crack! Cracks spiderwebbed out from the impact point, dust exploding upward in a small cloud. He pivoted hard, qi surging through his ridians as he redirected montum, and launched himself at the blue-armored figure standing between him and his brother.
Number One’s Gatling arm tracked the movent with chanical precision, the barrel rotating with a high-pitched whirrrr that made Aiden’s teeth ache. The robot adjusted its stance in microseconds, hard-light shield snapping up to intercept while its free hand reached for the blade at its hip.
Aiden was already moving again.
He hit the ground in a roll, concrete fragnting beneath him—crunch, crunch—as his cultivation-enhanced strength punched through the surface like it was cardboard. The Gatling spun to follow but he was faster, Phantom Step carrying him three ters to the right in the span of a heartbeat.
"Callum, command it to disengage the ranged weapon," Aiden called out, not slowing. "Make it use the blade."
"Number One, blade only," Callum shouted from his position near the rusted bike rack. His voice cracked slightly but the command ca through clear enough.
The robot’s Gatling arm retracted imdiately, folding back into its housing with a series of precise clicks—click-click-click. The hard-light blade extended fully, crackling with blue energy that cast shifting shadows across the cracked courtyard floor.
Good. Ranged combat wasn’t what Aiden needed to test right now. He needed to see how the summon handled close quarters against soone who actually knew what they were doing.
Aiden closed the distance again, and his own sword remained sheathed at his hip because there was no point drawing it yet. This was about gauging Number One’s capabilities, not actually trying to destroy his brother’s summon.
The robot moved to intercept, its footwork surprisingly fluid for sothing made of tal and hard light. It pivoted smoothly, blade coming up in a guard position that was textbook perfect, weight distributed properly across both legs.
Aiden feinted left, but Number One didn’t take the bait. It held position, tracking his center mass rather than his shoulders, waiting for the actual commitnt.
’Smart programming,’ Aiden thought.
He committed to the feint anyway, testing the robot’s reaction speed. He pushed qi into his legs and launched forward, closing the final two ters in a blur of motion that cracked the concrete again under the force of his movent.
Number One’s blade ca down to intercept.
Aiden twisted mid-air, his body rotating at an angle that should have been impossible without cultivation reinforcent. The hard-light blade whistled past his ribs, missing by centiters, and he landed inside the robot’s guard.
His palm struck the robot’s chest plate.
The impact rang out—CLANG!—like a gong. Number One skidded backward five ters, its feet carving twin furrows through the concrete—screeeech—before it managed to arrest its montum. Sparks flew from the contact point on its armor but the plating held, no visible damage beyond so scoring.
"Bloody hell," Callum breathed.
Aiden straightened, rolling his shoulders while his palm stung from the impact despite the qi reinforcent, which ant the robot’s armor was properly resistant to blunt force. That was good information to have.
"Again," Aiden said. "This ti, Cal, tell it to be more aggressive. I want to see its attack patterns."
Callum hesitated for half a second, then nodded. "Number One, aggressive combat mode. Engage target but avoid lethal strikes."
The robot’s stance shifted imdiately, and where before it had been defensive and reactive, now it beca sothing else entirely. The blue glow along its limbs intensified and its movents took on a predatory quality that made Aiden’s combat instincts flare.
It attacked.
The blade ca in fast, a diagonal slash aid at Aiden’s shoulder, and he sidestepped while the strike missed by inches. Number One was already flowing into the next attack though, a thrust toward his midsection that forced him to pivot away, then a horizontal cut that made him duck under the glowing edge.
Three strikes in two seconds, each one precise and committed, no wasted movent.
Aiden grinned despite himself because the robot was properly dangerous. Callum had summoned sothing that could actually hold its own in combat, not so glorified training dummy.
The attacks kept coming in rapid succession, and each one was precise and committed with no wasted movent. Overhead slash, leg sweep with the shield, blade thrust toward center mass. Aiden blocked the first with his forearm reinforced by qi, dodged the second with a backward hop that cracked more concrete, and caught the third strike with his bare hand.
His fingers closed around the hard-light blade. Energy crackled—bzzt, bzzt—against his palm, trying to cut through flesh and bone, but his cultivation base held it back. Peak Qi Gathering Realm might not be impressive by cultivation world standards, but it was more than enough to grab a D-rank summon’s weapon.
