Seven days passed, and they felt endless. The conversation Reidar had with Sub-Adjutant Xy'tharr Kench a week ago about his family had solved nothing. Instead, it made everything worse. The Kytinn warrior hadn't been lying about the scale of the problem. He hadn't used flowery language or tried to soften it; he just listed the facts, and those facts were terrible.

The situation in the Northwest was falling apart. While Reidar had been focused on reaching his parents, the Church of Unbinding had been busy everywhere else.

The Church of Unbinding was everywhere, with more hidden cells than anyone had guessed, and they were opening portals non-stop to power-level their own members.

Kingsgate was in the middle of it. Because it was an enormous city with a lot of survivors, and a dense population center meant stronger monsters were drawn there, creating a nightmare zone. The city was attracting the strongest monsters coming out of the rifts. The Church was using the chaos to get more powerful, and the sheer number of high-level threats in the area was skyrocketing.

Xy'tharr had explained that the Velia region was a statistical anomaly, and Creamont specifically was an even bigger anomaly.

In Creamont, survivors were pushing past Level 150; their growth curves skyrocketed because Reidar had broken the power progression.

He had acted as a tank, a damage dealer, and a safety net all at once, allowing weaker fighters to tag high-level threats and reap the rewards without the associated mortality rate. Reidar's presence had broken the normal rules.

Outside of Velia, humanity was stagnating as the allied world expected. The rest of the world was stuck, as they didn't have a Reidar Miller, someone so powerful to actually influence the entire region.

According to the Xy'tharr, the strongest survivors outside of the region were hard-stuck around Level 120. It was harsh but undeniable.

The reason was simple. The monsters out there were now too high-level for most people to fight, and the weaker ones were hiding or were being decimated.

Without a heavy hitter to absorb damage or a way to safely farm, leaving the protection of a Settlement Barrier had become a suicide mission. If you couldn't leave, you couldn't hunt. If you couldn't hunt, you couldn't level up. If you couldn't level up, the monsters continued to dominate the food chain. The risk-to-reward ratio had skewed too much, and people were trapped in a vicious cycle.

It was a savage loop, and humanity was caught in it.

Reidar had tried to leverage his alliance. He had asked—demanded, really—that the Aegis Phalanx extract Martha and Marcus immediately. He assumed that a fleet capable of interstellar travel and able to go through portals could handle a rescue mission in Kingsgate. It seemed like the obvious solution.

But the Kytinn refused. It wasn't a matter of willingness; it was a matter of logistical impossibility because of something that was once again caused by the Church of Unbinding: The World Carver Behemoth.

The massive mountainous monster had migrated there. The Aegis Phalanx tried to steer it away from human settlements and often evacuated the small ones to avoid them getting killed, but that couldn't be done in every circumstance. There simply were places where doing that wasn't feasible.

It wasn't just that, but the World Carver Behemoth wasn't the only monster around. With the church opening more and more portals to fuel its ascension, more of them were coming, and a lot of them could fly.

The sky in that region was a kill zone. Xy'tharr pointed out that the monster density was so high that even an Aegis Dreadnought could be easily destroyed if they tried a low altitude, which was required if they wanted to extract Martha and Marcus. Of course, if they were alive, which was another matter altogether.

They could not fly there even in person, and a ground approach would take months they didn't have. The best Xy'tharr could offer was a promise: those stationed there would search for Reidar's family and try to at least establish communications.

So, Reidar waited.

For a week, he did nothing. He spent the days in his quarters, staring at the wall.

He didn't leave his room at the Spriggan base. He didn't go hunting. He didn't summon his army to grind for levels, and he didn't check his C.L.A.S.P. progress.

The drive that had pushed him to slaughter thousands of monsters had evaporated, replaced by paralyzing dread. Every time he saw someone from the Aegis Phalanx, his heart almost jumped out of his ribcage—he was terrified they'd come to tell him his family was dead.

He just sat there. Matthias came by every day to check on him, looking worried, but he mostly just checked if Reidar was eating. Lena and Jake visited too, usually right after they came back from patrols, smelling like smoke and monster blood. They tried to get him to talk or to help with the strategy for Creamont, but Reidar ignored them.

He couldn't focus on strategy or survival points. He couldn't come up with plans to fight against the Church. The silence from the Northwest was hitting him too much; it was a pressure building behind his eyes, in his legs, arms, and chest. He felt useless. He was the strongest human in the world, and he could do nothing but sit on a hoard of power that meant absolutely nothing.

Then a knock cracked against the doorframe. It was as sudden as a whip strike in a silent cathedral. Reidar flinched because the sudden noise sent a jolt of adrenaline through his veins that left his hands shaking, but he said nothing, terrified of what waited on the other side.

The door creaked open slowly. Lena stood there, her frame filling the doorway. She didn't step inside immediately. She was hesitating, her eyes scanning him, taking in his posture and the empty room. She chose her words with visible care, her voice softer than usual.

She looked like she was approaching a trap that might trigger at any moment.

"Reidar?" she started, pausing again. "Xy'tharr… he wants to see you. Upstairs."

The dread tightened its grip. He followed her out, feeling like he was on a march toward his death.

When they reached the last floor, Xy'tharr Kench was waiting in front of a window.

"Do you have news?"

"Yes," Xy'tharr said.

He held out a small, smooth comms device. "They are on the other side of the line."

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