Chapter 183: Muddy Heroes
Dozens of footsteps pounded through the mud as soldiers ran toward them, splashing through puddles and shouting things that were barely words. Captain Venus was at the front, his face caught somewhere between disbelief and desperate hope.
He reached the pile of bodies in the mud and stopped.
"Voss?"
Holden opened one eye. There was mud in it. He blinked.
"Hey, Captain."
Venus looked at the crater where the portal had been, then at the muddy pile of academy students, then back at the crater.
"Where’s the portal?"
"Gone."
"Gone how?"
"I broke the thing that was holding it open. Then the dimension collapsed."
Venus stood there with his mouth opening and closing, looking like a man who had been holding his breath for days and had just been told he could finally breathe again.
He turned to the soldiers behind him. They stood in a loose group, covered in mud and blood, wearing the blank expressions of people who had been fighting nonstop for seventy-two hours.
"The portal is closed," Venus said.
His voice cracked on the last word.
Nobody moved.
"The portal is CLOSED!" he shouted, louder this time, his voice cutting through the exhaustion.
The sound that erupted from the soldiers wasn’t a cheer.
Not at first.
It was a roar.
One soldier near the back threw his helmet into the mud and screamed. Another joined him. Then ten more. Then fifty.
Within seconds, the entire wall was roaring.
The noise eventually became a chant, with no rhythm or coordination.
"TEAM SOUP! TEAM SOUP! TEAM SOUP! TEAM SOUP!"
Holden felt hands grab him and pull him out from the pile. Two soldiers lifted him from the mud and hoisted him onto their shoulders like he weighed nothing. To them, he probably didn’t.
The chant grew louder.
Emric was lifted next. He dangled over the soldiers’ heads like a confused flag, his arms hanging limp, his face covered in mud and one hand still desperately clutching his shield.
"I believe this is a celebration," he said to nobody in particular. "The social protocol suggests I should wave."
"WAVE THEN!" someone shouted.
Emric waved.
It was possibly the most awkward wave in the history of human celebration.
The soldiers loved it.
The chanting doubled in volume.
Renna had already been pulled to her feet and was being passed around the crowd like a trophy. She didn’t seem to mind. Every time a new pair of hands grabbed her, she shouted something different.
"WE KILLED A RANK 3 INSIDE THE PORTAL! I SHOT SEVEN ARROWS INTO SEVEN EYEBALLS! SEVEN!"
Lyra stood to the side.
Nobody lifted her. She had quietly gotten to her feet, retrieved her spear from the mud, and stepped back from the crowd. She watched the celebration with the composed, regal bearing of someone who had grown up attending noble galas and knew how to observe a crowd without becoming part of it.
But she was smiling.
The kind that reached her eyes.
Captain Venus eventually made his way through the crowd to Holden, who was still being held aloft by cheering soldiers. He looked up at him, his eyes wet despite the rain.
"Voss. You saved this Outpost. You saved every man and woman in this compound."
Holden looked down at him from his muddy perch. Mud dripped from his hair onto the captain’s face.
Venus didn’t even seem to notice.
"I mostly just hit things with a sword."
"Then hit things with a sword more often."
Venus raised his hand and gave him a sharp military salute.
"On behalf of the Demon Mouth and every soldier under my command, thank you."
Holden returned the salute.
"You’re welcome, Captain. Now can someone please put me down? I need a shower and about fourteen hours of sleep."
The soldiers lowered him.
The celebration continued around him.
Soldiers hugged one another. Some cried. A group of cannon crew members started singing something crude and painfully off-key that Holden didn’t recognize but somehow enjoyed anyway. Medics moved through the crowd, pulling wounded soldiers toward the medical tent, and even they were smiling.
Holden slipped away while everyone was focused on Emric, who was being convinced to give a speech and failing spectacularly.
"My combat ability improved by about forty percent because of the cognitive buff... I mean, I had good equipment and prepared properly, so... yeah. That’s basically it."
Nobody cared about the statistics but they cheered anyway.
Holden reached the officer barracks and found a small private room waiting for him.
He stripped off the torn Phantom-Weave Armor. The suit had held up remarkably well considering what it had been through, but the back panel had been shredded by the closing edge of the portal. It would need to be repaired or replaced.
He stepped into the shower.
The water was lukewarm and smelled vaguely of rust, but it was still the best shower of his life.
He stood inder the stream for ten minutes, watching mud, ash, and abyssal ichor swirl down the drain in brown and black spirals.
When he was finally clean, he dried himself, dressed in a spare set of military clothes, and locked the door.
Then he reached into his System Inventory and pulled out the Platinum Chest.
He had grabbed it during the dimensional collapse.
Right after killing the General. Before the gravity spike.
In the chaos of the breaking anchor and his teammates screaming, his hands had moved on instinct, snatching the glowing chest from the air and stuffing it into his Inventory in the same motion he used to dismiss his sword.
The Platinum Chest sat on his bed, glowing with the same pure, white-silver light. The seal on the front was identical to the two-layer mechanism on the other Platinum Chests.
Holden pressed his thumb against it.
shhhhk. click.
The chest opened.
The light that poured out was different from the previous Platinum Chests. Instead of white-silver, it was a deep, warm gold.
The warmth touched his skin, not hot but comfortable, like stepping into a sunbeam on a cold day.
