Lyra Voss was lying beside him.
Her silver hair covered part of the pillow. The white armor still surrounded her body, and one of her hands rested on Adrian’s chest.
She didn’t look like a projection.
The mattress sank beneath her weight. Adrian could feel the warmth of her fingers through his shirt, and her breathing moved several strands of hair near her face.
Lyra opened her eyes.
They both remained still for one second.
Then she moved.
Adrian felt a knee beside his ribs, a hand seize his wrist, and Lyra’s forearm press against his throat. The bed creaked as she pinned him beneath her body.
"Where are we?"
Adrian looked at the position they had ended up in.
"I usually try to get to know a woman better before waking up beside her."
Lyra increased the pressure against his neck.
"Answer me."
"And considerably better before she gets on top of me."
She lifted him off the bed.
Adrian barely had time to plant one foot on the floor before Lyra rotated her hips and threw him toward the window.
The contract reacted.
[Warning: Hostile action against Sovereign detected.]
[General restriction activated.]
Lyra’s arm stopped halfway through the motion.
Adrian remained suspended in front of the glass, held by the collar of his shirt. The window was less than eight inches behind him.
He looked down.
He lived on the seventeenth floor.
"That would’ve been a short conversation."
Lyra released him.
Adrian landed on both feet and straightened his shirt.
"My bedroom," he answered. "Meridian. Ten thousand years before the ruins."
Lyra examined the room.
The bed, the cracked table, and the training clothes didn’t appear to impress her. Her gaze stopped on the lights coming through the window.
She walked toward the glass.
The city stretched out below.
Vehicles moved between illuminated towers. Elevated trains crossed the avenues, and hundreds of people walked through the streets even though dawn was only beginning. Advertising screens displayed academies, dungeon equipment, and combat classes.
Everything was alive.
Lyra placed her hand against the window.
"Meridian."
"The name survived."
"The Council Tower is gone."
Adrian stood beside her.
"They haven’t built it yet."
Lyra found the academy building several blocks away. In her era, that structure had become the Unified Combat Center and extended almost 1.2 miles beneath the city.
Now, it was only a thirty-story tower surrounded by training fields.
"I had forgotten how much noise they made," she said.
Adrian looked at the streets.
"They weren’t quiet in the future either. They were just dead."
Lyra removed her hand from the glass.
A window appeared above her.
[General deployment completed.]
[Temporal transfer stable.]
[Lyra Voss exists physically within the origin era.]
[External manifestation limit: 12 hours.]
[Remaining time: 11:58:47.]
[General will be recalled automatically when duration expires.]
Adrian selected the final line for more information.
[External manifestation duration recovers while General remains inside Sovereign Territory.]
[Recovery rate: 1:1.]
[Physical injuries persist after recall.]
[Death while manifested is permanent.]
Lyra could also see the messages through their contract.
"I’m not a summon," she said.
"I never thought you were."
"Your system does."
"My system calls you a General. The soldiers are Units."
"That’s a small distinction."
"Not to them."
Adrian opened the Unit Archive. All five units remained registered, although each displayed damage sustained during the trial.
[Unit 01 — Integrity: 31%.]
[Unit 02 — Integrity: 46%.]
[Unit 03 — Integrity: 39%.]
[Unit 04 — Integrity: 28%.]
[Unit 05 — Integrity: 34%.]
Lyra examined their formation.
"They need repairs, ammunition, and new cores."
"Can you do it?"
"With the appropriate materials."
"The appropriate materials don’t exist yet."
"Then you’ll have to find them in the future."
Adrian closed the archive.
"First, we’ll find out what you can do here."
"You already saw what I can do."
"Your copy impaled me several times. I still don’t know whether the present affects your body the same way."
Lyra raised one hand. A small golden flame appeared above her palm for less than a second before going out.
The effort tightened the muscles in her arm.
[Legendary core restricted.]
[Current power available: 0.0004%.]
[Origin-era mana density insufficient for passive restoration.]
"My core exists," she said, "but it’s nearly empty."
"Can it recover?"
"With several centuries of rest."
"I’d prefer a faster option."
"You could obtain an intact divine core."
"The several-centuries option sounds more practical."
Lyra walked around the room. She touched the table, examined Adrian’s communicator, and stopped in front of the mirror.
Her reflection showed no distortions.
Adrian handed her a glass of water.
She smelled it before drinking.
"Were you expecting poison?"
"I woke up in the bedroom of a stranger who can imprison people inside his class."
"When you put it that way, it sounds reasonable."
Lyra finished the water.
Her body processed it normally. She had a pulse, body heat, and breath. War God’s Instinct also perceived her presence like that of any other combatant.
Adrian hadn’t created a copy.
He had transported the real woman ten thousand years into the past.
Adrian’s communicator vibrated.
[MUNICIPAL ALERT]
[Minor mana anomaly detected in Residential Sector 14.]
[Possible Rift creature.]
[Estimated Classification: F-rank.]
[Unlicensed citizens must evacuate the area.]
Residential Sector 14 was where they were.
Lyra read the message over his shoulder.
"Rift creature."
"They appear when a small fissure fails to form a complete dungeon."
"Since when?"
