[Gate closure imminent. Prepare to be transported back.]

A notification flickered across Elane’s vision, bringing with it a wave of joy and euphoria at a level she’d never experienced before.

’He did it!’

Elane’s chest rose and fell in ragged bursts as the notification hovered in front of her eyes like the words of God.

For one beautiful, impossible second, everything else vanished.

The screaming, clawing. The wet sounds of Spike Beasts tearing into unlucky Awakened too close to the entrance. All of it faded behind those simple but extremely meaningful words.

The gate was collapsing. Rohan had done it.

A laugh almost tore itself out of her but disappeared quickly as the pain started to surface. Elane immediately locked her dispersing thoughts down.

The chaos wasn’t over yet, not until they were out.

Her eyes snapped back to the heap of beasts piled over the boss’s corpse where Rohan had vanished from sight. But there was no human movement — no sign of him.

Only hunched scaly backs, thrashing limbs, and jagged spikes were seen as the maddened beasts fought to get whatever flesh they could grasp from the boss’s corpse.

When it was alive, none of them would have dared to even come near it, but now it was a free-for-all.

"Rohan!" She shouted, though there was little point.

Even if he were conscious, he wouldn’t be able to hear her over the constant noise of the horde.

Elane swallowed her fear and anxiety and forced her body to move.

The Elite Spike Beast bow flashed in her hands as she let loose arrow after arrow into the cluster surrounding Rohan. Her worry grew with every passing second.

There were just too many.

Even now, with the gate collapsing, the beasts were swarming.

The chamber was a pit of panic and slaughter. Awakened staggered to their feet only to be thrown right back down by beasts or by the chaotic movement of their peers. Some of those who adapted the quickest did their best to hold down until the gate collapsed, hoping that they could survive for that short period of time.

Norm was one of that bunch, and his brows flew up in surprise when he caught sight of Elane desperately firing into the horde, despite the dimension collapsing in just a few more seconds.

"Elane! You’re going to get yourself killed! There’s no need to risk your life for a few more kills, retreat for the last few moments until the gate collapses!" Norm tried to convince her.

"No! I can’t! Rohan’s in there somewhere. If it weren’t for him, we’d all be dead right now! I have to do something..."

The floor beneath them began to change in the next moment. Hairline cracks of white and blue light split through the faint light of the room, running along the chamber like veins of frost.

The whole lair groaned around them, and pieces of ceiling broke free and crashed down, crushing dozens of Spike Beasts.

The walls creaked and groaned once, then twice, and began to fracture outward, as if space was ripping itself at the seams.

Because it really was.

The Spike Beasts felt it too. Even in their maddened state, some of them darted their hunched bodies around in confusion, frightened by the changes occurring.

But instead of retreating in fear, they grew more violent. Liam’s death stripped away the collective pressure that controlled them earlier, leaving behind nothing but raw beast instinct.

Hunger, panic, and rage.

It turned the final few seconds inside the gate into a true nightmare.

Elane fired until her fingers burnt, and she was barely even making a dent in the numbers of the horde.

Norm and a few other Awakened who had managed to stand formed a rough line around the most vulnerable of the waking survivors. Gerty was on her knees, blood on her face, and tears streaming down her eyes. She was unable to take the shock, probably mentally scarred for life from that moment onwards.

All around them, Awakened were dying and surviving in the same breath.

Then the collapse claimed them all.

The chamber split into a storm of light. It started small at first. A Spike Beast gnawing on one Awakened’s leg vanished mid-bite.

The ceiling disappeared, giving way to a sky full of cracks and fissures.

Then the floor dropped away from beneath their feet, casting everyone to fall endlessly into a void until it was their turn.

Elane felt the world seize her through some mysterious force.

There wasn’t any graceful transmission, like moving between the outside universe and the Origin Realm or in and out of gates the normal way.

One instant she felt the sensation of falling endlessly, watching reality crack and split around her—

Then she hit concrete.

Her head hit first, the cold shock of it smashing into her body more viciously than the shift back from the Origin Realm had.

Her breath left her lungs, the wind beat out of her, and her hands scraped across rough stone.

No longer was the sky above her the aurora-lit darkness of the gate, but the open blue sky over Primus, glaring down in the midsummer’s daylight.

She almost let relief wash over her, but then she was reminded of Rohan.

’Where is he? Please tell me he survived...’

People started screaming. She didn’t know who started it first, but it started a chain reaction like no other.

Elane forced her head up and forced herself to come face to face with the situation back on Earth.

Chaos.

The gate had collapsed, saving her and all of the survivors, dumping everyone back on Earth where they entered from.

But so did the Spike Beasts.

Spike Beasts started to appear one by one all across the clearing where the gate was originally located, each one lunging towards the nearest Awakened.

A guard in uniform was swept off his feet by an unsuspecting group of Spike Beasts, but the beasts were soon pulverised a moment later.

The guard was an E rank Awakened, completely caught off guard by the sudden turn of events. He was momentarily stunned, which allowed the Spike Beasts to reach so close to him.

The sound of gunfire erupted from all around, and the Spike Beasts started dropping like flies. After a dozen seconds, they were falling faster than they were appearing.

Elane waited for the chaos to die down, then stood up and looked around frantically.

"Rohan!"

"Please tell me you survived, Rohan..."