Chapter 94: The Day Humanity Bled

Chapter 94: Chapter 94: The Day Humanity Bled

*Monday, 11:00 AM*

"Leo, you can’t put your piece there!"

"Why not, Unca?"

"Because that’s my corner of the board!"

"But I like this spot!"

"Liking a spot doesn’t mean you get to take it, kiddo. Important life lesson."

Leo stared right at him, pressed his chubby lips together, and slammed the plastic piece down anyway.

Felix stared at the board. The three-year-old stared back without blinking.

"...You are an absolute menace."

Leo burst into loud giggles. Felix slumped back onto the sofa cushions with a loud, dramatic groan.

He had spent the whole morning watching Darius’s boy: racing cars on the console, and now trying out a board game from his own childhood that he thought would be quiet and relaxing.

He had been completely wrong.

"Fine. You think you’re clever?" Felix reached out and slid his piece forward. "Try handling this move."

Leo instantly reached out and swatted Felix’s piece off the table.

*Clatter.*

"..."

"Oops!"

"That wasn’t an accident, Leo."

"Oops!" Leo repeated, flashing a bright, innocent grin.

Felix narrowed his eyes playfully. "You little d..."

BZZZZT. BZZZZT.

His phone rattled violently against the coffee table.

*Director Elena Voss.*

Felix picked it up with an easy smirk. "Morning, Director. Did you finally call to tell me how much you miss my smiling face?"

"Felix. Get to the Association medical wing. Right now."

The smirk vanished from his lips. Elena was always strict and professional, but underneath her direct words, Felix heard something he had never heard from her before: raw panic.

"Elena? What’s going on?"

"There’s an emergency transport idling outside your front doors," she commanded, her breath ragged. "Get inside it. Do not wait."

Frantic screaming cut through the background noise on her end.

"Clear the hallway! Move him to Ward B now!"

"HIS VITALS ARE BOTTOMING OUT! GET ANOTHER HEALER IN HERE!"

"We’re out of high-grade recovery potions! Where’s the supply run?!"

"Elena?!" Felix shouted into the mic.

"Felix, just hurry—"

Click.

The line went dead.

Felix stared at the dark screen for two seconds.

Elena Voss oversaw the most dangerous isolation wards in the country. She had stood face-to-face with Tier 1 murderers and rogue awakeners without blinking. She never lost her cool.

Her voice had been shaking.

If she was personally yelling orders in a triage hallway and losing her grip, this wasn’t an ordinary accident. This was a nightmare.

Felix stood up so fast his knee slammed into the low table, sending the game board clattering to the floor.

"Unca Felix?"

Felix looked down. Leo was staring up at him with wide, worried eyes. Felix took a slow, deep breath, forcing the tension out of his face. He couldn’t scare the kid.

"I have to go somewhere, Leo."

"Where?"

"To help some people who need a doctor."

"Are they hurt?"

"...Yeah. Very badly."

Leo’s playful grin vanished. He gripped the edge of his tiny shorts. "Will you fix them?"

Felix paused for half a second. Then he knelt down, scooped the boy up, and held him against his chest. "I’m going to try my best."

Felix ran out the door in his pajama pants and indoor slippers, not even thinking about changing his clothes. Nothing else mattered right now.

In the elevator, his mind raced through every possible scenario. A massive gate break? A high-tier dungeon boss breaking into the city streets?

No. If an S-rank monster was roaming Valemont, air-raid sirens would already be blaring across every neighborhood and evacuation alarms would be pinging his phone.

This was something different.

Dozens of heroes coming in at once, critical trauma, healers overwhelmed, and the Director herself running triage.

Something went horribly wrong inside the active dungeons.

The elevator doors chimed open on the ground floor.

Right outside the glass entrance, a sleek black Association transport was parked on the curb with its hazard lights flashing.

An agent stood beside the open rear door, his black suit jacket soaked down one side with fresh, dark blood. His face was chalk-white, his hands trembling.

The moment the agent spotted Felix, he lunged forward. "Doctor Valerius! Thank god! get in! Hurry!"

Felix hopped into the back, securely buckling Leo into the child seat before sliding in beside him.

The agent threw himself behind the wheel, slammed the pedal down, and the engine roared as the heavy vehicle blasted out of the complex.

Felix kept one arm wrapped protectively around Leo while staring out the tinted windows.

The city streets were eerie. Every intersection had its traffic lights turned solid red for regular cars. Sirens blared from the transport’s roof as civilian cars pulled over onto the sidewalks.

The Association had activated a full emergency corridor, clearing every mile of road specifically for this car.

A cold knot formed in Felix’s stomach. "Talk to me. What happened?"

The agent gripped the steering wheel so tight his knuckles popped through his skin. "Multiple gates spiked in rank during this morning’s scheduled clears."

"Spiked?" Felix demanded. "How?"

"Teams entered dungeons that were logged as stable B-ranks and A-ranks," the agent explained, his voice cracking. "Mid-raid, the mana density inside the rifts surged uncontrollably. Several manageable gates suddenly turned into meat grinders."

"How bad is it?"

"We’re still pulling bodies out. The first wave hit the medical wing forty minutes ago." The agent swallowed hard, tears welling in his eyes.

