"Hey, kid," a worried voice snapped him out of his thoughts once he stepped outside. "Are you alright in there?"
"Huh?" Jeremy looked at him, puzzled. He didn't quite get what the man meant. "I think so?"
"Let me rephrase that," the agent continued, his expression calm, though the panic in his voice betrayed his true concern. "Strange things are happening in almost every Gate. Something's not right. Even the monsters inside seem to be mutating, just like the ones outside. Did you see or fight anything... abnormal?"
Jeremy's eyes widened. There was something off, actually. Could it be that it wasn't just his usual bad luck? he thought with irony.
"Now that you mention it…" he replied, nodding slowly. "The boss of this Gate wasn't your typical Rank B Desert Reaver with Medium Potential..."
"It was a mutated monster called a Crystal Reaver, still Rank B, but with High Potential," the boy continued.
"What?" This time, the man couldn't keep his stoic expression. "And you managed to kill it?"
The answer was obvious — if he hadn't, he wouldn't be standing there — but the agent's reaction made it clear this was more serious than Jeremy had thought. He simply nodded, his face turning serious.
"What the hell is going on, Agent? These mutations... they're not supposed to be this common, right?"
The man stared at him, stunned, as if he were staring at a monster. But at the boy's question, his gaze lowered, and a nearly resigned expression crossed his face.
"Mutations are possible, yes... but they're extremely rare. In my entire career, I've maybe seen two. But now..." He looked up, locking eyes with Jeremy. "Now everything's changing. Even the monsters inside the Gates are mutating. And they're getting stronger. It makes no sense."
"We've lost countless Awakened because of this." His voice cracked.
"What?" Jeremy was genuinely shocked. "It's that bad? How are humans supposed to survive, then?"
The agent didn't catch the strange phrasing, and neither did Jeremy himself.How are humans supposed to survive?Wasn't he human too? Why did it sound like he was excluding himself?
After a few seconds of silence, the agent spoke again. "Your name's Jeremy, right? I don't know why the Headmistress decided to vouch for you, but now it all makes sense. You're strong. No doubt about that."
The air was growing heavier. Jeremy could tell what was going through the man's mind, judging by his eyes.
"If you want to survive, you'll need to get stronger. Fast," the agent said bluntly, locking eyes with him.
Jeremy returned the gaze. The man paused, struck by those black, hollow eyes — eyes like the abyss itself.
"But don't worry," he added, in a tone that sounded more like he was reassuring himself. "If the sky were to collapse… someone would always rise to hold it up. Humanity's not that fragile."
Finally, word by word, they reached the teleportation portal to the Guild Hall.
Jeremy turned around one last time and gave a nod.
The man nodded back. The serious look on his face hid well all the fears he was holding in.
As he stepped out of the teleportation gate, the atmosphere seemed different.
If the previous tension had been heavy, here it was something else entirely. Panic seeped into every inch of space.
And this wasn't happening in just this city, but across the entire empire.
Humanity had been relying on the Gates to grow stronger — but now, that path had become immensely more difficult.
Progress would slow down significantly, as the increased difficulty of the Gates meant stronger teams were needed to clear them.
"Shit, the situation's critical. I need to Rank-Up, fast," Jeremy muttered with determination. "I need to get stronger. There's no time, after all."
He was about to head toward the Rank-Up chambers — simple, sealed rooms where no one could disturb you — when a voice materialized out of nowhere beside him.
"I suppose the time for your Rank-Up has come."
"What the fu—" Jeremy cursed out of sheer surprise, only to see the Headmistress Rose standing right beside him. "You can't scare me like that, I could've had a heart attack," he said, exhaling in relief.
"Looks like your time's up, boy," the woman whispered. "Let's go. We've no more time to waste."
"Wait, I need to—"
He didn't get to finish his sentence. A force wrapped around him and dragged him away into the Headmistress's room at the academy.
"Don't worry about anything," the woman said. "Just use this time to Rank-Up and think of nothing else."
Then she threw him inside the room and shut the door.
"How rude... She could've at least been gentler." Jeremy rubbed his sore butt. "Anyway, guess it's time."
---
Rank-up Quest: Kill at least 1x Rank B Beast Medium Potential (MP), DONE
Get 1x Rank B Core Medium Potential (MP), DONE
Do you want to Rank-Up?
[YES] [NO]
---
Without hesitation, he pressed YES.Then—
A sensation unlike anything he had ever felt before took hold of him.And then—
Nothing.
