With a quiet sigh, Loki finished drinking the juice. The empty bottle suddenly started to levitate, heading towards the trashcan on its own.
Loki lazily walked up to the door. "Don't tell me it's that guy again," he said. His left wrist ran across the handle, twisting it open.
Standing in the hallway was a familiar face: Rémi Laurent, mid-twenties, messy brown hair, wearing a wrinkled button-up shirt and jeans.
His eyes were wide. He ran up to Loki and hugged him tightly like a scared kid.
"Loki! Thank God you're at home!" he blurted. "I was so scared, I thought the monster was going to kill me..."
"I'm not your babysitter," Loki declares.
Rémi started levitating, gaining some distance from Loki—about a meter away. "Eh?!"
Rémi Laurent, an extremely rich business owner, coward, and pathetic guy—Loki randomly saved him from a monster attack months ago, in a famous theme park owned by Rémi.
Since then, Rémi had been visiting him every time something went wrong and financially helping him, even when Loki didn't ask for it.
Rémi is a very smart man as the owner of "Enchanted Realms," which kinda cringe name.
"Sit down before you wear a hole in my floor," Loki gestured toward the couch as he walked up to the refrigerator to get some water.
Rémi then took a seat and proceeded to yap about past encounters.
"I kept thinking—if that thing had made it here, who knows what would have happened. But then I remembered that time in Lyon, when the monster flew through my park."
"Everyone was screaming. That massive wyvern was tearing everything apart… and you just randomly walked in, snapped your fingers, and the whole thing collapsed at the ground like gravity itself was obeying you. No chants, no staff, no nothing."
"You saved hundreds of people that day and then just… left. Like it was nothing." Loki offered him some water as he gently took it with his left wrist.
The TV news continued in the background:
"Casualties among adventurers are reported as moderate to heavy. Several adventurers with fatal injuries, including Gard Bertrand and Maugier Porrier, are receiving emergency treatment. Citizens are advised to remain in evacuation shelters until the all-clear is issued."
Rémi took a drink of the water and commented, "Man, that was insane. The Godzilla or whatever they called it was heading straight to Paris."
He cradled the glass of water on the coffee table.
"Really?" Loki, acting like an NPC, pretended he didn't know anything. He sat on the couch, pulled out his phone from his pocket, and started scrolling.
"By the way, what is that blood in your clothes?" Rémi asked, as he momentarily stare at Loki for a few moments.
"Oh this?" Afterward, the conversation continued...
— Dieppe —
Amid the rubble of ruined debris, "It's all over…" Melisande muttered, her voice filled with a mixture of hopelessness.
Her eyes fluttered faintly; a drop of blood could be seen coming from her mouth.
Her mind raced, "In the end, I couldn't surpass her. My big sister, Roxanne Cote, Z-Rank, France's strongest adventurer."
She let out a weak cough as her past flashes back through her mind, "Ever since we were kids, she always surpassed me, when it came to mana."
"She's the one always getting praised by my parents. I haven't heard my parents praise me even once."
"That's why I became an adventurer—so I can at least hear my name in one of those praises... And now." She gripped her fist tautly.
"Is this how it ends..?"
"Over here! I think I see someone!" a young adventurer shouted, his voice cutting through the haze of dust.
He was from Team D, a lanky Low-A Rank Grade Vl scout named Theo, his cloak torn and his face smeared.
His enhanced senses—a low-level detection spell—had captured a faint pulse of life beneath the ruined wall.
The group of five adventurers quickened their pace.
Leading them was Mid-S Rank support Elara Voss member of the Taranis Guild, a Grade lV sorcerer her staff glowing faintly with mana.
Beside her, two fighters from Helios—burly twins named Marc and Luc.
"Careful, don't shift too much at once," Elara warned, her eyes scanning the area.
She knelt down as they cleared a path, spotting the injured woman.
"It's Mel! 'Goldthorn' from Helios—she's alive, but barely. Multiple fractures, internal bleeding... hold on, I'll cast an healing spell."
Theo leaned in, wiping sweat from his brow.
"She looks bad. Was she in the front lines? I heard she took a direct hit from that atomic blast during the monster's transformation."
Marc, heaving another slab aside, nodded grimly.
"Yeah, saw it happen. The spear went flying like a lightning bolt all the way outside the city."
Elara placed her hands over Melisande's chest, channeling a warm, golden light that traveled into her wounds. "Vital Mend," she murmured,
The spell knitting torn flesh and staunching the blood flow.
Melisande's eyelids fluttered, a weak gasp escaping her lips.
Luc unfolded a portable mana-infused stretcher.
"Easy now. We'll get you back to the med tents. Sergeant Zen is already calling in an air evac for the worst cases."
As they carefully lifted her onto the stretcher, Theo glanced around the ruins, his voice lowering. "Think there are more out here?"
Elara stood, her expression straight despite the exhaustion. "Focus on the living. Melisande, if you can hear me... you're going to make it."
Meanwhile... in the dark corners of a half-collapsed alley, a mysterious man wearing a cloak was in a secluded spot with a woman that has long white hair.
"It worked even better than we planned," the woman let out a satisfied chuckle.
She adds,
"They really thought that thing was a natural Triple-S threat. That 'Godzilla' was never a living Kaiju to begin with.
"Just a machine. Seventy meters of reinforced adamantine alloy, a mana reactor core, and remote-piloted bio-mimetic flesh layered on top."
"Every roar, every regeneration, every heat strike was programmed."
Verene who walked passed the dark alley; was about to head towards the military camping site nearby, however she heard a conversation ongoing in the alley.
She lean her ear to the wall to eavesdropping, listening to the conversation. She pressed against the cracked wall just ten meters away; she felt her blood run cold.