Chapter 112: The World Beyond the Gate 2

Chapter 112: Chapter 112: The World Beyond the Gate 2

Aria stepped forward, resting her hand on the release lever. Darius raised his shield, and Felix took position right behind them.

CLUNK. HISSSS.

The heavy blast door swung open.

Bright, natural sunlight flooded into the dark stairwell, blinding them for a second.

The moment they stepped out into the open air, loud, frantic shouting exploded from every direction.

"FREEZE!"

"DROP YOUR WEAPONS NOW!"

"HANDS IN THE AIR! ON YOUR KNEES!"

"DO NOT MOVE OR WE FIRE!"

Clicking safeties echoed all around them. Dozens of gun barrels were aimed straight at their chests.

Felix blinked against the bright light, taking in the scene.

They were standing in a ruined concrete plaza surrounded by chain-link fences. Surrounding them were at least fifty soldiers dressed in dark green combat fatigues and steel helmets, carrying heavy assault rifles, machine guns, and shoulder-mounted rocket launchers. Two armored personnel carriers were parked on the road, their heavy turrets swiveled directly toward the team.

Felix looked at the soldiers’ faces.

They weren’t acting like cold, confident guards. They were terrified. Their eyes were wide, their breathing was ragged, and several young men were shaking so badly their rifle barrels were trembling.

Felix immediately spread his sensory mana, scanning the entire perimeter.

His eyes narrowed in shock.

Nothing.

No mana. No elemental affinities. Not even the tiny, faint trace of ambient mana that every normal civilian back home carried from living near rifts.

These people were completely, totally ordinary humans.

"Aria," Felix murmured.

"I see it," Aria said calmly. She slowly raised both hands in the air. "Everyone, stand down. Lower your weapons."

The team lowered their blades.

The soldiers didn’t relax at all. "I SAID GET ON YOUR KNEES! RIGHT NOW!"

"We aren’t here to fight you," Aria said, keeping her voice completely steady.

"ON THE GROUND!" the squad leader screamed, his finger twitching on his trigger.

Aria glanced back at Felix, then nodded. "Down. Let’s not spook them."

The team knelt onto the cracked pavement.

Three soldiers approached cautiously with their rifles raised, while another stepped forward carrying pairs of heavy steel handcuffs.

The soldier walked toward Seraphina, reaching for her wrist.

Felix realized what was about to happen a split-second too late. "Wait—"

Click.

The cold metal touched Seraphina’s skin.

In an instant, her calm face turned terrifyingly cold. The temperature around her plunged.

Pure water mana exploded from her fingertips, condensing into a razor-sharp blade of pressurized water that stopped exactly one millimeter from the soldier’s throat.

The soldier froze. All the color drained from his face. His rifle slipped an inch.

"Sera," Felix said, his voice quiet, calm, and firm.

She didn’t move the blade. "He touched me."

"I know." Felix shifted, resting a gentle hand on her shoulder. "Stand down, Sera. Let him cuff you."

Seraphina stared at the trembling soldier, then looked up at Felix. Seeing the calm in his eyes, the murderous aura vanished. The ice blade melted into thin air, splashing harmlessly onto the dirt.

The soldier stumbled backward, tripping over his own boots and gasping for air like a man who had just looked death in the face.

Felix smiled faintly at the fallen soldier. "You got very lucky just now."

"Wh-what... what are you people?!" the man stammered, scrambling back to his feet.

"Just humans," Felix answered smoothly.

The soldier didn’t look like he believed a word of it.

On the other side of the circle, Liora wasn’t handling it much better.

Another soldier reached out to grab her wrist, and pitch-black darkness flared across her skin. Thick shadow tendrils shot up from the ground, wrapping around the soldier’s forearm like iron chains before the cuff could even snap shut.

Liora glared at the steel restraint as if it were a poisonous snake.

The soldier tried to pull his arm back, but the shadows tightened, making him cry out in pain.

"Liora," Felix called out gently.

Liora turned her head toward him, her lips trembling with anger. "Felix. He’s putting chains on me."

"I hate this."

"I know you do." Felix walked over, kneeling right beside her. "These can’t hold you, Liora. You can snap them whenever you want."

She looked at the metal cuff, then back at his face. "You want me to let him?"

"Just for a little bit. So they know we aren’t here to hurt them."

Liora hesitated. Then, with a quiet sigh, she let the dark mana dissolve.

The soldier hastily clamped the cuffs around her wrists, backing away like he had just touched a bomb. Liora stared down at the metal links, her brow furrowed in deep disgust.

"It’s only temporary," Felix whispered, giving her a reassuring smile.

"I still hate it," she muttered. Then she leaned slightly closer to his shoulder, whispering, "I’m only doing this because you asked."

"Thank you, Liora."

That seemed to calm her down.

The rest of the team let themselves be cuffed without any resistance. The handcuffs were ordinary steel, laughably weak compared to the runic suppression cuffs at Acheron Deep.

Felix could have shattered them by twitching his wrists; Darius could have snapped them just by flexing his forearms; and Aria didn’t even bother looking at hers.

Kael held his hands up, clinking the metal together. "Huh."

"What now, Kael?" Lena muttered beside him.

"These are lighter than my rings. Are they made of tin?"

"Try not to insult our hosts while they’re pointing fifty guns at our heads."

Kael turned his head toward the soldier aiming a rifle at his nose. "Hey, buddy."

The soldier flinched. "Shut up!"

"Relax. If we wanted to kill you, you’d already be dead."

"Kael!" Lena hissed.

"What? It’s a factual statement!"

"That is literally the problem!"

The soldiers kept their weapons raised, but the whole mood had shifted. Every single man in that unit had just watched a woman conjure a water blade from thin air and a girl summon living shadows.

