The Monstrous Hero-Chapter 47 - 46: Two Realities

He smirked, tapping the side of his visor. "Let’s just say you’re... quite popular. Hard not to recognize the infamous ’Silver Ghost of Seven.’"

She scoffed and looked away, clearly annoyed but not enough to argue. "Don’t call me that."

"Can’t help it if it fits."

"Z-34," she warned.

He raised his hands in surrender. "Alright, alright. No nicknames. Got it." Then he turned his attention back to Liu Xian, eyes glinting with curiosity. "So... what about you?"

Liu Xian’s gaze dropped to the dirt. The flames flickered in his eyes. His fingers toyed with a stray thread on his sleeve before he said it—quiet, almost swallowed by the sound of the wind.

"I didn’t come from a district."

The words hit like a stone dropped into still water.

Z-34’s grin faltered. "...Say what again?"

"I said I didn’t come from a district."

Z-34 straightened, confusion etched across his face. "That’s not—what do you mean, you didn’t come from a district? Everyone comes from a district. It’s how we’re sorted. Birth registry, training, conscription—hell, even the damn collars are coded by district. It’s literally the law. You either belong to one or you’re taken down."

Liu Xian didn’t answer.

"Hold up." E-26, who actually wasn’t sleeping and had been eavesdropping, sat upright, eyes narrowing beneath his lashes. "If you’re not from a district, how the hell did you end up here? The Academy only drafts registered kids."

Liu Xian’s hand drifted toward the fire, resting on his knee. "I don’t exactly know much," he told them. "They just... came."

Z-34’s eyes darted toward 27-C. "What’s that supposed to mean?"

She didn’t answer right away, her gaze still fixed on Liu Xian. "He’s saying he was taken," she stated finally, her tone void of emotion and hard to read.

"Taken?" E-26 repeated.

"Yeah." She tilted her head. "Happens sometimes. There are stories about it—kids from outside the districts, the Outskirts, getting dragged in by recruiters. Most of them don’t make it past the gate though."

Z-34 stared at Liu Xian, disbelief flickering across his face. "You’re telling me you’re one of those?"

Liu Xian said nothing, but the slight twitch in his jaw was answer enough.

"You lucky bastard," Z-34 muttered, the chill in his voice sharp enough to make Liu Xian look over—only to see him smiling. He exhaled a shaky laugh and dragged a hand through his hair. "Well," he drawled. "No wonder you’re weird."

27-C shot him a glare.

"What? I’m just saying! Makes sense now, doesn’t it? He probably doesn’t even know what the hell’s going on half the time. Then again..." He leaned back, flashing a crooked grin. "He’s one heck of a lucky kid. Getting recruited before being found by the Rankers."

Liu Xian’s eyes lifted, a flicker of confusion crossing his face. Rankers?

Z-34 caught the look and snorted. "Yeah, Rankers. That’s what we call the big shots—A and S rank Awakeneds. The ones who’ve been around long enough to think they own the fucking world."

He poked the fire with a stick suddenly irritated, sending up a scatter of sparks that floated briefly before fading. "Those assholes think they run the fucking world. Anyway, they’re usually the ones tasked with ’cleaning up’ uncontracted Awakeneds—you know, the ones who pop up outta nowhere and can’t control themselves."

Liu Xian didn’t move, but the word cleaning up stuck in his head like a splinter.

He remembered the chase.

So those were Rankers, he thought. Those were the ones who kill other Awakeneds.

"Yeah," Z-34 went on, not noticing the subtle tightening of Liu Xian’s jaw. "They take out uncontracted Awakeneds before they go savage. You know, before their mana burns through their brains and turns ’em into freaking beasts."

The firelight threw long, shaky shadows across the group. B-67 sat with his knees pulled in, wide awake now, eyes fixed on Z-34 like he was listening to a campfire ghost story. While 27-C sat cross-legged, arms folded, gaze trained on the flames.

Z-34 leaned in, his mouth twisting into a grin that was trying way too hard to be normal. It came out crooked and unsettling, the kind of smile that made your skin crawl a little. "Seems like you don’t know much, huh?" He nudged Liu Xian lightly with the stick. "Guess I’ll have to fill you in before you end up making some dumb mistake. You ever heard of the Great Tearing?"

"I already know about that," Liu Xian said quietly, eyes still fixed on the fire. 𝒻𝑟𝘦𝘦𝘸ℯ𝒷𝑛𝘰𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝘤𝘰𝘮

Z-34 blinked, then chuckled. "Well damn, that saves me a speech." He tossed the stick into the flames and rubbed his palms together, leaning in closer. "Alright, so you already know the Tear happened and that it messed up the balance between the two worlds—ours and the others. But what you likely don’t get is how this whole setup works now."

He gestured with both hands, trying to draw something invisible in the air. "Imagine two worlds sitting side by side, right? Real close. So close they’re practically grinding against each other’s ass. Now, where they meet—that thin little intersection between them—that’s what we call the slit."

Liu Xian’s eyes followed the motion.

"The slit," Z-34 repeated, "is like a scar between worlds. And right in the middle of that scar is where the Arcane Academy sits. This place we’re stuck in? It’s literally built between two worlds. Not in one, not in the other—just hanging in the middle like an ass crack."

"Charming metaphor," 27-C muttered.

Z-34 ignored her.

He leaned back and smirked. "Pretty poetic, huh? We’re all just sitting in the ass hole between realities."

"Creepy," B-67 muttered.

"Yeah, well," Z-34 shrugged.

He picked up a twig and started drawing on the dirt. Two circles—roughly the same size—intersecting at their edges. He pointed at the overlap. "This right here is the arcane. The slit. The dimension of the Academy. It connects both worlds but also separates them. Everything that tries to pass from one world to the other has to come through here first."

"Through the portal," B67 murmured, as if repeating a phrase he’d memorized.

"Exactly," Z-34 said, snapping his fingers. "Before any monster or entities can invade our world, they have to cross through the Arcane. That’s where we come in. We’re basically the wall between worlds. The Academy trains us, ranks us, and throws us into those cracks to keep things from spilling over."

He stabbed the dirt again, dragging the twig across the circles. "We maintain the balance. If we fail, the slit widens, the monsters cross through, and poof—another city’s gone. Simple as that."

"Simple," E-26 repeated under his breath, tone dry.

Z-34 grinned. "Okay, not that fucking simple. But you get the point. We keep the world from falling apart, even if nobody out there knows we exist."

The group went quiet again. The fire crackled, and somewhere in the distance, a nightbird cried out—a sharp, lonely sound that faded into the dark.

Liu sat still, his face half-lit by the flames. Between two worlds, sitting in the middle between realities.

The thought was... unsettling.

B-67 finally broke the silence. "So... if we’re like the wall, does that mean we’re the only thing keeping the monsters from coming through?"

"Yeah, pretty damn much."