Soldiers who had spent hours staging for extinction were watching the stream’s cast walk out in person, and the professional distance was crumbling by the second.

Press drones dove lower, and the media perimeter collapsed.

Reporters from numerous countries broke into sprints across the staging plain, camera crews stumbling after them with equipment bouncing on their shoulders.

A Japanese crew hit the front first, their anchor shouting questions in rapid-fire Japanese while her cameraman struggled to keep the shot framed.

A Korean team flanked from the left.

An American anchor shoved past two Association officers with her microphone already extended.

"Mr. Grey! CNN International! Can you confirm the threat is neutralized?"

"BBC World! One question! Just one!"

"Sir, you’re in a restricted zone, you need to fall back behind the..."

The Association officers gave chase with the resigned energy of people who had trained for combat and been assigned crowd control, grabbing press badges and shouting about restricted perimeters while reporters ducked under their arms and tried to run by them, with very little success.

The rest of Kaiden’s team followed through the gate in their wake, Nyx strolling out with her arms folded beneath her chest and a satisfied smile, Aria drifting to Kaiden’s side with silver hair catching the morning light, Vespera and Scarlet emerging last with the unhurried pace of women who had walked out of worse.

Then Pebble stepped through.

He crossed the threshold at draft-horse size, four legs trotting through with his crown held level, and the moment his last leg cleared the dungeon’s boundary, Domain Conformity released its hold.

He grew.

The carapace swelled outward in a rush of expanding mass, legs thickening, the crown climbing skyward as six burning eyes spread apart across a skull that rose above the tree line.

The ground buckled under the returning weight, cracks radiating outward in concentric rings that knocked the nearest soldiers off their feet and sent the reporters scrambling backward so fast one of them tripped over her own cameraman.

Every artillery crew on the northern ridge found their hands on their triggers.

"Hold!" Their captain screamed, using a much higher-pitched tone than he planned.

The creature that had eaten twenty dungeons stood on Earth soil, smaller than it was as a Dungeon Master, but still far bigger and more threatening than any creature humanity was used to seeing.

Every weapon on the ridge was pointed at it.

Nobody fired, but trigger fingers trembled across the line, and the awakened fighters nearest to the gate had gone from impressed to calculating exit routes in the space of a single heartbeat.

"Wimpy Americans!" One Korean Vanguard captain folded his arms and held his ground with his jaw set, refusing to give an inch, and the sweat running down his temple said everything his posture wouldn’t.

Pebble ignored all of them.

The Guardian crossed the staging plain toward Kaiden in four ground-shaking strides that cracked the earth under every footfall and planted himself at his master’s back.

Then he raised his head toward the sky and howled.

It rolled across the staging plain as raw sound and kept going, a declaration that vibrated through the floor of every armored transport, rattled the helicopter gunships in their holding patterns, and pressed against the ribcages of every soldier on the line.

The howl carried the oldest promise a predator could make: this one is mine, and you will go through me.

When it faded, the silence that replaced it was absolute.

Two full seconds of a quarter million armed humans staring up at a creature from their screens made real, close enough to crush them, standing guard over a twenty-year-old who looked entirely unbothered by any of it.

Then the staging plain erupted.

The reporters who had been scrambling away from Pebble’s growth reversed course so fast they left equipment behind.

The Japanese anchor planted herself ten meters from the Guardian’s foreleg and delivered a breathless segment to camera while her hands shook, and the CNN correspondent was already live with "I am standing close to the creature the infamous Anomaly Kaiden Grey has named Pebble, and I can confirm that the ground has not stopped vibrating since it arrived."

A European Guild Coalition officer turned to the woman beside him with genuine bewilderment on his face. "Is that a cat woman?"

"Focus on the hundred-meter apex predator, Henrik."

"I am focused on the hundred-meter apex predator. But there’s also a cat woman."

"You’re way out of the loop, my friend. Were you living under a rock all these months?"

"Shiit, if I knew the ’muricans had tanned cat girls I would’ve defected a long time ago."

"...I’m afraid she’s taken."

Farther back, an A-tier squad that had been staging for twelve hours straight was staring at Calypso, and their squad leader had to physically turn one of them back around by the shoulders. "We’re still on deployment, Martinez." Martinez did not look like he agreed.

"K-Kai, I think someone is filming me..." Alexandra whispered from behind his back, because someone was absolutely filming her, a press drone hovering two meters away with its lens trained on the girl peeking out from behind the Paragon of Sin like a kitten behind a curtain.

"Want me to destroy it?" Kaiden asked, and received fervent bobbing of blonde hair left and right in response.

Alexandra knew he was utterly serious about it, and that was the problem. She did not want him to ruin relations with important people just because she still had issues appearing in the spotlight.

Finally, the command tent opened two hundred meters back from the perimeter.

Grace emerged first with her interface still unfolded across both hands, three comm channels blinking, dark circles under her eyes that had graduated past concern into architecture.

She stopped when she saw Pebble in person. "So it wasn’t an optical illusion," she sighed before closing the comm channels without saying goodbye, and let herself stare for exactly two seconds before professionalism reasserted itself.

The Chairman followed with his hands clasped behind his back and his coat streaked with ash, walking toward Kaiden’s group.

Lazarus Crane’s voice reached them before Lazarus Crane did.

"Bahaha! He brought a dog with him!"