Ten days. A sliver of time in the life of a planet, yet on Sanctuary, it passed with the frantic, focused energy of a forge moments before the hammer strike.

  “Efficiency is up 200% with the [Null-State] capacitors,” Eliza yelled over the roar of a Mana-Furnace Leoric had just finished calibrating. We were standing in the main workshop of Sanctuary — a cavernous stone hall carved deep into the obsidian cliffside. The heat was immense, a dry, magical warmth that smelled of vaporized mythril and ozone.

  Around us, a production line was in motion. Not factory drones, but artisans. Bastion blacksmiths, Noren Enchanters, and even a few of the Elven artisan-druids were working in tandem, churning out gear that hummed with a power far surpassing our settlement on the Confluence.

  I walked down the line, picking up a shield fresh off the cooling rack. It wasn’t the scavenged steel we started with. It was an alloy derived from the dense minerals of the Cradle, fused with the iron-wood of Sanctuary’s fungal forests. It was matte grey, absorbing the light rather than reflecting it.

  “This is for the heavy fighters?” I asked, testing the weight. It was lighter than it looked.

  “It’s a kinetic dampener model,” Leoric confirmed, waddling over, his mane tied back to keep it out of the sparks. He adjusted his multi-spectral goggles, grinning. “We utilized the schematics from the ancient data-logs I recovered from the Cradle’s archives. It ripples the impact force across the entire surface instead of taking it on the chin. We’ve outfitted three hundred so far. Everyone going down is getting a Null-weave underlay and a kinetic plate.”

  “Consumables?”

  “My alchemists has been busy,” Eliza gestured to a corner where crates were being stacked high by stone golems. “High-density mana biscuits. Healing salves refined from Sanctuary’s purple moss, mixed with standard health potions. We have thousands of units.”

  She tossed me a small, hexagonal disk.

  “And these. Emergency Beacons. Leoric’s baby. If a user’s vitals crash, it dumps a localized [Stasis] field and pings the nearest portal node. It burns a Tier 4 Core to do it, but it buys us time to get a healer to them.”

  “Good,” I nodded, thumbing the rune. “This isn’t a suicide pact. It’s an expedition. We aren’t losing people to bad luck.”

  I pocketed the disk and walked out into the cool twilight air of the settlement.

  The mood in New Bastion was electric. When the System announcement dropped, I had expected fear. I expected people to huddle in the safety of this hidden world, content with the peace we had bought them.

  Instead, I got a list of names that stretched three pages long.

  Later that evening, I walked through the market square under the guise of my [Veil]. I wanted the truth, not the filtered version people told their ‘leaders’.

  The square was alive with activity. It looked less like a refugee camp and more like a staging ground.

  “Why go back?” a woman’s voice drifted from a tent. I slowed my pace. It was Mara, a tailor from Noren. She sounded worried, her hands busily stitching a reinforcement strap onto a leather cuirass. “It’s safe here, Davin. The grass glows. The air is sweet. There are no beasts here.”

  “It’s safe, Mara,” a man replied — Davin, a scout I recognized from Silverwood. He was testing the edge of a new short-sword. “A beautiful, safe world. But my brother is still out there. The Kyorians took him. If this… this Flood happens… if the world goes chaotic, that’s my chance. I’m tired of running.”

  “You could die.”

  “I could,” Davin admitted, pausing. “But the our people and the System are giving us the teeth to bite back. Look at this gear. I’ve never held anything this balanced. If we stand together… maybe we don’t just survive. Maybe we can win.”

  I moved on, a ghost in the crowd.

  Near the central fountain, a group of teenagers from Bastion — kids who had been forced to grow up with weapons in their hands — were huddled around a holographic map of the local higher Essence zones.

  “We hit the Cobalt Mine first,” one whispered, tapping the glowing projection. “If it Awakens, the Essence increase will be insane. We could hit Tier 3 in a few months.”

  “Don’t be stupid,” another scoffed, a girl with a serious scar running down her cheek. “We stick to the Vanguard. Rexxar will be there with us. The Golden Lion will protect us, if you run off chasing loot, you’ll get killed.”

  “But imagine the drops…” the boy muttered, his eyes wide with a mix of greed and fear.

  “Imagine being dead,” the girl countered. “We follow the Lion. We get strong under his guard. Then we loot.”

  I smiled under my cloak. They were nervous, yes. But the paralysis was gone. They were planning. They were anticipating. They weren’t sheep waiting for slaughter; they were young wolves learning to hunt.

  Two days before the Essence influx, we stood inside the Control Room of Old Bastion, back on Earth.

  The room was silent, dust motes dancing in the beams of light cutting through the high windows. We hadn’t truly inhabited this space in months, leaving it dark in case the Kyorian scanners returned. But now, the hum of the core was rising.

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  “Shield diagnostics?” I asked, looking at the main display.

  Jeeves manifested beside me, his shadow-form sharp. “Analyzing the Prime System Upgrade. The ‘Safe Zone’ designation has fundamentally altered the Aegis array, master. It is no longer relying on our generators.”

  On the screen, the blueprint of the shield turned from a fragile blue wireframe to a solid, pulsing gold wall.

  “Efficiency rating?”

  “Immeasurable by our standard metrics,” Leoric grunted, tapping his datapad furiously. “It’s utilizing a dimensional shunt I’ve only seen in theoretical papers from the High-Archives. It doesn’t just block attacks; it denies the vector of hostile intent. I ran a sim using a heavy mana blast against it. The result was zero penetration. The energy is simply... ignored.”