"Over fifty heroes confirmed dead already. More than a hundred critically wounded. The recovery wards are drowning in blood."

Felix went completely motionless.

Fifty dead hunters. Over a hundred dying on stretchers. In under an hour.

"How is that even possible?" Felix’s voice turned cold as ice. "A gate doesn’t just jump two whole ranks while people are inside. What about the monitoring sensors? Did the external scanners pick up any mana buildup?"

"Nothing," the driver said, glancing into the rearview mirror. "A couple of gates had tiny mana blips right before entry, but standard scans showed clear green. Once the raid squads pushed past the entry zone, the monsters they met were completely different beasts. In two rifts, the entire terrain mutated into high-rank poison zones."

Felix’s fingers dug hard into his phone.

His memory flashed back to the dark elf dungeon: the mutated boss, the violent foreign energy clogging its core, and those manufactured red booster pills that artificially forced an awakener’s mana past its natural limits until their veins burst.

His eyes widened in shock.

The pills. The chemical formulas.

What if that poison wasn’t just made to feed individual monsters? What if someone had figured out how to dump that compound into an open rift to artificially force the entire dungeon’s rank through the roof? What if this whole catastrophe was planned from the start?

Someone targeted our raid teams on purpose.

He didn’t have hard proof yet. But the pieces fit together too well.

"Unca?" a small, shaky voice piped up from beside him.

Felix looked down. Leo was gripping Felix’s sleeve with both hands, his little forehead wrinkled with worry.

"Unca Felix... you look scary."

Felix felt a pang in his chest. Kids always picked up on what adults tried to hide.

He softened his eyes, unclenched his jaw, and forced a gentle smile. "I’m sorry, buddy. I’m not mad at you."

He gently rubbed the boy’s shoulder. "Listen to me, Leo. When we get to this building, I have to go to work right away. So I need you to do a very important mission for me."

Leo sniffled and sat up a little taller. "A mission?"

"A big one. You’re going to hang out with a good friend of mine. Her name is Liora. She’s really cool, and she has tons of video games."

That caught the toddler’s interest immediately.

"Games?"

"Lots of them. She’ll keep you safe and play whatever you want."

Leo nodded seriously. "Okay. I can do that."

Felix pulled out his phone and speed-dialed Liora. She picked up on the second ring, the sound of an arcade game music track blaring behind her.

"Felix?" she answered cheerfully. "Did you convince the game developers to fix my dodge roll yet?"

"Liora, listen to me carefully," Felix cut in, keeping his voice quiet so Leo wouldn’t panic.

"I’m sending an agent up to your quarters with a three-year-old boy named Leo. I need you to look after him."

The music in the background stopped. "...Wait. What? A kid?"

"Keep him in your room, feed him if he’s hungry, and make sure he stays safe until Darius gets back."

"Felix, why do you have a baby with you? What is going on—" She cut herself off mid-sentence.

Her instincts as a trained awakener kicked in, picking up the deadly seriousness in his breathing.

"Felix," her voice dropped low. "What happened?"

Felix stared out the window. The Association’s central medical compound was right ahead.

The main driveway was jammed with ambulances, emergency sirens were wailing, and dozens of medics in bloodstained aprons were sprinting between tents.

"A massive disaster, Liora. I don’t have time to explain. I need you to trust me and watch the boy."

There was a two-second pause. Then, firm and resolute: "I’ve got him. Don’t worry."

"Thank you."

"Felix?"

"Yeah?"

"Don’t die out there," she whispered.

A faint smile touched his lips. "I won’t."

He hung up just as the transport slammed its brakes, tires screeching against the concrete bay.

Felix unbuckled the boy and stepped out before the vehicle had even fully settled. The air smelled of burnt ozone, antiseptic spray, and heavy copper. Stretcher carts were rolling past in frantic waves.

Leo clutched Felix’s neck, burying his face against his shoulder, terrified by the flashing red lights and the loud shouting.

"Unca..." the boy whimpered.

Felix knelt down beside the car and gently turned Leo toward the agent, who had rushed around the hood.

"You’re going with this uncle, Leo," Felix said, resting both hands on the boy’s tiny shoulders.

"He’s taking you straight up to my friend."

Leo’s eyes filled with tears. "You not coming?"

The question felt heavier than an S-rank strike.

"I have to go help the people inside first," Felix told him softly. "I’ll come find you the very second I’m done. I promise."

He looked up at the agent. "Take him straight to Liora’s suite on Floor 4. If any guard stops you, use my priority clearance code: Valerius-Zero-One."

"Understood, sir," the agent said, carefully lifting the little boy into his arms.

Leo twisted around, reaching a small hand out toward Felix. "Unca Felix!"

Felix stopped. "Yeah, buddy?"

Leo sniffled, wiping his nose with the back of his sleeve. "Make them all better, okay? Don’t let them hurt."

The noise, the blaring sirens, and the frantic shouts around the courtyard seemed to fade into total silence for a split second.

Felix looked straight into the little boy’s teary eyes, nodded firmly, and said, "I’ll save every single one I can."

He watched the agent carry Leo safely through the side security elevators.

Then Felix turned around, let his green mana flare across his hands, and sprinted straight into the bloody chaos of the emergency bay.

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