Hunter Academy: Revenge of the Weakest-Chapter 995 - 233.3 - Changes across the world

The hum faded.

The last of the spectral readings blinked into place across Jules’s tablet, the sigils aligning in sequence like puzzle pieces locking into place. He let out a breath, his shoulders dropping.

"Alright," he said. "Confirmed. It’s stabilizing at Class-6. Deep-rank variance, minor oscillation—but nothing above tolerance."

Ryn rubbed the back of his neck, still tense. "Still doesn’t feel right."

Gellard finally lowered his scanner and exhaled through his nose. "Then maybe trust the gear instead of your gut, for once."

But the moment felt too clean. Too resolved.

And the sky agreed.

It began not with sound—but with absence. The wind dropped. The frostbitten air, which had gnawed at them relentlessly all night, suddenly fell still. A silence too complete. Too sudden.

Then—

KRACK.

A jagged bolt of lightning tore through the clouds above them. Not white. Not blue. Black.

It lanced across the sky with a sound like stone tearing through glass—and for a single instant, the slope, the gear, the faces of the team were all etched in silver.

"What—" Jules said, halfway to shielding his eyes.

And then the scanner screamed.

The runes across the stakes flared red. Not yellow. Not warning. Critical.

"Wait, what?" Jules stepped back instinctively, looking down at his screen. "No, no, that’s not—"

The numbers began to drop.

From Class-6, it blinked once.

Class-5.

Then again.

Class-4.

The resonance curve buckled in real-time. The pulses inverted, the energy stream folding in on itself like it was being compressed—like something inside was trying to hide.

"Is it collapsing?" Elena asked sharply, voice high and tight behind her scarf.

"No," Jules muttered, eyes glued to the impossible readout. "It’s not fading. The structure is still there. It’s not vanishing—it’s—"

"Bracing," Gellard finished, his voice low. Grim. "It’s changing its signature."

"But that doesn’t make sense!" Ryn barked. "Gates don’t just decrease in rank! That’s not how—"

WHUUMMM.

The gate’s perimeter stakes shuddered. Not visibly, not in the metal—but in their shadows. The dark cast beneath them wavered, flickering erratically, as if trying to pull inward toward some new center.

A hollow groan rolled up from the frozen soil.

Elena staggered back, her eyes locked on the center of the slope. "The ground—look at the ground."

A spiral was forming beneath the snow. Not drawn. Not carved. Melted. Steam hissed upward in thin, sinuous streams as heat and cold twisted around each other in silent war. At the center of it, the faintest shimmer hung in the air—like a ripple in water caught beneath glass.

The gate.

Except now, it twitched.

Ryn took an instinctive step back, nearly slipping on the slick snow. "Did it just twitch?"

"No," Jules muttered. "It reacted."

Gellard was already raising the comm unit to his shoulder, fingers working the mana dial embedded in its frame. "This is Field Recon Alpha-Seven—pinging HQ. We’ve got a gate fluctuation—repeat, a Class-6 gate is exhibiting anomalous behavior. Requesting protocol override and emergency extraction standby."

No reply.

He adjusted the crystal frequency, sharp now. "HQ, respond. Priority flag—unknown resonance event, possible breach instability."

Static.

A slow hiss crackled through the line, then broke entirely into silence.

Jules looked up from his tablet. "What the hell?"

Gellard’s hand clenched around the comm. He tapped the emergency beacon embedded in the main case, triggering the failsafe pulse. The flare of mana was supposed to launch a direct signal toward the closest Association repeater tower.

Instead, the beacon glowed once—then died.

"Dead," Gellard said, voice like stone. "The gate’s severed the connection."

"Is that even possible?" Elena asked.

"Not under normal protocols," Jules muttered. "But this? Nothing about this is normal."

The air had changed. It wasn’t just cold anymore—it was heavy. Intentional. The kind of stillness you only got when something was watching.

Watching and waiting.

"We shelter," Gellard said abruptly. "We wait for line restoration. No approaching the gate. No diagnostics. Pack gear, perimeter circle, twenty meters out. If this thing spikes again, I want buffers between it and us."

