The red emergency notification had been a high-pitched siren, cutting through the general city hum. Instantly, the area around the bus shed fractured into chaos. Civilians screamed and sprinted away from the alert zone, their terror palpable. They abandoned cars, dropped shopping bags, and fought each other to get into the subway entrances, which were quickly becoming overcrowded, temporary shelters.
Players, however, moved in the opposite direction. Rifts that had just spawned—especially B-Rank breaches—were considered 'wild hunting grounds.' They had zero jurisdiction under the UNPA or any Guild, meaning any loot or crystals from the monsters collected was tax-free. This promise of untaxed power instantly mobilized every D-Rank and E-Rank desperate for a level-up, turning their fear into greedy, focused determination. They moved with a reckless speed that seemed foreign and frightening to the average person.
Noah sprinted against the panicked flow of bodies, breathing hard, his muscles coiling and flexing with years of un-rewarded physical training. For an Unawakened Civilian, running towards a B-Rank threat was unnatural, bordering on suicidal madness; he was the only person moving in that direction who didn't glow with an internal mana signature.
He pulled out his cell phone and called Mina. "Mina! Have you received the emergency notification? This is bad, the breach is right by the industrial sector!"
"Yeah, I've just seen it," Mina's voice was tense, overlaid with the roaring sound of intense wind and distant explosions, indicating she was already airborne. "It's better if you leave it to us. This is officially not your problem, Noah. Go home!"
"Yeah? But George is there," Noah countered, expertly sidestepping a fallen briefcase and an elderly woman. "He's a Legendary Blacksmith, not a fighter. He's a scaredy-cat who probably just threw a wrench at the first D-Rank ant he saw. He won't even be carrying a sharp object capable of piercing that chitin."
"I'll get to him first. I'm ten blocks away, I can fly over the chaos in minutes," Mina insisted, her tone desperate and rapidly rising in pitch. "You should be staying away from the Rift as soon as possible."
Noah scoffed, his lungs already burning, the familiar exhaustion pushing him to his limits. "Heh. When did you ever see me running away?"
"Now would be the time, brother! It's a B-Rank for Christ's sake! That's a hundred times stronger than anything you've ever fought! The sheer mana pollution alone will kill a normal human!" Mina raised her voice, genuinely shouting.
"Well, you get to George. I'll help with the evacuation," Noah lied smoothly, already planning his infiltration route and turning off the call mid-sentence before she could deploy a magical tracking beacon on him. He knew Mina would incinerate half the city to protect her family, but her priority was rescue, not fighting through the horde.
He continued sprinting, pulling a small silver cylinder from his backpack and pressing a hidden button. It extended instantly into a three-foot bo staff—not wood or metal, but an alloy of refined mana-steel. He pressed it again and it retraced back to its small size. Simultaneously, he snapped a matte-black bracelet onto his right wrist, interlocking it with a small, metallic clasp. These were his twenty-sixth birthday gifts from his father—a Rare-Rank piece of mobility gear and a self-retracting weapon. They were top-tier, custom-made artifacts, a testament to the Chambers family's wealth and George's legendary crafting skill, even if they couldn't give the wearer an aura.
————————————————————————————-
Three blocks away, the source of the chaos materialized: a large, jagged Rift, looking like space-time had been cracked like fragile glass, shimmered in the center of the road. Through the void, massive, chitinous D-Rank Fire Ants poured, immediately slaughtering and consuming any civilian they encountered. The sheer scale of the incursion confirmed the severity of the B-Rank threat.
Players, however, were already responding. A group of low-rank fighters barraged the ant swarm with low-tier magic, but the ants were too numerous and their thick exoskeletons easily shrugged off the weak attacks.
"Th-that's a D-Rank Fire Ant! And there are so many of them!" one rookie shouted, watching ants climb the side of buildings, their mandibles clicking menacingly.
Then, quick flashes of brilliant white light broke the ant swarm. A streak of motion sliced through the chitinous bodies, cutting them into hundreds of clean, non-bleeding pieces.
"Th-that's Finley Jenkins!" someone screamed in awe, recognizing the tall, agile silhouette of an A-Rank Blademaster.
Finley landed lightly in the center of the chaos, his silver blade singing as it carved arcs of death. "You should help evacuate the people instead! Go! I'll hold them off! Don't let the ants spread into the residential sector!"
