Clutched firmly within the bare grip of the S-ranked Monster was a living Lesser Calamity Lord.

The entity was a massive, humanoid baboon-monkey Calamity Beast, easily twice the physical size of Gideon. Its long, powerful limbs, however, were no longer whole.

Both of its massive arms and heavy legs had been brutally severed at the joints, leaving behind cauterized, smoking stumps that ensured it could not run or lash out with its five-inch-long black talons.

Its face had seen a succession of devastating impacts; the hairless, crimson-skinned visage was heavily mangled, with two of its four separate yellow iris sockets completely crushed into a wet slurry tissue. Its unhinged jaw hung loosely sideways, dripping thick, acidic violet saliva that hissed and sizzled the moment it dripped onto the black volcanic sand.

The beast still radiated a suffocating, bone-chilling pressure. Yet, despite its high-tier biological core, it was whimpering helplessly.

"See?" Maddox grinned brightly, holding the truncated, horrifying monster up before the pale faces of his frozen students. "Told you I’d bring you a Calamity Lord."

The reactions across the campfire were instantaneous, split perfectly along the lines of their individual characters.

Gideon Vance’s jaw dropped so low it looked like he could swallow a big hamburger whole. He completely froze, a piece of roasted meat slipping from his fingers to land unheeded in the sand as his breath hitched.

The lesser calamity lords about whom he had heard and read so much, lay, systematically dismantled and limbless within less than sixty seconds.

Beside him, Ryan scrambled backward, his fingers automatically reaching up to shove his thick spectacles back up his pale nose. Leaving him shivering in silent dread.

Sora Maddox merely stared at her grand-uncle, her hand tightly gripping her daggers as a mixture of familiar exasperation and deep awe crossed her features. She knew the family metrics were absurd, but this was flat-out ridiculous.

Hide, however, did not flinch or retreat. He stood perfectly still, his cold blue eyes locking onto the mangled baboon-monkey with a detached, calculating focus.

Internally, a grim realization settled into his chest. ’He’s a complete monster,’ Hide thought, his mind tracking the efficiency of James Maddox’s movement.

To track, overpower, and beat a Calamity Lord to a paste within less than a minute was a feat Hide couldn’t replicate. The sheer, unfiltered physical superiority of a true S-Rank was a terrifying.

But beneath that cold calculation, a sharp, predatory grin slowly formed on Hide’s face. He didn’t feel despair. He felt an intense, burning ambition.

One day, in the near future, he would stand at that exact same level. Actually, with the continuous growth of the Universal Adaptation System, he carried the unique potential to pass them entirely.

Sure, there were stronger Exterminators in the world than Maddox—a small, elite handful sitting at the absolute peak of global divisions—but Hide knew his system layout carried no natural ceiling. He could become the strongest entity to ever breathe.

As the thought solidified, a strange, deeply unsettling question suddenly rose in his mind.

If achieving that tier of sovereign power was entirely possible, and there were currently hundreds of active S-Rank powerhouses scattered across the planet, why haven’t they combined their assets to permanently exterminate all Calamity beasts?

At first, Hide had assumed they simply couldn’t because the task was practically impossible. The beasts continuously poured from the dimensional tears, and human science didn’t understand the underlying nature of why the gates opened.

But looking at it clearly now, the logic was flawed. The proof of that was the fact that the Joker had shown him the gates could be opened by humans too if they had some power related to it, also he had stated that it had to do something with his mother who was a gate researcher, that was no coincidence.

There was a possibility that they could stop these gates. Then why haven’t they done that?

There was a massive, overarching International Corporation of Exterminators—a joint agency established by every nation to fight global-scale crises that a single country couldn’t contain alone. Yet, that global council did nothing to address the root source of the anomalies. They simply managed the economy, ran tournaments, and be over with it. Why?

As his thoughts drifted deeper into the geopolitical shadows, a singular, forbidden name suddenly popped into his head.

Estopia.

The region did not exist on any modern map, nor was it indexed within any public or military registry. Yet, deep within the blood-slicked trenches of the gate, the Golden Calamity lord had explicitly boasted that it was one of the seven rulers of Estopia.

Hide had tried to extract information regarding that name before. He had asked Major Claire, but that line had turned into a complete dead end; she too had the same question.

She had merely overheard the designation whispered once by Commander Maddox himself. That realization made Hide glare toward the auburn-haired man across the fire. Maddox was a darned old fox.

When Hide had cornered him in his office days ago, the Commander had simply discarded the inquiry with a lazy smile, claiming he would only reveal the classified intelligence when the time was right.

"Hide! Hide! Are you alright?"

A sharp, frantic voice suddenly shattered his drifting thoughts.

Hide blinked a couple of times, his focus instantly snapping back to reality as he realized Ryan had been calling his name several times in succession. He had blacked out into his own calculations for much longer than usual.

