The sky above Sector 7 warped as a pillar of dense blue spectrum energy slammed into the ground like a divine verdict.

  Buildings groaned. Glass shattered for blocks. The air itself felt heavier, saturated with pressure that made even trained agents instinctively step back.

  From the heart of the impact zone, something stood up.

  The Blue Frade was nothing like the brutish red one reported earlier.

  It was tall, too tall, its proportions stretched unnaturally, limbs long and thin like a marionette pulled too far by invisible strings. Its torso was narrow, almost skeletal, yet wrapped in layers of translucent blue constructs that shifted and reformed constantly, as if its body were never finished assembling itself.

  Where a face should have been, there was only a smooth mask of glowing azure light.

  And then it moved.

  With a simple gesture of its elongated arm, the air around it crystallized.

  Blue spectrum constructs formed instantly, spears, blades, floating slabs, chains, dozens of them, hovering with surgical precision. Each construct hummed with compressed energy, vibrating fast enough to distort the space around them.

  “This one’s a constructor,” someone muttered over the comms.

  “No,” another voice corrected grimly. “It’s a creator.”

  The first black spectrum user to step forward did so without hesitation.

  General Lucas.

  He landed on the cracked street in a controlled descent, white trench coat fluttering before settling against his black combat suit. The air around him bent subtly, as if shadows themselves were being dragged toward his presence.

  “Clear the perimeter,” Lucas ordered calmly. “This Frade is mine.”

  The Blue Frade tilted its head.

  Then the constructs fired.

  They didn’t launch all at once. They phased, blinking in and out of existence, reappearing closer with each flicker until they were suddenly there, tearing through the space Lucas occupied.

  Lucas raised one hand.

  Black spectrum energy erupted outward.

  Not as a wall.

  But as dozens of spears.

  They formed instantly, long, jagged weapons of condensed darkness, each one humming with lethal intent. With a flick of his wrist, they shot forward.

  The collision was catastrophic.

  Black spears punched through blue constructs, detonating them midair. The resulting explosions rippled outward, tearing chunks out of buildings and carving glowing scars into the street.

  The Blue Frade recoiled half a step.

  That alone was enough to confirm it.

  “This thing’s Emerald-class, not gold,” a nearby agent whispered. “At least.”

  Before Lucas could press the advantage, the Frade responded.

  Its arms spread wide.

  The ground shattered.

  Blue constructs erupted upward in towering formations, pillars, spikes, massive humanoid limbs that slammed down with overwhelming force.

  Lucas leapt backward, coat flaring as he summoned more black spears to intercept the attacks. Several constructs were obliterated, but others slipped through, crashing into the ground with seismic force.

  And then, a blade of pure blue energy formed in the Frade’s hand.

  It swung.

  The arc of the slash cut through space itself, leaving a shimmering afterimage that screamed as it passed.

  A figure stepped into its path.

  Black spectrum energy flared violently.

  The second black user met the attack head-on.

  He was tall, broad-shouldered, wearing reinforced armor etched with spectrum stabilizers. In his hands was a longsword, ordinary steel at first glance.

  Until it drank in black energy.

  The blade darkened, edges blurring as if reality itself refused to acknowledge its boundaries.

  He swung.

  The two attacks collided.

  The shockwave flattened everything nearby. Cars were hurled into the air like toys. The street split open, a jagged trench forming beneath their feet.

  The swordsman slid back several meters, boots grinding against broken asphalt, but he held.

  “Heavy output,” he muttered. “This one’s smarter than the red.”

  The Blue Frade reacted instantly.

  Its free hand clenched.

  Chains.

  Dozens of blue construct chains erupted from thin air, snapping toward the swordsman from every angle.

  He moved.

  Black energy surged through his arms and legs, reinforcing his body as he cut.

  Each swing was precise, no wasted motion. Chains shattered on contact, but more replaced them instantly, reforming faster than they could be destroyed.

  “Tch.”

  He planted his foot and roared.

  Black spectrum energy flooded his sword, coating it in a dense aura that distorted light.

  He swung once.

  The air screamed.

  A crescent of black energy tore forward, annihilating every construct in its path and carving a deep gash across the Frade’s torso.

  Blue energy bled out like liquid light.

  The Frade staggered.

  For the first time, it made a sound.

  A distorted, echoing shriek that reverberated directly inside the minds of everyone nearby.

  Then, it adapted.

  The wound sealed itself as layers of blue constructs reformed, thicker, more complex than before. Its limbs elongated further, joints shifting into sharper, more efficient angles.

