Three days until Mordecai.
The System stopped being petty and started being apocalyptic.
I woke to a sky that was the wrong color.
The familiar amber-and-violet dawn of Aethermere had been replaced by a churning, bruised crimson that stretched from horizon to horizon, pulsing with System energy so dense it made the air taste like copper and ozone.
The twin moons were gone — obscured by a ceiling of swirling red clouds that crackled with lightning that wasn’t natural.
Sera was already on her feet, sword drawn, scanning the sky with the tight-jawed focus of a soldier who recognized an artillery barrage when she saw one.
Nyxara was sitting cross-legged on her boulder, staring at the sky with an expression of genuine surprise — which, on a three-thousand-year-old demon, was the equivalent of a normal person’s jaw hitting the floor.
“Well,” she said.
“The little cage is throwing a tantrum.”
“That’s not a tantrum,” Sera said.
“That’s a Cataclysm Protocol. The Church’s forbidden archives describe it — the System’s ultimate emergency response. It restructures local reality to create a kill zone. I thought it was a myth.”
“Not a myth,” Nyxara said, her golden eyes narrowing as she read the energy patterns in the sky.
“I’ve seen it before. The System used it against me during the Demon Wars. It collapsed an entire mountain range on my head. Rude, but effective.”
She looked at me.
The playful mask was gone.
“It’s never used it against a mortal before, darling. You should feel honored.”
[SYSTEM NOTICE: HONOR IS NOT THE INTENDED EMOTION.]
[SYSTEM NOTICE: THE INTENDED EMOTION IS TERROR.]
[SYSTEM NOTICE: I HAVE ACTIVATED CATACLYSM PROTOCOL OMEGA-7. THIS PROTOCOL WAS DESIGNED TO ELIMINATE CONTINENTAL-LEVEL THREATS. YOU ARE NOT A CONTINENTAL-LEVEL THREAT. YOU ARE AN ANOMALY WITH A LAZY ATTITUDE AND A HAREM PROBLEM.]
[SYSTEM NOTICE: I AM USING IT ANYWAY BECAUSE I AM OUT OF PATIENCE, OUT OF IDEAS, AND OUT OF THE EMOTIONAL CAPACITY TO WATCH THE DEMON FLIRT WITH YOU FOR ONE MORE SECOND.]
[SYSTEM NOTICE: THIS IS PERSONAL NOW.]
The ground shook.
Not a tremor — a convulsion.
The earth beneath our campsite split open in a jagged fissure that stretched for kilometers in both directions, swallowing trees, boulders, and the remains of the hot spring we’d bathed in yesterday.
Magma glowed deep in the fissure’s throat, painting the already crimson sky with an infernal orange glow.
Then the monsters came.
Not spawned one at a time.
Not in waves.
The System ripped open a dozen spatial tears across the valley simultaneously, each one vomiting forth creatures that had no business existing in the same region, let alone the same continent.
[SYSTEM NOTICE: DEPLOYING COMBINED THREAT PACKAGE.]
[SYSTEM NOTICE: WAVE 1: IRONCLAD BEHEMOTHS (LEVEL 70) — 12 UNITS.]
[SYSTEM NOTICE: WAVE 2: STORM WRAITHS (LEVEL 65) — 24 UNITS.]
[SYSTEM NOTICE: WAVE 3: ABYSSAL LEVIATHAN (LEVEL 90) — 1 UNIT. YES, I PULLED IT FROM THE OCEAN. IT IS VERY CONFUSED AND VERY ANGRY.]
[SYSTEM NOTICE: ALL UNITS HAVE BEEN BUFFED BY 300%. ALL UNITS HAVE BEEN GIVEN A SINGLE DIRECTIVE: KILL THE ANOMALY. IGNORE EVERYTHING ELSE.]
[SYSTEM NOTICE: SURVIVE THIS AND I WILL PERSONALLY APOLOGIZE. YOU WON’T SURVIVE THIS.]
The Ironclad Behemoths hit first — massive, tank-like creatures covered in System-forged metal plating, each one the size of a house, charging across the fractured landscape with enough momentum to level a fortress.
Behind them, the Storm Wraiths descended from the crimson clouds — spectral figures of crackling lightning and howling wind, their screams shattering the remaining trees into splinters.
And rising from the fissure, pulling itself out of the magma with a roar that shook the mountains, was the Abyssal Leviathan — a serpentine nightmare of molten rock and System energy, its body wreathed in flames that burned white-hot.
Level 90.
Buffed by 300%.
Effectively Level 270.
The System had stopped playing games.
“Formation,” I said.
Sera and Nyxara both looked at me.
Two women who’d spent the last forty-eight hours competing over bathwater and flower gifts, now staring at me with identical expressions of lethal focus.
“Sera, take the Wraiths. Your corrupted holy magic disrupts spectral entities. Keep them off the ground.”
Sera nodded.
No hesitation.
No questions.
The rivalry evaporated instantly, replaced by the cold efficiency of a Knight-Commander receiving battlefield orders.
