Several hours earlier.

Lord Malgros had given the word and the magic circles began activating across Novaria simultaneously; every continent, every circle, all of it moving at once.

Leon was gone from the continent; they’d confirmed that.

And as humans say, "strike while the iron is hot"

Malgros had taken one precaution before initiating; he’d gone to see Lord Zhask personally. Their king. The being that even in the devil realms made people lower their eyes without being asked, equal in power to the devil sovereign himself.

Just in case the white haired boy came back.

Zhask would handle it.

And so across Novaria the circles activated, one after another, a chain reaction spreading across every kingdom and continent simultaneously, and in the human continent the sky began changing color above Everett; deep red bleeding into the clouds from the edges inward like something was being poured into the atmosphere from above.

The monsters hit the city gates first.

The S ranks held the line.

Then a voice came.

Not heard; felt, resonating directly in the minds of every living being across all of Novaria simultaneously, impossible to ignore, impossible to mishear.

*CONDITIONS HAVE BEEN MET.*

*DEVIL WAVES SHALL DESCEND.*

The silence that followed lasted exactly one second.

Then the portals opened.

They were abominable; that was the first thing anyone noticed, the particular wrongness of creatures that hadn’t been designed with any world’s natural logic in mind. Tall, humanoid at the base but twisted from there upward, their skin the deep mottled grey of something that had never seen proper light, horns ranging from short and curved to long and branching like dead trees.

Their eyes were wrong colors, red and yellow and a pale white that reflected nothing. Some had wings, leathery and vast, others had extra limbs that moved independently like they had their own intentions. They carried weapons that looked grown rather than forged, black and organic and faintly wet looking.

They came through the portals already moving.

No hesitation. No formation adjustment. They hit the defending forces like something that had been building pressure for a very long time and had finally found the release.

The battle for Everett began.

DING.

*SCANNING PLANET.*

*CONDITIONS HAVE BEEN MET.*

*DEVIL WAVES SHALL DESCEND.*

Everyone froze.

Did they hear that right? Devil waves?

The portal split open further and the first of them stepped through; tall, grey skinned, horns curling back from a skull that was just slightly too long to be human. Its eyes were a flat, lightless red. It carried something that looked like a sword grown straight out of bone rather than forged in any smithy.

It didn’t wait.

It attacked immediately, and behind it more came, dozens then hundreds, devils mixing into the monster horde until the two became indistinguishable from each other, one wall of chaos hitting the gates at once.

Sparks of clashing elements lit the battlefield; fire meeting claws, lightning meeting flesh, steel meeting whatever the devils were made of underneath that wrong colored skin.

All five S ranks were moving.

Even they weren’t enough on their own.

Among them stood two mages; a middle aged man known across the continent as the Earthwarden, and a young woman in her early twenties known simply as the Flame Witch.

The Earthwarden raised both hands and the ground responded; walls of stone rose at angles that funneled the horde into narrower paths, boulders the size of carriages tearing loose from the earth and crushing entire clusters of monsters in single sweeping motions.

The Flame Witch wasn’t far behind.

Magic circles bloomed beneath her feet, layering one over another, climbing past the third, the fourth, the fifth, stopping at the sixth with a hum that made the air around her shimmer.

The spell that followed erased hundreds of them in a single pass.

With the Earthwarden’s barriers funneling the horde and the Flame Witch thinning their numbers, the remaining S ranks found their openings.

The S ranker beside Arlott, spear already in hand, glanced over.

"It’s an honor to be fighting alongside the Silver Blade," he said.

"The pleasure’s mine," Arlott replied.

He drew his sword.

The man beside him settled into his stance.

They moved.

...

With the chaos pulling every defender into motion, reinforcements began arriving in waves; more knights, more adventurers, more guild members who’d answered the call the moment word reached them.

The S ranks held their ground and ground the horde down.

Still.

"Would you look at that, Coryn," Veth said, watching the battle from a distance with the casual interest of someone admiring something they’d built.

He stepped through a portal.

He reappeared directly in the middle of the battlefield.

Every S rank felt his presence land before he’d even fully arrived; the Flame Witch turned first, magic circles already flaring beneath her feet, releasing one of her strongest spells in the same breath she’d identified the threat.

Veth simply moved.

Two weapons came for him from the others nearby; he avoided both without breaking stride, like the attacks had been more of a suggestion than a threat.

He landed on the back of the nearest towering monster and looked down at the battlefield below him.

"Hey, humans," he called out, almost cheerfully. "How do you like my gift? Awesome, right?"

The Flame Witch had another spell circling up, magic already building around her hands.

Arlott tapped her shoulder.

"We need your firepower on the hordes," he said. "Leave this one to me."

She hesitated for half a second, then nodded and turned away, redirecting her focus back toward the monster lines.

Veth watched her go, then looked at Arlott with something amused settling into his expression.

"Just us, then?"

Arlott drew his sword and took his stance.

Veth descended slowly, landing across from him, a dark red liquid creeping up along his arm like something waking up beneath the skin.

"Sorry for the late introduction, Arlott Silford," he said. "My name is Veth."

He smiled.

"Let’s get along."