The bullet cracked from the barrel, skimmed a Monster’s limb, bit into the cracked concrete, and spat a spray of sparks like fireflies.

With a snap, the drifting embers burst, became tiny light motes, unfurled like petals, and draped the space outside the orphanage.

The Monsters blew back like leaves in wind.

A clearing opened before Night Frost.

A wall of fire held them outside the light-veil.

Seeing none dared close, Night Frost dragged a charred Monster inside, slit its thick hind leg with the orphanage’s small knife, and scraped off the burnt shell like bark.

She sliced the leg thin, set a pan to oil, splashed cooking wine, tossed in scallion, ginger, garlic, and spread the meat from center outward.

Steam rose like fog, wrapped in fat, and seared the surface in a heartbeat.

She capped the lid, turned to low flame, let it stew a few minutes, then plated it like a small altar of heat.

The other leg, bone and all, she threw over open fire.

Fat dripped into the dancing flames and hissed up meaty steam like spirits.

Night Frost didn’t fuss.

She gripped the leg-bone and tore meat in hungry bites like a winter wolf.

She’d planned to help Qianchun, but saw their Monsters thinning like fog.

So she ate, easy as embers.

The remaining beasts weren’t their match, like rabbits before hounds.

Leg bones beg for marrow; the essence was rich and bright like moonfat.

No straw here, so she split the bone and scooped it with a spoon.

Qianchun had smelled the aroma long ago, a ribbon of scent like a banner.

They’d worked all afternoon, stomachs hollow, and Night Frost’s cooking woke the starving gremlins in them.

The seasoning was simple as river stones, yet Night Frost ate with joy like summer rain.

When she was sated, she helped Chen Xiaoyin’s group, and dinner finally came early.

When the dust settled, Night Frost and the Eye Orb went to the basement and released the Magic Armor like shedding a skin.

“Whew, I’m dead tired,” she said, breath like steam. “Feels like the limit. What do you think, an hour and a half now?”

For reasons unknown, Lingchen Yao’s grip on Mana and Abyssal Aura surged like tide.

Forty minutes once strained him; now he held it an hour or two.

By rights his level should’ve fallen to First Symphony as control rose, like a fire banked.

Yet no drop showed; he only burned brighter.

It felt like his body fit this power like skin.

If the Eye Orb didn’t know he was human, male, it would’ve called him a newborn, human-shaped Black Dragon.

An accident had put the Black Dragon’s bracer in Lingchen Yao’s hands.

By chance he became a Magic Maiden, and his rise marched on like spring.

It all felt too neat, too smooth, like silk over a blade.

With finer instruments, the Eye Orb would’ve studied him like a rare comet, to see what monster he was.

The Eye Orb dipped like a lantern, pleased with the progress.

Man and orb dug deep into changes, and Lingchen Yao reaped insights like harvest.

Qianchun’s team had finished eating, like fires banked.

Lingchen Yao had nibbled, yet Qianchun still brought him a portion.

Without rest and food, no one faces hard battle, like a bow without string.

Some would ask, why not send the orphanage kids to a shelter while Monsters were thin, like moving boats at slack tide?

That might be one path, like a side road through pines.

For now, only Yunyang Orphanage sat in a hush like a shrine.

Beyond the mound of corpses, countless Monsters squatted, and bold ones crept in to steal bites.

This was only the first Monster tide, with no First Symphony and no Cantata Two.

Night Frost cut through it like wind, but the three with Qianchun labored.

They weren’t Lingchen Yao.

If holding ground was this hard, a frontal charge was folly, like ramming a cliff with a boat.

Their strength wasn’t poor; Qianchun’s training and tactics were a steady compass.

Paired with Lingchen Yao’s Arcane Firearms, they might drop a weaker Cantata Two.

Lingchen Yao still felt the gun was wasted on him, like a pearl on a straw rope.

He’d find a chance to hand it to Qianchun, like passing a torch.