The group of terrified D-Rank players quickly agreed. "O-okay!" and ran off to clear the perimeter.
Finley spun, the mana around him concentrating on his blade. "Hailstorm Fury!" A small, intense, man-made tornado erupted around him, a flurry of precise strikes that cut every ant in his vicinity into a thousand molecularly-sliced pieces. The skill was elegant, efficient, and left the surrounding infrastructure mostly intact.
Then, from the sky, a darker silhouette descended like an iron meteorite. A man in heavy, obsidian armor, holding a massive hammer, screamed a primitive war cry as he impacted the ground. "RAAAAAAAAGHHH!!"
The blow created a localized seismic event, a shockwave that cracked the concrete for meters around him, instantly killing the remaining ants but also canceling Finley's finely tuned skill with a blunt force of debris. Finley shielded his face from the pulverized asphalt and dust.
The man, revealed to be Max Jackson, a dark-skinned, bald A-Rank Berserker, lowered his smoke-wreathed hammer. "Can't you not break things, Max? You just destroyed an antique lamppost!" Finley said, annoyed, dusting off his expensive combat gear.
"I have to break things, Finley," Max replied, wiping green ant blood from his armor with a grunt. "I just paid ten percent of my EXP to the Tower to clear a high-risk debuff. I was supposed to be Level 370 by now and receive my fifth Class Evolution. I need to smash something to recoup that lost energy."
"That's not my problem, Max," Finley said, easily fighting off a new group of ants with casual, precise slashes of his sword.
Max, using his armored fist to punch straight through the ants' thick heads, leaving explosive craters of green ichor. "My class is not as mobility-based as yours, you know that. I cannot make quick strikes nor fight in narrow spaces. I need the space to swing this hammer and create a shockwave."
"Well, you should have your own dedicated party then, one that knows how to tank and clear trash mobs before you deploy a tactical nuke," Finley retorted, his words laced with professional disdain.
Max leapt and smashed his hammer, creating a rift of cracked earth and raw energy in front of him, vaporizing a fresh wave of ants. "Since when did you find an A-Rank Player partying with another, unless it's an S-Rank Gate, huh?" The competition for kills and loot was too intense; every Essence Core claimed by the other was experience lost.
Finley released a skill that created a web of shimmering energy around him, slicing everything it touched. "We could party. It's not always about that, you know. Sometimes it's about tactical efficiency."
Max stared intently toward the Rift. A thick, unsettling fog obscured the road, but the outline of significantly larger ants—easily the B-Rank threat, perhaps a Queen Guard—was now visible, emerging from the dimensional tear.
"Shut up and let's get this over with," Max growled, raising his hammer. "The big guys are here." The two powerful players, despite their rivalry, instantly formed an unspoken, temporary alliance.
Meanwhile, on the adjacent blocks, the response was more tactical. A group of thirty Players from One Piece Guild, ranging from E-Rank to B-Rank, were led by a captain riding a white horse clad in silver armor, holding a large lance and raising a black flag with a skeleton and a straw hat.
"Mages and other ranged classes, coordinate your strikes and focus at the front! Our Vanguards are struggling!" the captain, William Gill, commanded, his voice amplified by his helmet. "Assassins and mobility classes, clear the ants above our line! Don't let them flank the healers!"
The Mages quickly switched from firing at the ants clinging to the buildings to barraging the hordes in front. The Assassins, moving like shadows, sprinted up the walls, cutting the ants' joints and sending them falling to the waiting warriors below. This coordinated approach efficiently cleared the immediate swarm, proving that discipline could offset lower raw power.
An independent party, perched on a nearby rooftop, witnessed the scene. "That's one of the captains of the One Piece Guild right?"
"Yeah, it's William Gill. Captain of the 3rd Pirate crew." another Player confirmed. "You can really tell that even if most of them are low rank, they can make a difference through discipline and tactics. They are prioritizing the survival of the group."
"Tactics are good and all, but pure strength just conquers it all," a third Player commented, pointing down another street below them where the sheer destruction was visible.
"That's the Four Horsemen Guild, right? Only they ride into battle like a freight train."
"Yeah." They watched as a cavalry unit of high-rank Players, mounted on mana-enhanced steeds, broke through an entire block of the ant swarm with ease, their movement fluid and unstoppable, leaving only pulverized bodies in their wake. Strategy mattered, but raw, unstoppable power was the currency of the new world.