The café smelled like bacon, toast, and fresh coffee. Ptes clinked, steam rose from mugs, and a TV above the counter pyed the morning news.

  Sis sat across from Jaxon, Leon, and Valeria, hands wrapped around a rge coffee cup. He looked like he hadn’t slept at all.

  "You look like you got hit by a truck," Jaxon said around a mouthful of pancakes. "Or maybe a rhino with anger issues."

  Sis tried to smile. "Late night," he muttered, taking another sip. "Couldn’t sleep. Too much leftover energy from the Sentinel fight."

  "Leftover energy?" Inferno snorted in his head. "Please. We crossed a continent and turned a dragon into soup. That was art."

  Sis stabbed a piece of egg with his fork. Shut up. I’m trying to eat.

  "You really okay?" Leon asked. He watched Sis carefully. "You look worse than after Sub-Floor 4, and that’s saying something."

  "I’m fine," Sis said quickly. "Just tired. Nothing a gallon of coffee can’t fix."

  Valeria leaned back in her chair, stirring her drink. "If you pass out in your food, I’m taking a picture," she said. "For research."

  "That’s bullying," Sis compined.

  "That’s friendship," she replied.

  Before he could think of a comeback, the sound in the café changed.

  People went quiet.

  Chairs stopped moving. Forks froze halfway to mouths. Every face turned toward the big holographic screen above the counter.

  The news anchor on the screen stood in front of a huge dungeon gate covered in frost. She looked like she wanted to be anywhere else.

  "We have breaking news," she said, voice a little shaky. "The White Rabbit Guild has just reported a shocking event at Sector 478—the dungeon here is also known as the Frost-Valley Catacombs. The high-level dungeon was found completely cleared... but no one knows who did it."

  The image cut to the inside of the dungeon. The camera showed a giant, frozen chamber. Pools of melted ice. Long, smooth burn marks. A huge pile of slush where something big used to be.

  Sis’s grip tightened on his mug.

  "The monsters are all gone," the anchor continued. "According to the Guild, this happened only a short time before they arrived. There were no signs of a team, no spell marks they could track, and no remaining energy in the air. a full clear with no trace of the person who did it."

  The feed switched to a man in white and silver armour—the White Rabbit Guild Leader. He was usually known for his smug smile. Right now, he just looked scared.

  "It’s... it’s gone," he said, staring at the camera like he might wake up any second. He pointed at the melting pile of sludge. "The boss. The monsters. Everything. It happened maybe two hours before we got here. One person, maybe. Or something else. But there’s nothing left. No tracks. No leftover power. Just... silence."

  "WHAT?!" Jaxon’s fork slipped from his hand and hit the pte with a loud cng. Syrup spshed onto the table. "A top-tier dungeon? Cleared by one person? In two hours? That’s insane!"

  He turned to the others, eyes wide. "Tell me this is some kind of prank. Please."

  Leon pushed his gsses up, staring hard at the screen. His usual calm expression was gone.

  "Look at the pilrs," he said quietly. "Those burn lines... and the way the ice is melted. That’s not a team. That looks like..." He trailed off, frowning. "I don’t even know what that looks like."

  "It looks like a bug in reality," Jaxon said. "Like the system glitched and deleted everything."

  Valeria watched the repy in silence for a moment. Her eyes narrowed.

  "Whoever did this," she said softly, "is not normal. Not even by hunter standards."

  Sis let out a loud, exaggerated gasp and spped a hand over his mouth.

  "No way," he said, eyes wide as he stared at the screen. He leaned forward, selling the act. "Someone did that alone? That’s... that’s ridiculous."

  "Right?!" Jaxon pointed at the TV like it had personally offended him. "This guy is stealing our headlines. We barely survive a Blue-ranked construct, and some mystery man just speed-runs a nightmare dungeon before breakfast?"

  "Calm down," Leon said, but even he sounded rattled. "We’re not even in the same league. Whoever cleared that pce is on a completely different floor of the building. Like, several floors up."

  Valeria gnced at Sis.

  "Would you fight someone like that?" she asked.

  Sis almost choked on his coffee. "Me? No way," he said quickly. "I like being alive. I lose a duel to stairs some mornings."

  Jaxon snorted. "True. I’ve seen it."

  On the screen, the anchor kept talking about "mystery hunters" and "unknown powers." Someone in the café whistled under their breath.

