"What—"

The water parted away from the dam like a curtain being drawn. Like a sea split by a divine hand. Like something out of a legend that no one had actually believed was true.

It was retreating, compressing itself into a wall of water that stood, impossibly, against its own weight, held in place by something invisible.

"And lo, the Merfolk rose from the depths to wage war upon the dark angels that poured from the heavens like a rain of plague..."

Cecilia whispered as she stood atop the concrete and the edge of the reservoir with her hand extended toward the water.

"Goddess Morgen... She of the Salt and the Abyss, lifted the ocean as a mother lifted a sleeping child..."

The scripture in her lips was carried by the strong wind.

"The waters parted and rose, and the deep-dwellers swam freely through the open air, suspended within their own salt-dense kingdom, as though the sea had become the sky, blending the two blue horizons..."

Her hand moved. The water moved with it.

Her hypothesis had been correct.

Apparently, even without a human-beast bond and the magical tether that connected a human soul to a beast’s mana, a human could use magic.

She could use magic.

But how to do it was more complicated than simply wanting it badly enough.

The School Romance scenario had been set in a world where normal humans could use magic freely. They used mana by training their Force and Vision, honing their abilities through practice and study, or wielding unique magic through various sources of mana control.

In that world, awakening had been as natural as breathing for a talented person.

It was simply part of who they were, recorded in their DNA, perhaps, woven into their genetics by generations of evolution that had given them the ability to manage mana without a Beast Bond. 𝒻𝓇𝑒𝘦𝘸𝑒𝒷𝓃ℴ𝑣𝘦𝑙.𝒸ℴ𝘮

Since then, Cecilia had wondered. Could humans in the real world do the same?

Did they have the same kind of potential, buried deep, waiting to be awakened? And in this world, the alternate future, the world of rifts and hunters and corruption, did they have it too?

But right now, she had no time to find out. She had no time for an awakening.

So she had tested a second hypothesis.

What if, without bonding with any of her husbands in this world, she simply drank the more-than-abundant mana potions she had collected from the Gacha Banners?

What if she used those potions as a substitute, like a battery, a temporary bridge between her human soul and the power of mana control?

She could access her inventory, after all—

Fifteen Four-Star Mana Potions later...

...she felt like she could lift the sky in case it collapsed.

"HELP!"

The scream cut through the air.

As the pressure from the reservoir receded and the water pulled back under Cecilia’s will, nothing could stop the pressure pushing from the other side of the rift where the corrupted ocean was.

With the domain of her power suddenly gone, backing away from the dam, Miss Rachel was left exposed, her magic straining, her body trembling as she plugged the rift with nothing but her raw mana.

"EASTIEL!"

"ON IT!"

Eastiel didn’t hesitate. His hands found the concrete, and with a roar that ripped through his throat, he collapsed the damaged section of the dam itself.

CRACKLE—CRACKLE—

The concrete buckled. The steel reinforcements groaned. And the rubble, tons of it, massive chunks of stone and metal and aggregate, was shoved directly into the rift, stuffing it, temporarily plugging the hole with the very structure they had been trying to save.

Oathran landed on the other side of him, and the moment his feet found purchase on the bed, without a word, he shoved his arms into the crack alongside his brother, his mana pouring into the concrete, reinforcing and strengthening it, holding back the ocean that was pressing against the other side.

"WHAT THE FUCK IS HAPPENING?!" Damon’s voice was no longer the calm, controlled tone of a director managing a crisis. He just watched the laws of physics take a coffee break—

"WE DON’T KNOW!" Arkai yelled back. "I’m going up—"

"GO!" Oathran’s eyes were wide, his face pale, full of horror.

Arkai transformed mid-leap. His human shape dissolved, replaced by the massive, black-furred form of a full wolf. He scrambled up the concrete face of the dam, his claws finding purchase on the rough surface and his muscles screaming with effort.

Oathran had seen something that had put that look in his eyes. And Arkai had a terrible, sinking inkling of what it might be.