They knew with terrifying certainty that these ten strangers could wipe them out in seconds if they wanted to.

Aria looked at the squad leader. "Can we speak with whoever is in charge of this outpost?"

The man swallowed hard, his finger hovering off the trigger. "I’m calling it in right now."

He tapped a radio unit on his shoulder.

"Command, this is Perimeter Team Four. We have an encounter at Sector Nine. Ten unknown hostiles emerged from the old bunker shaft. Repeat, ten unknown hostiles."

A scratchy radio voice replied through the speaker: "Confirm hostiles. Are there casualties?"

"No casualties, sir."

"Are they armed?"

"Yes, sir. Heavily armed."

"Did they engage?"

The squad leader looked at Felix, who gave him a polite little wave.

"...No, sir. They surrendered peacefully. They are in restraints."

A brief pause on the radio. "Hold your perimeter. Do not fire unless fired upon. General Davis is en route."

"Understood, Command."

The radio clicked off.

Felix looked past the barbed-wire fence, staring at the horizon.

Beyond the dirt perimeter sat a sprawling city. Enormous skyscrapers of concrete and reflective glass pierced the sky. Paved highways curved between city blocks, filled with four-wheeled gasoline cars and transport trucks.

It looked like an exact photograph of Earth before the rifts first appeared five hundred years ago.

Felix glanced over at Aria. "You see that?"

"I do," Aria said quietly.

"This world..."

"Has never touched mana," she finished.

Felix checked the soldiers again. Their bodies confirmed it. Not only did they lack awakened abilities, but their physical baselines were frail.

Back on their own world, five centuries of living near ambient rift mana had gradually enhanced ordinary humans, giving even non-awakened civilians denser bones and faster reflexes.

These soldiers had none of that. They were pure, unevolved, baseline humans.

"They have zero mana resistance," Felix whispered to Darius.

Darius’s eyes narrowed. "Which means..."

"This world never experienced a Cataclysm,"

Felix said. "No gates. No beasts. No awakeners."

Seraphina stared at the distant glass towers, her cold expression softening into sheer awe. Beside her, Liora’s jaw slightly dropped as she watched cars driving smoothly down the distant highway.

A world without monsters. A world where people didn’t have to lock themselves in bunkers or pray for heroes to save them.

A world that had simply lived in peace.

Felix looked at the modern city, his mind racing.

If this world had never had mana, why did an S-rank gate suddenly open in an abandoned bunker? And why did this military unit know to guard that specific hatch?

A few quiet minutes passed.

Liora shifted uncomfortably, the steel cuffs clinking together. She hated the feeling of being bound. It brought back memories of cold isolation cells.

Seraphina noticed. She looked down at Liora’s hands, then down at her own wrists.

"They’re annoying, aren’t they?" Seraphina said in a quiet voice.

Liora looked up, surprised. "Yes."

"You could break them right now."

"I know."

"Then why keep them on?"

Liora looked toward Felix’s back. "Because he asked me to."

A faint flicker of understanding softened Seraphina’s azure eyes. "...I see."

Felix turned around, looking at both of them. "What are you two whispering about?"

"Nothing," both women said at the exact same time.

Felix blinked. "...Right."

Two steps back, Kael turned his head toward Ryan.

Ryan only sighed.

"It’s actually a miracle," Mira whispered.

"A true talent," Orion nodded solemnly.

"He’s been like that since we were rookies," Darius chuckled quietly.

"It’s his greatest defensive ability," Lena teased.

Felix turned around again. "Are you guys talking about me?"

"Nope! Lovely weather!" Kael grinned.

---

Five minutes later, a heavy armored command rover kicked up dust as it pulled into the plaza.

The doors opened, and an older officer stepped down.

He was in his late fifties, his hair trimmed short and silver at the temples, wearing a dark green general’s uniform decorated with service ribbons.

His face was lined with deep stress, and the closer he walked toward the team, the more unsettled he looked.

He stopped five paces away, surrounded by four bodyguards with submachine guns.

The general looked at their custom armor, their sleek weapons, and the casual, relaxed posture of ten people who clearly didn’t care about the fifty rifles pointed at them.

"Who are you?" the general demanded.

Aria looked him in the eye, her voice calm and steady. "Explorers."

"Explorers?" The general’s eyes narrowed.

"Where did you come from?"

Aria tilted her head back toward the open hatch. "From down there. Through the facility."

The general’s jaw tightened. "That bunker was sealed shut forty years ago. There are no operational tunnels leading into this sector."

He looked past them, staring toward the dark opening of the hatch, his expression turning pale.

"You aren’t from this continent, are you?"

Aria didn’t blink.

"Are you even human?" the general asked, his voice wavering slightly.

"Yes," Aria said. "We are human."

The general stared at the faint glow still fading from Seraphina’s fingers, then at the strange, beautiful armor they wore.

"Then what in God’s name are you?"

Aria looked at Felix. Felix gave her a small, steady nod.

Aria turned back to the general and spoke clearly into the quiet plaza.

"We are humans from another world."

Dead silence fell over the square.

Every single soldier froze. The squad leader lowered his rifle an inch in disbelief. The general stared at them, his eyes wide and completely hollow.

Kael smirked. Liora watched the soldiers’ reactions curiously. Seraphina stood calm and unbothered.

Felix looked past the armed troops, staring once more at the peaceful, towering skyscrapers in the distance.

A world that had never known mana. A world completely defenseless against the beasts of the rift. And right in its basement, an S-rank gate had just ripped open.

Felix’s instincts screamed at him: this was no random coincidence.

Whatever enemy was poisoning the dungeons back home, they had just dragged an innocent, peaceful world into the firing line.

And Felix and his team were the only ones standing between this world and complete annihilation.

---

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