Jera sealed the door to the Chicago safe house. The click of the deadbolt echoed in the hallway, sounding as final as a prison gate.
He stood there for a full minute, his back to the door, his entire body rigid.
Inside that room was Seraphina. A human being. A fragile, terrified, and terrifyingly insightful woman who had seen through his armor in seconds. She had seen the real Jera Murphy—the panicked, emotionally-wrecked man cowering inside the "Cain Walker" suit.
He hated it.
He had spent weeks building that mask. The cold, logical, silent "Overlord" persona was his shield. It was the only thing that had kept him from collapsing after his betrayal. It was the only thing that allowed him to wield this god-like power without going insane.
And now, with a few soft-spoken words, she had shattered it.
He was a failure. He had "saved" her and, in doing so, had doomed the world. He had trapped the Ascended, broken the global power structure, and effectively painted a target on the entire planet for dungeon outbreaks.
He had to fix it.
His mind, screaming in a thousand different directions, latched onto the only coherent thought it had left. The only plan.
Level up.
It was a desperate, simple, and probably useless idea. But it was a plan. It was an action. He needed to hit something. He needed the validation of his System, the flood of XP, the climbing numbers. It was a drug, and he was a desperate addict.
He turned from the safe house door and walked, his steps heavy and fast, back to the entrance of the Chicago Deep Tunnels. He wasn't a hero or a villain. He was just a man with a hammer, and his entire world had just become a nail.
In a high-tech war room, buried a mile beneath the Hunter Bureau, Elara Kane stared at a global map.
It was a nightmare.
Every single icon representing an Ascended-level Hunter was grey.
Elias Thorne (America) - OFFLINE.
Valeria Rostova (America) - OFFLINE.
General Jin Wei (China) - OFFLINE.
Akira Ito (Japan) - OFFLINE.
Kai Solloway (Australia) - OFFLINE.
Isabela Rossi (Brazil) - OFFLINE.
"Wraith" (Freelancer) - OFFLINE.
"It's confirmed, Captain," an analyst said, his voice hollow. "All seven... they were all at the Midnight Auction. It was the first time in a decade they had all met in one place... something about a 'Heresy Fragment.' The entire dimensional signature of the Auction is... gone. It's a black hole."
Elara Kane felt a cold, sinking dread that stole her breath. This wasn't a Guild-level squabble. This wasn't a political coup.
This was a decapitation.
"And Walker?" she whispered.
The analyst brought up another screen. It showed a single, bright B-Rank icon, moving steadily toward a known dungeon in Chicago.
"He's... he's in Chicago. He just left his safe house and is re-entering the B-901 contract zone."
The room was silent. The sheer, terrifying arrogance of it was crushing. He had just erased the seven most powerful beings on the planet, and then he calmly went back to farming a B-Rank contract.
This was not an act of war. This was an act of boredom.
"He's not a conqueror," Elara said, her voice shaking with a new, terrifying understanding. "He's a reaper. And he's just... working."
She slammed her hand on the console. "I am the acting-Commander of the North American Bureau. I want every S-Rank Hunter left on this continent—every single one who wasn't at that auction—mobilized. I want them in Chicago. Now. Set up a 10-mile quarantine zone. He is not to be engaged. He is to be contained."
"But Captain," the analyst stammered, "what's our objective? What's the plan?"
Elara Kane looked at the lone, B-Rank icon.
"We... we don't have one," she said. "Pray he doesn't decide to 'work' in our direction."
Jera didn't know about the quarantine. He didn't care.
He was back in the pitch-black tunnels, the smell of rust and static filling his helmet. In Chapter 15, he had cleared the first nest with a single, clean, surgical pulse.
This time, he was not a surgeon. He was a berserker.
He found a new nest, another massive, collapsed terminal, crawling with at least thirty Shadow-Stalkers.
They sensed him. They hissed, their forms phasing into the shadows, preparing their ambush.
"RRRAAAGH!"
A raw, human sound of pure, undiluted fury tore from Jera's speaker. He didn't wait. He didn't plan. He leaped.
He landed in the center of the nest, and he unleashed.
[Action: Unfocused AOE Strike. Strength Multiplier Roll: $\times 955$.]
He punched the floor.
He didn't hit a monster. He hit the planet.
The 955x multiplied strike, backed by his post-Trial, S-Rank+ baseline strength, did not make a hole. It created a shockwave.
The entire subway terminal disintegrated.
The concrete floor turned to liquid. The massive support pillars exploded into dust. The ceiling collapsed, and the very air ignited from the sheer kinetic force. It was not a punch; it was a small-scale nuclear detonation.
The thirty A-Rank Shadow-Stalkers, caught in the blast, were not just killed. They were erased. They were atomized, along with the broken trains, the concrete, and a quarter-mile of the surrounding tunnel network.
Jera stood in the center of a new, massive, self-made cavern. He was breathing heavily, his entire rig smoking from the force of his own attack.
And the notifications flooded in.
[MASSIVE OVERKILL BONUS APPLIED.]
[Level Up! Jera Murphy is now Level 86!]
[Level Up! Jera Murphy is now Level 87!]
[Level Up! Jera Murphy is now Level 88!]
The blue light of the System interface washed over his vision. The panic in his chest... it eased. The roaring in his ears quieted.
This was the only thing that worked. This was his fix.
He opened his Status interface, his hands still clenched.
[Status Interface - Jera Murphy (Alias: Cain Walker)]
[Level: 88]
[Core Stats (Baseline) - POST-TRIAL BOOST (x512)]
Strength: 485,000+ Agility: 430,000+ Mana: 580,000+ Endurance: 475,000+ Luck: $\infty$/Unknown
[Skills]
Aetheric Shield (S-Rank, L512)Language of the Forgotten (A-Rank, L912)...and 14 other skills.
The numbers were gods. And they were his.
He could do this. He just needed more.
Level 100 was only 12 levels away.
He could fix this. He just needed to kill. He just needed to keep going.
He turned, his purpose renewed, his panic buried under a fresh layer of XP. He would hunt this dungeon dry.
Back in the safe house, Seraphina sat on the cheap sofa, her new cloak wrapped tightly around her. She was alone. She was terrified.
Jera had left. The "key" was gone.
She looked at the table. He had left the two merged Runestone Fragments there. Maybe he had forgotten them in his haste. Or... maybe he had left them for her.
She felt that familiar, cold thrum. The same feeling she got from the "Corruption." The same feeling she got from Jera. The energy of the "Bleed."
"The truth is in the fractures..." she whispered, reciting the line Jera had told her about.
She reached out, her fingers trembling, and placed her hand on the cold, alien metal.
Her violet eyes flashed, exploding with light. The cheap apartment vanished.
She was no longer in Chicago. She was floating. She was in a void of black, starry space, looking down at... a cage.
It was a massive, impossibly complex sphere of glowing, blue-white threads. The [System].
And outside it, in the dark... something was pressing against it. The [Bleed].
And she saw, to her horror, that the cage wasn't just cracked.
It was opening.
Massive, continent-sized holes were tearing open in the glowing threads.
"The cage... it's not just failing," Seraphina whispered, her voice a terrified, hollow echo in the empty apartment. "The Ascended... they weren't just leaders... they were the anchors. They were the patches."
She realized the truth. When Jera trapped the Ascended, he hadn't just removed the world's defenders.
He had just personally, and simultaneously, unlocked all the main doors to the cage.
"He didn't just doom us," she whimpered, as she saw the first tendrils of the Bleed begin to pour, unchallenged, into their world. "He accelerated it. They're... they're here."