Chapter 227: The Northern Safe Zone.

Without wasting any more time, Kael carried the envelope with him and returned to his room. He stepped inside, closed the door behind him, and walked toward his bed before finally sitting down.

Only after he had settled himself did his attention turn fully toward the envelope resting in his hands.

Kael carefully reached out and placed his fingertip against the magical seal. For a brief moment, nothing happened. Then warmth suddenly spread from beneath his fingertip.

A faint glow emerged from the seal, as fine traces of magical energy flowed across the surface of the envelope, weaving through the intricate patterns etched into the seal.

The enchantment was examining his aura, comparing it against whatever imprint had originally been registered within the seal, verifying his identity before allowing the contents to be accessed.

The entire process lasted less than a second.

The warmth beneath Kael’s fingertip gradually weakened until the glow disappeared entirely, leaving the seal looking almost exactly as it had before. The verification was complete.

Kael then carefully opened the envelope.

It was time to see what was inside.

He reached inside and pulled out a thick stack of documents. His eyes immediately swept over the files, but before he began reading them, his attention was drawn toward the small note attached to the top of the documents. Kael picked it up and read the short message written upon it.

> Since you agreed to participate, here is all the information we’ve gathered so far on the other safe zones.

Vice President Jonas Grieg

Kael stared at the note for a moment before a faint smile appeared on his face.

"No wonder this information had a secrecy seal."

He placed the note aside and turned his attention toward the documents.

He would be lying if he said he hadn’t been curious about the other safe zones ever since Vice President Jonas first mentioned they existed. But he had never actually gotten around to asking about them.

He hadn’t even known whether the Eastern Safe Zone possessed detailed information about the other regions, and considering everything else he’d been dealing with, Kael had simply decided to find out more once the tournament began.

But now, Vice President Jonas had taken the initiative and sent the information directly to him.

How convenient.

Kael picked up the first document and began reading.

His expression quickly became serious.

The further he went through the files, the more focused he became. He read through every page carefully, taking in the information without skipping anything.

The documents contained details about the geography, organizations, power systems, leadership structures, history, and development of the other safe zones.

Time passed, and eventually, Kael finished reading the final document.

He lowered the file slightly and stared at it with a strange expression.

"How could they all be this different?"

He leaned back slightly, his mind still processing everything he had just read.

"They’re almost like different realities altogether."

Before reading these documents, Kael had imagined the safe zones would differ in some ways, that much was obvious. Different regions came with different environments, different resources, different circumstances during the apocalypse. But he had ultimately believed the differences wouldn’t be too significant.

After all, they were still humans.

They had once lived together in the same old world before the apocalypse tore civilization apart. Regardless of where they ended up, Kael had assumed that their societies would have developed along relatively similar lines.

He couldn’t have been more wrong.

The differences extended far beyond their governments or cultures. Their power systems, their leadership structures, their methods of development, even the fundamental structures of their societies differed in ways Kael hadn’t expected.

The Northern Safe Zone for example.

According to the information in the file, the Northern Safe Zone was located within a region dominated by dense forests and towering mountains. Its environment alone made it drastically different from the Eastern Safe Zone, where Kael currently lived.

But the geographical difference wasn’t what surprised him.

The Northern Safe Zone had no Hunter Association.

There were no guilds operating under the same structure that existed in the Eastern Safe Zone, nor was there a conventional organization responsible for governing the awakened population. Instead, the entire Northern Safe Zone was ruled by a single individual.

The Supreme Leader.

Kael’s eyes narrowed slightly as he recalled the information.

One person governed an entire safe zone.

At first glance, it sounded absurd. The Northern Safe Zone wasn’t some small settlement containing a few thousand survivors. It was home to countless humans, including powerful superhumans capable of influencing entire regions.

How could a single individual command enough authority to govern all of them?

More importantly, how powerful did someone have to be for everyone else to accept such a system?

That was where the information became strange.

According to the documents, the Supreme Leader rarely showed himself.

Kael frowned slightly.

That fact alone made the entire situation difficult to understand. A ruler who rarely appeared shouldn’t have been able to maintain absolute authority over such a large population, especially one filled with powerful individuals.

Yet somehow, he did.

The answer lay within the completely different power system used by the Northern Safe Zone.

Unlike the Eastern Safe Zone, where humans could become Awakeners after entering the Tower and passing the tutorial, the Northern Safe Zone had something else entirely.

Warriors.

Humans who possessed beast bloodlines.

Kael’s gaze moved across the page as he continued reviewing the information.

The history of the Northern Safe Zone began during the earliest days of the apocalypse. When the world had been thrown into chaos and humanity had been scattered across different parts of the planet, a group of survivors found themselves in the northern region.

Unlike the people who eventually established the Eastern Safe Zone, those survivors didn’t immediately discover the Tower or develop the same system that would later define their society.

Instead, they found themselves trapped in a region filled with monsters emerging from the rifts.

The early survivors had been completely unprepared.

They had no established system of power, no organized army capable of resisting the monsters, and no understanding of the new world they had been thrown into. The situation quickly became desperate as waves of monsters rampaged through the region.

Thousands died, entire settlements were destroyed, and the survivors were nearly wiped out by the beasts. It was then that the Supreme Leader appeared.

The file described him as a mysterious and benevolent man who arrived during the darkest period of the Northern Safe Zone’s early history. His true identity remained unknown, and even the circumstances surrounding his arrival were unclear.

What was known was his ability.

A bizarre power capable of grafting beast bloodlines into humans.

Through that ability, humans who had once been completely ordinary could gain the bloodlines of powerful beasts, allowing their bodies to undergo profound transformations and granting them abilities far beyond those of normal humans.

Those people became the first Warriors.

And from there, everything changed.

The survivors, once helpless before the monsters, gained the power to fight back. The stronger they became, the more territory humanity reclaimed. Settlements were rebuilt, armies were formed, and that was how the Northern Safe Zone was eventually established.