Near midnight, Hao Wenqian and Chen Xiaoyin soothed the kids to sleep like nesting birds.

They bedded down in the lobby, one on watch, two to rest.

It should’ve been four on rotation, but Lingchen Yao and the Eye Orb refused to leave, and the women could only sigh like wind.

Space whispered like dry grass, and no one knew where the next tear would open.

Wolf howls scraped the sky, then drowned beneath distant clashes like thunder.

Lingchen Yao lay down, his eyes etched with dark-gold lines like runes.

Mana and Abyssal Aura ebbed like tide, and his tired body finally loosened.

He fell into clouds, wrapped in wet gauze of mist.

Warm sunlight swaddled him like blankets.

Time blurred, then the fog parted, and the world sharpened.

He opened his eyes to a bustling street, buildings unknown like foreign mountains.

Two blurred faces held his toddler hands, step by step through the stream of people.

He stared wide, greedy to pocket every sight like shells.

The roadside scenery slid by like a river.

Want tugged at him first; then he pleaded to the woman in the pale-yellow dress behind him.

“I want to look a little longer…”

They would have said yes on any other day, like sun after rain.

Not today.

The pair saw something; the man swept Lingchen Yao up, and the woman cast at his feet, wind blooming under each step.

Buildings folded like paper on both sides.

The ground sprouted spikes like thorns, chasing the man and the woman at his side.

They shed the earthen spikes by a hair, like birds skimming arrows.

The man reached for something, when an Abyssal Rift tore open.

A Black Dragon, fifty meters long, slid out like night.

He aborted and ducked into an alley with them.

The Rift was smaller than the one over the Twelfth District, yet its Abyssal Aura and even Mana felt thicker, like oil.

The tear showed a pure black.

“Don’t worry. They shouldn’t catch up,” the man said, voice tight as wire. “Shatter the vial. Mask our scent, then run to the nearest ward!”

He barely finished when Black Flame fell, a whistling cold that hit ground and burst like a sun.

Chill flipped to scalding flood, as if to melt bone.

BOOM!

The blast yanked Lingchen Yao awake, devouring the dream’s last words like surf.

The shaking was fierce; he sprang up, dressed, and ran out.

Distant aftershocks rolled here like thunderheads.

Monsters from downtown streamed to the outskirts.

Yunyang Orphanage sat near the edge and would face the second tide.

Unlike the first tide, this wave would carry First Symphony types in numbers, like sharks in the foam.

A hard fight loomed.

He checked the time.

2:04 a.m., cold as steel.

Only two hours of rest, he thought, a small ache like a stone in water.

Chen Xiaoyin was on watch.

Qianchun and Hao Wenqian jolted awake too, grips tight on stocks, fingers on triggers, eyes sharp as ice.

They eased the door, saw the ward intact, and let a breath fall.

Night Frost pointed to two fighters and a bug dueling in the sky like lightning.

She briefed them, and the quick-handed crew moved to prepare like a drill.

Just in case, Night Frost laid another ward outside, set on a Cantata Two Magic Stone like a heart.

The old ward had trembled under the horde like a tired bridge.

At this hour, there was no saving ammo.

Money returns like rain; the dead don’t, like wilted leaves.

Night Frost clipped the Monsters that slammed the light-veil like moths.

Then she watched their flow in silence, like reading a river.

Gunshots rang from afar, crisp as frost.

A four-girl squad of Magic Maidens sprinted down the street, with a mass of Monsters driven from downtown on their heels like a flood.

“Magic Maidens from downtown? Order Keepers?” Night Frost’s voice was dry as flint.

By that formation, they could only be Order Keepers, like chess pieces.

No underground group would cosplay at this hour.

“Looks like it,” someone said, words brief as a nod.

Chen Xiaoyin’s group gathered at the shots like birds.

They saw the four holding the line ahead.

Each was First Symphony, pistols in hand, ammo not empty yet but fading like dusk.

Seeing the Order Keepers harried and dodging like swallows, Chen Xiaoyin and Hao Wenqian moved to help, but Night Frost barred them like a gate.