A total void engulfed him. But it wasn't just darkness. His senses were gone. No perception, no touch, no hearing, no sight. Everything vanished.
Only his thoughts echoed within that emptiness.
What's happening...?Where am I...?Why am I here? What was I doing? Who am I...?
A flood of unanswered questions thundered in his mind.
Then—
A realization struck him like a boulder.
He was Okoron, the supreme lord of the—
BOOM
A deafening explosion yanked him out of that darkness. All those thoughts — thoughts that didn't even seem like his — vanished into nothing.
Something had interfered.
The next thing he knew, Jeremy was lying on the floor. Naked. Motionless.
The scene was gruesome.
The Headmistress's room, once pristine and grand with its white marble veined in gold, had turned into… something else entirely.
Red. Everywhere.
What had happened?
Just before the explosion, Jeremy's body had erupted into a thousand pieces. The room wasn't just stained with blood: it was filled with organs. His organs.
But the moment his body exploded, it had reconstructed itself — as if that macabre detonation had been a lie.
And yet the state of the room told a different story. Whatever had happened to Jeremy... it had happened for real.
This time, unlike before, Jeremy didn't wake up immediately.He was still.Not breathing.Not moving.
He looked dead.
---
Meanwhile, a harrowing scene brought chaos within the city walls.
The sky above North Capital had become a violet mosaic. Spatial fractures, like pulsating veins of darkness, began to tear open one after another without pause. Gates rained down like meteorites, and with them came monsters.
A lone figure moved like a living blade across the rooftops, leaping from building to building, leaving behind trails of red energy like streams of liquid ruby. Her eyes were sharp slits, locked on the mental map that tracked the invasion's epicenters in real time.
"Gate in the northern district: enhanced Kobolds. Southern district: packs of Fang Wolves. West… mutated werewolves."
She was not alone. Other high-ranked Awakened were moving in sync, slicing through the hordes with surgical precision. But none could move with the same deadly grace as Rose.
With a single blade, dozens of monsters vanished as if erased from reality.
The situation was dire, but not hopeless. Countless citizens were fighting back against the swarming monsters. And although they continued to fall, the monsters' ferocity showed no end. Their numbers didn't dwindle—in fact, the more monsters were killed, the more seemed to appear.
Time passed, and thanks to the strongest Awakened, the city managed to survive—for now. The Gates were still open, after all, and it seemed like they would never stop.
About thirty minutes after the invasion began, the city was still somehow standing. Many buildings had collapsed, and countless had died, but things had become… manageable.
But then—
A Gate appeared at the very center of the main square. It didn't float like the others. It was breathing.
Gurgles of black energy dripped from its edges like ancient blood, and when it opened… a face tried to push through.
A grotesque, towering creature stared down at the city with unnatural interest. No—it wasn't the city it was interested in, but the world itself.
Then, suddenly, something exploded outward. Literally.
A colossal body materialized in midair and crashed down with a thunderous impact, cracking the stone pavement for hundreds of meters. A monster.
The Gate closed in on itself—as if it had vomited out something too dangerous to contain.
---
NAME: ???
RANK: S
LEVEL: 113
POTENTIAL: APEX
CLASS: Devourer of Worlds
RACE: Demon
LAW: DEVOURING
MAIN SKILLS:
[Reality Maw] – Devours a fragment of the world every 30 seconds, completely erasing an area from existence.
---
[Voidborn Regeneration] – Reconstructs its body from any shadow present in the environment.
---
[Eclipse Pulse] – Detonates a wave of pure magical negation, nullifying every spell or buff within a 500-meter radius.
---
At the appearance of the creature—if it could even be called that—all the Awakened felt a chill of pure terror.
Only one word could describe it.
Demon.
It stood as a formless colossus over fifteen meters tall, its body fluid-like, covered in countless fused heads of unknown beasts. All of them shared one feature: a single mouth. Nothing more.
At its center, however, was one mouth—far more monstrous than the others—that hung wide open. It seemed to absorb space itself.
Then, the mouth began to move.
Not a roar—but a vibration. A violent, resonant pulse that shook the air around it.
Many of the nearby Awakened exploded on the spot, painting those around them in blood. It was a scene out of a nightmare.
The Awakened fled. Not out of cowardice—but by instinct.
Rose did not move.
The sword at her hip let out a shrill sound, as if hungering to taste that unnatural blood.
"Volter, handle the evacuations," she told the man beside her.
Then her gaze turned empty. Cold. Lethal.
"You will be the source of my nourishment, demon."