  “Don’t let it analyze you!” Lucas shouted.

  Too late.

  The Frade raised both arms.

  The battlefield changed.

  A lattice of blue constructs expanded outward, forming a three-dimensional framework that filled the air, platforms, angles, floating surfaces that allowed the Frade complete control of positioning.

  And then it vanished.

  Not teleported.

  Distributed.

  Its presence split across the construct network, attacks coming from multiple directions at once.

  A black blur slammed into the field.

  The third black spectrum user entered the fight.

  Unlike the others, he carried no weapon.

  He didn’t need one.

  Black spectrum energy wrapped around his body like a living exoskeleton, compressing, reinforcing, rewriting his physical limits entirely. Every step cracked the ground. Every breath displaced air.

  He launched himself forward.

  The impact was thunder.

  He smashed through a wall of blue constructs with brute force, shoulder-checking through layers of hardened energy that would have stopped tanks.

  A construct blade formed inches from his throat.

  He caught it.

  Barehanded.

  Black energy surged, and the blade shattered like glass.

  “Found you,” he growled.

  He grabbed the Frade, or rather, the core of it hidden within overlapping constructs, and slammed it into the ground.

  Once.

  Twice.

  Three times.

  Each impact detonated outward, shockwaves rippling through the construct lattice and destabilizing it.

  Lucas didn’t waste the opening.

  Black spears formed by the hundreds.

  They didn’t fire randomly.

  They tracked.

  Each one locked onto a specific point of instability in the Frade’s construct body, guided by Lucas’s precise control.

  “Fire.”

  The sky turned black.

  Spears rained down like a judgment call, piercing through blue constructs, pinning limbs, shattering platforms, collapsing the battlefield into chaos.

  The swordsman moved in tandem, his blade flashing as he severed reforming constructs faster than they could stabilize.

  The enhanced combatant kept pressure on the core, his blows relentless, overwhelming, denying the Frade the time it needed to fully adapt.

  Still, it wasn’t enough.

  The Blue Frade screamed again, and this time the constructs exploded outward, sacrificing mass to create distance. A massive formation began assembling above it, a colossal construct arm, layered and reinforced, crackling with devastating power.

  Lucas felt it instantly.

  “Fall back!”

  Too slow.

  The arm slammed down.

  The black-enhanced combatant was caught mid-motion, crossing his arms as black energy surged defensively. The impact drove him into the ground, burying him deep in the shattered street.

  The swordsman was thrown clear, crashing through multiple buildings before coming to a stop.

  Lucas remained standing, barely.

  Dust and debris filled the air.

  The Blue Frade hovered amid the wreckage, its form unstable but still intact, constructs shifting more erratically now.

  It was wounded.

  But far from defeated.

  Lucas exhaled slowly.

  “Emerald-class with adaptive construct logic,” he said quietly. “This is going to take more than brute force.”

  Above them, the blue pillar of light pulsed again.

  And somewhere far away.

  Other battles were raging just as fiercely.

  The yellow pillar did not descend like the others.

  You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

  It detonated.

  The moment the spectrum surge hit the ground, the street collapsed inward as if gravity itself had spiked. A shockwave tore outward in a perfect ring, pulverizing concrete, flipping armored vehicles, and knocking agents off their feet even from hundreds of meters away.

  From the epicenter, something moved.

  No, something charged.

  The Yellow Frade burst through the smoke like a living battering ram.

  It was massive. Quadrapedal, low to the ground, built like a fusion of rhinoceros and siege engine. Its body was encased in overlapping plates of yellow spectrum armor, each layer etched with glowing reinforcement lines that pulsed rhythmically, like a heartbeat. Spikes jutted from its shoulders and back, each one vibrating with stored kinetic energy.

  Its head was blunt and brutal, horned and faceless save for a single slit of blinding yellow light.

  When it inhaled, the ground cracked beneath it.

  When it exhaled.

  It charged.

  The beast crossed a city block in less than a second, plowing through buildings as if they were paper. Walls disintegrated on impact. Steel supports bent and snapped. Every step compounded its momentum, yellow energy stacking and stacking, feeding into the next impact.

  “This thing converts motion into output,” an agent shouted over the comms. “The longer it moves, the harder it hits!”

  A shadow dropped from above.

  The first black spectrum user struck like a meteor.

  She landed directly in the Frade’s path, black energy erupting outward in a circular shockwave that forced the Yellow Frade to skid sideways, tearing a trench through the street as it struggled to maintain its charge.