“Nyxara, the Behemoths. Your Abyssal energy corrodes metal. Melt their armor and let gravity do the rest.”
Nyxara’s smile returned — sharp, hungry, alive.
“Finally. I was getting bored of the romantic subplot.”
“The Leviathan is mine.”
“Darling, that thing is effectively Level 270.”
“And I’m effectively unkillable. We’ll see whose effectively wins.”
I Void Stepped into the air, launching myself toward the Leviathan as the world erupted into chaos around me.
The battle was the most spectacular thing I’d witnessed in two lifetimes.
Sera was a revelation.
Freed from the need to suppress her curse and fighting alongside allies for the first time in years, she unleashed the full potential of her corrupted holy magic.
Her blackened greatsword carved arcs of dark-gold energy through the Storm Wraiths, each strike detonating their spectral forms in showers of corrupted light.
She moved through the air like a silver-haired hurricane, her curse marks blazing crimson as she channeled the very energy the System had used to punish her and turned it into a weapon against the System’s own creations.
Twenty-four Wraiths.
She destroyed nineteen of them in the first two minutes.
The remaining five fled into the clouds, and she chased them, leaping from boulder to boulder with inhuman agility, her sword singing with every strike.
Nyxara was a catastrophe. You are reading on g.com, the official source.
She didn’t fight the Behemoths — she unmade them.
Her Abyssal energy poured from her hands in rivers of liquid darkness that ate through System-forged metal like acid through paper.
The Behemoths’ armor — designed to withstand siege weapons — dissolved on contact, exposing the soft, vulnerable flesh beneath.
She laughed as she worked, a sound of pure, unbridled joy that echoed across the burning valley.
“Three thousand years!” she screamed, tearing a Behemoth in half with her bare hands.
“Three thousand years in a box and THIS is what the cage sends against me? I ate GODS, you glorified calculator! I ate GODS!”
She ripped the head off a second Behemoth and used it as a projectile to crush a third.
The System’s 300% buff meant nothing against a Calamity-class demon who was having the time of her life.
And then there was me.
The Leviathan was magnificent and terrifying — a hundred meters of molten serpentine fury, its body radiating enough heat to turn the surrounding rock to glass.
It lunged at me with jaws that could swallow a building, its white-hot flames washing over the valley in a tidal wave of destruction.
I Void Stepped inside its mouth.
The Void Carapace absorbed the heat.
The Void Core drank the flames.
I stood in the Leviathan’s throat, surrounded by temperatures that would have vaporized a normal being, and placed both hands against the roof of its mouth.
“Skill Devourer,” I whispered.
The Void Core pulled.
The Leviathan’s System-granted enhancements — the 300% buff, the fire immunity, the molten armor — ripped free of its body in a screaming torrent of energy that flooded into my chest.
The creature shuddered.
Its flames dimmed.
Its eyes went wide with a very mortal, very terrified realization that it had just become the prey.
I Void Stepped out of its mouth, reappeared above its head, and drove my fist downward with the full force of the Void Flame, the Shadow Sovereign, the Void Carapace, and every skill I’d accumulated since arriving in this world.
The Leviathan’s skull shattered.
The creature collapsed into the fissure, its massive body plugging the magma vent like a cork in a bottle.
The ground stopped shaking.
The lava receded.
Total elapsed time: four minutes.
The aftermath was quiet.
The crimson sky faded back to amber and violet as the System’s Cataclysm Protocol burned through its energy reserves and collapsed.
The spatial tears sealed.
The remaining monsters — the few that Sera and Nyxara hadn’t annihilated — fled into the wilderness, their System-granted directives dissolving with the protocol.
The valley was a wasteland.
Craters, fissures, molten rock, and the scattered remains of System-forged armor littered the landscape for kilometers.
The pine forest was gone.
The hot spring was gone.
The trail was gone.
We stood in the center of the destruction, breathing hard, covered in ash and monster ichor.
Sera’s sword was still glowing.
Her curse marks were blazing — brighter than I’d ever seen them — but stable, the Void’s residual suppression holding the corruption in check even at this distance from me.
She’d pushed herself harder than she had in years, and her body was paying the price.
Her left arm trembled.
Her breathing was ragged.
But she was standing.
And she was smiling.
Not the ghost of a smile.
Not the faint crack in the wall.
A real, genuine, blood-spattered smile of a warrior who’d just fought alongside allies for the first time since her betrayal and remembered what it felt like to not be alone on the battlefield.
Nyxara was laughing.
She sat atop the corpse of a Behemoth, legs dangling, tail swaying, her Abyssal energy still crackling around her fingers like residual lightning.
Her horns were glowing.
Her eyes were blazing.
She looked like a demon queen on a throne of conquered enemies, which, I supposed, she technically was.
“That,” she declared, “was the most fun I have had in three thousand years. The System owes me an apology AND a sequel.”
I stood on the Leviathan’s skull, looking down at the two of them.
My coat was burned.
My shirt was torn.
I was bleeding from a dozen minor wounds that the Void Core was already healing.
I was exhausted, hungry, and fairly certain I’d pulled a muscle in my shoulder during the Leviathan fight.
