Meanwhile, Loid and his team reached the portal. Everyone formed a circle facing inward toward the portal, swords raised and ready.
Loid's voice was steady.
"Stay on guard. Anything can come out at any moment."
Every eyes locked onto the portal. Every breath held.
After a few tense moments of stillness —
BOOM
Something black tore out of the portal. It moved so fast that it seem like it was nothing but a blur and in that same instant a guard's throat was cut clean.
By the time anyone registered what happened, the head was already hitting the ground. The body followed a second later.
After that, the creature was nowhere to be seen. Everyone tensed immediately but not a single guard broke rank or ran.
Then they saw it. The creature was closing in on them fast. They knew they should move. They knew they should shield themselves. But their bodies had already made the decision — pure instinct, pure fear. React now or die.
It didn't save them. One by one they fell and when it was all over, the only one left standing was Loid.
The creature vanished into thin air again. But Loid didn't react like the others. There was no panic in him. No fear. He stood firm, sword raised, moving slowly, eyes cutting through the air around him, waiting for the moment it would reappear.
Then it did. It came charging at full speed but it wasn't fast enough for Loid. He didn't make the same mistake the others made. He didn't rush to attack first. Instead he parried. Every strike, every angle, every burst of speed — he met it all cleanly, like it was nothing. The creature's greatest weapon was its speed. Against Loid it meant nothing.
Then he found it. A weak strike, slightly off balance, slightly slower than the rest. This time his parry was different. Instead of just deflecting he used the redirect to throw the creature off its footing. Before it could recover Loid closed the gap and drove his sword clean through its neck.
After the creature's neck was cut it vanished into thin air. Loid stood over the bodies of his comrades, breathing heavily. The fight was far from easy — but it wasn't as hard as it should have been.
He looked at them for a long moment, then turned and started walking toward the kingdom.
By the time he reached the middle of the kingdom the guards were already waiting. They asked him about the portal and the others.
"I killed the monster," Loid said.
"But it killed everyone."
His voice was heavy. The shock that followed was immediate. One monster had taken seven guards. And everyone standing there knew the same thing without saying it that it wasn't the end. More of them would come.
While Loid and the guards were still talking, Arashi and Emi came rushing in. Arashi skidded to a stop in front of Loid, hands on his knees, catching his breath before the words came out.
"Lil — Lily got consumed by a black thing. She's nowhere to be found now. What do we do? We need to save her."
The words hit everyone like a stone. Their princess was gone, consumed by something none of them understood. The worry spread through the guards instantly. Where was she? What was happening to her right now?
But hearing those words Loid remained calm. His expression didn't change. Deep down he was hurt but this wasn't the time to show it.
Then without warning a sound tore through everything. One step louder and it would have burst every eardrum in the kingdom. Every head snapped toward the source. The sky was breaking apart on its own. Loid and everyone around him froze. None of them had ever seen anything like it in their lives.
Loid stared upward, his voice barely escaping.
"What the hell is this?"
The sky was splitting down the middle, cracking open like a rift was tearing the world itself in two.
The rift was tearing open fast. Every guard, Arashi and Emi included, panicked. The sound from earlier had already pulled people out of their homes. Some spilling into the streets, others peering down from their balconies. Nobody knew what to do. Chaos spread through the kingdom like a wave. Something terrible had already happened that morning and now this. For the people it wasn't just fear — it was trauma hitting twice in the same day.
Loid drew his sword, steady as ever. He ordered the guards to evacuate everyone to the safest hideout outside the kingdom. A separate group he told to stay behind and fight alongside him. But there was no time.
Before they could even begin moving the people, something forced its way through the rift — wolf-like creatures, clawing out before it had even fully opened. Like they couldn't wait. Like the smell of blood alone was enough to drive them through.
The monsters dropped from the rift and hit the ground hard. The people were still too close.
Loid turned to Arashi and Emi.
"Get out of here. Go with the others to the safe zone."
Emi rejected it without a second thought. Arashi hesitated.
'This feeling again. The same one as before. If I fight I will only drag them down. What if the power inside me wakes up again? What do I do? I might destroy this kingdom too, just like I did with my town. They will also started to hate me. Everyone will started to hate me. Ughhh.'
He started scratching his head, lost in his own thoughts. Then slowly he pulled himself together.
'But I can't just run away. Not with all these people behind me. Not with all those kids. I can't run away from this. I will protect their smiles no matter what.'
With that he shook his head and rejected Loid's offer.
Loid didn't push. No lecture. No "you're just kids. You can't fight them." Instead he simply turned back toward the rift, sword raised, and said.
"Okay. Just don't die on me."
Arashi replied with a confident smile.
"Roger that, boss!"
Then a realization hit him.
"W-wait. I-I don't have a weapon."
Emi shot him a sharp annoyed side glance then immediately snapped her gaze back to the monsters closing in. She tightened her fist, ready.
Arashi was still looking around desperately for a weapon like a kid searching for a toy while Loid and the guards had already engaged.
It wasn't that Loid and the others didn't care. There was just no time.
Three types of monsters poured out of the rift. The wolves were back. They were the fastest of the three, already closing the distance before the others even landed.
The second type moved on two legs, shaped vaguely like humans — arms, legs, an almost familiar build but their heads were something else entirely. Wrong in every way.
The third type was different again.
Skinny. Frail looking. But where their fingers should have been, each hand ended in long sharp blades which were identical to the black creature Loid had just killed.
On the other side of the kingdom the evacuation was falling apart. The guards tasked with moving the people had the harder job. The streets were pure chaos. People running, crashing into each other, tripping over themselves. The noise was overwhelming.
And somewhere in the middle of it all babies were crying, too young to understand what was happening. Too young to know to be afraid.
On Loid's side the wolf monsters reached him and the guards. Loid and some of the guards cut them down in one clean motion. But there were too many. Some of the wolves were too fast, they leaped clean over the blades and threw their full weight onto the guards beneath them, pinning them to the ground. The screams that followed were brutal. Teeth finding necks. Guards dying in the worst way possible.
Arashi and Emi watched it happen. Their hands started shaking without them even realizing it.
The wolves were far more in number than the other two types. And those other two types weren't rushing. They moved slowly, deliberately like they owned the ground beneath them. Unbothered. The kind of slow that was somehow more terrifying than speed.
Then one of the wolves locked its eyes on Arashi and Emi. It didn't go for the guards. It didn't go for the fleeing people. It ran straight toward them. Both of them panicked. Neither of them knew how to face it.
The monster jumped toward them. Arashi and Emi were standing side by side but the moment it launched itself they split, moving in opposite directions just fast enough. The monster caught nothing but the ground. It slid forward but recovered instantly and turned its focus on Arashi.
This time Arashi planted his feet and faced it. But his hands were shaking too much. His heart was hammering inside his chest. The monster jumped again, aiming straight for his neck.
But right at that moment, when the monster was in the air and nearly at Arashi's neck, a knife came out of nowhere and drove straight into its head.
It dropped instantly, landing right at Arashi's feet.