Void Realm creatures were flooding in everywhere across the globe. The Atlas Federation was no exception.

Across Federation territory, nearly thirty dimensional rifts had appeared.

Some of those rifts were still "quiet," with nothing coming out... yet.

But others had already started spilling Void Realm creatures nonstop, one after another.

They showed up in all kinds of places—the snow-choked summits of the Whitecap Peaks, deep in the Skywall Range, in the heart of the Blackpine Wilds, and across the central Ironspine Range.

Atlas City compound...

Maxwell and the others watched the footage being relayed from the Satellite Operations Control Center, and every new angle made his gut sink further.

"So many..." Gabriel swallowed hard, throat bobbing. "Can we really... hold?"

Maxwell’s expression was grave, the lines around his eyes carved deeper by the second.

"Send the order to every compound," he said. "If Void Realm creatures reach the walls, and they aren’t openly slaughtering the city—don’t strike first. Don’t be impulsive. If you can endure it, endure it."

Charles frowned. "That... doesn’t that make us look pathetic?"

"Pathetic?" Maxwell snapped, eyes sharp. "Only the living get to be ’pathetic.’ If you’re dead, you don’t get anything."

The room went quiet.

The others answered in low voices, resentment and helplessness mixing in their eyes. "Understood."

Someone couldn’t hold it in any longer. "What if they start slaughtering people? What if they raid, rape, and take whatever they want?"

"Then we fight," Maxwell said, voice like iron. "The Atlas Federation has never been afraid of war. But we don’t waste lives for pride."

His gaze didn’t waver.

"If they cross that line, then every compound fights to the death."

"Yes!"

"And right now," Maxwell continued, tone heavy, "every compound is sitting in the eye of the storm. There’s no support coming. Everyone has to survive on their own."

Months of brutal work had paid off. Every compound’s strength had surged.

After the mergers, each major compound now had millions of core fighters at Tier 16 and above.

That was the baseline.

Because most zombies had already reached Tier 16 or higher, anyone below Tier 16 didn’t even qualify to go out on sweeps. Tier 16+ was what they called the core combat force.

But the compounds hadn’t only built numbers.

Almost without even discussing it, they’d all made the same choice: pour resources into cultivating top-end power.

Everyone understood the truth—when you faced a truly high-Tier enemy, raw headcount didn’t mean much. If you wanted to survive, you needed apex fighters.

So each compound had its own elite team. Awakened were prioritized first. If someone wasn’t Awakened, then they’d better have terrifyingly strong skills to make up for it.

At the leadership level, crystal cores recovered from hunts were routinely sent to synthesis, then fed to that elite group first.

And not long ago, under Maxwell’s push, the compounds had also traded a large amount of supplies with Fallen Star City in exchange for a batch of Tier 22 crystal cores.

Which meant the top combat strength in each compound—at least on paper—shouldn’t be weaker than Tier 22.

The only problem?

No one had any idea where Tier 22 even sat inside the Void Realm’s food chain.

Maxwell worried about it constantly, but there was nothing he could do. Right now, Atlas City was barely holding itself together.

Then something occurred to him.

Maxwell turned to the middle-aged man beside him. "Right—did you share the feeds with Ethan’s side?"

"Already shared."

"Good." Maxwell’s voice dropped, controlled but tight. "Keep Fallen Star City patched into our live feed. Every movement, every rift, every Void Realm creature we can track—I want them seeing it in real time."

He paused, then spoke even lower, as if saying it aloud might make it happen.

"If we fall, they keep the Federation alive."

"Understood."

Fallen Star City, at the same time...

Ethan and the others watched the feed on the phone, faces tight and grim.

It was worse than they’d expected.

In just one morning, the number of Void Realm creatures confirmed inside Atlas Federation territory had already become impossible to count.

There were humanoids, mutant beasts, and things that looked almost human—until you stared too long and realized they weren’t.

And the worst part was how quickly it turned into a spread. Those creatures weren’t staying near the rifts. They were already leaving the passage entrances and fanning out in every direction.

