CHAPTER 47: WHAT IS LEFT

What was once a monument to Yundao’s strength was now a tomb in the making, its pristine marble floors fractured and stained. In the deep cracks, the crimson gore of Hunters mingled with the viscous, ichor-like fluid of monsters.

At the heart of the inferno stood Ning Que. His breath sawed in his throat, each gasp a fresh agony. The Katana of Light, a blade that hummed with arcane energy, felt impossibly heavy in his grip. Beside him, visible only to his eyes, a translucent blue screen flickered erratically.

[WARNING: Vitality Below 12%]

The stark red letters pulsed in time with his hammering heart. Across the ruined atrium, behind a barricade of overturned onyx desks and shattered statuary, Aeris and Viera fought to shield the last handful of civilians. Their faces were smudged with soot and fear.

Through his System’s interface, Ning could see a swarm of red danger signals converging on their position, a tide of corrupted beasts flooding the very reality they were sworn to protect. These weren’t gate monsters; these were something else, something wrong, born of the rift surge itself.

He had no time to think, only to act. He pushed off the floor, his exhausted muscles screaming in protest. The moment his feet left the ground, the System flared to life, a cool wash of data flooding his senses.

[Skill Activated: Voidtrace – Level 2]

The world shifted. Faint purple lines traced themselves over the charging monsters, highlighting the thrumming, unstable cores that served as their weak points.

He landed amidst a pack of scuttling, multi-limbed horrors, his katana a blur of silver light. The blade sang as it plunged into the glowing joint of the nearest beast.

[You have struck a Rift Beast – Weak Point hit! Critical Damage x3 Applied] [EXP +780]

The creature dissolved into glitching particles of light and shadow before its death screech could fully escape its maw. Another lunged, its claws scything for his throat. Ning ducked under the attack, his blade sweeping up in a devastating arc that severed its head from its shoulders. He didn’t wait to see it fall.

He was already moving, a dervish of steel and instinct. The battlefield became a brutal, syncopated rhythm: dodge, trace, strike, kill. Repeat. His body moved with a grace that belied his injuries, his movements perfectly synchronized with the flood of information from his System.

A surge of warmth flooded his veins, knitting together a fraction of his wounds.

[Level Up! Current Level: 16] [All Stats +1] [Stamina and Vitality Partially Restored]

"Ning, get back!" Aeris’s voice, sharp with terror, cut through the din. "There’s another wave coming! Something... something big!"

He glanced toward her, his gaze sweeping the corrupted, shimmering archway from which the beasts poured. She was right. The smaller Riftlings were peeling away, clearing a path.

A low, guttural growl echoed from the darkness, a sound that vibrated through the stone floor and up into his bones. A colossal shape lurched into the firelight.

It was easily twice his height, its body a grotesque fusion of obsidian armor and raw, pulsating flesh. Veins of crimson light, like corrupted circuitry, pulsed beneath its dark carapace.

It wasn’t a monster from any known gate, a beast classified and cataloged in the Hunter archives. This was new. This was an Aberrant, born from the raw, chaotic energy of the rift itself.

It fixed its multi-lensed eyes on him and charged. The ground shook with its thunderous advance. Ning’s instincts screamed.

He threw himself to the side, but the creature was impossibly fast, its movements defying its bulk. It adjusted its trajectory mid-stride, swinging a clawed arm the size of a battering ram.

He couldn’t dodge. He brought his katana up in a desperate block. The impact was absolute. The sound was a deafening crack, not of his sword, but of the air itself breaking around him. He was launched backward, a human projectile, and smashed through the already weakened wall of the main war room.

He hit the far side of the room with a sickening thud, his body crumpling amongst the debris of the holographic command table. Dust and sparks rained down on him.

The world swam, a nauseating blur of red and black. His System interface fritzed, the blue screen dissolving into static before rebooting with a series of frantic warnings.

[Critical Health Warning] [Vital Systems Unstable] [Error: Internal Damage Detected] [Skill Lockdown: Passive Regeneration Disabled]

The last line was a death sentence. A coppery taste filled his mouth, and he coughed, spitting a thick spray of blood onto the fractured floor. He tried to push himself up to find his sword, but his limbs refused to obey. They felt disconnected, heavy as lead.

