Unlikely Allies
The air across Sector 1 was thick with the suffocating scent of ozone and burning asphalt. As Ruyi and Kael moved through the ghost town of ruined high-rises, the scale of the Class-1 Disaster Gate became overwhelmingly clear. The sky bled crimson overhead, casting long, menacing shadows across the deserted avenues.
"We need actionable intelligence before we move toward the breach," Ruyi said, her voice a low, steady murmur as she navigated a crumbling overpass. "Panic blinds people. We gather information first, then decide where our intervention creates the highest leverage."
Kael nodded tightly, his jaw set. "Right. But getting closer means crawling right into their nest."
They didn't have to wait long for trouble to find them.
As they descended into a ruined commercial district, the sound of skittering claws echoed down the alleyways. A pack of six Razor-Claw Crawlers—frenzied, canine-like Class-2 sub-beasts with hardened chitin exoskeletons—vaulted over an overturned bus, their glowing red eyes locked onto the cousins.
"Two on the left, four straight ahead," Ruyi observed coolly. "Watch your footwork."
Before Kael could even draw his tactical blade, Ruyi moved. She was a blur of seamless, deadly grace. She didn't use flashy movements or waste an ounce of momentum. As the lead beast leaped toward her throat, Ruyi simply stepped inward, passing beneath its arc. Her hand flicked out, opening a microscopic Void Seam directly across the creature's neck.
Whishp.
The beast’s heavy head was cleanly severed before its body slammed uselessly onto the concrete.
Kael blinked, momentarily stunned by the sheer, effortless lethality of her movement. She didn't look like a civilian survivor; she moved like a seasoned executioner.
"Kael! Focus!" Ruyi’s sharp command snapped him back to reality.
Two crawlers lunged at Kael from the left. Gritting his teeth, Kael channeled his mana, extending his Spatial Tether. Instead of using it merely to pull himself away, he remembered Ruyi’s advice from weeks ago—fold the distance. He anchored a tether behind the beasts and slammed them backward into a concrete support pillar, cracking their armored carapaces.
"Don't just slam them," Ruyi instructed, casually stepping past a lunging beast and letting its momentum carry it into a Void Seam that erased its forelimbs. "Compress the spatial tension at the point of impact. Treat your tether like a wire, not a rope. Slice, don't just pull."
Kael took a deep breath, absorbing her pointer mid-combat. As the remaining two crawlers rushed him, he manifested two hyper-thin spatial lines, tethering them directly across the alleyway at waist height. As the beasts charged forward at top speed, they ran straight into the compressed spatial tension.
Thwip!
The spatial lines acted like monomolecular razor wire, dicing the beasts mid-stride.
"Like that?" Kael panted, wiping a streak of black beast blood from his cheek.
A faint, approving glint flickered in Ruyi's amethyst eyes. "Better. Your energy control is tightening. Keep that density stable."
As they pushed deeper toward the heart of the sector, the density of beasts increased, forcing the cousins to fight in synchronized harmony. Kael used his Spatial Tethers to manipulate the battlefield—redirecting beast charges, trapping limbs, and compressing spatial pockets—while Ruyi acted as the absolute finisher, opening precise void seams that erased high-density targets before they could strike. With every encounter, Kael’s tactical instincts sharpened under Ruyi’s quiet, ruthless guidance, his confidence growing with every beast they felled.
Soon, the sound of heavy gunfire, shouting, and collapsing masonry drowned out the ambient roar of the gate.
They reached the perimeter of a secondary barricade near the central subway interchange. The situation was catastrophic.
Dozens of low-tier Guild hunters and municipal responders were pinned down behind makeshift steel barriers. They were surrounded by a massive horde of Class-1 sub-beasts and armored Gargoyle-types pouring down from the rooftops.
Standing at the front line, covered in dust and dried blood, was Officer Mark, wielding a heavy mana-shield, alongside Darren, who was frantically barking orders to the wounded squad while discharging his rifle into the advancing mass.
"Hold the line!" Darren roared, his voice hoarse. "If this barricade falls, the beast swarm will spill straight into the evacuation transit tunnels!"
