The next morning, the bright sunlight of the lecture hall felt like a personal attack. Maddy sat in the middle of the Newbie Orientation, her eyes half-closed. She was trying her best to listen to the facilitator explain guild insurance and quest protocols, but her focus was shattered by a heavy weight suddenly thumping onto her shoulder.

It was Johnn.

He was fast asleep, snoring loudly enough to rival a mountain troll. He smelled like a brewery, the scent of last night’s celebration still clinging to his garment.

"Mother... just five more minutes, Mother..." Johnn muttered in his sleep, his head nuzzling into her cloak.

Maddy’s eye twitched. Her patience, already thin from a lack of sleep, snapped like a dry twig.

"This is the seventy-seventh time!" she hissed, though there were only fifty people in the room. She violently shoved his head away. "Wake up, you drunk brat!"

As Johnn’s head flopped toward the other side, a young female applicant nearby caught it with a gasp of delight. The girl began blushing a deep red, looking like she had just won the lottery because the SSS Rank hero was using her as a pillow.

However, Johnn wasn’t satisfied. Even in his stupor, he seemed drawn to Maddy’s presence. He groaned, leaning his body back toward her shoulder like a heat-seeking missile.

"I am so done with this," Maddy whispered.

She didn’t want to cause a scene, but she needed him awake. Under the table, she hidden her hand and manifested a tiny, needle-like mosquito proboscis from her fingertip. With a surgical flick, she gave Johnn’s neck a sharp, stinging pinch.

"YOW!"

Johnn bolted upright, his eyes bugging out as he clutched his neck. He looked around wildly, his hair a mess and his face pale.

"A monster! I’m under attack! Ouch, my butt cheeks..."

He yelled, his voice echoing through the silent lecture hall. The facilitator stopped mid sentence and glared over his spectacles. Maddy simply crossed her arms and looked straight ahead, acting as if she had absolutely nothing to do with the "hero" currently making a fool of himself.

The facilitator cleared his throat loudly to regain control.

"Ahem! If the handsome hero is quite finished with his... nightmare... we shall proceed."

He tapped a map on the board.

"Today, we must discuss Mana Distortion. This is not a theory; it is a crisis happening right now in the South."

Maddy’s posture stiffened. She leaned forward, her eyes narrowing with a sharp, hidden intensity. The South was the direction of Shellgrave—the direction of her children.

"A Mana Distortion," the facilitator explained, "is a temporary phenomenon where excessive mana density destabilizes an area. It creates a storm-like field that both attracts and generates magical creatures. Monster activity and mana concentration increase dramatically until the distortion finally collapses."

Maddy listened carefully, though she was already familiar with the term. Lucy had briefed her on it back at the worm spawning zone, so she knew exactly what this meant.

The facilitator continued,

"The effects are predictable but deadly. Monsters spawn more frequently, and every creature within the zone becomes significantly stronger and more aggressive. Most importantly, rare and Alpha species—monsters that usually take years or even centuries to spawn—may appear instantly within the mana distortion. It is a truly lethal phenomenon."

He paused.

"And that is why... our dear Oozewell Town suffered this sorrowful fate."

Johnn’s relaxed posture vanished. He sat up straight, his face suddenly serious, the silliness of the "butt cheek" incident gone.

"Yeah, and you know what the worst part is? Those damn greedy assholes. Plenty of adventurers see a mana distortion as nothing but a payday. They use the chaos to loot more, waiting for the rare drops while people are screaming for help."

He looked around the room, his eyes sharp.

"I’m not saying it’s wrong to want loot. But when a place like Oozewell is drowning in monsters, you don’t wait for the paperwork. Even if it’s just a slime spawning zone that went into distortion, people are in danger. You take the fight—with or without an official quest. That’s what being an adventurer is supposed to be about."

Maddy looked at him out of the corner of her eye. She had spent the last twenty four hours thinking he was nothing but a lucky, horny brat with too much power and not enough brain cells.

But hearing him speak now again with sympathy, she realized there was a core of genuine steel beneath his attitude. He was a "good boy" in the truest sense—perhaps a bit naive, but his heart was in the right place. 𝗳𝚛𝚎𝚎𝘄𝕖𝕓𝕟𝕠𝚟𝚎𝕝.𝗰𝕠𝐦

"He’s an idiot. But he’s a decent idiot."

The facilitator leaned over his podium, his shadow stretching across the map of the southern territories.

"To understand the danger, you must understand the cause. Mana Distortions do not just appear. They form when natural mana accumulates over time until the land can no longer hold it. It is like a dam bursting."

He began to pace, his boots clicking on the wooden floor.

"But it is also fed by us—by the battles we fight. Residual energy from powerful magic, the lingering essence of a monster’s soul, and even the spilled mana of a fallen adventurer. All of it pools together, rotting the fabric of reality until the air itself begins to bleed the storm."

Maddy listened, her expression unreadable, but her mind was racing. She knew the cave was rich in mana, but she had always managed it. However, the facilitator’s next words made her breath hitch in her throat.

"However... there is a third cause. One that we fear more than any natural accumulation or lingering battle residual."

He gripped the edges of his podium so hard his knuckles turned white.

"A distortion can be forced into existence when a powerful creature resides in the area. If a being of immense, unnatural power stays in one place for too long, their very presence act as a... magnet."

Maddy flinched. The wooden armrest of her chair groaned under her grip.

"A powerful creature..."

She thought of her children. She thought of herself. To the world, she was an adventurer, but she knew what she really was.