System Breaker: Surviving Apocalypse with Nine-Tailed Kitsune-Chapter 24: Swarm

"Forgive my straightforwardness, but do any of you perhaps have a health potion?"

Damon didn’t reply, and instead, he only shifted his stance, taking a stronger grip on his tachi.

The intruder chuckled nervously as he continued to take another few steps forward. "I’m sorry, I know this is a little sudden-"

"Are you the one who just entered the rift?" Damon asked. Not that he didn’t know the answer, but rather to see what the person before him would say.

The lanky man continued to take another two steps forward, stopping only when the tip of Damon’s tachi pushed against his chest before replying.

"I am. I didn’t know someone else was already in it." He answered, scratching the back of his head.

Damon’s gaze moved toward the man’s burned arm. "Your injury... what happened?"

This time, Damon could almost see the smile on the man’s face waver for a moment before he replied, forcing the smile back on his pale face.

"Oh, this?" he asked, turning toward his burned arm as if he forgot it was there, "It’s a long story, actually. I was being chased by a group of Fire Hounds and stepped into the rift to escape them. Nasty creatures, they almost got me. Ha! Ha!"

His chuckle died fast as he realised Damon’s face remained stone cold.

The man’s eyes then shifted toward Victor, as if sensing him to be the weak link. "By any chance, you don’t have a spare health potion, do you?"

"N-No but... here." Victor moved toward the intruder, ripping a piece of his jacket to give to him as a makeshift bandage. "It’s not much but-"

"No, no its great. Thank you," The man replied with a smile, as if happy for the worthless piece of cloth or happy that his play was working.

Damon, of course, wasn’t buying any of it. He slowly lowered his tachi, just enough not to appear hostile but high enough to be ready for anything. He watched with a bit of a frown as the intruder began wrapping his burned skin with a loose piece of Victor’s jacket.

"What’s your name?" Victor asked.

"Casper, and you are?"

"I’m Victor, and this is Damon."

Casper turned his gaze to meet Victor’s, then shifted it toward Damon, at whom he looked for a moment too long for a casual introduction.

"I’m glad I found the two of you. Closing the purple rift all alone would be suicide. Though I am surprised... are the two of you able to close rifts by yourselves?"

Damon turned to a spectator as Victor and Casper talked. It was a role he preferred in their current situation. The man before them clearly couldn’t be trusted, but if they could use him to ensure they reached the core and closed the rift, then he didn’t care how or what burned the man’s skin.

"Purple rift?" Victor asked, genuinely confused, "No, it’s our... well, my first rift."

"I see. Well, this is a purple rift, which is significantly harder than the blue ones. I believe the official ranking by those who care is an F Rank for Blue Rift and an E Rank for Purple One."

Victor’s eyes widened. "What? No, no, it was blue when we entered! Wasn’t it?" he turned toward Damon for an answer, but he would not find one.

Damon had already suspected that something about this rift felt odd. Hearing that its colour changed wasn’t much of a surprise to him, and Kitsune would only confirm his thought process.

"That’s correct. The rifts, if left unclosed long enough, grow more potent. It was truly bad timing that we entered right before it changed."

For some reason, Damon felt a bad premonition at the way she confirmed it, though. Almost unsurprised at the change took place in the first place almost as if...

’You knew, didn’t you?’

Kitsune’s voice purred in response.

"You can thank me when we get out of here," she said with a giggle. 𝕗𝐫𝐞𝕖𝕨𝐞𝗯𝚗𝕠𝘃𝐞𝚕.𝐜𝗼𝚖

Damon let out a long sigh, which earned him questioning looks from both Casper and Victor, who were mid-conversation, raising their brows at him.

He ignored their stares and changed the subject.

"It’s nice to meet another human and all, but we should get moving. The faster we close the rift, the better."

They nodded in response, and just like that, the three of them continued to move toward the direction of the rift core.

***

The walk that followed was uneventful, annoyingly so. Damon cursed at the lack of action as the quiet walk made him wary of the intruder who just joined them, ever more.

Daylight had eventually returned.

Their legs began to protest against the never-ending walk, until finally they seemed to be reaching the end of their journey. The forest ended abruptly. Calling it unnatural would be an understatement. The forest didn’t thin out, it simply stopped, as if someone had almost completely erased anything on the plateau before them.

Endless dark earth stretched outward. In its dead centre was a rift core. Far larger than the one Damon had seen in his first rift. In one corner of one eye, he could see Victor’s joyful grin, while in the other, he could see an expression that could only be described as cunning on the intruder’s face.

But before they could step onto that desolated ground, a loud buzz cut through the silence, coming directly from above them.

Damon frowned as he looked up.

There, hanging in the sky, was a black cloud.

Confusion struck him like a warhammer. Having checked the direction of the rift core numerous times across their journey, he was certain the black cloud wasn’t there before.

He stared at it for a couple of moments before realising it was getting bigger, and as it descended a couple of meters more, only then did he realise it was not a cloud but a massive swarm of fly-like monsters, coming straight at them.

"Run!"