Every major compound was about to face the hardest test yet.

But Ethan didn’t have the mental bandwidth to worry about everyone else right now.

Because the rift he feared most—the one near Riverton City—was also pouring creatures out in waves.

The first to appear were the Stoneborn Ethan’s group had encountered before.

They were probably here for Rocky and the others. The moment the dimensional rift stabilized, they came through—and not in a scouting party.

A swarm.

Just eyeballing it, there had to be tens of thousands.

Deep in Riverton City’s mountain wilderness, beneath the massive rift hanging in midair, a crowd of Stoneborn elites stood there, heads turning as they took in the strange landscape.

"Brennor and the others should’ve entered this world," the Stoneborn man at the front said, voice rough like stone grinding.

"Most likely," a follower said, lowering his head.

The leader nodded, then closed his eyes and activated a Stoneborn secret art, reaching out to summon Brennor and his companions.

The technique went out.

And came back empty.

Minutes later, the leader opened his eyes, brow furrowed hard.

"Not here?" he muttered. "Or... dead?"

"They came through this passage last time," someone said quickly. "They can’t just be gone. Something must’ve happened."

"If someone can kill Brennor’s group..." The leader’s gaze sharpened. "Then this world isn’t simple either."

He turned without hesitation. "Move. We scout the area first."

"Yes!"

The Stoneborn force started marching off in one direction, a heavy, steady flow of bodies disappearing into the forested terrain.

Half an hour after they left, the rift rippled again.

Another large group crawled out.

This time it was a species Ethan recognized immediately—the Bloodfang Orcs. The same kind of ugly humanoids Ethan had killed before, the ones so hideous you almost didn’t want to look straight at them.

Human-shaped, but wrong in all the ways that mattered.

They slipped out, immediately ducked into cover, and hid like thieves. After confirming there was no one nearby, they moved fast and vanished into the wild.

After that, the rift kept producing more.

Different kinds. Different shapes. Different vibes.

Almost every short while, another group would squeeze through, pause to orient themselves, then scatter.

Ethan’s group saw it all.

They’d installed a web of micro-cameras in the area, enough to capture the whole region clearly.

Just from this single rift, hundreds of thousands of Void Realm creatures had already come through.

Ethan didn’t even want to imagine what the final number would look like once the other rifts fully stabilized, too.

And because it was just phone footage, he couldn’t accurately judge their strength.

But the quantity alone was giving him a headache.

These Void Realm creatures were wildly curious about the new world. They didn’t linger long after stepping through—most of them simply drifted outward, exploring in all directions.

And among them... several groups were heading toward Fallen Star City.

Not with clear intent, not with a marching formation. More like tourists who’d stumbled into a brand-new continent—moving while looking around, speed unhurried.

While Ethan and the others were focused on the Riverton City feed, Clearford City was the first to clash head-on with Void Realm creatures.

Clearford City had a Void Realm passage nearby—one Ethan’s group had entered before. The world beyond that rift was filled with Outland Beasts, and somewhere deep inside it lived an unimaginably terrifying apex beast.

That passage wasn’t far from Clearford City compound.

Once the rift stabilized, countless Outland Beasts began pouring out. Some of the flying beasts quickly spotted Clearford City compound and headed straight for it.

When the landbound beasts saw the flyers moving in that direction, they followed as well.

Before long, a massive beast tide was bearing down on Clearford City compound.

At that moment, General Cross, Rowan, and the others stood on Clearford City’s wall, watching the dense mass of beasts in the distance. There was no fear on their faces.

Clearford City was no longer the same city it had been a year ago.

Back then, a few hundred Titan Apes from that Void Realm had nearly been enough to destroy them. But now, the Outland Beasts from that same realm no longer posed a true threat. Their numbers looked intimidating, but that was all.

Even so, General Cross and the others didn’t let their guard down.

They still remembered what Ethan had told them.

Deep within that Void Realm, there was an unbelievably terrifying apex beast.

What they feared most... was that it had come through too.