The team moved.

Jules and Elena scrambled to pack the scanners. Ryn activated his kinetic ward, a shimmer of violet glinting faintly around him as he backed away from the slope. Gellard remained planted near the edge, eyes locked on the ripple in the snow.

It no longer twitched.

It rested.

Minutes passed in the crawl of the windless dark.

Then, without fanfare, the sky cleared.

No lightning. No sound. Just a slow release of the tension in the air, like a breath being let out.

Jules’s scanner blinked back to life.

Mana feed reconnected.

The comm line flickered, buzzed—and then restored, the dull crackle of the headquarters’ standby tone returning with a mechanical sigh.

"HQ line open," Jules breathed. "We’re back online."

And the gate?

Its readings recompiled.

Class-6.

Stabilized.

Again.

"Back to normal," Elena said, frowning. "That… should be good news."

But Jules didn’t answer immediately. His eyes were locked on the diagnostics, flicking through lines of mana flow algorithms and trace signatures.

"...Something changed."

Ryn froze mid-step. "What do you mean?"

Jules turned the screen toward them.

"The core frequency is the same. Same energy output. Same resonance level. It’s Class-6 by all external readings. But the structure’s alignment…"

He tapped the screen.

"This isn’t the same gate we scanned fifteen minutes ago."

"What changed?" Gellard asked.

"The substrate vector. The calibration sigil." Jules hesitated. "And the timestamp. It no longer registers as a new formation."

Elena’s eyes narrowed. "Then what is it?"

Jules swallowed, his voice dropping just above a whisper. "It’s listed… as reactivated."

The word hung in the air like a curse.

Ryn took a slow step forward. "You mean it’s been opened before?"

"No," Jules said, tapping the tablet again. "Worse. It means it was closed. Something sealed it. And now... it just came back."

Before Gellard could reply, the comm unit flared to life with a sharp chime, cutting through the silence.

BZZT—Alpha-Seven, this is Central. Alpha-Seven, respond. Status confirmation required. Repeat—status confirmation.

Gellard grabbed the unit immediately. "Alpha-Seven reporting. All operatives accounted for. We experienced a full blackout—communications, scanners, even auxiliary mana feeds. Everything’s restored now, but the gate—"

We know.

The voice from HQ—sharp, clipped—barely masked its tension.

There was a pause. Then:

Your region’s blackout coincided with multiple zones across the globe.

The team froze.

Mana spikes. Phantom readings. Communication failures. All simultaneous. North Thalas, Northern Caldur, parts of the Dusk Reach… even zones where no active gates exist. Everything—went dark.

Jules exchanged a look with Elena. She looked pale beneath her scarf.

Gellard kept his voice steady. "Any signs of breach?"

None confirmed. Yet. But readings are inconsistent.

Another pause, longer this time.

You’re not the only team to report a gate shifting its classification.

Ryn let out a low breath. "So this wasn’t just us."

No. And we don’t know what caused it. We’re rerouting mana-thread surveillance to priority zones, but as of now, we’re blind to the initiating event. There’s no pattern. No warning.

A beat.

...It was as if the entire system hiccuped.

Jules frowned. "That’s not a system error. That’s coordination."

The comm stayed silent.

Then:

Copy your diagnostics. Archive the pre-event and post-event readings. We’re pulling all flagged gates into containment protocols. You’ll remain on site for full atmospheric trace scans. Priority.

Gellard nodded, though they all knew HQ couldn’t see him. "Understood."

The line clicked off with a dull finality.

For a moment, no one moved.

Elena looked up at the gate. Its shimmer was faint again—tranquil, almost gentle.

"Reactivated," she whispered. "But by who?"

Jules didn’t answer. His screen was still displaying the timestamp discrepancy.

Ryn exhaled, muttering, "Whatever this is… it didn’t start here."

And deep beneath them, where the melted spiral still faintly steamed, the gate pulsed once more.

As if it heard.