The heavily beaten Calamity Lord had finally lost consciousness, its massive, limbless grey torso slumping heavily onto the black sand right beside the camp fireplace.

But the moment Hide’s True Sight crossed the beast’s unconscious form, his eyes instantly narrowed into dangerous slits.

Deep within the creature’s biological framework, its highly concentrated C-Rank core was completely visible. But... the core was wrapped and bound inside a blinding, intricate white net composed of highly compressed pure mana strings.

A sudden, icy creep ran violently through Hide’s entire body, his skin prickling under his jacket. The reason this Calamity Lord couldn’t utilize its abilities or open its jaws to unleash some magical roar wasn’t due to the beatings; it was because that white net was completely severing its core from utilizing mana.

’Maddox can do that too?’ Hide thought, a deep sense of familiarity striking his subconscious. This... made him feel as if he had witnessed something eerily similar, though he couldn’t fully unearth the specifics.

Forcing his expression back into a lazy mask of indifference, Hide pulled his attention away from the beast and looked toward his training mates.

Ryan had already recovered enough composure to approach the unconscious beast. Reaching up to his thick spectacles, the scholar tapped a small runic engraving on the frame. The spectacles flashed with a brief blue light, acting as a highly compact spatial storage device, and materialized a heavy research notebook and a pen directly into his hand.

Ryan began furiously cataloging the beast’s physical traits, his eyes shifting over to Hide. "Uh, Hide... Commander Maddox mentioned back there that you’ve killed a Lesser Calamity Lord before. That’s... I really mean it, that is fucking awesome. How did you do it? How did the beast look like? What kind of power did he have? What..."

Before he could speak anything further Hide stopped him. "Wait, wait... those are enough questions for once."

Hide took a slow breath, his lips twitching slightly. He had zero intention of revealing the existence of his adaptation system or his dark mana capabilities to a group of people he met not so long ago.

"First, I was not alone. I had two majors, as designated by the NEA, working with me." Hide said, it was the truth.

His voice was entirely deadpan as spoke, looking at Maddox with the corner of his eye, he tried to create a fake fight sequence based on his prior encounter with the Slaughter Doll. "It was a weird beast... a mechanical puppet to be precise. And the fucker used kinetic expansions in his own muscles. It wasn’t that deep and mainly I didn’t handle it face-to-face."

Focusing inward, Hide let out a small amount of his dark mana which no one noticed in the darkness.

Fsssshh.

Zenith materialized into the dim firelight, the four-foot-tall phantom settling onto one knee, its featureless visor pulsing with a quiet, dangerous blue luminescence. It was Hide’s way to only get out of this without explaining much.

"I never had much interaction with the beast, it was mostly fought and executed by my unique summon," Hide stated flatly, gesturing loosely toward the phantom soldier to pass off the credit. "I just provided support from the perimeter."

Ryan and Gideon both stared at Zenith, as they looked at their rings to find them unable to show information of Zenith. A unique class capable of materializing autonomous Phantom beasts explained exactly why Maddox treated the E-Rank rookie who awakened not too long ago as their equal.

GASPF!

Suddenly, the massive, truncated baboon-monkey on the sand violently jolted awake.

"Fuck!" Gideon roared, his brawler instincts flaring as he instantly lunged forward.

Sora smoothly dropped into a low stance, her twin daggers materializing back into her palms with a sharp, metallic hiss.

The C-Rank Calamity Lord thrashed its limbless torso against the volcanic sand, its remaining yellow eyes bulging with a manic, bloodshot fury. But with its core still entirely bound by Maddox’s blinding white mana net, it couldn’t manifest a single drop of dark mana.

Realizing its utter helplessness, the creature’s unhinged jaw twisted, and it began spitting a torrent of guttural curses directly at Maddox.

"Damn you! Human. Once my lord knows of this, he will pluck your head off your -"

BAM!

Maddox kicked its face slowly snapping it to the other side.

Disregarding all safety protocols, Hide calmly stepped past Gideon. He walked directly above the thrashing monster, crouching down until his silver hair was inches away from the beast’s snapping obsidian fangs.

His piercing blue eyes locked dead into the creature’s remaining yellow sockets, his voice dropping into a chilling, razor-sharp whisper that completely cut through the curses.

"Tell me," Hide demanded, his pupils narrowing into predatory slits. "What do you know about Estopia?"

The moment the word left Hide’s lips, the Calamity Lord’s frantic thrashing instantly froze. Its unhinged jaw fell wide open, and its remaining yellow eyes widened into dinner plates of pure, unadulterated terror—as if the name itself carried a curse far bigger than its immediate execution. It opened its mouth, its vocal cords straining to release a frantic response—

BAM!

Maddox’s leg slammed the beast’s head turning it into paste.