Author:
Hey everyone, just a quick note.
I know updates haven’t been as consistent lately, and I’m not going to make excuses for that. I really appreciate those of you who’ve stuck around, kept reading, and continued supporting the story. It genuinely ans a lot.
I’m working on getting back into a better rhythm and improving the update rate going forward, so you can expect things to pick up again.
Also, if you’ve been enjoying this series, I highly recomnd checking out my other books, especially the latest one. I put a lot into it, and I truly believe it’s sothing you won’t regret giving a shot.
Thanks again for sticking with .
—
Ethan heard her repeat the exact sa question, word for word, and it stirred sothing uneasy in his mind. Could it be that she wasn’t with the Divine Sea Temple after all? The thought flickered briefly, but he kept his expression neutral, giving nothing away. She could easily be pretending, or perhaps she was probing him, trying to figure out whether he stood on her side.
"You’re not with the Divine Sea Temple."
The words slipped out before he had fully decided how to respond. He had been weighing his options, whether to play along and gather information or simply take them down where they stood, but the mont passed too quickly.
The woman, who had been tense and alert just monts ago, suddenly relaxed.
"Huh?" Ethan frowned, caught off guard.
He was about to press her, but she spoke again before he could get a word in.
"You just got here, didn’t you?"
"Who the hell are you people?" Ethan asked at last, genuine curiosity creeping into his voice.
"Never mind who we are. Just leave. Get out of here... if you still can."
The prettiest of the group slid her knife back into its sheath, her tone tight with urgency. It wasn’t just a warning, though. That last part lingered in the air, heavy with implication.
If you still can.
"Why? Is sothing here planning to keep us against our will?" Ethan’s brows drew together. He could tell she knew more than she was letting on, and whatever it was, he needed to hear it. So Central Magnolia really did have sothing seriously wrong going on beneath the surface.
"Yeah..."
The girl hesitated when she saw he wasn’t moving.
Behind her, the other three won stepped forward. Ethan had been watching them the entire ti through his Soul Sense, and what they were doing hadn’t escaped his notice.
Those thugs earlier had been scum, no doubt about it, but they were still human. Ethan had assud the won would rough them up, maybe teach them a brutal lesson.
Instead, they killed them. Without hesitation or warning.
That was why Ethan had reacted a step too late. He hadn’t expected them to move that fast, that decisively. In the end, he had only managed to save one.
The girl before him had chased after the man, but the remaining three hadn’t followed. Instead, they had turned their attention to the corpses.
At first, Ethan thought they were checking for sothing simple. Then he noticed the way they worked, careful, deliberate, almost clinical. For a brief, uncomfortable mont, a ridiculous thought crossed his mind. No way they were that twisted... right?
But then they began dissecting the bodies.
thodically and Silently.
Eventually, one of them found sothing.
She leaned in quickly, a pair of tweezers in hand, and pinched at sothing invisible. The three exchanged glances, their expressions lighting up with unmistakable excitent.
Ethan froze.
He could clearly see the tweezers gripping sothing, but through his Soul Sense, there was nothing there at all.
His expression tightened. ’Again?’
This wasn’t the first ti his Soul Sense had failed him, and it was starting to wear on him.
"Fiona, I found it! It’s really there!"
The girl hurried over, holding the tweezers out. This ti, Ethan could see it clearly with his own eyes. A tiny black speck, no larger than a mung bean, wriggling and pulsing as if trying to escape.
His heart skipped.
Fiona glanced at it, her expression calm, almost unsurprised, unlike the others.
"So our guess was right. Everyone here has been infected with these parasites."
Ethan heard her, but the words barely registered at first. His chest tightened as he stared at the squirming thing.
"This..."
"This is what happens when you absorb the energy here. The parasites grow inside you."
Fiona spoke patiently, assuming he was asking for an explanation, but Ethan wasn’t reacting to her words.
He was staring.