  "Think it’s a government secret weapon?" a man at the next table asked.

  "Maybe a hidden S-Rank," his friend replied. "Or some ancient monster in disguise."

  "Or a bug in the system," Jaxon muttered again.

  Sis stared at his reflection in his coffee. For a second, he thought he could still see a faint, white glow in his eyes.

  Keep your head down, he told himself. Laugh. Look surprised. Stay small.

  He took another sip and forced a weak smile.

  "Well," he said, trying to sound casual, "whoever did it... I hope they’re on our side."

  "Same," Leon said.

  Valeria nodded. "If they’re not..." She looked back up at the screen. "Then this world has a new problem."

  Sis didn’t answer.

  Inferno chuckled in the back of his mind. Bck Lightning hummed, pleased.

  Sis just took another drink of his coffee and looked as ordinary as he could. For now, that would have to be enough.

  The sky over the district of Sector 24 cracked and started bleeding. A huge tear pulsed with a Ruby light, casting a long red shadow over the skyscrapers. This was not a danger; it was out in the open for everyone to see and feel what despair looked like

  The Order immediately sprang into action. Within an hour, ur the area was surrounded by barriers and mobile command centres.

  The atmosphere in the briefing hall was tense. Sis stood at the back with his team, trying to look concerned but not too concerned. The heavy hitters were gathering around them.

  The Diamond Vanguard was there with two National-Level heroes from the Soris Guild. They sat at the front. Their presence made the air feel heavy.

  The Ruby Elites were also there with thirty Ruby-rank hunters, including Valeria. They were the ones who would do the lifting.

  The Mid-Tier Support team had dozens of Emeralds and Sapphires, including Leon and Sis. They were being organised into Cleanup and Containment squads.

  Mira was at the podium, looking serious. Her hair was tied back. She was swiping through holographic maps of the rift.

  "Listen up!" Mira shouted. "This is a Ruby Gate. We have 24 hours before the Stagnation Date hits. If we don't clear the Boss Room by tomorrow night, Sector 24 will be destroyed. We have three Diamond-rank leaders leading the charge, supported by thirty Rubies. The rest of you are on fnk duty. You keep the monsters off the elites’ backs."

  "Ruby Rank..." Jaxon whispered, his grip tightening on his shield. "I've never seen a gate this big. Sis, are you okay? You're awfully quiet."

  Sis was just staring at the map. He was thinking about how to get through this without drawing attention to himself.

  The Crimson Rift did not feel like a dungeon. It felt like stepping into the throat of a living god. The walls were a dark-red organic matter that bled a thick translucent sap.

  As the raid force pushed deeper, the organisation was like an operation. The Soris Guild Diamonds led the charge, their white mana acting like a sun that vaporised the monsters.

  Sis moved with ease. He fired off bolts, each one perfectly timed to help Jaxon or Valeria, but never enough to draw the eyes of the Diamond-ranks at the front.

  After three hours of clearing, the main force reached a circur pza. The floor was covered in white powder. Crushed bone. The Diamond-ranks halted, their hands going to their weapons.

  The air was silent. The organic walls stopped pulsing. The ground began to vibrate with a rhythmic thrum.

  Then the centre of the pza erupted. A nightmare of chitin and teeth burst from the earth, towering fifty feet into the air. It had no eyes, only a rotating maw of thousands of serrated bdes, each dripping with a corrosive acid.

  "Contact!" Miras voice crackled over the comms. "First Boss identified: The Abyssal Death Worm.

  The Diamonds’ white light flickered, suppressed by the worm’s aura. Jaxon smmed his shield down. The vibration of the worms’ shriek began to crack the enchantments on the metal.

  Valeria lunged forward with her daggers, glowing. The worm’s skin was like tank armour. She bounced off, barely rolling away from a spray of acid.

  Sis stood at the back, his eyes narrowing. He could feel it. The worm wasn't a monster; it was a Mana-Vacuum. It was designed to kill high-output hunters by turning their power against them.

  The worm was going to eat the mana in the air. If the Diamonds tried a move, it would explode. Sis needed to take it out as quickly as possible.

  Sis looked at his friends. Jaxon was struggling to hold the shield. Leon was pale. Valeria was preparing for a second lunge.

