Miles Sherman pulled Zoe Pierce back, his voice rising again. "Zoe! We have to go."

Streaking beams of light and mechas illuminated the sky as if it were dawn. The roar of cannon fire was so deafening it was nearly impossible to hear anything else.

Zoe Pierce was all but yanked back to reality by Miles Sherman.

The image of Shannon Stone running forward was still reflected in her eyes, the figure shrinking until it vanished completely.

"Let’s go," she said loudly, her eyes flashing as she came to her senses.

"Deploy the mechas. We need to get out of here," Miles Sherman said, relieved to see Zoe Pierce back to normal. ’The way she was staring at Shannon Stone’s back was unsettling. I have no idea what she was thinking.’

With no one else around, Zoe Pierce summoned her mecha and, with a light leap, slipped inside.

Once inside his mecha, Miles Sherman felt his frayed nerves begin to settle.

But a moment later, an urgent call came through.

Miles Sherman glanced at the caller ID and answered.

On the screen was the stern face of Adrian Chapman, his brow deeply furrowed. His normally resolute, sharp eyes now held a hint of anxiety.

"Miles," Adrian Chapman began, then his eyes registered Miles’s surroundings. He was inside a mecha.

’What could possibly make someone on vacation get into a mecha?’

Adrian Chapman’s brow furrowed so deeply it seemed it would never smooth out again. "What’s the situation on Planet B36? The military has already dispatched a relief force."

Miles Sherman replied, "It hasn’t reached the worst-case scenario yet."

This was only the beginning, but as everyone knew, the most difficult thing to control was a sustained Xenobeast Tide.

Adrian Chapman said, "Planet B36 reports multiple Xenobeast Tide outbreaks. One is low-grade, one is mid-grade, and one is advanced."

"If you have the strength to spare, help out where you can." Adrian Chapman paused, the sound of explosions roaring in the background of the call. "But, and this is more important, protect yourselves."

An S-Class team like Miles Sherman’s was an irreplaceable combat unit.

This Xenobeast Tide would be a harsh trial for them. Far from the safety of their academy, they would now have to apply everything they’d learned on a real battlefield.

"Miles, protect Zoe Pierce." Adrian Chapman wasn’t worried about the Alphas; he was worried about Zoe, the team’s Omega.

Even though they had taken Zoe Pierce to a planet with a Xenobeast Tide before, the current situation was exponentially worse than that small-scale incident.

Miles Sherman’s gaze fell on the mecha standing before him. He couldn’t see Zoe Pierce’s face through the armor, only that her mecha, too, was still facing the epicenter of the Xenobeast Tide.

"Understood," he replied quietly.

"Keep your comms open. If you run into danger, your top priority is to stay safe." Adrian Chapman had his own selfish motives. His gaze burned as he looked at Miles Sherman. "As your teacher, saving people isn’t the point. Your safety is."

"Understood."

After the call ended, Miles Sherman relayed Adrian Chapman’s message to Zoe Pierce and Erin Xavier.

Xenobeasts were already starting to break away from the main swarm. Erin Xavier raised his mecha’s arm and fired a single shot. The creature let out a cry and collapsed into the bushes.

He looked up toward the massive, towering mountain. "What about Chase and the others?"

"Tell them to hurry and get out," Miles Sherman said. "That mountain won’t withstand a tide of Advanced Xeno-beasts."

It wasn’t just the xenobeasts; with the constant barrage of heavy weaponry, the danger was compounding exponentially.

After contacting Chase and his group, Miles Sherman spoke over the channel, his mecha turning to face Zoe’s. "Zoe, Erin, are you ready?"

They were about to voluntarily join the forces fighting the Xenobeast Tide, to fight alongside this planet’s Beta warriors.

A smile touched Zoe Pierce’s lips.

The three mechas on the ground suddenly launched into the sky, blasting straight toward the Xenobeast Tide. 𝚏𝐫𝚎𝗲𝕨𝐞𝐛𝕟𝚘𝐯𝚎𝗹.𝕔𝐨𝗺

The roar of their launch was so powerful that Shannon Stone, still running for the safe zone, instinctively looked up. She immediately recognized two of the mechas. They belonged to the people who had tied her up earlier.

’But... weren’t there only two mechas?’

’So why are there three now?’

’Did they have a third person with them?’

She had no time to think about it further and broke into a run again. The possibility that an Omega could pilot a mecha never even crossed her mind.

As they ascended, the scene below came into sharp focus.

The rift where Zoe Pierce had first detected the Wormhole was now a gaping tear a full eight or nine meters wide. The surrounding forest had been bombarded into ash, leaving the ground a stretch of carbonized black.

Xenobeast carcasses were strewn everywhere, yet a steady stream of creatures continued to pour out of the Wormhole.

This was the first time Zoe Pierce had seen the xenobeasts emerging directly from the source. A beast at the front would be hit by a laser blast and collapse at the Wormhole’s mouth, only for the one behind it to shove the corpse out of the way and charge through.

The slaughter was nearly ceaseless, but it still wasn’t enough to stop the rift from growing wider, stretching into an empty chasm.

Far away, in a command room, the personnel on duty also noticed the mechas hovering in the air.

"Those mechas over the hospital—what unit do they belong to?" The speaker was a middle-aged man. He could tell at a glance that these three unfamiliar mechas were not the standard-issue models for Planet B36.

A person next to him recognized the models as standard military-grade and pulled up several surveillance feeds. "They don’t seem to have come from the Entertainment District."

The Entertainment District referred to the area with recreational facilities, like the beaches and treehouse resorts.

They cycled through several surveillance drones and found that the three mechas were helping to pick off straggler xenobeasts.

But there was still no trace of the three unfamiliar mechas’ arrival. It was as if they had materialized out of thin air.

"The Alphas from the Entertainment District were all assigned to the uninhabited sectors."

Even though they had sent a distress call to Siren Star, military reinforcements would take time to arrive. In the interim, besides having mecha warriors guard the Wormhole, they needed most of their people to move essential equipment and facilities.

It was a last-ditch effort.

The sudden appearance of these three, therefore, was highly conspicuous. It didn’t matter that they were helping destroy xenobeasts.

"Send a few mechas over," the man decided instantly. The moment he confirmed that not a single drone had tracked their arrival, the decision was made for him.

’This has to be a premeditated approach,’ he thought. ’Otherwise, why would a few Alphas suddenly pop up in this place, at this time?’

He gave the order in a grim voice, "Open fire!"

’In a situation this critical, you didn’t have to think twice about how to deal with individuals who had ulterior motives.’

’It didn’t matter if they had discovered some secret or not. Only the dead can keep a secret.’

’Besides, they had the perfect excuse.’

And so, Zoe Pierce and her team, who were holding their position at the rear, immediately noticed several mechas flying straight for them.

The mechas closed in fast, the laser cannons on their arms already deployed. Dazzling spheres of light began to coalesce at the muzzles, and there wasn’t just one.

Miles Sherman’s expression turned grim. He instantly flew his mecha in front of Zoe’s and shouted into the channel, "Run!"