Chapter 32: Unbelievable Feat

Outside the rift to Gob Valley, chaos reigned.

Mutant rifts were terrifyingly rare, but the Mission Hall had procedures drilled into every Acolyte Incase of its appearance.

Sector 516’s Acolytes formed a tight perimeter around the shimmering tear in reality, while the martial artists who hadn’t yet entered were forced to remain on standby.

This was because when a rift undergoes mutation, it would reject entry for up to a week.

So everyone waited, tense and silent, until the rift surface suddenly rippled and figures began stepping out.

“Contact the manager!” one Acolyte barked the moment he noticed movement.

“Tell him, we have survivors!”

The impossible had happened.

One after another, the martial artists Adam had saved stumbled out of the rift, bloody, limping, but alive.

Finally, Scarlet stepped out last.

Although a mutating rift didn’t allow entries it could still allow exits.

Medics rushed forward immediately.

A mutant rift never spat people out unharmed.

The six dead bodies laid out on stretchers were evidence enough.

Their grim, pale forms forcing several Acolytes to avert their eyes.

Honestly, everyone expected more bodies. Less than half a dozen dead in a mutant rift? That was a miracle in itself.

A miracle with one obvious source.

A medic approached Scarlet, reaching for her arm, but she gently shook her head.

“I’m fine.”

She wasn’t, but physical wounds weren’t her problem.

Her eyes were locked on the rift, brows furrowed, confusion twisting her expression.

“Why, isn’t Adam out yet?”

She had assumed he stayed behind deliberately, to make sure nothing ambushed them as they exited, at that time it seemed like a logical and sensible reason.

A single mutant goblin ambush at the wrong moment could turn their desperate escape into a massacre.

Adam leaving last was exactly the kind of thing someone like him would do.

But he should have walked through right after her.

He should have.

A cold thought struck her like a blade to the spine.

Did something happen to him?

Scarlet’s breath hitched.

A shiver crawled up her body as flashes of her dead teammates surfaced, the torn throats, the twisted limbs, the fear frozen in their eyes.

The idea of Adam, someone who felt so untouchable and overwhelming, meeting the same fate because he chose to stay behind for them, stabbed into whatever fragile piece of her psyche was still holding together.

Her knees buckled.

A medic darted forward, catching her before she hit the ground.

“Easy, let’s get you checked.”

She didn’t resist this time. Her body moved on autopilot as they guided her toward a nearby treatment tent.

She wasn’t bleeding, bruised, or poisoned. But the things she saw in that rift… those would leave marks deeper than any wound.

As she crossed the tent’s threshold, Scarlet looked back over her shoulder one last time, eyes fixed on the shimmering rift as anxiety gnawed at her chest.

Please… be okay.

It didn’t take long before the manager finally arrived at the rift’s entrance.

His black uniform, lined with golden stripes, fit him perfectly, and despite the grey hair and the age carved into his features, he carried himself with authority, far more authority than yesterday, during his brief interaction with Adam.

He had been compiling a detailed report for the higher-ups when the urgent call came in: survivors had emerged from the mutating rift.

To the manager, this was of vital importance. He abandoned the report instantly and rushed to the rift.

Now, as he stood before the swirling anomaly, one of the acolytes finished relaying everything they had gathered from the traumatized survivors.

And shocked didn’t begin to describe the manager’s expression.

He stared at the acolyte and asked again, needing confirmation.

“So you’re telling me Mr. Adam did not just take down a single unranked level-2 mob goblin… but took down a whole fifteen?”

“Yes, sir,” the acolyte replied.

The manager continued, incredulous.

“And he threw a dirty bronze-grade knife at a suspected unranked level-2 elite goblin and sent it flying before finishing it off with that same dirty bronze knife? Thus creating the exit that allowed the survivors to escape?”

Hearing the manager phrase it like that; especially the emphasis on dirty bronze, the acolyte almost couldn’t believe it himself.

Even though he was the one who wrote the report, it still sounded absurd out loud.

“Yes, sir,” he still repeated albeit a little bit bewildered by the details of his own report.

Silence hung between them for a few breaths before the manager spoke again.

“Where is the girl, the one who left the rift last?”

The acolyte straightened and answered,

“She’s under sedation now, sir. It was the only way to calm her down.”

The manager nodded slowly.

“When she wakes up, inform me immediately. I need to know why our hero hasn’t left the rift yet.”

“On your orders, sir.” The acolyte bowed lightly before walking off.

The manager turned back toward the mutating rift, staring into its unstable reflection.

He didn’t believe Adam had fallen, not for a second.

Finally, he muttered under his breath, meant for no one except the boy still inside:

“Whatever you’re planning, I hope it’s the right call.”

With that, he turned and walked away as the remaining acolytes continued standing guard around the shifting rift.

A full day passed with nothing unusual happening. But on the next day, and the days that followed, the area around the mutating rift became a hive of activity.

Survivor after survivor staggered out of the portal, sometimes carrying the corpses of the fallen, and sometimes emerging with no bodies at all.

But the absence of corpses wasn’t because they couldn’t bring back the dead.

It was because there were no dead to bring back.

Every single person in those groups had survived. Not one perished.

The acolytes on guard watched it all unfold in disbelief. A mutating rift was supposed to be catastrophic, it was an abrupt, unpredictable eruption that claimed countless lives due to its suddenness.

Yet here, the death rate was lower than in a normal rift.

It defied logic.

Survivors came out weeping, laughing, embracing each other with trembling hands.

Some fell to their knees in relief.

Some shouted prayers.

All of them were simply grateful to be alive.

When the manager received the updated report, only one word left his mouth.

“Unbelievable.”

And unbelievable it was. Because nearly all the survivors credited their survival to a single person.

A boy with negligible essence capacity. A boy drenched head to toe in blood, looking less like a savior and more like a devil crawling out of hell.

A boy who wielded nothing but a dirty bronze knife-soaked with the blood of countless goblins and yet saved them all without hesitation.

Word of his deed spread like wildfire.

Now, from the old grandmother who sat by her shop front to the scruffy street cat that dove into the trash bins behind her stall. Everyone knew the name of the one who achieved the impossible.

Everyone knew the name Adam.

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