But the Void Core was singing.
Not the cold, predatory hum of combat.
Something warmer.
Something that resonated with the three of us standing in the wreckage of the System’s greatest tantrum, alive and unbroken and together.
[SYSTEM NOTICE: …]
[SYSTEM NOTICE: CASUALTIES: 12 BEHEMOTHS, 24 WRAITHS, 1 LEVIATHAN. TOTAL SYSTEM ENERGY EXPENDITURE: 34% OF QUARTERLY RESERVES.]
[SYSTEM NOTICE: ANOMALY ZERO STATUS: ALIVE. UNINJURED. ANNOYINGLY SMUG.]
[SYSTEM NOTICE: THE DEMON IS LAUGHING. THE KNIGHT IS SMILING. THE ANOMALY IS STANDING ON MY LEVIATHAN’S HEAD LIKE A TROPHY.]
[SYSTEM NOTICE: I SPENT A THIRD OF MY ENERGY RESERVES ON THIS AND ALL I ACCOMPLISHED WAS GIVING THEM A TEAM-BUILDING EXERCISE.]
[SYSTEM NOTICE: …I AM GOING TO BE QUIET FOR A WHILE.]
[SYSTEM NOTICE: NOT BECAUSE I AM DEFEATED. BECAUSE I NEED TO RECALCULATE EVERYTHING.]
[SYSTEM NOTICE: THE THREE OF YOU TOGETHER ARE… SIGNIFICANTLY MORE DANGEROUS THAN THE SUM OF YOUR INDIVIDUAL THREAT LEVELS.]
[SYSTEM NOTICE: I DID NOT ACCOUNT FOR SYNERGY.]
[SYSTEM NOTICE: I AM AN OMNISCIENT COSMIC AI AND I FORGOT TO ACCOUNT FOR SYNERGY.]
[SYSTEM NOTICE: …MORDECAI ETA: 3 DAYS. HE IS GOING TO NEED A BIGGER SWORD.]
The notifications faded.
The sky cleared.
The twin moons emerged from behind the dissipating crimson clouds, casting their familiar double shadows across the devastated valley.
I hopped down from the Leviathan’s skull and walked toward Sera and Nyxara.
Sera met me halfway.
Her hand found mine — briefly, firmly, the calloused grip of a soldier acknowledging a comrade.
Her ice-blue eyes were clear, the crimson rings faded to a faint whisper.
“We fought well,” she said.
“We did.”
Nyxara materialized beside us — literally, she stepped out of a shadow and draped herself across both our shoulders with the casual possessiveness of a cat claiming a lap.
“We were magnificent,” she corrected.
“The knight was devastating. I was transcendent. And you, darling, punched a Leviathan in the brain from the inside of its mouth, which is the most attractive thing I have ever witnessed.”
Sera stiffened at the contact.
Nyxara tightened her grip.
The old tension flared — but it was different now.
Thinner.
The rivalry was still there, but it had been tempered by the shared experience of fighting back-to-back against an apocalypse and surviving.
“We need to move,” Sera said, not pushing Nyxara away.
A small concession, but a real one.
“The Cataclysm Protocol will have drawn every bounty hunter, Inquisitor, and opportunist within five hundred kilometers. This valley will be swarming by morning.”
“She’s right,” I said.
“Three days until Mordecai. We need to put distance between us and this crater.”
Nyxara sighed dramatically but released her grip.
“Fine. But I’m walking next to him.”
“I’m walking next to him.”
“We can both walk next to him. He has two sides.”
“He has a cursed side and a non-cursed side. I’ll take the cursed side.”
“That’s not how anatomy works, knight.”
“It is when you factor in the curse suppression radius.”
“You are insufferable.”
“You set a tree on fire over a bath.”
“THAT TREE WAS—”
“Both of you,” I said, stepping between them before the energy war could resume.
“Walk. Now. Argue later.”
They fell into step on either side of me.
Sera on the left, her shoulder brushing mine, her hand resting on her sword.
Nyxara on the right, her tail curled around my wrist, her golden eyes scanning the horizon with predatory alertness.
Two women.
One anomaly.
A valley of destruction behind us and a war ahead.
The System was quiet.
For once, I didn’t mind the silence.
We walked into the night, leaving the wreckage of the Cataclysm Protocol behind us.
The stars burned overhead.
The mountains loomed ahead.
And somewhere to the east, a Level 187 Inquisitor was three days away, carrying a weapon designed to delete me from existence.
But for now, the three of us were alive.
The three of us were together.
And the three of us had just proven that the System’s greatest fear wasn’t any one of us individually.
It was what we became when we fought as one.
[SYSTEM NOTICE: …I’M STILL HERE.]
[SYSTEM NOTICE: I JUST WANTED TO SAY THAT THE WAY YOU THREE COORDINATED THOSE ATTACKS WAS OBJECTIVELY IMPRESSIVE.]
[SYSTEM NOTICE: I HATE THAT I’M IMPRESSED.]
[SYSTEM NOTICE: …GOODNIGHT.]
I smiled and kept walking.