She wouldn’t let a flare of kindness drag that pack toward the orphanage like wolves to lambs.

This wave held plenty of First Symphony Monsters.

They had simple wits, enough to steer others like bulls steering a herd.

Night Frost wasn’t sure the twin wards would hold long.

If numbers swelled and several First Symphony pinned her, the orphanage would be naked as a candle.

She wouldn’t risk Chen Xiaoyin and Hao Wenqian for strangers.

Blood or none, years had bound them like braided grass.

For that same reason, she knew words alone wouldn’t stop them, like string against a tide.

Hao Wenqian was simple as spring water, joined the Order Keepers for curiosity and for justice.

Chen Xiaoyin was similar in some ways, but lacked that fearless edge.

She wanted to make daily life gentler for others, so she chose the Mutual Aid Society.

“If none of that’s clear, I might as well headbutt a wall,” Night Frost said, tone flat as slate.

“Fine. You stay. I’ll go.”

Night Frost rose and took the Eye Orb.

She pressed the Arcane Firearms into Qianchun’s hands as a safeguard.

Then she stepped past the light-veil, crouched, touched the ground, and fire gathered at her heels like rockets before bursting.

The flames boosted her tens of meters in one leap.

Her core strength set her down steady behind the four Magic Maidens, like a leaf on water.

They had no time to marvel.

A wall of heat surged behind them like a sunrise.

The rear two felt hands lift them and shoot them toward the orphanage like arrows.

These Monsters feared Chapter Three more than fire, like beasts flinching at thunder.

They’d take burns over being crushed by Chapter Three.

The firewall didn’t hold a minute as she hoped; it lasted seconds, like paper in rain.

It thinned some, yet the numbers still swarmed like locusts.

The Order Keeper quartet had dragged and fought from the mall to the edge, six or seven kilometers.

Their bodies hit the red line, like bows drawn to creak.

Night Frost tossed two inside when flame-maned Monsters broke through like bulls.

One slower girl got snagged by a long-tusk Monster’s hook and was dragged into the crush, trampled to paste like overripe fruit.

Another raised her pistol and fired while falling back like a tide.

At her limit, she twisted aside, but a wolf-type’s blade-sharp ruff slashed lines across her thigh.

She clutched the wound at her groin, blood spilling like a cut wineskin.

In seconds her flushed cheeks blanched, white as paper.

She propped herself up, unwillingness a stone in the chest.

She tossed the empty gun and dragged herself toward the orphanage, inch by inch like a snail.

A Monster flicked her skyward like straw.

She couldn’t land clean; the angle sent her into the tide, where she’d be stomped to pulp like her teammate.

Weightless at the peak, she felt gravity hook her down like a fisher.

Speed climbed; she shut her eyes, braced for the end’s bite like winter.

But the pain didn’t come.

Instead, arms hot as flame wrapped her tight.

They were a little scorching, yet warm like a hearth.

She opened hazy eyes, the blood loss turning her sight to dusk.

Even so, she saw that flame, alive and dancing like a phoenix’s feather.

Flames leaped and fell like a breathing bellows. Night Frost stepped over the Monsters’ corpses and vaulted through the luminous curtain.

Inside, Hao Wenqian had medicine and bandages ready, hands steady under the milky glow. Yet the girl’s wound had cut an artery; magic could only stall the spraying Blood.

Good thing Chen Xiaoyin had learned first aid in the Mutual Aid Society; she jammed the breach with Mana. The bandage wrapped tight at the root of her thigh, a tourniquet like a winter snake coiling.

Alcohol bit as it wiped the wound, a clean sting like ice. Then came the old way—Night Frost’s fire seared the girl’s skin, cautery heat clamping the Blood for now.

When it was done, Lingchen Yao glanced back at the two girls, an interrogator’s glint sharpening his eyes. He spoke slow, like a blade sliding back into its sheath:

“You two—care to tell me what happened?”