Before long, the Outland Beasts were rushing toward the compound in overwhelming numbers.

General Cross’s face turned cold.

"All units, engage!"

The Awakened forces that had been waiting for battle immediately left their positions and advanced toward the beast tide.

With three compounds merged into one, Clearford City now had a population of over ten million. More importantly, it had over three million Enhanced at Tier 16 or higher.

That was more than enough strength to face this wave head-on.

The two forces collided almost instantly.

Against Outland Beasts that didn’t even reach Tier 12 at their strongest, Clearford City’s Enhanced looked like gods descending to earth.

It wasn’t a fight.

It was a slaughter.

They’d never had a battle that felt this easy. So easy it started to warp their thinking—like maybe Void Realm creatures weren’t that big a deal after all.

"Ha! These Void Realm things are that weak? Did everyone just hype them up for nothing?"

"Seriously. I drop one skill and wipe a whole pack. And we’ve been on edge for months over this?"

"Told you. The higher-ups love doom-and-gloom. With trash like this, who cares how many come?"

"Don’t say that," someone muttered, still keeping his head. "If the leadership’s this worried, there’s a reason. Maybe we just got lucky and ran into the weaker ones first."

"Maybe the higher-ups just needed a new boogeyman to keep us scared and in line now that the zombies are running out."

Voices carried through the battlefield—low, quick, smug. The fear they’d started with was already turning into contempt.

Then—

A massive shadow appeared in the sky.

It stepped onto empty air and walked forward as if the world had stairs no one else could see.

The creature was over thirty feet long and thirty-three feet tall, its whole body a deep brown. It resembled a lion, but its head bore horns, its eyes brimmed with cold majesty—and on its forehead, a vertical third eye stared down like a judgment.

The instant it appeared, every Outland Beast on the ground threw itself flat, trembling.

A horrifying aura swept the field.

The temperature in everyone’s bones seemed to drop to ice. People shook uncontrollably, their minds going blank, resistance snuffed out before it could even form.

"T-This..." someone gasped. "What is that thing? It’s... it’s terrifying!"

In that moment, everyone finally understood what "Void Realm" really meant.

The ones who’d been sneering just seconds ago clamped their mouths shut, faces drained of color.

A monster like that... was it something humans could even fight?

Up on the wall, General Cross and the others had gone pale too. Staring at that figure in the sky, despair crawled through their chests like something alive.

So it still came out in the end...

General Cross swallowed hard.

If this beast decided to strike, Clearford City would be the first compound erased. There wouldn’t even be a struggle. They didn’t have the right to call it a battle.

He felt unwilling. Furious.

And completely helpless.

Around him, the same dead gray settled into everyone’s eyes.

They couldn’t win.

They couldn’t even run.

Just as the entire city seemed to freeze, waiting for death to fall...

The terrifying beast only glanced down, indifferent—like it was looking at ants.

Then it turned.

Still stepping through the air, it walked toward the distant horizon.

A few breaths later, it was gone from sight.

For a long time, nobody moved.

When they finally snapped out of it, they looked at each other, stunned, at a loss.

"What... what just happened?" someone whispered.

"Why didn’t it attack?"

General Cross couldn’t make sense of it either. In the end, he just shook his head.

Alive was alive.

As for why that monster hadn’t attacked... he’d ask Ethan later.

The terrifying beast was gone, but the fight didn’t restart right away.

The Enhanced stared at the remaining Outland Beasts and, for a moment, nobody wanted to move. The earlier arrogance had vanished. What filled their eyes now was caution—borderline fear.

Those Outland Beasts clearly came from the same Void Realm as that nightmare in the sky.

What if they started killing again and the beast came back?

Having a powerful backer was a kind of strength too.

And right now, everyone had been scared half to death.

The Outland Beasts didn’t dare stand up until a long time after the apex beast left. Even then, they rose carefully, looking around like prey listening for a second set of footsteps.

Only after they were sure the sky was empty did they finally ease up.

Then they glanced at the humans who were still watching them like hawks.

Fear flickered in the beasts’ eyes.

And they ran.

"Kill them," General Cross ordered from atop the wall, his voice hard.

They’d already slaughtered so many Outland Beasts, and that terrifying beast still hadn’t intervened. That meant it likely wasn’t on the same side as these creatures—or at least it didn’t care about them.

Either way, there was no chance Clearford City was letting all those crystal cores walk away.

The moment the command came down, the Enhanced surged forward, chasing the fleeing beasts.

In the end, after a running massacre, most of the Outland Beast army that had approached Clearford City was killed. Only a small portion escaped.

Clearford City’s losses were minimal—aside from the psychological shock.

And the haul was enormous: piles of crystal cores and mountains of Outland Beast corpses.

The cores weren’t high-tier, but they could be synthesized. For Clearford City, that was still a serious fortune.

Still... nobody celebrated.

That apex beast’s silhouette stayed lodged in their minds like a splinter.

No one knew if it would come back.

While Clearford City was still catching its breath, Fallen Star City finally met its own opponent.

The first group of Void Realm creatures that had walked over from Riverton City was now less than fifteen miles from the compound.

They were short—probably under five feet tall, each of them.

But every one of them was built like a block of iron.

Thick arms. Barrel chests. Legs corded with hard muscle.

You could tell at a glance: these things were strong.

Ethan watched the feed on his phone, thought for a moment, then looked at Skinny Pete.

"Skinny Pete, have your little Zombie King send some zombies over," Ethan said. "I want to see what these guys can do."

"Got it."

With Skinny Pete’s order, the nearest zombie swarm split apart. Tens of thousands peeled off and sprinted straight toward the approaching Void Realm group.

It didn’t take long for the two sides to meet.

The moment the short, muscular creatures saw the zombies, surprise flashed across their faces.

"Huh. This world actually has humans?" a dark-skinned man said, eyes narrowing.

"Look at their eyes," another one said. "They’re mutated. Those aren’t really humans anymore."

"Mutant humans were still humans once," a third said. "If this world has mutant humans, then normal humans must exist somewhere too."

"Heh. Humans are supposed to be the cleverest race, aren’t they? If we can put a few human settlements under Mightkin control, they might make useful servants."

"Then we’d better move fast. Plenty of races from Eldoria have already crossed into this continent. If we’re too slow, there won’t be much left for us."

"Right. Let’s deal with these mutated humans first. If this is all they’re capable of, then the humans of this world probably aren’t much stronger."

As they spoke, the zombie horde crashed toward them.

The Mightkin warriors sneered. Then, without hesitation, they charged straight in and started swinging.

Bang. Bang. Bang.

Dull impacts rang out in a brutal rhythm. Every zombie their fists landed on burst apart on the spot, shredded into chunks.

They were short, but the power in those bodies was obscene.

There weren’t even ten thousand of them, yet every single Mightkin carried monstrous physical strength. In the time it took to blink, they had erased tens of thousands of zombies.

"Pathetic," one of the Mightkin warriors said, shaking his head. "Too weak."