Cecilia understood why the System had brought her here now. It was for a reason. The gods had guided her toward this specific scenario and this specific world.

Not merely because this was the future or because she needed to understand how far humanity could go without using magic or mana, but because of this.

"Alright, now we move on to our daily report of rift outbreaks within the last twenty-four hours."

The anchor’s voice shifted. The screen behind her changed, displaying a map of a world Cecilia did not recognize. Continents shaped differently, bordered by lines she assumed were political rather than geographical. Red dots bloomed across the image like a pox.

"Starting with North America, the United States has reported seven new rift outbreaks across the Midwest corridor, with Illinois, Ohio, and Missouri each confirming at least two active sites."

"Local Hunter Chapters have been mobilized, and evacuation orders are in effect for affected counties. The Canadian territories have reported three additional rifts in the Alberta region, bringing the continental total to twelve active incidents."

The map shifted. More red dots. More unfamiliar names.

"In Europe, the situation remains as predicted. Germany’s Black Forest region has seen a surge in rift activity, with five new outbreaks concentrated near Baden-Württemberg."

"France has reported four rifts along its eastern border, while Poland and Ukraine have confirmed a combined total of eight new outbreaks. Italy’s Hunter Command has issued a level-three alert for the Lombardy region following a significant spike in contamination readings—"

"The United Kingdom, Spain, and Greece have each reported two additional rifts, bringing the European total to twenty-three active incidents within the past day."

The anchor paused, her eyes flicking briefly downward, reading from something.

"Across Asia, the numbers are similar. China’s western provinces have reported eleven new outbreaks, with the Xinjiang and Tibet autonomous regions bearing the brunt of the surge."

"Japan has confirmed two rifts along its eastern seaboard, while South Korea and the Philippines have reported two each. India’s northern territories have seen a spike with nine new outbreaks concentrated near the Himalayan border region."

"Australia and New Zealand have reported a combined total of five rifts in the past twenty-four hours, bringing the global total to over seventy active incidents."

The screen shifted again. No longer a map, but footage. Cecilia leaned forward, her hands gripping the smooth, unfamiliar armrests of the hospital chair.

The images were grainy, but the quality did not obscure what they showed. Monsters. Familiar ones, spilling out of dark, jagged gates that had torn themselves open in the fabric of the world.

Orcs, cyclops, goblins, ogres, the seasonal monster waves that had plagued the real world’s territories for centuries before the cycles thinned and the world grew quieter.

But these were not the clean monsters of her world’s history. These looked as if... they were infected. Every single one of them, from the largest cyclops to the smallest goblin, was coated in something dark and oily, a black, tar-like substance that seemed to cling to their bodies. It dripped from their limbs. It oozed from their eyes.

Slimes, which in her world were little more than nuisance creatures, had become toxic, bubbling masses of black sludge. Giant spiders scuttled through ruined streets, their legs leaving tar-like prints on the pavement.

She had heard Oathran describe Voidcrawlers once. He had spoken of them in the low tones, as if recounting something he had hoped never to remember.

They were thin, skeletal figures, humanoid but wrong. Their proportions stretched and distorted as though someone had taken a person and pulled them apart like taffy. Their limbs were too long. Their fingers were too many.

Their faces, if they could be called faces, were featureless except for the places where the black tar-like substance that coated their bodies had dripped away to reveal something pale beneath.

That tar, he had said, coated them in a thick, viscous layer that never dried, never washed away, never stopped dripping. It left trails wherever they walked. It pooled in their footprints.

It seeped into the earth and poisoned it, made it impossible for anything to grow in the places they had touched. And when they were destroyed, they did not leave corpses. They left only puddles of that black, oily residue, which slowly seeped into the ground.

But the creatures on the screen were not Voidcrawlers.

They were creatures Cecilia recognized, creatures that belonged to her world’s history and her world’s monster cycles. They were not skeletal or stretched. They were not humanoid figures with too-long limbs and too-many fingers and faces that were not faces at all.

They were still familiar.

But they were infected.

The black substance coating their bodies was not like the thicker, dripping tar of a Voidcrawler like Oathran had described. It was thinner. Perhaps a coating rather than a second skin. It clung to the orcs’ tusks and the goblins’ claws and the cyclopes’ single, staring eyes like oil floating on water.

This was not a Voidcrawler outbreak. This was something more like a symptom.

Cecilia stared at the screen.

This was the future of her world. This could be the future of her world.

This... was what would happen if Oathran did not sacrifice himself.

If the Dragon Lord did not die to seal whatever ancient evil was waiting to consume everything.

She had speculated, wondering what the gods were preparing her for. The Romance Trope Scenarios were training. The gacha was gearing her up. The skills and weapons and strange, unprecedented powers she had accumulated were meant for something.

But this—

This was beyond Oathran’s death. This was the world consumed, monsters pouring through rifts in reality, coated in black tar, drowning continents in chaos. This was humanity pushed to the brink, surviving only through technology and barriers and the organized violence of something called the Hunter’s Association.

But even so... they seemed to get used to it.

"The level of contamination has been kept to low, but citizens are advised not to enter the red zones marked on this map within the next seven to eight days. Cleanup and containment operations are ongoing."

Seventy outbreaks in twenty-four hours with monsters coated in black filth. How long had this been happening? How did they get used to it?

Was it also like how the people of her real world got used to monster waves in seasons?

Cecilia’s frown deepened, carving lines into her face.

This is what the gods wanted her to see.

Not just the technology, but this. The consequence. The world that would exist if she did not find a way to save him... or, perhaps, if she saved him in the wrong way, saved his life at the cost of everything else.

This could be the consequence of her love.

Was this the price? Monsters and rifts and whatever else was waiting beyond that black, jagged gate?

Was this... the gods trying to discourage her from—

"Mrs. Vas—Miss Araceli?"

Cecilia blinked. The voice... she recognized it. She turned, and the man standing before her was wearing dark overalls. The fabric was stained, and his hands, hanging at his sides, bore the calluses and small burns of someone who worked with heat and metal for a living.

His long, golden-blonde hair was pulled back into a messy bun, stray strands escaping to frame a face that was sharp and handsome, very, very dear to her.

"Eastiel?"