Chapter 221: Beginning (XXI)
The four years that followed the birth of Hide Volter brought a period of unprecedented serenity to Earth—a calm that humanity had not experienced since the dawn of the Awakened Era.
In global news feeds and scientific journals, commentators and historians began referring to this miraculous window of time as the "Silver Era." For reasons no human researcher, government director, or S-Rank Commander could comprehend, the dimensional tears that had relentlessly plagued the planet completely ceased. Not a single One-Way Gate or Loop Gate manifested anywhere on Earth for four full years.
Without the constant, terrifying influx of fresh Calamity Beasts pouring through the atmosphere, the International Exterminator Corporation and national agencies redirected their full military might toward clearing the surface. Hunter strike teams systematically scoured the Dead Zones, exterminating the lingering, unanchored monsters that had roamed freely for decades. For the average civilian, the sky felt lighter, the constant emergency drills faded into distant memories, and a fragile sense of normalcy returned to human society.
In the quiet, smog-choked residential blocks of Area 17 in Varisus, Erin Volter’s world shrank to the size of her small, apartment and the silver-haired boy growing in her care.
Hide was an extraordinary child from the very beginning. He reached developmental milestones at a pace that astonished his mother. He began walking steadily before his seven-month mark, spoke in full, coherent sentences before his second birthday, and possessed a physical frame that was visibly taller, broader, and far more sturdy than any toddler in their residential sector.
Yet, despite her quiet joy, Erin’s sharp, analytical eye remained constantly vigilant.
Hide had been born with a dark-affiliated core—a subtle, hidden singularity deep within his chest inherited from his father, the fallen Calamity Lord Roshhide. But following Hide’s birth, a strange, permanent phenomenon occurred within Erin herself. Her own dark core went dormant, and her Oracle talent—the horrific, uncontrollable visions of the future that had torn her sanity apart on Rilth—completely vanished.
Where her foresight and dark mana output went remained a complete mystery to her hyper-analytical mind. But Erin felt no desire to solve that puzzle. She felt only profound, overwhelming relief. She was glad to be rid of the terrifying curse that had forced her to witness her own bloody murder.
Her deepest, most agonizing fear, however, had been Hide’s potential inheritance.
She knew that her firstborn son, Rosh, had forcefully claimed Roshhide’s authority over Space while still in her womb on Hubin. By that same cosmic logic, Erin had prepared herself for the worst, waiting in quiet terror for Hide to manifest Roshhide’s authority over Darkness. She spent months watching her sleeping infant, terrified that she would wake up to find pitch-black flames or corrupted mists leaking from his tiny hands.
Days turned into months, and months turned into years. Yet, Hide never displayed a single speck of magical affinity.
He generated no mana output, triggered no environmental distortions, and manifested no talent whatsoever. He did not possess dark mana, nor did he interact with pure light mana. In the eyes of basic civilian health scanners, Hide Volter was a completely normal, baseline human child.
That absence of power filled Erin’s heart with a deep, comforting warmth.
Perhaps the cruel, bloody cycle of the Calamity Lords had finally been broken. If Hide possessed no active abilities, then perhaps she could shield him from the world of Exterminators, gates, and monsters. She could keep him far away from the dark, apocalyptic war she had once glimpsed in her visions—a future war whose timing and triggers she no longer knew, but desperately hoped to avoid. If fortune smiled upon her, she would watch Hide grow up like a normal boy, attend school, find a career, and eventually build a happy family of his own.
Because Hide’s physical development was so advanced and his intellect so sharp, Erin enrolled him in the local Area 17 public elementary school a year earlier than standard protocol, when he was just three years old.
Despite sitting in classrooms alongside children who were a year older, the gap was completely invisible. Hide adapted effortlessly. He was a quiet, deeply observant boy who rarely caused trouble, keeping his bright blue eyes focused on his books and blending seamlessly into the background of the classroom.
On quiet afternoons while Hide was at school, Erin would sit by the window, her mind occasionally drifting back across the dimensional threshold to the Dead Zone of Sector 4.
