Chapter 201: Beginning (I)
Twenty Years Ago.
Southern Continent, Varisus, Area 2
The rain came down in cold, diagonal sheets, turning the pulverized asphalt into a slippery, treacherous mess. The area was cordoned off by massive, reinforced steel barricades, illuminated by the frantic, strobing lights of the National Exterminator Agency’s emergency vehicles.
At the center of the exclusion zone, hovering a few feet above a massive crater, was a bruised-purple, violently swirling tear in reality. A Three-Star loop Gate.
"Get your heavy, uneducated hands off my equipment right this second, or I swear to the gods I will requisition your squad’s entire budget for the next fiscal year!"
The voice belonged to a woman, and it cut through the howling wind and the deafening roar of the gate with authority.
Erin Volter yanked her modified spatial-resonance scanner out of the hands of a heavily armored B-Rank Exterminator.
She was a striking woman with silver-white hair left open, and piercing green eyes that currently burned with fierce, uncompromising irritation. Despite the freezing rain, she wore only a laboratory coat over her dark clothes, entirely lacking the heavy combat gear worn by everyone else in the perimeter.
"Captain Volter, please," the Vanguard pleaded, holding his hands up defensively. He was easily twice her size, but he looked genuinely terrified of the silver-haired woman. "You cannot cross the yellow line. The Gatekeeper hasn’t been neutralized yet. The dark mana leaking from the gate is lethal to—"
"I know exactly what is inside! I wrote the manual on dark mana leakage from gates!" Erin snapped, aggressively tapping the side of her bulky scanning device. "But the dimensional decay rate of a Three-Star gate fluctuates the most during the final moments of the Gatekeeper’s life! If I don’t get this sensor array inside the threshold right now, we lose months of data! We will never understand how the gate keeps open and connected to our reality even after the death, if you meatheads keep stopping me!"
The man simply grinned and scratched the back of his head. He could not understand what the fuck she just said, he could never. No one can understand what these researchers talked about.
She shoved past the giant man, marching directly toward the swirling purple vortex. Her brilliant mind was entirely focused on the data. She didn’t care about the danger. She didn’t care about the monsters. She just wanted to understand the why. Why did the loop gates not vanish? How did they function mechanically?
She was three steps away from the portal when the gravity around her suddenly intensified, growing so heavy that her boots locked to the pavement. A hand, devoid of any armor but carrying the suffocating pressure of a collapsing mountain, clamped down firmly on her shoulder.
"That’s far enough, Erin."
Erin let out a frustrated sigh, her shoulders slumping. She didn’t need to turn around to know who it was. The terrifying density of the mana in the air was a dead giveaway.
"Let me go, you stinky old man," Erin demanded, though her fierce tone lost a fraction of its bite.
James Maddox stepped into her peripheral vision. He looked young, his auburn hair plastered to his forehead by the rain, wearing a casual leather jacket that seemed completely oblivious to the freezing storm. He looked at her, his brown eyes devoid of their usual playful warmth.
"It’s suicide, child," Maddox said, his voice quiet but left no room for argument. "You are an unawakened human. If you step through that threshold, your internal organs will liquefy in less than sixty seconds. I am not going to stand here and watch the Captain of the Gate Research Facility die because she wanted to read a thermometer."
"We are fighting blind, you old man!" Erin argued, turning to face him, her eyes flashing with desperate frustration. "You Exterminators just keep hacking away at the symptoms! You kill the beasts, you close the gates, and you wait for them to regenerate. It’s a losing battle! If I can just get inside and map the spatial tear, I can prove that these gates can be closed just like Dungeon gates or one way gates. There has to be a way!"
"Even if there is, you are not dying today to prove it," Maddox replied flatly. He reached down and effortlessly plucked the heavy scanner from her hands, tossing it to the bewildered B-Rank nearby. "Take her equipment back to the lab. I’m escorting the Captain back to headquarters."
Erin glared at him, her fists clenched, but she knew it was a lost cause. When the old Commander decided something was closed, it was closed.
The ride back to the National Exterminator Agency Headquarters in Area 5 was tense and silent. Maddox drove the hover-car himself, completely ignoring the scowl Erin directed at the passenger-side window.
When they finally arrived at the colossal, monolithic structure of the NEA, Maddox didn’t take her to the underground laboratories. Instead, he led her up the elevators, directly to his residential suite on the eightieth floor.
"Why are we here?" Erin asked, crossing her arms as the heavy oak doors hissed open. "I have a team waiting for those initial readings down in the lab."
"Because I need to grab some files before the Summit," Maddox replied softly as he stepped into the dimly lit, opulent living room. "And because I need you to keep your voice down."
Erin blinked, her irritation fading into confusion. She followed his gaze toward the massive leather couch in the center of the room.
Curled up into a tiny, trembling ball, entirely swallowed by an oversized fleece blanket, was a little girl. She couldn’t have been more than ten or eleven years old. She had messy, golden-blonde hair and pale skin that looked like porcelain. But it was her eyes that made Erin’s breath catch in her throat. The girl’s eyes were a striking, vibrant red, but they were completely empty. There was no light in them, no childish innocence.
"Who is she?" Erin whispered, her fierce, analytical demeanor instantly melting into heartbreak. She had been here multiple times, but never saw this girl.
Maddox stood beside her, his jaw locked tight as he looked at the child. "Her name is Claire," he said. "She is from the eastern continent, remember the 5 Star dungeon break."
Erin’s eyes widened in horror as she remembered the incident. A 5-Star Dungeon break was an apocalyptic event. It meant a Supreme Calamity Lord had bypassed the twenty-four-hour limit and successfully merged a piece of the alien world with Earth.
"I found her buried under the rubble of a collapsed shelter. She was holding the severed hand of her mother." Maddox swallowed hard. "She is the only survivor from there. She has been living in the orphanage, but I’m adopting her."