  “So it’s a type of Edict,” I realized. “As long as the Prime System maintains the grid, Bastion is invincible to Kyorian aggression.”

  “Invincible is a strong word,” Jeeves cautioned. “But highly resistant. The Empire would need to bypass the Prime Authority to crack it, and judging by the System’s recent mood, that would be ill-advised.”

  “We have a forward operating base,” Lucas said, looking at the display with hungry eyes. “Right in our old home. We can turn the lights on and not worry about who sees.”

  “Oh, we will turn them on,” I agreed. “Even if they look at us, their scanners can’t penetrate this new shield. Besides, our people will need a closer camp while slipping into the Awakened Dungeons.”

  I turned to the map table. Anna had marked twelve other settlements — places where earlier recon had spotted surviving pockets of humanity huddled under similar System Settlements.

  “Have the scouts reported back?”

  “Contact made with three,” Anna said. “New Horizons Enclave, the Rising Remnant, and a large group in the Clawing Himalayas. They’re suspicious, Eren. Terrified, mostly. But when we mentioned we’ll help them take advantage of the Essence Flood… they listened. They know something big is coming. We gave them the comms crystals.”

  “A Grand Alliance,” I mused. “Of the free people.”

  “It’s a start,” Lucas agreed. “We offered to share intel on dungeon spawns, ruins and rifts. Good will gestures. If they see us thriving during the Flood… they’ll follow.”

  The anticipated day has come.

  We stood on the battlements of Old Bastion.

  It was dawn, but the sun looked wrong. The light was shimmering, refracting through air that felt heavy and static. It was the feeling of standing under a thundercloud seconds before the strike, stretched out into an eternity.

  Behind us, the courtyard of Bastion was packed. Over four hundred souls. Not drafted soldiers. Not desperate refugees. People who had chosen to step back through the portal.

  They stood in ranks, checking their gear. I saw Davin, the scout, adjusting his sword belt with shaky hands, but his chin was up. I saw the teenagers, sticking close to the seasoned hunters. I saw familiar faces from Noren, gripping storm-charged axes.

  There was fear, yes. Sweaty palms and shifting feet. But beneath it was a buzzing current of excitement. The anticipation of breaking the ceiling.

  I stood at the front, next to Rexxar. My Anima was vibrating with such intensity that small golden sparks were jumping off his fur.

  “Do you smell it, master?” the lionman rumbled, sniffing the air, his eyes closed in ecstasy. “The wind tastes like old wine. Rich. Heavy.”

  “It tastes like potential,” Nyx corrected, balancing on the edge of the parapet, her eyes scanning the tree line.

  I checked the System clock in my vision.

  30 seconds left.

  “Listen up!” I turned to face the courtyard, where Lucas was using mana to carry his voice without shouting.

  The chatter died down instantly.

  “For two years, you survived,” he said. “You hid in caves. You ran from patrols. You scraped for every point of Essence. You earned your lives the hard way.”

  He pointed to the shimmering sky.

  “Today, the System balances the books. This isn’t a disaster; it’s a harvest. Every monster out there is about to become a battery. Every dungeon is a crucible to forge yourselves. Every ruin a vault waiting to be cracked. We aren’t here to hide anymore. We are here to grow. But, remember! Your first priority is survival, do not take unnecessary risks and follow your leaders’ instructions, I don’t want any of you dying on me.”

  10 seconds.

  “Stay in your squads,” I commanded. “Trust the gear. Trust your training. If you get in trouble, pop the beacon. And make sure to always look out for each other.”

  I looked at Lucas, Anna, Silas. My family. They looked ready.

  The sky didn’t break. It sang.

  It was different this time. Louder. A resonant chime that shook the dust from the walls. It wasn’t just a notification; it was the injection.

  I felt it hit.

  It didn’t wash over me; it filled me. It was like breathing pure oxygen after years of holding my breath.

  The ambient mana density didn’t just rise; it detonated. The air turned from thin and grey to rich, vibrant, and alive. I gasped, a sound of pure, unadulterated euphoria ripping from my throat. My Core overflowed, spinning wildly to accommodate the pressure.

  It felt like when I woke up from my coma, that moment years ago now, magnified.

  “This feeling…” I whispered, my skin tingling as if charged with static electricity.

  I could see the mana increasing. It drifted in the air like thick, luminous pollen — threads of blue, green, and gold swirling in the wind.

  Somewhere in the distance, a roar echoed. Deep. Primal. Something ancient waking up from a long nap.

  Then another roar. And another. The world was screaming awake.

  I looked at people who did not have full mana cores, their regeneration now almost three times faster.

  I laughed. I couldn’t help it. The power was intoxicating.

  The heavy adamantine gates of Bastion groaned open.

  Beyond the safety of the shield, the forest was already changing. Trees were visibly growing, vines twisting and thickening in seconds, thorns lengthening into spikes. A rift tore open thousands of miles away in the sky above the tree line, a jagged blue wound bleeding monsters, towards the direction of Delta-7.

  “It’s beautiful,” Anna breathed, an arrow notched, her eyes shining silver.

  “It really is,” I replied.

  Rexxar roared — a sound that challenged the waking world — and leaped over the wall. The volunteers surged forward, fear forgotten in the rush of power.

  The Flood had begun.