A robotic voice chimed in his head.

[Ding!]

[Congratulations for Awakening Host]

Name: Leonis Silford

True name: ???

Age: 8

True age: ???

Race: Human

True race: ???

Bloodline: ???

-----

Status:

Personas: 2/???

Current output: 0.1%

Experience Transfer in Progress

------

Skills

Frost Genesis [??? Rank]

Primordial Frost [??? Rank]

Deceleration [SS Rank]

[Ding! Experience Transfer Complete]

[New Skills Unlocked]

KI Series [SSS Rank]

Dragon Overlord Series [SSS Rank]

Skill Crafter [??? Rank]

Skill Sealer [SSS Rank]

The skills kept popping up one after another, and Leon read through all of it with a calm expression, his mind processing everything at once.

Then two voices sounded in his head.

"You guys are still around?"

"Of course," Leon replied, sounding faintly amused. "You didn’t really think that just because you absorbed us, we were gonna disappear, did you?"

The system chimed again.

[Proceeding to Survey Planet]

[Ding! Planet Novaria has entered an Apocalyptic Era]

"Apocalyptic era?" Leonis asked, frowning.

"That means the devils corrupted the world core," Crimson answered.

"All the more reason I’ve gotta hurry."

"You do know what happens if you make a move right now," Crimson said, and even he sounded like he was smiling when he said it.

Leon smiled too.

"I don’t care." He rolled his shoulders once.

"Play time’s over"

He shot off like a wisp, a thin blue streak cutting across the sky, and the frozen forest behind him stayed exactly as it was, caught in that one endless second, while the boy who left it was already gone.

...

Meanwhile in the Silford estate

The portal split open first above the east garden, a jagged tear of black and red light that hung in the air like something had cut a wound into the sky itself.

Then it wasn’t the only one.

More tore open across the estate grounds in the span of a few seconds, one near the stables, two along the outer wall, another right over the training grounds where the grass was still torn up from that morning’s spar.

Then the things came through.

They weren’t goblins. They weren’t anything Beastglade had ever produced. Twisted, humanoid at the base but wrong from the waist up, skin the color of old bruises, limbs bending at angles that had no business existing on anything that walked upright. Horns jutted from some of their skulls, short and curved. Others had none, just smooth stretched skin where a face should’ve been, a single glowing red slit where eyes belonged. They moved fast, faster than their size suggested, dropping onto the estate grounds and immediately turning on whatever was closest.

A maid screamed near the east garden.

"MOVE!"

Cain’s voice cracked across the courtyard like a whip, and whatever hesitation had frozen the household staff broke apart at once, bodies scattering, guards fumbling for weapons they hadn’t expected to need today.

Julian was already moving.

[Fearless Warrior]

His talent surged through him, confidence and strength doubling in an instant, and he crashed into the nearest cluster of monsters with his greatsword already swinging. The first one didn’t even get a sound out before it was in two pieces.

"Lily, left side!"

"I see them!"

Her eyes shifted, that sharp golden hue bleeding into her irises as her talent activated, and she was already loosing arrows before she finished the sentence, each one finding a throat or an eye socket with brutal precision.

Lena hit the ground running from the front steps, rapier already drawn, dragon eye flaring to life.

"Guards, form up on the wall breach!" she shouted, cutting down one of the creatures mid-stride without breaking pace. "Don’t let them spread into the house!"

A guard nearby, blood already on his sword, nodded hard and relayed the order, and slowly, chaotically, something like a formation started pulling itself together out of the panic.

Lena reached the nearest cluster and didn’t slow down.

"Silford Sword Craft: Celestial Bolt."

Lightning cracked along her blade and she vanished into a blur of motion, cutting through three of the creatures before the others even registered she’d moved. They shrieked, an awful wet sound that didn’t belong to anything from this world, and scattered back for half a second before regrouping.

More kept coming through the portals.

"There’s too many of these things," Lily called out, nocking another arrow, voice tight. "They’re not stopping."

"Then we don’t stop either," Cain said, already moving toward the next wave, sword catching one of the creatures across the chest and sending it sprawling.

