After a brief exchange with Night Frost, Qiu Sheng slipped back to her spot. Outside, Monsters packed the doorway like a black tide, and pressure climbed. Even with Night Frost striking, the first light screen of the orphanage shuddered under endless bodies.

A bug armored in ink-green plates crawled from nowhere. Its barbed tail spiked through the first layer. Night Frost tangled it at once, and the second layer survived by a hair.

The punctured screen split wider as the Monster tide rammed the fracture. The Formation lost a cornerstone and collapsed in a blink. The horde rolled on, pressing the orphanage’s last veil of light.

Night Frost knew that final layer wouldn’t last. The first layer had already eaten the tide once; it wouldn’t block a second wave.

A scorpion-shaped Monster lunged, its barb arrowing straight for her brow. Night Frost hopped lightly and landed on bare ground no Monster had fouled.

A body at Cantata Two getting tagged by a First Symphony? That’d be shameful.

Flame wrapped Night Frost like ribbons. Heat flared like noon in a desert, driving the heat-shy Monsters back by steps. Only the scorpion pressed forward through the blaze.

Of course it’s a scorpion. It treated the heat like fog. The barb punched through the fire wall. Its green shell charred to black, yet its rush didn’t slow.

Night Frost slipped sideways. The scorpion had one attack, simple as a hammer. But that shell and its heat resistance made it a rare, equal-tier foe.

She wouldn’t stall. She worried for the people inside. Five First Symphonies and a crippled Cantata Three wouldn’t fall easily, but if the screen shattered, blood would follow.

She had to end it fast.

Between the scorpion’s plates ran flesh-colored membranes, scaled with fine lamina tucked under the black armor. A weak spot, sure—but not an easy door.

She snapped a side kick. The round toe of her leather shoe bit the green scales—kaka—then she torqued from her core, body rising, hanging in air.

Her toes turned. Firelight dyed her long hair red, flaring like a banner. Her pupils held the scorpion’s green shape. Flame sheathed her bent right leg.

Like a meteor scraping the sky, she burned. Gravity dragged, fire shoved. The fall would bloom into a shock strong enough to crack that shell.

She’d thought of this saving Moon Owl: wrap herself in flame, ride the thrust, close fast, strike to kill. On flat ground it broke bones. In the air?

She’d watched a lot of tokusatsu. The move was old news—wrap the leg in flame, let fire and gravity push and pull, add a spin, focus to a point—

Call it the Leo Flying Kick—no, the Night Frost Flying Kick.

“Hey, hey, don’t plagiarize so brazenly,” the Eye Orb muttered from her shoulder.

“It’s a fantasy world anyway, and the author’s such a hack, who’s gonna—”

She didn’t finish. Her kick met shell. Impact and blast dented the junction of head and flesh, but it wasn’t fatal.

The tail froze for a heartbeat. A perfect opening. Add a spin and she’d drill it into paste.

“Die!”

Night Frost crushed the scorpion’s head. Flame poured inside, ripping it open from within. She reached into the fire, plucked out its Magic Stone, and sprinted to support those inside.

This wave dwarfed the last two. The two Magic Maidens helped, but like a cup into the sea. They had maybe two thousand rounds total; the first two waves chewed most of it, and the third emptied the rest.

With ammo, they could have stayed behind the Formation and gunned Monsters down. Now, to halt the horde, they had to step out and clash steel to fang.

Xia Qingqing lacked power, her magic control shaky. Zhang Jialu could fire general magic bullets, but they barely scratched Monsters, good only for weak beasts.

Hao Wenqian’s body enhancement and Chen Xiaoyin’s defensive spells together could handle one First Symphony.

On a normal day, they were impressive. In this all-directions tide with First Symphonies everywhere, they weren’t enough.

The weight fell on Qianchun and Night Frost.

Qianchun, a combatant of the organization, outclassed Chen Xiaoyin and Hao Wenqian in skill and grit. But her Magic Stone had shattered. Now she could barely manage one First Symphony.

Night Frost’s body ranked near the top of Cantata Two. After a month of fights, her fire neared Cantata Two’s bite. With the Eye Orb’s guidance, weak-point reading, and a Magic Tool pistol, she might drop a weaker Cantata Two.

Qiu Sheng held her own, about level with Qianchun. With the drugs and Magic Tools on her, she might test a Cantata Two—only test.

As for Moon Owl, flat on a bed…

The Eye Orb had checked. She could barely handle a First Symphony now. Dozens of deep gashes from Blades, countless shallow cuts, explosions and burns, beasts’ bites. Chunks of flesh gone from her limbs.

I don’t know how she endured. That grit deserves respect. If it were me, I’d have blacked out.

Bottom line: all pressure sat on Night Frost. If a Cantata Two, or several First Symphonies, showed up, the orphanage line would lose its edge. The Formation alone wouldn’t hold long.

“I’m gonna smash you to pieces!”