  Her form was wrapped in layered black armor, sleek, angular, constantly shifting. Unlike the others, her black spectrum manifested as adaptive plating, flowing and reforming over her body to counter incoming force.

  “Momentum monster,” she muttered. “Figures.”

  The Yellow Frade roared and pivoted instantly, slamming a plated shoulder into her.

  She braced.

  Black energy condensed, locking her stance in place.

  The impact was deafening.

  The street collapsed beneath her feet, but she held, armor flaring violently as it redistributed the force across her body.

  Still, she was launched backward, crashing through a building and skidding to a halt in a storm of debris.

  Before the Frade could follow up, something hit it from the side.

  A black spectrum chain, thick as a truck, etched with glowing runes, wrapped around one of the Frade’s legs and yanked hard.

  The second black user stood atop a ruined overpass, arms spread wide as dozens of similar chains erupted from his shadow, anchoring themselves into buildings, streets, even the Frade’s armor.

  His black spectrum wasn’t about destruction.

  It was binding dominance.

  “Stop moving,” he commanded coldly.

  The Yellow Frade resisted.

  Its armor flared brighter.

  The chains groaned, stretching, cracking. Then the Frade ripped free, dragging chunks of street and steel with it as it lunged forward again, chains snapping one by one.

  The binder spat blood. “Unreal torque…”

  A blur of black intercepted the charge.

  The third black spectrum user didn’t slow the Frade.

  He matched it.

  Black energy engulfed his entire body, compressing inward until he became a streak of darkness moving at absurd speed. His spectrum manifestation was pure kinetic amplification, every movement multiplied, every collision weaponized.

  He slammed into the Yellow Frade head-on.

  The impact produced a sonic boom.

  For a brief, impossible moment, the beast was actually stopped, its claws digging into the ground, armor screaming under the strain.

  Then both were thrown apart.

  The speed-enhanced user skidded across the street, flipping end over end before digging his heels in. The Frade staggered, its armor dented for the first time.

  It shook itself once.

  The dents smoothed out.

  Yellow energy surged brighter than before.

  “Adaptive reinforcement,” the speedster muttered. “Great.”

  The ground trembled.

  The Yellow Frade lowered its head and charged again, this time faster, heavier, its entire body wrapped in a blazing aura of condensed momentum.

  Above it, black energy gathered.

  The fourth black spectrum user hovered in the air, calm and composed, hands clasped behind his back.

  His black spectrum manifested as spatial compression.

  The space in front of the charging Frade folded.

  The beast slammed into an invisible wall, not a barrier, but a region where distance had been crushed into nothing. The collision was catastrophic, yellow energy detonating outward as the Frade screamed in rage.

  The hovering man extended one hand.

  “Collapse.”

  The compressed space imploded.

  The Frade was crushed inward, its armor plates grinding against each other as if caught in a vice.

  Still, it didn’t die.

  With a roar that shook the city, the Yellow Frade released everything it had stored.

  Momentum exploded outward in a blinding flash.

  The spatial field shattered.

  The binder was thrown from his perch. The speedster was launched through two buildings. The armored woman barely managed to reform her plating in time to avoid being torn apart.

  The beast emerged smoking, armor cracked, but still moving.

  Still charging.

  The hovering man exhaled sharply. “Persistent.”

  The armored woman stood, black plating locking into a heavier configuration. “Then we end it the hard way.”

  The binder slammed his hands together. Chains erupted again, but this time, they pierced into the cracks in the Frade’s armor, anchoring deep.

  The speedster vanished.

  He reappeared above the Frade, black energy condensing into his legs as he delivered a kick amplified beyond reason, straight into the weakened plating.

  The armored woman followed, tackling the beast from the side, her armor shifting into a ramming configuration that mirrored the Frade’s own charge.

  And above them all, space twisted once more.

  The hovering man compressed a final point, right at the Frade’s core.

  The Yellow Frade let out one last, furious roar.

  And then its momentum betrayed it.

  The combined force collapsed inward.

  Armor shattered.

  Yellow energy dispersed in a violent spiral.

  When the dust settled, a massive crater remained.

  At its center lay the fractured remains of the Yellow Frade, its glow fading rapidly.

  The four black spectrum users stood, or hovered, around it, breathing hard.

  “Confirmed neutralization,” the binder said quietly.

  The armored woman cracked her neck. “That thing was built to kill cities.”

  The speedster grinned weakly. “Good workout though.”