She often thought about the Doom Overseer. What had that majestic, ancient feline done to hold off the Exterminator response teams and Commander Maddox for so long? Was the teal beast still alive, hidden deep within the Dead Zone, or had he died? She had no way of knowing. But Erin felt a quiet, profound gratitude for the beast’s sacrifice. The Overseer had kept its vow. Commander Maddox never came for her, the National Exterminator Agency never tracked her down, and her quiet sanctuary in Area 17 remained undisturbed.
By Hide’s fourth year, however, Erin faced a practical, mundane reality: her savings were running out.
The emergency funds she had quietly accumulated during her years as a senior Gate Researcher for the NEA had sustained them for four years of quiet living, but the balance had finally dipped into a critical margin. Refusing to access government welfare or draw attention to her registry, Erin sought a modest, low-profile civilian job in the district.
She found work as a barista at a small, old-fashioned coffee shop nestled in a quiet commercial alleyway of Area 17.
The cafe was owned and operated by an elderly woman with a crooked, heavily disfigured face—a permanent physical scar left behind by a horrific gate break that had devastated her home district decades ago. Despite her intimidating, scarred appearance, the old lady possessed a remarkably kind, gentle, and patient heart. She made the best coffee in the sector, yet few civilians visited her shop due to her appearance. She welcomed Erin without asking intrusive questions about her past, offering her a fair wage and treating the young mother with a warm, quiet respect that touched Erin’s heart.
It was while working at this secluded coffee shop that Erin met Roxana.
Roxana was a quiet, strikingly beautiful woman who visited the cafe almost every single afternoon. She would sit alone in the furthest corner booth, sipping her warm tea, her dark, expressive eyes staring out the dirty glass window as if waiting for a ghost.
For weeks, Erin observed her in quiet sympathy. Then, one afternoon, Erin witnessed the reason for Roxana’s silent vigil.
A compact, stern man dressed in a tailored utility coat—carrying the invisible, razor-sharp aura of an elite awakened—quietly stepped into the cafe. He was accompanied by two young children. The man was Ren Sihue, and once a month, he brought his children to meet their mother in secret.
The children were a boy named Enji and a delicate toddler girl named Risa.
Over the following months, as Erin served their secluded table, a natural, gentle friendship formed between the two women. Their bond cemented when they realized a sweet coincidence: Roxana’s daughter, Risa, attended the exact same local elementary school as Hide.
While her son was not allowed to go to school and tutored at his house.
During the quiet hours when the cafe was empty, Erin and Roxana sat together over hot tea, sharing their thoughts. Slowly, opening her heart, Roxana revealed the tragic, oppressive reality of her life—bound to the cold, mathematical brutality of the Sihue Clan, forced to live separated from her children to protect them from the clan’s sociopathic internal politics.
In Roxana, Erin found a true kindred spirit. Both were women marked by tragic pasts, both were hiding in the grey shadows, and both carried an absolute, fierce love for their children in a world governed by power and blood. Their friendship became Erin’s anchor, a quiet comfort in a dreary district.
For four years, life in Area 17 was a peaceful, beautiful dream. Erin watched Hide grow into a healthy, handsome, and gentle four-year-old boy, finding a profound, quiet happiness she had never believed possible for herself.
Until one overcast afternoon in Hide’s fifth year.
Erin was standing behind the wooden counter of the coffee shop, wiping down a glass, while Hide sat at a small table near the front window, quietly reading a picture book. Outside, the sky above Area 17 turned a heavy, bruised grey.
WAAAAAAIL—!
Without a single second of warning, the high-pitched, deafening screech of emergency sirens erupted across the district, shattering the four-year silence.
The air above the central commercial street folded violently inward. A massive, familiar, bruised-purple tear ripped through the atmosphere, bleeding a cold, metallic mist onto the pavement below as the guttural, feral snarls of Calamity Beasts echoed through the streets.
Erin dropped her cloth, her green eyes widening in pure, breathless horror as she stared at the swirling portal.
The Silver Era was over. The gates had begun to open once again.