Hao Wenqian drove a heavy fist. Qianchun rode wind blades, and together they slit a First Symphony’s throat. It didn’t die. Its countercharge hit like a storm.

It didn’t land. Night Frost grabbed its tail, slung it aside, and a palm of fire ended it.

Twelfth District, the border.

The Twelfth was besieged within and without: a Cantata Three rampaged inside, and outside a greater tide of Monsters tried to break the border.

Since the Abyssal Rift tore open wide and the district fell to chaos, Monsters had gathered fast on the frontier, marching as one. The count became a sea, ready to level the Twelfth.

Light and heavy machine guns and rockets were the border groups’ and army’s tools. The thud of rockets, the chatter of guns, Monster screams, and human roars braided into one grim song.

Illusory Glass’s borderworks from the past days did help. They slowed part of the tide, and the Twelfth didn’t meet the tsunami too early.

But time passed. Monsters multiplied. Defense strained like a fraying rope.

The border groups were patchwork. Strengths uneven. Some had no wish to die for the district. Under night and gunfire, they slipped away.

Some stayed.

They stood beside the army, plugging holes left by deserters or the dead. At first, it steadied the border line. With time, flaws showed through like bones.

“We’re… we’re out of hands!”

The runner panted. The leader who’d made a promise to Illusory Glass lay under a trench shored by mountains of Monster corpses, swapping a subgun mag.

The guns had never gone quiet, yet the Monsters pooled thicker. Keep this up, and they’d lose the position, let the border beasts maul them, devour them, grind them to paste.

There was no cure for too few hands. Pull men to plug one hole, and another front thinned—rob Peter to pay Paul, ending with empty buckets.

If they didn’t pull and tried to retreat instead, likely none of them would live.

He was the leader; he had to think farther. He wasn’t cold-blooded. The homeland mattered, and so did his people. He didn’t want them wiped out. Call it a selfish wish.

“Call the brothers in. That post won’t hold. We hold what we can.”

Orders ran. While they spread, the leader braced on a carcass and fired into the charging tide. He ran dry, leaned on the still-warm body, and reloaded.

Bodies piled into the trench around him. Still far fewer than at the start, less than half now.

Even those left were wounded. Light wounds beyond counting; more than two hands’ worth with missing limbs. The better-off, machine-augmented ones had metal twisted, plates dented and crushed.

He hadn’t thought the tide would be this vicious. Even after abandoning lines, they wouldn’t last long.

Maybe someone read his face. A voice rang out:

“Boss Tan, we don’t retreat! We won’t let those Magic Maidens look down on us! This land’s our home—if they won’t guard it, we will!”

The voice was strong yet hoarse. Chaos smeared the sound. The leader couldn’t place it, only that it was familiar—a good young one.

“Wasn’t that why we built this organization? To show those Magic Maidens we aren’t trash to dump at the border! We crave coexistence, not contempt and prejudice!”

“Yeah, Boss!”

The fighters answered like a drumline on a stormy night.

How long had they been in the Twelfth? The leader couldn’t recall.

He knew this: men and women here had been thrown to the border by the Magic Maidens of their districts, labeled hazardous waste.

He had walked the border for years, gathering the abandoned and the wanted, building a small organization. Their shared goal and slogan: return to the original world, rebuild the original Order.

Years in the wild—endless killing and flight—for what?

He remembered. He’d been one of the castoffs when the Magic Maiden government first rose. Since then, he’d longed to go back—to a world without Magic Maidens and the Abyss, to quiet days.

But there was a premise: what they guarded had to still exist.

If Monsters broke the Twelfth and made it a beast-kingdom, the horde would roll south or north, feasting on human land. No land, no civilization, no people. Even reclaiming the old world and Order from the Magic Maidens would mean nothing.

He punched a bullet into a Monster’s brow, slipped the fire it vomited, then sent another round through its eye, stirring its brain to slurry.

His gaze fell near the trench lip, on a kid with flaxen short hair, dressed like a boy—truly a girl. She held a pistol in an imperfect stance and fired into the tide. Her form was off, but every bullet found a skull. A born shot.

He remembered finding her half a year ago in the Tenth District, skin-and-bone and starving, almost a dish on a Monster’s plate.

A pang tugged: wash her clean, put her in a pretty dress—no, surely she’d be a sweet child, like his daughter the Magic Maiden took, a swallow in spring…

The leader fished a grenade from the trench’s crate and lobbed it into the surging tide of Monsters.

No pillar of fire leapt skyward; only a deafening boom, then the endless drumming of iron hooves, like rain hammering a night roof.

“You’re right! We won’t fall back as a unit—but not everyone stays. Those three-year veterans over thirty, the old pines, stay!”

“You’re right! This is our home; the Magic Maiden won’t guard it, but it’s not your fledgling perch to hold. You youngsters aren’t worthy to die here!”

“You are the embers of our faith; carry the flame and live for me, then…”

“Flip the sky and overturn the earth!”