Chapter 179: The Portal Crisis
waaaah. waaaah. waaaah.
Everyone turned.
Maeve was on her feet, her face so pale that her freckles stood out like dark stars on blank skin. Her fingers were frozen on the tablet screen, which was flashing solid red and showing a waveform so large it spilled off the edges.
"Holden." Her voice was small, too small for Maeve. She never sounded like that. "Come here. Now."
He was already moving, crossing the room in three strides and looking at the screen.
The radar showed the Abyssal Portal, that massive, swirling black hole on the horizon that had been pulsing steadily since it opened.
But the pulse had changed. It wasn’t expanding and contracting anymore. It was growing, steadily and uniformly, like a balloon being inflated from the inside. The energy readings on the edge of the portal were climbing, and the numbers on Maeve’s screen were spinning upward so fast they blurred.
"What am I looking at?"
"The portal is stabilizing." Maeve’s voice was shaking. "It’s not just spitting out random monsters anymore. It’s preparing for something big. The energy signature is concentrating at the center of the opening. I’ve been running models for the last ten minutes, and every model converges on the same result."
She looked at him, her eyes wide behind her glasses.
"In approximately one hour, a Rank 4 entity is going to step through that portal."
The room went silent.
Rank 4. The tier of Emperors, the tier of Vespera. A Rank 4 monster walking through that portal would not be stopped by cannons. It would not be stopped by anything in this Outpost.
"If that thing crosses over," Maeve said, "the Outpost is gone. Everyone here. Gone."
The door to the bunker slammed open.
Captain Venus stood in the doorway, looking worse than before, which was saying something. His uniform was torn and fresh blood ran from a cut above his ear.
"We have to evacuate everyone. Right now. I’m ordering all personnel to abandon the Outpost and retreat to the secondary line at Trinmark Pass."
Nobody moved.
"Did you hear me? We evacuate. NOW. That portal is about to birth a Rank 4, and I will not feed my soldiers to it."
"Captain." Holden’s voice was calm and flat, completely unbothered. "Your soldiers can’t outrun a Rank 4 beast in the mud."
Venus turned on him. "Then what do you suggest? We stay and die?"
"No. We shut the door."
Venus stared. "Shut the door. The portal. You want to shut the portal."
"It has an anchor. Every stable rift does. A core that keeps it open. Destroy the anchor, the portal collapses. No more monsters. No Rank 4."
"The anchor is INSIDE the portal. In the Abyssal Realm. You’re talking about going into the enemy’s territory."
"Yes."
"That’s suicide."
"It’s tactical suicide," Emric said from behind him. "There’s a meaningful distinction."
Venus looked at Emric. Then at Renna, who was crackling with electricity and looking far too excited. Then at Lyra, who stood with her spear, calm and steady. Then at Holden, wearing black armor he had never seen before, standing with the quiet certainty of someone who had already made the decision.
"You’re actually going to do this."
"Captain. Hold the walls. Keep the swarm off our backs for as long as you can. If we’re not back in one hour, evacuate."
Venus’s jaw worked. His fists clenched. His eyes darted between the team, the radar, the door, the radar again.
"Sixty minutes. Not a second more."
"That’s all we need."
Venus stepped aside.
Team Soup made their moved.
Emric strapped his shield to his arm and tightened every buckle. Renna checked her bowstring, counted her arrows, and strapped a spare quiver to her hip. Lyra leveled her spear, frost creeping along the shaft in a thin, controlled layer.
Holden summoned his Solar-Forged Sword. The blade appeared in his hand, and the Phantom-Weave Armor tightened around his body, settling into combat configuration.
They walked out of the bunker into the rain.
The compound was chaos. Soldiers were running everywhere. The evacuation order had spread, and panic was eating through discipline like acid. Cannons still fired from the walls, but the rhythm was ragged and desperate.
Team Soup didn’t stop. They crossed the compound, climbed the eastern wall, and dropped over the other side into the mud.
The battlefield stretched in front of them, black mud beneath a black sky, with the portal pulsing on the horizon like a dark, infected heart. Between them and the portal, the swarm waited. Thousands of monsters filled the space, Rank 1 fodder in the front and Rank 2 brutes behind them, forming a living wall of corrupted flesh between Team Soup and the black hole.
"Holden." Maeve said through the earpiece, her voice barely above a whisper. "The portal energy is at sixty percent concentration. You have forty-seven minutes."
"Copy."
He looked at his team.
"Emric. Front. Bash a path. Don’t stop moving."
"Understood." Emric raised his shield.
"Renna. Cover. Anything that flies, dies."
"Born for it." She nocked three arrows.
"Lyra. Freeze the mud under our feet. I need traction, not a slip and slide."
"Done." She pressed her palm to the ground, and frost spread outward in a thick sheet, turning the mud to solid ice.
Holden raised his sword.
"Move."
They ran.
Emric hit the front line of the swarm like a battering ram. His shield, powered by Rank 2, 2-Star strength, caught the first wave of monsters and threw them sideways.
BOOM.
Renna fired without slowing. Three arrows sang through the air, each one finding a winged target.
thwack. thwack. thwack.
Three bodies dropped from the sky and crashed into the mud behind them.
Lyra ran behind Emric, her hands touching the ground as she moved. Ice spread in a path ahead of them, freezing the mud solid so their boots didn’t slip. Monsters that lunged from the sides met a wall of frost that slowed them just enough for the team to pass.
Holden ran at the front, cutting down anything that got past Emric’s shield.
The portal grew larger with every step. The black swirl of Abyssal energy filled the horizon until it was all they could see.
They reached the edge.
The portal was even bigger up close, a perfect circle of swirling darkness two hundred meters across, punched through the earth like a wound. The edges crackled with dark energy. The air around it was cold and wrong, carrying a smell that was the opposite of anything natural.
"Holden." Maeve’s voice was thin, static eating the signal. "Thirty-one minutes. The energy concentration is at seventy-five percent and accelerating. You need to move."
Holden looked at the portal. The swirling black surface reflected nothing. It was pure absence, a hole in reality.
He looked at his team.
Nobody hesitated. Emric gripped his shield. Renna drew her bow. Lyra’s eyes glowed bright blue in the dark.
"Let’s go."
Holden turned toward the portal and ran straight into the dark.
His body crossed the threshold. The world vanished, light and sound and color and gravity disappearing for a second before the darkness swallowed him whole.
Emric, Renna, and Lyra followed.
The portal hummed behind them, the sound swallowed by the void.
On the wall, Captain Venus watched four figures disappear into the black hole.
He stood there for a long time, staring at the spot where they had vanished.
Then he turned to his cannon crews.
"Hold the line."