Rosa’s voice rang out from the upper balcony, sharp and urgent. "Someone get the younger staff inside, NOW! Barricade the east wing!"

Maids were already dragging the kitchen staff and stable hands back toward the house, guards forming a loose wall between them and the tide still spilling through the tear in the sky over the garden.

Lena spun low, rapier flashing, catching two of the creatures across the legs before driving the blade up through a third. Her breathing was already getting ragged, mana burning faster than she wanted to admit.

"Where’s Father," she shouted, not really expecting an answer. "Where’s Leon—"

A monster lunged at her from the side.

She didn’t see it in time.

Lena’s rapier caught one of the creatures across the throat, dropped it, and pivoted into the next one without breaking stride.

But her eyes weren’t fully on the fight.

They kept flicking toward the sky. Toward the gate. Toward anywhere Leon might come from.

’Where is he.’

She’d felt something a while back, something enormous rolling through the air from the direction of the eastern district, cold and vast and unmistakably his. Then nothing. No sign of him since.

A creature lunged at her from the side and she barely got her blade up in time, the impact jarring up her arm, her footing sliding back half a step in the dirt.

"Focus," she hissed at herself.

She cut it down, breathing harder than she should’ve been this early into the fight.

’He should be here already, is he in danger?’

Another wave of the twisted things poured through the tear near the stables, and she forced her attention back where it belonged, driving her rapier through one, spinning to catch a second across the ribs.

No matter the chaos going on currently, her mind kept splitting itself in half, one part fighting, the other part scanning the horizon, looking for her twin.

Somewhere behind her, Cain’s voice cut through the noise. "Lena, your left!"

She turned just in time to avoid losing an arm.

’Get it together.’

Then the sky changed.

A deep, groaning shadow spread across the estate grounds, swallowing the afternoon light in one slow sweep, and every head on the battlefield turned upward at once.

An asteroid.

Smaller than the ones that had already gutted the eastern district, but still massive, still tumbling down through the atmosphere trailing fire and debris in long orange streaks, headed directly for the estate.

For a second nobody moved.

Then everybody did.

"EVACUATE!" Cain’s voice tore across the courtyard, and the household staff scattered, maids grabbing the younger ones, guards pulling back from the perimeter to shepherd people toward the cellar, toward anywhere that wasn’t directly under that falling rock.

Lena’s stomach dropped as she did the math in her head.

They weren’t going to make it.

Not everyone. Not in time. The asteroid was too close, too fast, and half the estate staff were still scrambling across open ground with nowhere close enough to hide.

She gritted her teeth, useless fury boiling up in her chest because there was nothing, nothing, she could do about a falling mountain except watch it happen.

Then something moved.

A blur of white shot up from somewhere near the front gate, faster than anything Lena’s eyes could properly track, climbing higher and higher until it was nothing but a speck against the darkening sky.

Then it stopped climbing.

And came down.

Fist first.

The impact didn’t sound like anything Lena had words for. It wasn’t a crash, wasn’t an explosion, it was closer to the sky itself cracking open, a single concussive boom that flattened every blade of grass in the courtyard and sent dust rolling outward from the point of impact in a wave that reached the estate gates before the sound even finished.

The asteroid didn’t just stop.

It came apart.

Fractures spread through it in an instant, glowing faint gold at the edges, and then it simply shattered, breaking into thousands of pieces that rained down harmlessly, burning out to ash and gravel long before they ever reached the ground.

The courtyard went dead silent.

Every eye that had been staring up in terror now stared up in disbelief.

Descending slowly out of the settling dust was a figure in flowing white, robe barely disturbed by what she’d just done, two tails swaying gently behind her, fox ears alert and forward.

Yuki landed without a sound.

She looked up at the empty space where the asteroid used to be, then out at the estate grounds still crawling with those twisted, wrong-limbed things pouring endlessly through the tears in the sky.

"If he’s not here, the only one who can protect this place right now is me."

Her golden eyes narrowing, gaze sweeping across the chaos, She moved.