The thing trapped in those tweezers carried the exact sa energy signature as the black particles he had sensed in the energy spheres before. Not only that, it looked disturbingly similar to the swarming shapes he had seen in the footage Shatterstar had shown him, like a larval form of sothing far worse.
’Parasite.’
The na fit too well.
It looked like so kind of insect, but in Shatterstar’s footage, those black entities had been cloaked in dark mist, their true forms obscured. Ethan had always suspected they were alive, sothing sentient rather than re energy.
A possibility began to form, cold and unsettling. Could this be how the Void Realm invaded other worlds?
Shatterstar had told him about the First Universe, how black mist had erupted across it without warning, attacking and possessing everything in its path. Ethan had assud it was a direct invasion, that the Void Realm had simply broken through using whatever "contaminants" Shatterstar ntioned.
But now...
Maybe it hadn’t been sudden at all.
Maybe the First Universe had simply been too vast for anyone to notice what was happening on a single planet at first. An energy surge, like the one on Earth. Strange spheres appearing, releasing energy from the Void Realm.
People absorb that energy, and the parasites grow. And when they mature... That nightmare begins.
Ethan’s thoughts raced, the pieces falling into place in a way that felt disturbingly logical. Shatterstar had described the black mist as if it had appeared overnight, like an army materializing out of nowhere, but that had never made sense. Even soone like Ethan, who wasn’t particularly scholarly, knew how resilient the barriers of a universe were.
If the Void Realm could simply smash through them, there would be no need for subtlety. No need for infiltration. They would have already conquered everything outright.
But then another thought struck him.
There were nine universes in the π chain, and Earth’s universe, the Barren Universe, lay outside of them.
If those nine universes were ant to act as a wall, and this corruption had already reached here...
Had the wall already fallen? Ethan’s stomach tightened.
His mother.
The Lord of the Underworld had gone directly to confront the Void Realm. If this was already happening here, if the Void Realm had already set its sights on the this Universe...
Was she in danger?
Morzan had said four or five years. Two had already passed.
Ti suddenly felt very, very short.
Ethan forced himself to push the thought aside and looked back at Fiona.
"Who are you people? What are you doing here?"
These won were clearly not ordinary fighters. They were here with a purpose. The thugs earlier had simply been unlucky enough to cross their path, though in truth, given the way those n behaved, it was hard to feel much sympathy. If anything, they had likely t a fate they had long earned.
"We’re the Ninth Division. This is our mission."
Fiona gestured toward the container holding the parasite before fixing her gaze on Ethan again.
"The real question is, who are you?"
Ethan blinked.
"Ninth Division?"
A realization hit him. He hadn’t seen Celeste since returning. Not among the group he brought back from the Antarctic, and not within the Silverwood family’s Hidden Territory either. He had heard about her, though, from Leo.
According to him, the Ninth Division had been crushed during their first clash with the Divine Sea Temple. Leo had ntioned it casually, without much detail, and since he didn’t seem shaken, Ethan had assud Celeste was safe. If sothing had happened to her, Leo would not have been so composed.
And yet here stood soone claiming to be Ninth Division.
Ethan felt a flicker of surprise.
He himself had technically been part of it once. Aside from that first mission to Shadow Lynx Village, though, he had done almost nothing for them. Thinking about it now, it was a little embarrassing, especially considering he had killed their Director and later purged the Dissenters in a brutal internal conflict.
Though not all of them had been beyond saving. People like Celeste, who had been controlled but not completely broken, had managed to hold onto their humanity.
Seeing Fiona and her team now, the rumor that the Ninth Division had been completely wiped out suddenly felt exaggerated.
"Which unit are you from? Stationed in Central Magnolia?" Ethan asked, deflecting her question.
"We’re Shadow Unit..."
Fiona answered instinctively.
"Fiona."
One of the older won behind her cut her off sharply.
Fiona froze mid-sentence, her expression turning awkward before she shot Ethan an irritated look.
