The hydraulic doors of the transport vessel hissed open with a loud burst of compressed air. Ayla stepped onto the metal platform and looked out.

The Spire itself was not visible yet. There was only the endless ocean stretching under the violet sky.

This water was not like any ocean Ayla had catalogued from human memory. It was larger than the human concept of large.

It did not move the way normal water moves. The surface rolled in heavy, slow shifts without breaking into foam.

A colossal stone bridge emerged from the dark water. It rose at a steep angle and disappeared into the thick fog above.

The scale of the structure was enormous. A sprawling city was built directly around the base of the bridge.

This was Bastion. It was the human settlement that had grown around the only entrance to the Spire over the five years of the war campaign.

Austin leaned close to her ear from behind. "This city is called Bastion," he murmured smoothly.

Ayla gave a small nod without turning her head.

Before Austin could speak again, Kenji’s leather-gloved hand closed firmly around her wrist. He pulled her to his side with a quick tug.

He placed his broad shoulders between her and Austin with the same natural fluidness he had shown back at the transport line.

Austin noticed the block immediately. His internal voice shifted its strategy, recording Kenji as a major obstacle that needed to be neutralized before he could secure Ayla’s favor.

Ayla mostly ignored his mental thoughts, except when he swore at Kenji. She decided to punish Austin for that, but it could wait.

Bastion was entirely unlike the estate in Solgrace. Solgrace was built for luxury and administrative comfort.

Bastion was constructed solely for war and survival. The conflict had lasted so long that survival had become its own bizarre civilization.

The buildings were low to the ground and heavily reinforced with thick steel plates. The stone streets carried the physical scars of a place that had been shelled and rebuilt multiple times.

The people here moved differently than the citizens in the inner walls. They walked faster.

They maintained the constant peripheral awareness of soldiers who had learned to track the slight sound of incoming artillery.

Ayla filed every detail into her memory banks. She realized that she was not the most dangerous entity in her immediate environment for the first time since her birth.

The Spire’s presence was a physical pressure she could feel vibrating through the bridge’s ancient stone.

The sensation was not like the shallow pressure of an apocalypse tunnel or a testing chamber. It was the weight of something much older and infinitely more vast.

Her hungry senses mapped the surroundings as they marched through the low streets.

She could feel the faint presence of Amanda trailing far behind the main group. Amanda’s mind was still full of quiet malice, but she kept her distance.

The hundred selected Crusaders were led into a reinforced bunker near the base of the bridge.

A senior officer of the Bastion command stood before them to deliver the briefing.

His uniform was stained with dark oil and his face was hard. The briefing was controlled and professional.

The officer limited the information deliberately.

"The Spire will assign your role once you cross the physical threshold," the officer explained, his voice echoing against the concrete walls.

"Knowing too much about the Event before entry will alter the system’s logic and disrupt the role assignment."

Although humanity had no firsthand experience in Spire Events, the Nexus system had not hidden any secrets about it, so humans did have knowledge about the process.

As the officer explained, knowing too much of the Event would affect one’s thought process, which might alter the role they received.

Humanity absolutely never wanted anyone to become an Ender. Although the chances of it happening were almost zero, they had to be sure, since anomalies might appear at any time after all.

Ayla listened to the officer’s speech while her traits quietly intercepted his active thought streams. She got the full picture anyway.

The officer was also a challenger, and his mind was filled with vivid images of the Event.

The Beast Master’s world and the Supreme Beast Academy.

The Spire was a world of beast masters where people bonded with monsters and evolved together until a catastrophe of unknown origins hit them.

This Event was happening in the Supreme Beast Academy, the number one academy of that world, which had trained powerful Beast Masters for centuries.

That was why that Unknown force first targeted the academy. The Event objective was direct, which was stopping the destruction of the academy.

Inside the Spire, time worked differently. One day was like a year. Currently, it had been seven days since the Event began.

That meant they were already seven years late.

The briefing concluded quickly. The hundred Crusaders were ordered to form a single line at the massive entrance of the stone bridge.

The system threshold was a shimmering curtain of blue mana that spanned the wide walkway.

The system read the challengers one at a time. Each Crusader stepped forward and paused inside the curtain for a brief second.

No one could see what role the others received. It was a way of protecting the challengers. Being Preservers was humanity’s primary need because they wanted to conquer the Spire, so Enders became hostile in their eyes.

But for the Spire, Preservers and Enders were the same, and whoever won would claim it.

"Step forward," the terminal interface chimed.

Most of the standard vanguard soldiers received the Preserve role anyway.

Austin stepped into the curtain. He looked satisfied as he moved to the staging area. Kenji went next, his hazel eyes completely blank as the curtain washed over his dark armor.

Giving her a half nod, he stepped away.

Ayla finally reached the threshold. She stepped into the shimmering curtain of blue mana. The system’s energetic pulse flooded her vessel, searching for a human soul and a standard core to categorize.

Instead, it encountered the bottomless void of a Mimic Slime.

In her eyes, holy white and ominous black energies tried to become dominant. She knew these were the roles fighting to claim her.

Ayla yawned, bored by the catfight. For her, whatever role she received made no difference, as she would do whatever she wanted anyway.

When she thought that, the fight paused. The black and white completely disappeared, birthing an ethereal golden glow.

Ayla blinked as text slowly formed in her vision.

[You have chosen to be a bystander.]

That was all she heard as her senses returned to the platform. She moved near to Kenji, her mind wandering about the implications of the role, and when she could not find any clues, she simply ignored it.

"Ayla, I am looking forward to fighting alongside you," Austin smiled.

"Mm," she muttered, glancing at the skeptical gaze of Kenji. She read his mind instantly.

’You are not an Ender, right?’

She rolled her eyes. "I am just a bystander," she mouthed back.

"Wow. You are so cool in this tense atmosphere. An apocalyptic core carrier indeed," Austin praised.

Ayla gave him a deadpan look, but she did not say anything. Her attention turned toward the rest of the challengers as, one by one, they accepted their roles.

While reading all of their minds, she gained an understanding of the roles they had gotten, and it surprised her.

’Ninety-seven Enders...’

That meant except for Austin, Kenji, and Ayla, everyone else was an Ender.