Demonic Po*nstar System

Chapter 867: Back on Earth

They made it three steps toward the gate before Pebble reminded them he existed.

The Guardian had been exploring the Cavern’s deeper reaches, sniffing stalactites and scaring slimes into corners, and the commotion of the group moving toward the exit had excited him in ways no one could quantify.

He came bounding back at his reduced size with six eyes blazing and his tail section wagging hard enough to rattle loose stone off the walls, planted himself at Kaiden’s side with a stomp that shook dust from the ceiling.

"Well..." Kaiden set a hand on the armored crown. "We’re home."

The crown pressed into his palm and rumbled.

Aria studied the Guardian from across the group for a quiet moment, then walked over to him.

She stopped before the dense, dark snout and folded her hands in front of her the same way she had on the white plain when she’d asked him if he was prepared to die for Kai.

"Pebble." Her tone was gentle and serious. "We’re about to go outside. Earth is dangerous right now, and Kai will be in the open."

Alexandra’s hands flew to her mouth. "You don’t mean..."

Nyx and Luna exchanged a grin so wide it was practically a high five. "She does mean it." They’d known since the moment Aria started walking.

Every eye swung from Kaiden to the Moon Valkyrie and locked on.

"You’re to come with us." She reached up and set her palm flat against the armored cheek, and the gesture held none of the careful testing from the white plain. She touched him like a colleague. "Stay close, watch what he doesn’t see. I will handle the rest, but when I’m not beside him, you are."

The rumble that answered her rolled through the stone floor and up through Kaiden’s boots, low and absolute, and Pebble’s crown dipped once toward Aria in a nod so measured it could have been a salute.

Aria beamed at him and patted the armored plate. "Good boy."

<The puppy and the yandere have formed an alliance,> Alice transmitted, radiating disapproval. <I am the main protector and always will be...>

"Aria, Pebble is part of the dungeon..." Kaiden sighed. "We don’t even know if he can leave the..."

Both heads turned to him at the same time.

"And?" Aria’s hands settled on her hips. The yandere girlfriend was more than ready to make her point no matter what. "He should be able to leave like the others."

"Yeah, but..." He trailed off, because the argument had already lost its audience.

Aria’s hands migrated from her hips to clasped in front of her chest, silver eyes going wide and shining with the specific sweetness she deployed when she wanted something and had already decided she was getting it.

Beside her, Pebble pressed his snout toward Kaiden with all six eyes dialed to maximum devastation, and the fissure-mouth produced a whine so pitiful it could have fundraised.

"...Fine." Kaiden pinched the bridge of his nose, folding almost instantly. "For now."

Aria’s beam returned at full brightness, and Pebble’s happy stomp cracked the floor in three places.

The Moon Valkyrie and the Guardian of the Abyssal Dungeon shared exactly one look of mutual satisfaction before turning back toward the gate together, and Kaiden filed away the fact that his girlfriend and his dog had just double-teamed him without exchanging a single word.

"Alright." He rolled his shoulders once, feeling the new body settle into itself, and looked toward the Cavern’s gate. "Let’s see what’s out there."

They walked.

The gate of the Abyssal Dungeon opened onto a staging plain that had become a forward operating base the size of a small city while they’d been gone.

Mana artillery lined the northern ridge in rows deep enough to blot out the treeline, every barrel aimed at the gate coordinate.

Armored transports idled in columns along the access roads. Helicopter gunships held rotating patterns overhead, and beyond the conventional hardware, at a distance that suggested someone had done the math on acceptable blast radii, three nuclear warheads sat on mobile launch platforms with their targeting systems locked to the exact spot where Kaiden was about to put his foot.

Hundreds of thousands of awakened fighters filled the gaps between the machines, organized by guild and region, S-tiers standing shoulder to shoulder with A-tier strike teams pulled from three continents.

Press drones swarmed above them in buzzing clouds, each one trailing a blinking red recording light.

The whole thing looked like humanity had been preparing to fight God.

Kaiden stepped through the gate, and the world noticed.

The S-tiers felt him first.

Guild captains in the nearest formation went still as the pressure rolled off him, hands drifting to weapons before training caught up with instinct, and Kaiden’s new Agility caught every ripple of the shift across the staging plain.

An A-tier strike team leader lowering her comm artifact mid-sentence. A Korean Vanguard officer turning sharply toward the gate. Hundreds of awakened in the front ranks reading his mana signature and recalculating everything they thought they knew about the boy they’d been watching through a screen.

"That’s him..." The words moved through the formations in a current. "He’s out."

"Feel that pressure?" A fighter near the artillery line grabbed his squad leader’s arm. "That’s not the same kid who went in there."

The reaction spread backward through the ranks in a visible wave, professional stillness giving way to something louder as the realization landed: the extinction event they’d been staging for had just walked out of the gate as a young man.

Tens of thousands of voices rose at once, the sound a quarter million armed fighters make when the apocalypse turns out to have a name and a face and is smiling at them.

His girls walked out behind him, and the sound changed pitch.

Calypso came through grinning with her arms spread wide, red skin gleaming in the morning sun and her tail swaying behind her as she soaked in the noise like an encore she’d been waiting for. "Yo! Hope you enjoyed the theater!" she cheered, waving with both hands.

The nearest formation split down the middle, half the fighters stepping back from the horns and the other half leaning forward for a better look.

"She really is a demon..."

"That’s the Infernal Matriarch. She was on the stream."

Bastet followed with unhurried grace, veils catching the breeze and golden anklets chiming with each bare footstep. Instead of acknowledging the attention she was receiving, the tanned felinid eyed her demonic friend and explained, "Theater is what you watch in person. Since they watched through their screens, the correct term is cinema."

Luna cleared the threshold with her chin up as she threw a peace sign at the nearest cloud of press drones.

Alexandra made it two steps past the gate before the sheer scale of the staging plain hit her and she retreated behind Kaiden’s back with both hands gripping the hem of his shirt, peering out at the sea of armor and artillery with wide eyes and pink cheeks.

"K-Kai... They have so many weapons pointed at us... And so many people..."

"Yeah."

Across the staging plain, the atmosphere was shifting.