  Sis stepped one pace forward, his Blue Glow remaining steady. He let the obsidian fin sm into his chest. He was unched like a ragdoll, soaring across the chamber, crashing through pilrs before disappearing into the dark.

  The formation crumbled. Jaxon wheezed, falling to one knee, his shield shattering into shards.

  The Soris Diamonds were forced into a circle, their light shrinking as the worm began to burrow. The ground beneath them started to bulge. It wasn't just attacking anymore; it was hunting.

  The screams of the dying echoed through the chamber, muffled by the thumping of the organic walls. The Ruby light of the rift above seemed to pulse with a dark hunger.

  Off, in the shadows, a pair of eyes snapped open. They weren't blue. They were an incandescent white that made the shadows themselves retreat in fear.

  Sis stood up. Brushed the dust off his shoulder. His Sapphire uniform was all torn up, showing skin that was starting to glow with an energy that made the whole dungeon quiet.

  Deep in the hole, far from the Soris Guilds’ fading sunlight, Sis stood in a spot where it was completely silent. The Prism Veil was not just open; it was thrown away.

  The air around him did not just get hotter; it started to disappear.

  "Finally," Inferno shouted, his voice no longer a whisper but a loud rumble. "Lets show this parasite what real heat looks like."

  Sis raised his hands. In the dark, six big pilrs of magma appeared, each one twenty feet long and sharp like a needle. They were not fire, they were solid white-gold spears of hot energy from Inferno.

  "Bck Lightning: Coil," Sis said.

  From his fingers, sharp arcs of electricity shot out, wrapping around the fire spears like hungry snakes. The bck lightning did not just add power; it helped control the heat, so the light did not leak out soon and warn the Diamonds in the cave.

  He took a breath, his eyes glowing with a strong light. He did not aim at the worm. At the spot where the worm was going to be.

  "Inferno: Morning Star’s Volley," he said.

  He let go.

  In the room, the Soris Leader was getting ready for a st desperate fight. The Abyssal Death Worm had broken through the floor under Jaxon, its mouth open wide enough to swallow the whole team.

  Then everything changed.

  At first, there was no sound, an empty feeling. Six streaks of gold light shot through the cave from the shadows. They moved fast; they went right past the worm.

  The spear hit the worm’s hide with a huge force.

  The effect was instant. The worm did not scream; it just disappeared. The Inferno spears went through it, turning its insides into a bomb. The bck lightning then made the explosion go inward. The shockwave did not kill the hunters but completely erased the Boss.

  A little ter, the sound came, a thunder that knocked every hunter to the ground. When the light went away, the Abyssal Death Worm was gone. In its pce was a round hole in the ground, the edges hot and glowing.

  The silence that followed was heavy, broken by the sound of heavy breathing and the walls of the cave sizzling.

  "What... What was that?" Jaxon asked, staring at the spot where the monster was. "Did the Soris Leaders do that?"

  The Soris Leader, his armour broken and his energy gone, stared at his hands in shock. "No, that was not us. That was higher-level magic."

  Leon crawled toward Valeria, his eyes wide as he looked at the hole. "There was no sign, a fsh of bck and then nothing."

  Valeria, holding her hurt shoulder, looked toward the hole where Sis had been. Her eyes were sharp, searching the shadows, even though she was in pain. "Where is he?" she whispered. "Where is Sis?"

  As the dust settled, Jaxon ran toward the pile of rubble where Sis had disappeared.

  "Sis! Sis answer to me!" he shouted.

  He moved a stone and found Sis. Sis was sitting against the wall in his uniform. His skin was covered in fake bruises he had made with a little bit of magic. His eyes were closed, his breathing slow raggedough.

  His hand was cold to the touch he made himself look like he was out of energy.

  "He's alive!" Jaxon yelled, his voice cracking with relief. "He's just unconscious. The impact must have knocked him out before... Whatever that was... Happened."

  Leon and some other hunters ran over to check Sis’s pulse. "He's lucky," Leon said, though his eyes looked at Siss boots, which were clean, unlike the rest of the room. "The shockwave should have crushed his ribs at this range."

  Sis did not move. Inside his head, his powers were quiet, happy, and full.

  "Good acting, Boss, " Inferno whispered. "Very good. Ten out of ten."

  Sis stayed "unconscious," letting his friends carry him back to the safety of the group, his secret safe, for a little while longer.

  torosg