Chapter 183: Not From The Sky

Evren moved quickly through the penthouse, heading to his suite to change into tactical combat clothes.

He pulled on reinforced dark trousers and reached into his spatial storage ring for the Glacial Wyvern Mantle, throwing it over his shoulders and securing the silver clasp at his collar.

Returning to the living room, he found Amber and Zephyra already suited up and waiting. Amber had strapped on her fitted combat armor, fastening the twin dragon-bone sabers to her hips while the faint crimson-gold glow of her aura flickered around her boots.

Beside her, Zephyra stood ready in her fitted black combat leathers. Her signature whip-blade was coiled neatly at her slender waist, and her twin phantom daggers rested securely along her lower back. Her silver hair was pulled back into a high ponytail, and her violet eyes looked calm but deadly.

Calista sat nearby in her Star-Silk Magitech Chair, her hands gripping the armrests tightly as the sirens outside echoed through the glass walls. "Evren... is the whole city under attack?"

"The sky rift is opening early," Evren said gently, kneeling beside her chair so he was eye-level with her. "We have to report to the Imperial Assembly, but I am not leaving you unprotected."

He reached into his pocket and tapped the master security console on his tablet. With a low hum, reinforced titanium blast-shutters began descending over every window in the Sky-Palace, locking down the entire 80th floor into an impenetrable bunker.

At the same time, the private elevator doors chimed, and Guild Master Walter stepped out into the hall. He was clad in his dark iron-thistle plate armor, followed by four burly, veteran shield-bearers carrying massive tower shields.

"Chairman Evren," Walter said with a salute, his grizzled face completely serious. "My men are ready. What are your orders for the residence?"

"Walter, leave four of your most dependable veterans right here," Evren commanded. "They do not leave Calista’s side for any reason. If anything breaches the lower floors, they lock the blast doors and hold this room with their lives."

"Understood," Walter replied without hesitation, turning to the four veteran hunters behind him. "You heard the Chairman, guard Lady Calista with your blood."

"Sir!" the four veterans barked in unison, immediately taking up defensive positions around the perimeter of the room.

Evren turned back to Calista and gently took her hands in his. "You’re safe here, Calista. No monster is getting anywhere near this floor."

Calista nodded, squeezing his fingers with her warm hands. "Please come back safely, Evren. All of you."

"We will," Evren promised with a warm smile, pressing a gentle kiss to her forehead before standing up.

Leaving the sealed penthouse behind, Evren, Amber, Zephyra, and Walter took the express elevator down to the ground level. When the lobby doors slid open, the chaos of District 1 hit them like a physical wave.

Wailing sirens echoed through the canyon of skyscrapers. Fleets of black armored personnel carriers, military supply trucks, and hunter combat units were racing down the wide asphalt avenues under flashing red emergency lights.

Overhead, the sky looked terrifying.

Dark purple clouds gathered into a massive swirling storm that stretched for miles, flashing with purple lightning. The pressure from the sky was intense enough to make ordinary citizens feel sick to the stomach.

Evren and the rest boarded their armored transport, joining the high-speed convoy heading directly toward the Imperial Defense Citadel Plaza.

The Citadel Plaza was the primary staging ground outside the Grand Citadel.

Just yesterday, Evren had crossed this same stone square to attend the National Council plenary meeting where Caldwell was humiliated, but now the entire plaza was an active war zone ringed by colossal anti-air mana cannons.

By the time Apex’s armored vehicles rolled through the fortified gates, the plaza was already swarming with over five thousand high-rank awakeners.

Banners from dozens of registered guilds fluttered in the gale-force winds whipping down from the clouds. Elite combat squads were checking weapon charges, loading alchemical rounds, and organizing battle formations.

As Evren stepped out of the vehicle with Amber and Zephyra flanking him, the surrounding hunters immediately fell silent.

Whispers rippled through the crowd. Everyone remembered how Apex had crushed the provincial trials, how Evren had bought an eighty-story skyscraper with liquid cash, cleared Iron-Thistle’s predatory debt, and shattered imperial records by purging the Zone One S-Rank rift in forty-eight minutes with zero casualties.

A few dozen paces away, the members of Solar Crown stood in formation, led by Guild Master Silas Drake.

Drake wore full golden plate armor, but his face was pale, his eyes narrowing with a bitter mix of jealousy and reluctant awe as he glared at Evren.

Evren didn’t even spare Drake a glance. His focus was entirely on the massive command platform rising thirty feet above the center of the plaza.

Standing at the edge of the platform was Grand Arbiter Raymond Kincaid. The supreme commander of the imperial defense forces stood tall like a steel mountain. A flickering holographic tactical grid lit up his battle-scarred face.

Kincaid raised his armored hand, and the plaza instantly went dead silent.

"Hunters of the Empire!" Kincaid’s deep voice boomed through the loudspeakers, carrying across the thousands of assembled warriors. "The Suspended Sky Rift has destabilized forty-eight hours ahead of imperial projections. Within minutes, the spatial membrane will rupture completely, raining extinction-class beasts down upon the capital!" ℴ

A tense murmur ran through the ranks, but Kincaid’s iron tone cut straight through the fear.

"We will not allow them to touch the soil of District 1," Kincaid declared fiercely. "Our airborne artillery will soften their frontline, but our elite strike teams must fly directly into the breach to destroy the primary nesting nodes before the rift expands!"

Kincaid tapped the holographic console, bringing up the division assignments on the colossal digital screens surrounding the plaza. "I will now assign the primary assault leads!"

Right as Kincaid opened his mouth to call the first assignment, the solid granite beneath their boots suddenly shuddered like an earthquake.

But this was no ordinary earthquake.

A deep, unsettling shockwave ripped through the earth, shaking the foundations of the entire city. The violent tremors rattled the mana cores of every hunter in the plaza, forcing many of the weaker ones to drop to their knees to keep their balance.

Zephyra’s hand instantly flew to the hilt of her dagger. "What was that? That didn’t come from the sky."

Before Evren could answer, a flashing golden window erupted directly into his line of sight, blinding his vision:

[CRITICAL SPATIAL COLLAPSE DETECTED: SECTOR 3 WESTERN FRONTIER — ASTRAL-CHASM RIFT]

[COUNTDOWN: 3 HOURS REMAINING UNTIL TOTAL DIMENSIONAL IMPLOSION]

[CRITICAL TARGET AT RISK: LEVEL 80 STAR-DIAMOND VOID CORE (CALISTA VESPER STAGE 3 CURE)]

Evren’s heart clenched in his chest as the grim reality hit him.

The gravitational shockwave from the sky rift had triggered a premature collapse in the Western Frontier. The Level 80 core needed to heal Calista’s paralyzed spine was trapped inside a dying dungeon that would implode into nothingness in exactly three hours.

If he stayed here, Calista would remain paralyzed... until another similar rift appears, which is very unlikely. But if he abandoned the capital, thousands of innocent people would die under the falling sky beasts.

At that exact second, Grand Arbiter Kincaid’s booming voice roared through the plaza’s loudspeakers.

His iron gauntlet pointed straight at the Apex formation: "First Strike Division, assigned to lead the charge directly into the Sky Rift breach: Chairman Evren of Apex Guild!"

A roar of cheers and shocked gasps exploded across the five thousand hunters in the plaza, all eyes snapping directly onto Evren.

Standing under the gaze of the entire imperial military, Evren stood completely still, his eyes locked on the three-hour death timer flashing in his vision.