  Above them, the yellow pillar finally faded.

  But no one relaxed.

  Because three pillars had risen.

  And not all of them were finished yet.

  The dragon surged forward.

  Not with fury- with certainty.

  Its colossal body compressed, coils tightening as red spectrum energy flooded every glowing vein across its scales. The pressure spiked so violently that the air itself buckled. Windows shattered in a half-kilometer radius before it even moved.

  Demonic Instinct screamed.

  MOVE.

  I launched myself sideways just as the Frade struck, not with a beam, but with its entire mass. The ground vanished where I’d been standing. Asphalt, rebar, and concrete were pulverized into a shockwave that flipped cars and flattened what little remained of the street.

  I landed hard, skidding across broken pavement, my boots tearing sparks from exposed steel.

  My slime followed, stretching, compressing, reforming, flowing around debris like liquid shadow before slamming itself into the Frade’s side.

  It didn’t damage it.

  But it anchored it.

  The slime latched on, tendrils hardening as spectrum energy reinforced its body. The dragon hissed in irritation, thrashing as its forward momentum stuttered for half a second.

  That half second saved lives.

  I could hear them now, civilians shouting, footsteps echoing as people poured out of side streets, evacuation corridors finally opening up.

  Good.

  The dragon twisted violently, smashing its body against a nearby tower. The building crumpled, collapsing onto my slime in a roaring avalanche of steel and glass.

  For a terrifying moment, the slime vanished beneath the debris.

  “No!”

  Then the rubble shifted.

  Blackened tendrils erupted outward, flinging concrete aside as the slime reemerged, smaller now, its surface rippling violently.

  I felt it through our link.

  It was hurt.

  Not critically.

  But hurt.

  “Fall back,” I muttered under my breath, not sure if I was talking to it or myself.

  The Frade didn’t give us time.

  Its head snapped toward me again, six eyes locking on.

  This time, the energy didn’t gather in its mouth.

  It gathered around me.

  Red spectrum energy surged across the battlefield, lines forming in the air, intersecting vectors locking onto my position.

  Targeting.

  “Oh, you’ve got to be kidding!”

  The beams fired from every direction.

  I didn’t think.

  I ran.

  Yellow energy flooded my legs as I sprinted straight toward the dragon, weaving between collapsing buildings and burning wreckage. Beams carved through the city behind me, detonating in cascading explosions.

  I slid beneath one, vaulted over another, felt a third graze my shoulder.

  Pain detonated.

  My coat disintegrated. Flesh burned. My arm went numb.

  But I didn’t stop.

  I jumped.

  Straight at its face.

  The dragon recoiled slightly, surprised, not threatened, just confused.

  White energy surged.

  “Summon, full release!”

  The slime shot upward beneath me, expanding explosively, launching me higher as its body twisted into a massive, elastic mass. I landed on the Frade’s snout, boots skidding against molten scales.

  Heat seared through my soles.

  I drove my palm down.

  Red spectrum energy discharged point-blank into its skull.

  This time, I didn’t hold back.

  The blast detonated with a thunderous crack, ripping through layers of glowing scale. The Frade reeled, roaring in genuine pain as its head slammed into the ground, shockwaves rippling outward.

  For the first time-

  It bled.

  Red energy spilled from the fracture, unstable and violent.

  My knees buckled.

  I barely leapt away as the dragon thrashed, its jaws snapping shut where I’d been standing.

  I hit the ground hard, rolling, barely managing to regain my footing.

  My chest burned.

  My vision swam.

  Demonic Instinct surged again, forcing me upright even as my body screamed for rest.

  The dragon rose.

  Slower now.

  Angrier.

  The red glow intensified, veins blazing brighter as energy spiraled inward. The air howled, pressure compressing until my ears rang painfully.

  This wasn’t a beam.

  This was annihilation.

  I could feel it forming—an attack meant to erase everything in front of it.

  My book flickered open instinctively, pages fluttering.

  Nothing left.

  No trump card.

  No miracle.

  I looked around.

  The streets were almost empty now.

  Sirens faded into the distance.

  Evacuation complete.

  Good.

  That was enough.

  I planted my feet.

  Yellow energy reinforced my stance, muscles locking as red energy flared wildly around me, unstable but defiant.

  My slime slid to my side, battered but intact, its surface shimmering faintly with spectrum energy.

  “You ready?” I whispered.

  It pulsed once.

  The dragon unleashed its attack.

  A torrent of compressed red spectrum energy erupted forward—not a beam, but a flood, a roaring wave of destruction that consumed everything in its path.