"I’ve been asking you questions, and you haven’t answered a single one. Forget it. We need to report back and figure out how to deal with this thing."
She gestured toward the parasite again before continuing.
"You should leave. If you still can. The Divine Sea Temple won’t make it easy. Getting in here was simple, but getting out? That’s another story. And whatever you do, don’t absorb the energy here. Seal yourself off. Those parasites are mixed into it."
Despite her irritation, there was genuine concern in her voice.
Ethan found that oddly endearing.
Still, his curiosity lingered, especially about this so-called Shadow Unit. He had never heard of it before, yet these won were undeniably strong. Fiona in particular stood out. She couldn’t have been more than nineteen, but the way she moved, the speed of her blade, it was almost like teleportation.
Almost as fast as Vasuki.
He wondered, briefly, which of them would be faster.
Everyone seed to have their own specialty. Even him.
Though the one ability he possessed was sothing he could never safely use on Earth. He had tried it once, back in the Sea of Death, and had been lucky that the star he summoned was far smaller than the Umbral Star.
Earth was different. A smaller planet. If he ever miscalculated and dragged sothing larger down... The entire world would be wiped out.
Forbidden: Starfall Barrage.
An overwhelmingly powerful technique, and completely impractical. The kind of move where you kill your enemy and yourself in the sa breath.
"Fine. We’re leaving."
Fiona’s voice snapped him out of his thoughts. She had noticed him zoning out again and clearly had no patience left.
"Wait."
Ethan called out, and she stopped, turning back with visible annoyance.
"What?"
"Uh... I’m actually with the Ninth Division too."
He pulled out his small notebook, the one marked with a large M on the cover, representing the Ember City branch. He held it out, expecting recognition.
Fiona glanced at it briefly and rolled her eyes.
"M Squad, huh? Fine. I guess that makes us coworkers."
Her tone was flat, unimpressed, but the three won behind her leaned in, examining the notebook more carefully. They checked the photo, confird it was legitimate, and their expressions softened.
One of them handed it back with a small smile.
"A squad’s a squad. Don’t mind Fiona."
"Lynn, what’s that supposed to an?"
"Fiona, relax. How many Ninth Division squads are even left? Does it matter if it’s M or Q? We’re alive. That’s what matters."
The tension eased slightly as another woman stepped forward.
"I’m Lynn. That’s our big sis, Yvonne. Number three is Sienna. I’m number two, and she’s the youngest."
Her introduction was warm, almost disarmingly friendly.
Ethan felt a flicker of awkwardness. They didn’t recognize him at all.
He had half expected to explain himself, maybe even be recognized imdiately. After all, his na had carried weight within the Ninth Division. He had taken down Director Vaughn and dismantled the internal faction conflicts.
But apparently, that reputation hadn’t reached them.
"Were you not at the battle against the Divine Sea Temple?" Yvonne asked.
"Ah... I was on another mission."
The mont the words left his mouth, he felt the shift. The three won exchanged glances, their expressions cooling almost instantly.
"You’re lying."
Fiona turned sharply, pointing straight at him.
"You’re a coward. A deserter. Figures soone from M Squad would be trash."
She stomped her foot, anger flashing across her face before she turned away.
"Big sis, Lynn, Sienna. Let’s go."
The others said nothing. They simply gave Ethan one long, searching look before turning and following her.
Ethan stood there, stunned. Just monts ago, everything had been fine.
Now this?
He couldn’t understand it. All he had said was that he wasn’t there.
What he didn’t know was that when the Ninth Division had clashed with the Divine Sea Temple, every single mission had been recalled. All squads were ordered back.
So never showed up.
No one knew why, and there had been no ti to investigate. The crisis had escalated too quickly, and the Divine Sea Temple had proven far stronger than anyone expected. In a single clash, the Ninth Division had been nearly wiped out.
The few who survived had drawn their own conclusion.
Any squad that didn’t return... was a squad that ran. And to them, Ethan’s explanation sounded no different from an excuse.
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