"There we go. Rest up, we’ll head ho after you wake up," I smiled, as I set Aria down on a bed in the dical room of Sanctuary Gamma’s Hunters Union building.
I’d just got here with Aria and Aarav, had to carry both since Aria was too exhausted to walk and Aarav was out cold. I placed Jin’s body in Treasury and handed it over to the Union staff once I got here.
They showed to this dical room, Aarav got healed and is now resting on one of the other beds in the room.
"M’kay...it feels good to lie down," Sighed Aria, as she let out a yawn.
"Considering how exhausted you are, I bet-...," I began wryly, before trailing off as I sensed a shift in the air.
What the...?
What...what is this feeling? There’s sothing familiar about it...
"Huh? Hey, you feel that, Kai? This pressure in the air...doesn’t it feel like the Dungeons?" Frowned Aria, her brows furrowing as she sat up slightly.
"Right, that’s what this is...the Mana concentration in the air must have gotten stronger. I don’t like this...," I muttered warily, right as I got a call.
I glanced at my I-Watch to see who was calling...it’s Lachlan. The timing can’t possibly be a coincidence...
"Hey, we’ve got a huge problem!" He exclaid urgently the instant I answered.
"What’s going on? Has sothing happened?" I responded with a grimace.
"Yeah, the situation is dire! Sanctuary Alpha has all but been destroyed! It’s-...!"
"Wait, what?" Blurted out Aria with a stunned look on her face, as she sat up with a start.
"Take a breath, calm down and explain the situation," I remarked.
"R-Right, I’m sorry...to start with, all three of the unknown Monsters have been killed. You two already know about the first two, of course, and the third one was defeated about ten minutes ago.
But right after it was defeated, it self-destructed in an explosion of flas that razed about a quarter of Sanctuary Zeta to the ground, killing thousands.
Jaden Xeno reported all this to the HUC a couple of minutes after the Monster self-destructed, Beatriz Oliviera was killed during the battle. And then, right after he finished his report, the Mana Current activity all around the world went crazy."
"More single-floor Dungeons?" I surmised with a sense of dread.
"No...worse. A trendous amount of Mana gathered below the middle of Sanctuary Alpha, and more large amounts gathered in the areas surrounding the other Sanctuaries. Except for Sanctuary Alpha, there are around a thousand Dungeons around each Sanctuary.
And as for Sanctuary Alpha...a trendously massive structure arose in the middle of it, occupying about a third of the area within the Sanctuary. Just it appearing was enough to kill countless people.
Our analysts have figured out how to assess the barriers over the entrances of the Dungeons and determine how much ti we have before a Stampede occurs.
We should be getting a report on how long we have before the Monsters or whatever is inside the massive structure in Sanctuary Alpha erge and-...oh, speaking of which, looks like they just submitted the report of their analysis."
"And? How long do we have?" I responded warily.
"A month. In one month’s ti, the barrier over the entrance will fade."
"What about the thousands of other Dungeons? How long do we have?" Chid in Aria.
"Well, we’ve only scanned a few of them so far, but they seem to be normal Dungeons, the few that have been scanned so far haven’t shown anything out of the ordinary.
But...they’re all no lower than High Level Dungeons. The majority are High Level, there’s a good number of Critical Level Dungeons too, and a handful of Calamity Levels.
Dire doesn’t even begin to cover it...there’s no way we can conquer all these Dungeons in a week. Especially with how many of our strongest Hunters we’ve lost to the three unknown Monsters.
Two X-Aces have been killed, along with several Aces and dozens of lower-ranked Hunters. And the Dungeon, or whatever the structure that appeared in Sanctuary Alpha is, it’s a complete unknown."
"Wait...the whole reason why the Monsters invade through the Dungeons is to kill enough people to weaken the boundary between our worlds, so that the brunt of their forces can invade us in one go.
This must be it...that explosion triggered by the Monster Jaden’s group fought, it must have killed enough people to weaken the boundary sufficiently enough.
In other words, this is it, the final stage of the Monsters’ invasion of our world. Worst case scenario, it’s possible that the entirety of their forces are in all these Dungeons.
And the one in Sanctuary Alpha...I’d wager the Demon Lord himself, along with the strongest among his forces, are in that one," I realized grimly.
"What exactly are we supposed to do? If there are around seven thousand Dungeons, we’re looking at a few million Monsters at the very least. No way we’re killing that many in a week. Several Stampedes are all but inevitable," Surmised Aria quietly.
"The biggest threat is the one in Sanctuary Alpha, but that in no way ans that we can just ignore the other Dungeons. We’ll just have to conquer as many as we can within this next week, and deal with the Stampedes once we get to that point.
As for the massive Dungeon, we need to decide which our best option is, entering it and attacking inside, or letting a Stampede occur and having the battle outside. We don’t have much ti to make our decision," I added, doing my best to stay calm and assess the situation.
"Yeah...this may well be it. We struggled so much when the intensity of the Dungeons spiked over a year ago, and now, we’re in that situation tenfold.
Today, just three Monsters were enough to wipe out several tens of thousands. If there are more Monsters like that, not to ntion the usual Calamity Level Threats of Archdemons, Dragons and King Ants...what chance do we have?"
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