Ruthless Invaders?

The landslides and avalanches continued, though they had lost much of their earlier intensity and no longer posed a threat to Tier-3 fighters and above.

Of the nearly thousand Alpha Chosen that had attacked the Raid Party, about a hundred had perished in the battle. On their side, many Raid Party members were injured—some critically, others lightly—but miraculously, none had died. 

This was largely thanks to Olivia, who had been vigilant in sending the injured to Akor, who maintained the║Aqua Shell║, a protective barrier around the weaker and injured members. Inside, Andrea worked tirelessly, healing the wounded and sending them back into the fight.

Alongside them, Halbor and a few other Rock Magmoids worked diligently, using their abilities to set up the Space Platform within the safety of Akor's barrier. Occasionally, a few enemies breached the perimeter and reached the Aqua Shell, but Akor had dealt with them without even stepping outside.

Olivia had been the cornerstone of their defence, balancing the battle by both protecting their own and ensuring a steady offense. While Sergei and Brandon led the charge with full force, Olivia carefully orchestrated their efforts, no longer burdened by concerns over Yinad—Dante and the other three had that under control. This allowed her, along with the stronger members of the Raid Party, to focus solely on the local Alpha Chosen army.

But as the battle dragged on, Olivia began to notice something odd, something that shifted her entire perspective of the battle. The attackers were relentless, fighting with the desperation of those defending their lives. She accessed the memories of several injured enemies through her telepathic abilities, and what she found shocked her. 

Their Raid Party had been painted as ruthless invaders who would massacre entire Trial Regions and their inhabitants. Yinad, their leader, had convinced them they were fighting for survival, believing the Raid Party to be ruthless killers.

Realizing this, Olivia understood that their attackers were not mindless enemies but people defending their homes based on misinformation. She quickly tried to send telepathic messages to the assailants, assuring them that her team wasn't there to kill them but only to clear the Obelisk in their Trial Region.

Most of the enemies didn't believe her, convinced it was a ploy to lower their guard. The rest hesitated but continued to fight, unsure if they could trust her words. Olivia sighed in frustration, knowing that convincing them would take more than just words in the heat of battle. 

She was just about to relay her findings to the Raid Party members through their mind link when her gaze snapped upward. In an instant, the sky darkened, and arrow-shaped meteors descended from the heavens like vengeful spears. They crashed into the earth with deafening force, their impact triggering a devastating magnitude 7 earthquake. 

The ground groaned and buckled beneath her feet, sending violent tremors through the landscape. Fresh avalanches roared down the mountainsides, tearing through rock and snow, while landslides surged with lethal speed, engulfing everything in their path, forcing everyone—friend and foe alike—to react to the deadly wave of destruction.

Meanwhile, far from them, Min-soo acted quickly the moment his Spirit Energy regenerated. In an instant, he teleported to Dante's side, grabbed him and whisked him away just in time to avoid the cascading avalanches that followed the devastation—the destruction resembling nothing less than a meteor shower. The mountain range had become a death trap, collapsing under the force of repeated impacts.

Dante, however, was in no state to move. His legs were severed below the knees, and his body was riddled with deep, self-inflicted dagger wounds. Large chunks of his flesh were missing, the result of his Fate being linked to Yinad through║FATE SHOWDOWN║. Every injury that Yinad had sustained had been mirrored on Dante. If Dante had not ended the skill when he did, the damage would have been far worse, perhaps even fatal.

Min-soo's heart sank at the sight of Dante's condition. A tear escaped his eye as the full weight of Dante's sacrifice dawned on him. This wasn't the first time Dante had put himself in harm's way to protect them all. 

Min-soo remembered how Dante had enraged the Plasma Predator, buying time for Jay and ensuring the survival of everyone in their Trial Region on Day 10. Now, Min-soo understood his own "miraculous" recovery—it was Dante who had absorbed his injury, sacrificing himself to save him.

Yet even as Min-soo held Dante, he could see something miraculous happening again. Dante's body began regenerating at an abnormal pace. Flesh reknit itself, severed limbs regrew, and within seconds, Dante was whole once more. 