Inside the chest, resting on a bed of compressed starlight, was a vial.
[Item Acquired: Rank 3 Star Core Elixir]
[Type: Permanent Consumable]
[Rank: 3]
[Effect: Permanently mutates the host’s energy core. Doubles natural stamina recovery rate. Eliminates fatigue buildup during sustained combat. Allows continuous use of Ultimate and Perfect tier skills without energy exhaustion.]
[Description: A distilled essence of concentrated star energy, refined through the Abyssal Crucible. The elixir bonds with the host’s cultivation core on a molecular level, enhancing the body’s ability to generate and recover energy. Effects are permanent and irreversible.]
Holden held the vial up to the light.
The liquid inside was pale gold, shimmering with tiny points of light that moved like stars trapped inside a bottle.
"Doubles stamina recovery. No fatigue during sustained combat."
He thought about that.
Every fight since awakening the System had been limited by one thing.
His energy.
Hellfire Cleave was devastating, but it drained him. Ultimate Gale-Step was incredibly fast, but it came with a cost. He couldn’t simply spam his strongest techniques because his energy pool had a limit, and that limit was lower than he wanted.
This elixir changed that.
It didn’t increase his energy capacity. Instead, it doubled the rate at which he recovered.
He could fight longer, hit harder, and use his strongest techniques more often. In a prolonged battle, that could be the difference between winning and collapsing.
Holden pulled the stopper.
He closed his eyes, tilted his head back, and drank.
It didn’t have a real taste. It was more of a sensation, a warmth that began in his mouth and traveled down his throat before spreading through his chest like a slow, gentle fire.
The warmth settled into his energy core and began to work.
Holden felt the change almost immediately, though it wasn’t dramatic or painful. It was subtle. His energy core shifted and reorganized. The pathways that fed his stamina, the channels that replenished his power during combat, widened and smoothed.
The friction that naturally built up during prolonged energy use began to disappear. The resistance that created fatigue dissolved.
A soft, golden light glowed from his chest.
Then it faded.
The warmth settled into his body and became part of him.
Permanent and irreversible.
[Rank 3 Star Core Elixir Consumed!]
[Stamina Recovery Rate: Doubled]
[Fatigue Resistance: Significantly Increased]
[Continuous Skill Usage: Enabled]
Holden opened his eyes.
The room looked exactly the same, but he could feel the difference inside himself. There was a reservoir of steady energy where there hadn’t been one before, like a second engine humming quietly in the background and ready to feed power to his muscles and skills whenever he needed it.
He rolled his shoulders and cracked his neck.
The exhaustion from the Abyssal Realm, the dimensional collapse, and the Rank 3 breakthrough was gone.
His body had processed the fatigue and discarded it.
"That’s convenient."
He stood, pulled on his boots, and walked down the hall toward the communications bunker.
Maeve was there.
Her tablet was propped against a stack of field manuals, surrounded by empty tea cups. Three of them.
She had clearly been busy.
The screen displayed multiple data streams: military communications, academy chatter, and another feed showing Capital news and underworld network traffic that she had apparently been monitoring in the background.
She looked up when Holden entered.
Her eyes immediately scanned his face, posture, and the way he carried himself.
She could tell something had changed.
"You look better."
"I feel better."
"Did you sleep well?"
"Technically."
"For how long though?"
"Does staring at the ceiling count?"
"No."
"Then no. But I feel great."
Maeve pushed her glasses up and studied him.
She didn’t push further but her eyes remained on him for three extra seconds, cataloging the changes she couldn’t see but could somehow sense. His energy felt steadier. His breathing was easier. Even his shoulders sat lower, more relaxed.
"Okay," she said at last. "You’re good."
"I’m good."
"Good. Because we have a situation."
"What kind?"
"The good kind. For us. Not for them."
She tapped the screen.
"The Capital is buzzing. The portal closing at Demon Mouth is all over the news. Vanguard Academy is calling it a miracle. They’re already writing headlines about the academy students who went inside the portal and came back alive."
"Let me guess. They don’t know what actually happened."
"They know Team Soup went in. They know the portal closed. They’re filling in the blanks with whatever sounds heroic."
She scrolled through the reports.
"The academy is pushing for a formal commendation. Venus submitted a field report that mentions you by name twelve times."
"Twelve?"
"He was very thorough. I think he used the word ’impossible’ six times."
Holden sat down across from her.
"What about the political side? Vespera’s government holding up?"
"Holding. Barely."
Maeve’s expression became more serious.
"The Sterling situation is still unresolved."
Her voice softened.
"Holden. Lyra’s family."
"I know."
"House Sterling is still operational. Lyra’s father is in prison, but the house itself, the estates, the private army, most of its political allies, all of that infrastructure is still standing."
She paused.
"And they’re angry."
"Good. Angry people make mistakes."
Maeve studied him.
She could read his face better than anyone, and she saw the change in his expression. It wasn’t anger or cold fury.
It was quieter than that.
More patient.
"You’re going back."
"The Outpost is secure. The portal is closed. There’s nothing left to fight here."
Holden leaned back.
"It’s time to go back to the Capital."
"And House Sterling?"
Holden smiled.
It was the kind of smile that should have worried Maeve more than it did.
"Pack up your computers, Maeve. We have a train to catch."
She was already reaching for her tablet.