Reincarnation Of The Strongest Spirit Master-Chapter 1440: A Disaster!!!

William’s worst fears solidified in his gut the moment he heard her tone. It was a tone of dismissal, of casual confidence. It was painfully obvious that she and the other high-ranking commanders had taken these creatures lightly, operating under the dangerous assumption that they were confined and rendered harmless.

"Don’t tell me you withdrew masters from the containment zones where those monsters are active!" William snapped. He gave Lara a look so stern and heavy with spiritual pressure that she visibly trembled.

Lara had known William long enough to understand his temperament. He wasn’t a man given to hyperbole or practical jokes. If he came to her asking about a specific threat with this level of intensity, she had to assume that the deadliest of dangers was currently gestating in those forgotten zones.

Her silence was her confession. Just as he had guessed, the high command had siphoned off nearly half of the masters initially assigned to the containment perimeters.

"Show me the map," he commanded, moving toward the centre of the tent. "I don’t need excuses. I need to know which areas are currently the least defended."

He stood before a large, round tactical table. Following Lara’s quick orders, her subordinates scrambled to clear the current logistical charts, replacing them with updated topographical maps of the surrounding territories. The ink was barely dry on some of the latest reports.

"Here, here, and here," Lara said, her finger tracing three distinct spots on the map. She let out a weary sigh. "As for the other containment sectors, we moved close to half of the assigned masters to help stabilise the city’s defences and reinforce the primary frontline battles. But as for these three specific zones... we moved almost seventy percent of the personnel from there."

Before she could finish her sentence or offer a justification, William was gone. He sprung into motion at once, dashing toward the tent’s exit with his fastest speed. He was a blur of bronze and determination, heading straight for the portal hub.

"Wait! William, listen to me!" Lara shouted after him. "Those areas are cold! The mutation spikes have flatlined, and those monsters have been stagnant for weeks. They are likely long dead from the internal instability of their own forms!"

She tried to reach out, to stop him, but she failed to even catch his shadow. She turned to Becky, and the two women shared a long, synchronised sigh of frustration.

"You know him better than I do at this point," Becky said, her voice tinged with a mix of hopelessness and begrudging admiration. "I don’t know why he is so fixated on these mutated freaks when there is a much bigger threat lurking in the shadows of the main army. But I’ll try to convey your words to him. Hopefully, he’ll listen to reason once we get there."

She gave a quick wave of her hand before sprinting after William. Behind her, the three dark masters followed suit without needing a single word of instruction. Their loyalty was as silent as it was absolute.

William had already reached the portal plaza. He didn’t hesitate, heading directly toward the gate that linked the city’s heart to the most endangered of the three containment zones.

"Just wait for me, would you?!" Becky screamed as she rounded the corner of the plaza.

But before she could reach the shimmering veil of the portal, a sudden, thunderous torrent of eighty monsters—the pack William had been leading—surged past her in a flurry of scales and claws. They moved with a terrifying, singular purpose, passing through the portal alongside William in a flash of light.

Becky was left standing in the wake of the dust, clutching her side as she struggled to catch her breath.

"He is so damn rash!" Becky cursed under her breath. She didn’t stay behind for long, taking a deep breath and plunging through the portal herself.

As the world twisted and reformed around her, she shouted into the empty air of the new destination: "You have to give me a proper reason for all this hectic chasing! Why the hell didn’t you just wait for five seconds?!"

Just before the first syllable of her complaint could leave her lips, the ground beneath Becky’s boots buckled and shook with a violent, rhythmic intensity. She didn’t hesitate; she instantly expanded her spirit sense in a wide radius, and the mental image that flooded her mind made her very soul freeze in place.

The portal she had just emerged from was situated in the centre of a bustling, decent-sized town. While it lacked the grand, reinforced scale of Lara’s central city, it was a prosperous hub compared to the common settlements of this world. Or, it had been.

Aside from the immediate vicinity of the portal plaza and the crumbling, low-level walls that offered a pathetic semblance of defence, the entire town—and the horizon beyond—was being swallowed by an endless, roiling stream of monsters.

These weren’t the standard, disorganised beasts of the forest. They were the legendary, terrifying Scarlet Bears. Thousands of them.

Their fur was the colour of dried blood, and their eyes glowed with a feral, collective madness. And if that sight wasn’t enough to shatter the morale of a seasoned general, this apocalyptic army was being led by a significant vanguard of mutated monsters—the very creatures Lara had claimed were "stagnant" and "dead."

No matter how many masters had been left behind to garrison this town, and no matter which auxiliary army was stationed here, they stood no chance.

No one on this continent possessed the power to halt such a concentrated menace—no one, except for the person who had sensed the disaster before it even began and rushed across the portal network to meet it.

"William! What the heck is going on?!!" Becky screamed.

She spotted him instantly. He was already at the forefront, positioned at a breach in the outer wall as if he had been stationed there since the very first horn sounded. He was a whirlwind of bronze-gold light, his blades humming with a lethal frequency.