That was when he saw it.

Standing atop the dam, her golden hair billowing against the wind, wearing his own grey shirt that was oversized on her, whipping around her small frame, was a golden goddess.

Her hand was extended toward the reservoir. Her expression was calm as though holding back a hundred billion cubic meters of water was simply a matter of concentration.

"Whine—" The sound escaped Arkai’s throat before he could stop it.

"Arkai, help me down. I need to push all this water back into the temporary dam upstream." Cecilia said steadily.

Arkai wanted to ask how. He wanted to ask what, when, why, how are you doing this, how are you standing, how are you alive. But his body moved before his mind could catch up.

He bowed down in front of her, his massive, black wolf form lowering itself to the concrete, his head dipping, his ears flattening against his skull, instinctively submitting to something greater than himself.

Cecilia floated, adding to his horror, her feet lifting off the concrete and her body drifting through the air. She settled onto his back, her bare legs grasping his either sides.

"Now we go."

Arkai didn’t have time to think. All he had was worry. This one fragile human, this pregnant woman, was holding the volume of the entire flowing grand river, and she was doing it alone.

Above them, helicopters began to swirl about, their rotors chopping through the summer air, their cameras zooming in on the impossible scene unfolding below.

From far away, they had captured the footage of what had just happened as Cecilia stood alone against the water. The news had smelled the urgent, grand operation and had followed the scent like sharks sensing blood.

"Is that... a woman...?"

"She looks like a human!"

"No. No way. That must be a... a Dragon in disguise!"

Arkai leaped. He jumped back down the gap between the water and the dam, his massive body cutting through the air with Cecilia still perched on his back. And that was when Eastiel saw clearly what was happening.

"This..." His golden eyes, wide behind his visor, tracked the figure on Arkai’s back.

The blonde hair and the borrowed clothes. The hand still extended, still holding back an entire reservoir... He turned to Oathran, who had the exact same expression.

Shock and awe and gut-wrenching guilt.

"I didn’t kno—"

"Okay. We will not blame each other right now. I am sorry. I shouldn’t have called you." Eastiel whispered, raw, clean of pride.

Oathran shook his head. "It’s my fault. It’s my fault. She is pregnant. It’s my fucking fault—"

But Eastiel, watching his eldest brother crumble from guilt in real time, quickly tried to reason with him. "Oathran, we have an ocean to hold back. We didn’t know what she was going to... Listen, whatever entity she made a contract with to do all this shit—"

"I know. I’m sorry I lost it. We do what we can now." Oathran pulled himself together, shoving his emotions into a box and locking the lid. He looked away from Cecilia’s figure and forced his eyes back to the rift.

Eastiel, too, no matter how reluctant he was, no matter how much every instinct screamed at him to grab his girlfriend and shake her until she explained what was happening, looked away.

"The other rift!" Swanson alarmed.

The other rift, the dormant one they had discovered first with a half-meter-diameter hole to another corrupted world, had almost lost its pressure against it too. The reservoir water was pushing back, and soon it will pass over it.

"If this other one is also connected to a corrupted ocean, I don’t think I can plug it alone, guys!"

"Polar Werebear team arrived!" Damon exploded through the comms, raw with relief.

DRAP-DRAP-DRAP—

They came over the edge of the gap like an avalanche of white fur and muscle, grizzled half-beasts, their humanoid forms massive and thick-limbed, and their bodies covered in the dense, cream-colored fur.

"Oh my fucking God, what the fu—" The lead bear skidded to a halt, his massive paws leaving furrows in the concrete, his dark eyes going wide as dinner plates.

Behind him, the rest of his team stumbled to a stop, their mouths falling open.

They hadn’t really been briefed on the situation. Just told about the rift and the contamination and the dam that was about to collapse.

No one had told them about the wall of water, suspended in the air, pushed back from the dam.

"What are we seeing...?" one of them whispered, his voice trembling with primal fear. "A god had descended...?"