"The first Rift appeared thirty years ago."
Lyra turned toward him.
"Thirty years."
"Yes."
"In my era, the records placed the beginning of the contamination thousands of years before the first invasion."
"Then we’re seeing the beginning."
Another alert appeared.
[Entity located 1,017 feet away.]
[Municipal teams en route.]
Lyra walked toward the door.
"I want to see it."
"Your armor will attract attention."
"Let them stare."
"They’ll also ask for your identity."
Lyra opened the door.
"I don’t have one."
"Exactly."
Adrian took a long coat from the closet and threw it to her. Lyra caught it without looking.
"Put it on over the armor."
"This wouldn’t stop a blade."
"Its primary function is preventing questions."
Lyra examined the garment.
"Your era created clothing specifically to conceal armor."
"My era created people incapable of ignoring a woman dressed for war."
She put on the coat.
The fabric barely covered the golden lines, but it was better than walking through the street with a full set of legendary armor exposed.
They left.
The creature was inside an alley behind the building.
It had passed through an opening beside a drainage pipe. The fissure was less than two feet wide and released violet smoke as it slowly closed.
Two dumpsters had been overturned.
Something was feeding between them.
It resembled a skinless dog, but it had six legs and a row of black spines extending from its head to its tail. Its jaw split into four sections around a red core.
Adrian stopped at the entrance to the alley.
[Spinecrawler.]
[Level: 4.]
[Origin: Minor Rift.]
[Condition: Hungry.]
"That looks familiar," Lyra said.
"They existed in your era?"
"They were food for larger creatures."
The Spinecrawler raised its head.
Dark blood covered its jaws. It had found a rat between the dumpsters, but the scent of two living humans was more interesting.
It growled.
War God’s Instinct reacted.
The hostile intent appeared within Adrian’s perception before the creature moved a single leg. It wasn’t a visual warning. He felt the direction of the attack, its chosen target, and the instant its muscles were about to release their strength.
The Spinecrawler leaped toward Lyra.
She didn’t move.
Adrian tore a loose metal bar from the wall and threw it to her.
Lyra caught it.
The movement of her hand turned the bar into a spear.
She took one step.
She didn’t use Meridian War Step or release a technique capable of destroying the alley. She simply aligned the metal with the exposed core inside the monster’s mouth.
The Spinecrawler impaled itself.
The bar entered through its jaw and emerged from the back of its neck. Lyra rotated her wrist before the creature could fall.
The red core shattered.
[Spinecrawler defeated.]
Lyra withdrew the bar.
"Too weak."
"You just woke up with less than a thousandth of your power."
"It’s still too weak."
The creature’s body began releasing violet particles. They would normally have dispersed into the air, but Infinite Sovereign’s crown appeared above Lyra.
The energy changed direction.
It entered the cracks in her armor and reached her core.
Lyra took one step back.
The golden lines across her body glowed more brightly.
[Foreign mana detected.]
[Energy signature compatible with damaged Legendary Core.]
[General restoration initiated.]
[General restoration: 0.4%.]
The window remained in front of them both.
Lyra closed her eyes.
A tiny fraction of energy returned to her core. It wasn’t enough to increase her level, but the change was real.
[Current equivalent Level: 18.]
[Progress toward Level 19: 0.4%.]
Adrian looked at the corpse.
"Several centuries or killing monsters."
Lyra opened her eyes.
"Killing monsters."
"I thought you’d choose that option."
She crouched beside the Spinecrawler and touched its shattered core.
Her expression changed.
"This energy belongs to the same corruption that destroyed Meridian."
"Are you certain?"
"It’s weaker. Incomplete. Like a seed that hasn’t decided what it will become yet."
Lyra lifted one of the black spines.
"But the signature is the same."
Thirty years before Adrian’s Awakening, the first Rifts had appeared on Earth. Since then, humanity had built reinforced cities, academies, guilds, and an entire economy around the dungeons.
Everyone believed they had learned to control them.
Nine thousand years later, no one remained.
"The Rifts aren’t isolated attacks," Adrian said.
"No. They’re preparation."
The sound of vehicles approached from the avenue. The municipal team would arrive in less than a minute.
Adrian hid the metal bar inside one of the dumpsters. Lyra wiped the blood from her hand on the creature’s hide.
"We need to leave."
"You have a license."
"To fight. Not to explain where an unregistered woman came from after she used a martial technique that doesn’t exist."
Lyra stood.
"We could eliminate the witnesses."
"We’ll try adapting you to modern customs before allowing you to speak to the police."
They left the alley through the opposite exit.
As they walked, Infinite Sovereign continued analyzing the absorbed energy.
[Restoration source recorded.]
[Searching for matching mana concentrations.]
[Origin-era spatial anomalies detected.]
Adrian stopped.
A map of Meridian appeared in front of him. Several registered dungeons glowed around the city, but only one changed from blue to gold.
It was beneath an old transit station, a little over two miles away.
[Nearby compatible dungeon detected.]
[Dungeon: Hollow Station.]
[Classification: E-rank.]
[Distance: 2.1 miles.]
[Compatibility with Lyra Voss: 94%.]
[High-density restoration source detected.]