"We're running out of high-grade ammo!" Mark yelled back, his mana-shield flickering violently as a massive, eight-foot armored Alpha beast slammed its warhammer-like fist against the blue barrier. "Where is the Guild vanguard?!"
"They're tied up at the main rift!" Darren cursed, his rifle clicking empty. "We're on our own!"
From the high vantage point of a ruined skybridge overlooking the plaza, Ruyi assessed the battlefield.
"They won't last three minutes," Kael murmured nervously. "That Alpha beast is about to shatter Mark's shield."
Ruyi's eyes narrowed. Mark was a good officer—methodical, honest, and one of the few who had treated her with genuine decency during the District AAA investigation. She couldn't let him die here.
"Stay hidden, Kael," Ruyi ordered calmly. "I'm going to provide heavy fire support."
"From up here? Without a rifle?" Kael asked.
Ruyi didn't answer. She raised her right hand, pinpointing the cluster of heavy beasts surrounding the barricade. She couldn't use obvious spatial jumps or localized voids near Mark without raising immediate red flags, but she could mask her attacks.
She opened broad, high-altitude Void Seams directly above the beast concentrations, thousands of feet up in the cloud cover, sucking in massive pressure differentials and releasing them as localized, sonic kinetic shockwaves that mimicked heavy orbital artillery strikes.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
Invisible, devastating detonations slammed into the plaza from above.
The Alpha beast shattering Mark's shield was instantly crushed into the pavement as if an invisible anvil had fallen from the heavens. A dozen surrounding crawlers were vaporized in a clean, silent vacuum burst that left deep, circular craters in the asphalt.
The entire battlefield fell into a stunned silence.
"What the—?!" Darren ducked, clutching his helmet as dust rained down. "Is that Guild artillery?! Who called in an air strike?!"
Mark, his shield flickering out, stared at the crushed Alpha beast before him. He looked up at the sky, then slowly swept his eyes across the surrounding rooftops. There was no smoke trail, no artillery shell casing, no mana signature from a mage squad.
Just a clean, terrifying, absolute erasure of force.
Mark’s eyes stopped on the shadowed skybridge five hundred feet away. For a split second, through the drifting smoke and crimson twilight, he caught sight of a slender figure in a dark jacket standing against the railing—and a pair of distinct, unblinking amethyst eyes.
Mark’s breath caught in his throat.
He recognized that cold, absolute composure. It was the same chilling stillness he had felt from the civilian girl during the District AAA survivor audit. The girl whose file Vance was desperately trying to reopen.
Ruyi met Mark’s gaze across the smoky battlefield. She didn't move. She didn't hide. She simply stood there, an unspoken message passing between them in the chaos.
If you speak, the peace ends.
Mark swallowed hard, his heart hammering against his ribs. He looked at his exhausted men, then at the dead Alpha beast that would have slaughtered them all, and finally back to the shadow on the bridge.
Slowly, deliberately, Officer Mark turned back to his squad, raising his hand.
"Focus on the remaining stragglers!" Mark barked, his voice echoing across the plaza. "The perimeter is secure! It was... a delayed automated defense grid payload! Keep moving!"
Darren blinked in confusion. "Automated grid? I didn't think Sector 1 had heavy orbital payloads installed—"
"I said it was the defense grid, Darren!" Mark snapped, giving his partner a hard look. "Don't question it. Clear the trench!"
Up on the bridge, Kael let out a breath he didn't realize he was holding. "Did... did that officer just cover for us?"
"He covered for himself," Ruyi said softly, lowering her hand. "He knows that knowing too much in this city is dangerous."
With the arrival of the invisible "artillery support," the pressure on the secondary barricade broke completely. The surviving responders let out an overwhelming sigh of relief, rallying together to clean up the remaining low-tier beasts with renewed vigor.
Ruyi turned away from the railing, her dark hair swaying as she looked toward the core of Sector 1, where the Class-1 rift burned brightly against the darkened sky.
"The secondary line is safe," Ruyi said smoothly. "Now, let's go see what's coming out of that gate."