He twisted his wrist, and the blade bent as the hard light distorted under the force. Number One’s grip faltered for just a mont, and that was all Aiden needed.
He released the blade and stepped in close, driving his elbow into the robot’s chest plate. Another resounding impact—CLANG!—that sent Number One stumbling backward, sparks flying—tssss—from the contact point.
Aiden pressed the advantage. He moved forward with Phantom Step, closing the distance before the robot could recover, and delivered a palm strike to its shoulder joint. The qi-reinforced blow hit with enough force to make the entire arm go montarily rigid, servos whining—eeeee—in protest.
Number One tried to bring its shield up to block but Aiden was already inside its reach. He swept the robot’s leg with his own, cultivation-enhanced strength overcoming the chanical balance, and Number One hit the ground hard enough to crater the concrete beneath it—BOOM!
Aiden stepped back, breathing steadily while his heart rate had barely elevated. "Good. Now let’s see—"
The sky went wrong.
It happened between one heartbeat and the next, and the black sky that had dominated for days suddenly shifted as the color bled away to sothing else. Sothing worse. A bruised-red mist rolled in from nowhere, thick and unnatural, swallowing the darkness and the red lightning both.
The sun disappeared completely, and it wasn’t blocked by clouds or obscured by haze, but gone, as if soone had switched off the only light in the universe.
Aiden’s phone vibrated in his pocket—bzzzzt, bzzzzt—and the vibration was strong, insistent, synchronized with sothing that felt global.
Every phone on Earth, he realized distantly, and all of them were vibrating at the sa exact mont.
Callum’s phone buzzed too—bzzzzt. Then their mother’s voice ca from the flat above, sharp and frightened, calling both their nas.
Aiden pulled out his phone with hands that had gone cold. The screen lit up with a notification that made his stomach drop through the floor.
[SYSTEM ALERT: GLOBAL MANA-SHIELD INTEGRITY AT 0%]
[WARNING: THE 72-HOUR GRACE PERIOD HAS BEEN EXTINGUISHED]
[DINSIONAL BARRIER COLLAPSE IMMINENT]
[TI REMAINING: 00:30:00]
Thirty minutes.
Not twenty-eight hours. Not even ten hours.
Thirty bloody minutes until the dinsional barriers collapsed completely and the armies from Valdris poured through every rift worldwide.
"Aiden?" Callum’s voice was small, younger than it had any right to be. He stood frozen near the bike rack, his own phone clutched in white-knuckled hands, staring at the sa ssage.
Number One had risen from the crater, its stance shifting automatically into defensive mode around Callum, though even the robot seed to sense that sothing fundantal had just changed.
Aiden’s cultivation base roared to life inside his chest, and qi flooded his ridians in response to the spike of adrenaline. The Heart of Slaughter pulsed once against his sternum, and the black mark felt warm through his shirt.
The countdown in his vision flickered, then updated to show the new tiline.
[00:29:47... 00:29:46... 00:29:45...]
Less than thirty minutes.
The bruised-red mist thickened overhead, and through it Aiden could see the dinsional rifts more clearly than ever before because the barriers that had been holding them closed were disintegrating, dissolving like tissue paper in water.
Through the nearest rift, maybe two kiloters away, he could see the Valdris army more clearly than he’d ever wanted to see them. Thousands of orcs in organized formations, goblins scurrying between the ranks, and sothing massive moving in the background that made the hair on the back of his neck stand up.
They were waiting. Ready. The mont the barriers collapsed completely, they would flood through.
"Cal," Aiden said quietly. His voice was steady despite everything, years of cultivation discipline keeping the panic at bay. "Go inside. Get Mum. Pack whatever you can carry in two minutes. We’re leaving now."
"Leaving?" Callum’s voice was shaking now. "Where are we going?"
"The nearest Safe Zone. Three kiloters south." Aiden was already moving toward the flat, his mind racing through options. "We’ve got maybe twenty minutes to get there before the streets beco a warzone."
He trailed off, but he didn’t need to finish that sentence because Callum understood.
Thirty minutes before the invasion.
Thirty minutes before everything changed.
The bruised-red mist rolled across London like a burial shroud, and sowhere in the distance, air raid sirens began to wail—a long, rising scream that made Aiden’s teeth ache.
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