While absorbing essence, time always seemed to lose its meaning.
Breaths blended together. Cycles repeated without pause. What felt like a few hours passed in a blur, and then, just like that, the full thirty hours were gone.
Adam stood in front of the mirror in his room, quietly studying his reflection.
The injuries that had once wrapped his body in pain were gone. Continuous essence absorption had accelerated his recovery far beyond normal limits, muscle knit cleanly, internal damage erased, fatigue washed away as if it had never existed.
He looked... whole.
He was dressed simply: a black jacket layered over a white inner shirt, green combat trousers fitted for movement, and plain white canvases on his feet. Nothing special or reinforced.
Unfortunately, the mission hall had nothing suitable for him.
Any defensive armament they could provide was inferior to his own natural defenses. Moreover, since they were armaments and not conduits, they wouldn’t scale with him or bolster his protection. If he wore one, he’d simply end up protecting the armor instead.
So he settled for regular clothing.
Battle-Ready had been the only armament he owned that truly suited him. It didn’t just match his defense, it surpassed it. And it had proven its worth, sacrificing itself to protect him from the explosion at Siren’s Swamp.
Repairing it wouldn’t be simple.
Even if it were possible, it wouldn’t be here. He’d only recently learned that it had been shipped from a mission hall in a higher sector, far beyond his reach now.
Adam exhaled slowly.
Then he straightened, meeting his own gaze in the mirror.
"Just focus, Adam," he said quietly. "You can still do great without an armament. Maximum effort is all you need."
He held his own eyes for a moment longer, as if daring them to doubt him.
Then he let out a short chuckle.
I might be going insane.
After one last look, Adam turned away from the mirror, stepped out of his room, and headed out.
As Adam reached the lobby of the hotel, he was taken aback by what he saw.
"Took you long enough," Abigail said as she rose from a couch, stretching slightly. "I almost thought you were applying makeup."
Adam blinked. He hadn’t expected her to be here, but she wasn’t alone.
Other clan heirs were gathered across the lobby, their followers standing behind them. Even Sebastian was present. That alone was shocking.
Stranger still was the fact that every one of them was fully equipped, armed and ready as if they were about to march straight into a battlefield.
Adam’s gaze swept over them, disbelief flickering through his eyes.
It can’t be...
Rather than dwell on it, he decided to ask outright.
"What are you guys doing here?"
Abigail looked at him over the rim of her sunglasses. Her expression made her thoughts painfully obvious; still, Adam remained silent.
She sighed, finally voicing the reason they were all there.
"We’re going with you."
Adam stared at her, then slowly turned to the others. They met his gaze without hesitation. There was something strange in their eyes, an intensity that hadn’t been there before.
He turned back to Abigail.
"And why would you want to do that?"
He was genuinely curious.
Before this, when the threat had been far more severe, getting even minimal cooperation from the heirs had been difficult. And even if they had agreed back then, most wouldn’t have put in their all. Yet now, when the situation was supposedly more manageable, they were willingly choosing to fight.
It didn’t add up.
And Adam was certain it wasn’t because the danger had lessened.
The answer came quickly.
"It’s because of your potential."
The voice didn’t belong to Abigail.
Adam turned and found the Baki clan heir, Kyle, stepping forward.
"My potential?"
Kyle nodded. "You’ve shown that you’re more than just your special talent."
The words were simple, but Adam understood immediately.
Since arriving in the sector, he had shown strength, overwhelming strength. Power far beyond his anyone else. But that was all most of them had seen.
An unranked martial artist relying on a special talent. Dangerous now, but limited in the long run.
Special talents were cheats.
But cheats alone didn’t define true potential.
Only when a special talent went hand in hand with a cultivation talent did it become something terrifying, something worthy of fear and respect. Even rumored reawakened special talents followed that rule.
And Adam had just proven that he wasn’t stagnant.
He had grown.
So just showing them my growth was enough to earn their respect?
It felt bizarre, but he didn’t complain.
Before, the heirs hadn’t been needed because their effort would have been half-hearted at best. The mission hall had been desperate enough to accept that. Now, they weren’t desperate.
But free help and willing help?
No one would reject that.
Adam nodded once.
"Alright then, Let’s give it our all."
With that, he turned and walked out of the hotel.
The heirs followed behind him.
****
The walls surrounding the sector rose like artificial mountains.
There were no shimmering barriers, no translucent shields humming with energy. Just raw mass, pure concrete, layered, reinforced, and compacted until it became something closer to a fortress than a wall.
They towered high above the ground, thick enough to endure sustained punishment.
Lined across the top were rows of tier-one artillery armaments, evenly spaced and angled outward toward the wild zone. Their barrels tracked slowly, calibrated and ready. Acolytes manned each installation with rigid focus, fingers resting near triggers, essence flowing steadily as they kept the weapons primed.
More Acolytes stood atop the walls themselves, spaced at intervals, weapons drawn and eyes fixed on the horizon.
They were waiting.
Beyond the walls lay the wild zone, an expanse choked with unstable terrain and corrupted land. Within the area covered by the barrier alone, fifteen rifts had been identified.
Under normal circumstances, that number would have spelled disaster.
Luckily, not all of them were in play.
The Siren Swamp lay to the west of the sector, and the rifts positioned beyond that direction were excluded from the tide’s flow.
That still left seven incursions directly in the sector’s path.
Seven.
Each one housed a different species of monster, creatures shaped by wildly different rift environments, instincts, and methods of attack.
When the tide began, there would be no coordination. No tactics. No restraint.
Six types of monsters, and one mutant variant, would pour out simultaneously, driven by instinct alone, rushing the walls with reckless abandon.
The concrete fortress stood ready.
Whether it would be enough was another matter entirely.