  I roared back.

  Red energy detonated from my body, reckless and uncontrolled, slamming head-on into the attack. The impact blasted me backward, bones screaming as my body strained against forces it had no right to withstand.

  My slime surged forward, wrapping around me, absorbing what it could, redirecting energy away from my vital points.

  The world dissolved into light and pain.

  For a moment, I thought this was it.

  Then-

  A new pressure hit the battlefield.

  Different.

  Colder.

  Sharper.

  The dragon’s attack faltered, its energy wave destabilizing as something cut through it.

  I felt it before I saw it.

  Black spectrum energy.

  A spear of absolute darkness tore through the red flood, detonating against the Frade’s head in a blinding explosion.

  The dragon screamed.

  Not in rage.

  In surprise.

  I laughed weakly as my vision cleared just enough to see shadows descending from the sky.

  “…Took you long enough,” I rasped.

  I collapsed to one knee, body finally giving in as the battlefield shifted, not into silence, but into something far more dangerous.

  Reinforcements had arrived.

  And the fight isn’t over yet.

  “Looks like things will be over soon,” Katherine muttered, her voice barely more than a breath as her fingers hovered above the floating panel of light.

  The image suspended before her showed a frozen moment of chaos, Jayden kneeling amid shattered concrete, smoke curling around him like a funeral shroud, black spectrum users descending into the battlefield as the red Frade reared back in fury. Even paused, the scene radiated tension. The story itself seemed reluctant to stand still, lines of causality tugging forward, eager to continue.

  Katherine leaned back in her chair, the soft leather creaking beneath her weight, and exhaled slowly.

  The closed world story Jayden had been assigned to wasn’t a simple one-and-done narrative. It was a progressive world, the kind that unfolded in layers rather than chapters, each dive revealing only a portion of its truth. No single descent into its pages could ever be enough to fully resolve it.

  To complete a story like this, a bookkeeper would have to return again and again.

  Not to repeat events.

  But to understand them.

  Katherine’s gaze drifted from Jayden to the wider battlefield frozen around him. The Frades. The agents. The civilians fleeing through corridors of destruction carved by spectrum energy. Every thread mattered here. Every choice branched into consequences that would echo forward long after this particular crisis ended.

  The first arc of this world had been deceptively simple on the surface.

  A powerful protagonist.

  A catastrophic threat.

  A trial by fire.

  But that was never the real point.

  “This part was never about him saving the world,” Katherine murmured, more to herself than to anyone else.

  Her fingers flicked, and the panel shifted, new layers of metadata unfolding beside the frozen image. Power distribution graphs. Narrative weight assessments. Probability trees mapping future divergences.

  Even now, as Jayden fought at the center of the disaster, the system’s calculations were clear.

  The world did not need him.

  That was the lesson being carved into the story’s foundation.

  Yes, Jayden was strong. Abnormally so, for someone at his stage. His growth rate was frightening, his adaptability bordering on unnatural. Even without formal training, he had managed to hold his own against threats that should have erased him outright.

  But strength alone was not the axis this world revolved around.

  There were others.

  Agents who had trained their entire lives. Black spectrum users whose power warped reality in quieter, more lethal ways. Commanders who coordinated evacuations with cold precision. Civilians who survived not because of miracles, but because systems and people worked together.

  This world had defenders.

  Plural.

  And that mattered.

  Katherine watched as one of the black spectrum users in the frozen frame raised a spear of darkness, its form sharp and absolute, aimed straight at the Frade’s skull.

  Jayden had bought them time.

  But they would finish the job.

  “That realization is going to sting,” she said softly.

  She could already imagine it, Jayden returning to the library, battered in spirit even more than body. The questions would come quickly, tumbling out one after another.

  Why didn’t I matter more?

  Why was I replaceable?

  If the world could handle it without me… what was I even there for?

  Katherine closed the panel with a gentle motion, the image dissolving into motes of light.

  “I’m sure he’ll have many questions when he returns,” she muttered again, this time with a faint, knowing smile.

  Questions were good.

  Questions meant the story had done its job.

  This first dive wasn’t meant to crown him a savior. It wasn’t meant to hand him validation or reassurance. It was meant to strip away a dangerous assumption, that power alone granted purpose.

  When Jayden came back, he wouldn’t just be carrying wounds.

  He’d be carrying doubt.

  And if he survived that-

  Katherine’s smile deepened, just a little.

  Then the next chapter of his growth could truly begin.