Chapter 97: The Day Humanity Bled 4

Chapter 97: Chapter 97: The Day Humanity Bled 4

He had healed over a hundred heroes. And still, people had died.

Felix looked down at his trembling hands. A faint green glow still clung to his skin. If I had just been ten minutes faster.

He shook his head and shoved the thought away. Beating himself up wouldn’t bring anyone back. But the faces wouldn’t leave his head: the young hunter crying for his captain, the shaking girl who thought she had lost her patient, the cold bodies wheeled away under white sheets.

He leaned his head back against the sofa cushions and closed his eyes, taking his first real breath since running into the building.

Elena sat nearby, watching him quietly. "Felix."

"Yeah?"

"The three S-ranks are stable. Intensive care is watching them and the others in the main halls are holding on too. Your healing field saved dozens of lives today."

"How many did we lose here?" he asked, his voice low.

Elena’s face fell. "We’re still getting the numbers. Some died before the ambulances got here. Others were too far gone when they arrived." She paused. "In this region alone... at least seventy dead."

Felix opened his eyes, staring at the ceiling. Seventy. Even after everything he had poured out, seventy people were gone and that was just one sector.

He let out a hollow breath. "...I see."

She had no words to make the number hurt less, so she stayed quiet.

Felix pulled his phone from his pocket with shaking fingers and checked the screen.

Breaking news alerts flooded the display one after another:

[URGENT: MULTIPLE RIFTS EXPERIENCE SUDDEN RANK SPIKES]

He scrolled down.

[EMERGENCY CALL: MASSIVE HERO CASUALTIES ACROSS MULTIPLE REGIONS]

[ASSOCIATION ORDERS ALL HEALERS TO REPORT TO LOCAL HOSPITALS]

[ENTIRE RAID TEAMS REPORTED MISSING AFTER GATE MUTATIONS]

It was happening everywhere. Not just here, but across the entire continent. Stable gates had jumped two ranks without warning, locking teams in with beasts they couldn’t handle.

Monitoring gear had picked up nothing until it was too late. Some teams got out bleeding; others never made it to the exit.

Then a new global update flashed on the screen:

[UNCONFIRMED: GLOBAL HERO DEATH TOLL PASSES 5,000]

Felix’s throat locked up.

Five thousand. Five thousand fighters who had stepped into a rift that morning thinking it was just another shift. People with kids, partners, friends, and regular lives, now reduced to a number on a screen.

He scrolled a little further and noticed a grim pattern. Out of dozens of affected territories, only four had managed to keep their casualty rates under control.

Each of those four regions had an Ultra-rank healer on site.

That level of healing was almost unheard of, just a handful of people across the whole planet.

Today had proved the brutal difference between an ordinary healer and an Ultra: it was the difference between saving five people or saving a hundred.

Felix’s own magic had kept this wing from collapsing completely. He locked his phone and looked over at Elena.

"Has the Association figured out why the gates spiked?"

"Not yet," Elena said, rubbing her temples.

"Investigations are barely starting. We’re pulling data from every rift core we can find, but there’s no official answer."

"Did anyone find foreign mana signatures?

Anything that doesn’t belong in a normal rift?"

Elena looked at him sharply. "Why do you ask that?"

Felix leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. "I’ve seen monsters with artificially boosted mana before. Foreign energy forced directly into a core."

"The dark elf incident."

"Yes."

"You think this is connected?"

"I don’t know for sure," Felix said, his voice turning cold. "A dozen gates don’t just mutate at the exact same hour by accident. Gates don’t coordinate with each other. This doesn’t feel natural."

Elena went dead still. "If someone can trigger rank spikes on purpose..."

"Then this wasn’t an accident," Felix said, his azure eyes dark. "It was an ambush. Someone figured out how to turn our own rifts into a weapon against us."

A cold chill settled over the hallway.

For five hundred years, humanity had learned how to manage the gates. They built sensors, rated threats, and sent in teams to clear them before monsters broke through. It wasn’t perfect, but it kept civilization alive.

If someone had learned how to poison that system, every future raid was a death trap.

Elena swallowed hard. "I’ll make sure this is brought up at tomorrow’s emergency board meeting."

"Good," Felix said. "Check every core. Check the residue in the monster flesh. If there are chemical boosters involved, I want to know."

"Understood." She looked at his pale face.

"Now go rest, Felix. You’ve done more than enough for one day."

Felix looked toward the heavy doors of the recovery ward. Behind them, over a hundred hunters were breathing because he had arrived in time.

Then he thought of little Leo. The boy had looked him in the eye and asked him to fix everyone. He had promised to try.

He had tried with everything he had, but the promise still felt heavy in his chest.

"...I need to go check on someone first," Felix said quietly.

Elena raised an eyebrow. "Who?"

"Leo. Darius’s kid. I brought him here and left him with Liora."

The worry on Elena’s face softened. "Go. I’ll make sure everyone gets home safe."

"Thanks."

Felix pushed himself up from the couch. His knees wobbled, and he had to grab the armrest to keep from tumbling forward. Elena caught his elbow instantly.

"Careful!"

"I’m good."

"Stop saying that. You can barely stand."

Felix let out a weak, tired chuckle.

He pulled his arm back and took a steady step toward the elevator, his slippers scraping softly against the clean floor.

Behind him, the faint sounds of the hospital echoed down the hall: soft crying, the steady hum of monitors, and tired doctors checking clipboards.

Felix tightened his hands into fists.

Thousands dead across the world. And if someone was really pulling the strings from the shadows, the worst part of this nightmare wasn’t the beasts waiting on the other side of the rifts.

It was whoever had decided to feed humanity to them.