Through the smoke-choked hole in the wall, the Aberrant Beast stalked, its monstrous form silhouetted against the raging fires. Its limbs twitched in a series of unnatural, glitching movements as it honed in on him. It lifted a jagged claw, dripping with foul energy, preparing for the final, killing blow.

For the first time since he’d awakened in that sterile chamber, a System embedded in his soul, Ning Que felt the absolute, cold certainty of his death. It was a freezing calm that settled deep in his chest.

Then, the world erupted in a blur of shadow and silver.

A black glaive, humming with an energy that felt both familiar and terrifyingly potent, slammed into the side of the Aberrant’s head. The beast staggered, roaring in fury and pain. A figure landed between them, a silhouette of fierce, desperate grace.

Lian Zhen.

She was limping heavily, one hand pressed to a deep, bleeding wound in her side. Her face was ashen, her lips pale and drawn tight with pain. But her eyes burned with a cold, unadulterated fury that dwarfed the flames around them.

"Get up, you useless lump!" she snarled, her voice a low, ragged growl. She didn’t look at him, her entire focus locked on the recovering beast. "You think the universe is just going to wait for you to catch your breath?"

She wrenched the glaive free in a shower of black ichor and spun, the weapon a whirlwind of deadly grace. The Aberrant swiped at her, but she was already moving, ducking under its clumsy, enraged attack. As she came up, she hurled her glaive with the last of her strength.

It wasn’t a simple throw; it was an act of divine, impossible accuracy. The black blade flew true, slamming directly into the beast’s chest and embedding itself deep within the crystalline, crimson heart at its core.

A spiderweb of cracks spread across the crystal. The crimson light within flickered, sputtered, and died.

[Fatal Blow Landed: Aberrant Riftspawn Neutralized] [EXP +2200] [Level Up! Level 17 Reached] [New Passive Unlocked: Arcane Stability – Reduces System Glitch by 40%]

The Aberrant Beast gave one last, shuddering groan before it crashed to the floor, its obsidian armor dissolving into molten ruin. As the notifications chimed in his vision, Ning scrambled to his feet, ignoring the fire in his ribs.

Lian coughed, a wet, rattling sound. A stream of dark blood trickled from the corner of her mouth. Her knees buckled.

He lunged forward, catching her just before she hit the ground. Her weight was a dead thing in his arms, her body trembling with shock and exhaustion. He held her close, her head lolling against his shoulder.

"You came back," he whispered, the words raw with a relief so profound it felt like pain.

She tried to laugh, but it came out as a choked gasp.

"Idiot," she muttered, her voice barely audible. Her smirk was a pale, faltering ghost of its usual self. "I didn’t... I didn’t come back to save you." Her breathing hitched. Her eyes, still burning but losing their focus, searched for his. "I came... to kill Tao’s lies."

As she spoke, a strange, profound silence fell over the guildhall. The constant, high-pitched screeching of the Riftlings suddenly ceased. Down the hall, the tide of monsters froze.

Then, as if answering an unseen signal, they turned and retreated, howling and glitching as they melted back into the shadows from which they’d emerged.

Ning’s System flickered one more time, the glitched screen clearing.

[Rift Signature Collapse Detected] [Remaining Entities: 4% – Disengaging Combat Phase] [Yundao Core Stability – Restoring (Status: Critical)]

The quiet that followed was more deafening than the battle. It was filled only by the crackle of distant flames and the groaning of stressed metal. From behind the ruined barricade, Aeris and Viera emerged, their faces pale, their expressions stunned into disbelief.

"Ning!" Aeris cried out, rushing forward with Viera close behind. "We saw the explosion... We thought you were " She stopped short, her eyes falling on the woman cradled in his arms. "Lian! Oh gods, is she...?"

Ning barely heard her. His focus was entirely on the fading warmth in his arms. He could feel her pulse, faint and thready, against his chest. Her breathing was growing slower, shallower.

"Lian," he said, his voice shaking. He gave her a gentle shake, as if he could jostle her back to consciousness, back to life. "Don’t die. You hear me?"

Her eyes were closed now. The fury was gone, leaving only a fragile, terrifying stillness.

"You’re not allowed to die," he pleaded, his voice cracking. "Not like this..."