Min-soo recognized the familiar healing. It was exactly what had happened on Day 10 when Jay had saved Dante by sharing his own health. There was no mistaking it—Jay had somehow saved Dante, even though they were thousands of kilometers apart.

Dante and Min-soo were both now 15 kilometers from the main impact zone, a distance that felt almost insignificant given the sheer scale of destruction. Kensei and Henry had been caught in the avalanche but managed to free themselves, shaken yet alive. Dante, however, remained focused on the area where the meteoric arrows had struck. His gaze was fixed, his senses alert—he could still feel Yinad's Fate Halo, buried deep beneath the snow and wreckage.

It seemed impossible to Dante. The devastation from the arrows had surpassed his expectations entirely. Each arrow, massive as a small skyscraper, had fallen from a staggering height of 200 kilometers.

The force of their descent, combined with the Aero-Dynamic Shield and Gyroscopic Stability buffs, had allowed them to hit the ground with the power that borderlined Tier-6 attack power. The kinetic energy unleashed by each arrow was comparable to the detonation of 76.5 tons of TNT, each impact like a small tactical nuclear explosion.

The destruction had been catastrophic. The arrows vaporized snow and shattered rock, leaving craters hundreds of meters wide. Avalanches cascaded down the mountains, and massive shockwaves rippled outward, destabilizing the entire area. 

Even the ongoing battle with the army of local Alpha Chosen was interrupted. Fighters on both sides were forced to halt their clash, momentarily stunned by the sheer magnitude of the destruction. The massive shift in the landscape had thrown the battlefield into chaos, as the terrain they fought on was no longer recognizable.

The mountain range itself had been reshaped—entire peaks had collapsed, while others had been reduced to rubble. The shockwaves from the impacts could be felt for miles, triggering landslides and avalanches across a vast area, affecting as far as 50 kilometers away.

Yet, against all odds, Yinad had survived. He had taken all fifty arrows head-on, each one more destructive than the last, and remained alive—wounded, but alive. Dante struggled to comprehend how anyone could endure such devastation. The combined energy release from the arrows—equivalent to 3.8 kilotons of TNT—was akin to a small nuclear event. It had reshaped the landscape and left a path of utter destruction, but somehow Yinad had withstood it.

Even Dante, who had seen unimaginable power before, couldn't fathom how Yinad had survived an assault that rivaled the force of a tactical nuke. Not even the Plasma Predator might have survived such an onslaught. Yet there, buried under the avalanche of snow and debris, Yinad's Fate Halo still flickered, proof that the battle was far from over.

What baffled Dante most was that Yinad's Fate Halo wasn't purple, meaning he wouldn't die in the next 10 minutes. Yet, despite that, Yinad's Fate Sequence showed minimal movement, leading Dante to speculate that Yinad was gravely injured and trapped deep within the hundreds-of-meters-wide crater. 

He wanted to strike while Yinad was vulnerable, eager to finish him off before he could recover. But just as Dante prepared to move, MJ's voice came through the wristband Prototype on his arm: "Don't go by yourself. The Space Platform is being set up as we speak. In six more minutes, it'll be complete. Master will arrive with reinforcements."

Dante hesitated, knowing MJ was right. Instead of charging forward, he waited. Soon, Henry and Kensei arrived at his side, along with Min-soo, and the four of them made their way back to rejoin the Raid Team.

≿━━━━━━༺❀༻━━━━━━≾

Author Note: 

Exclusive artwork for every free chapter is now available on my PATRE0N page! You can find the link in my Discord server.

I'm thrilled to share that I'm taking a big leap forward! Alongside Earth's Alpha Prime, I've launched the first sub-book for EAP.

ALTER REALITY: Online

≿━━━━━━༺❀༻━━━━━━≾

The first ten to comment for new chapter releases will get '1 ADVANCED CHAPTER' for free on Earth Alpha Prime's Discord server.

In the discord server, I opened a private channel for those Top 10 candidates, where I posted the respective Advanced Chapter.

 ╭── ⋅ ⋅ ── ✩ ── ⋅ ⋅ ──╮

Discord Link for 'Earth's Alpha Prime' :

https://discord.gg/maQC7xDBYZ

 ╰── ⋅ ⋅ ── ✩ ── ⋅ ⋅ ──╯