Incubus Living In A World Of Superpower Users-Chapter 254: How The Situation Became After The Meteor Shower

She didn’t wait.

"You entered here with a set number of points."

Her tone didn’t shift. No threat. No warning. Just a matter-of-fact.

"That’s all you’ll get from the university as new students."

A pause followed, long enough for the meaning to land.

"After that, you’ll have to earn more."

No one made a sound. But something in the air shifted. Something in the way the students sat, in how their shoulders settled, how their backs straightened.

They were listening now, not out of politeness, but clarity.

"Some of you will rise," the Dean continued, "some will fall within days. Others will hover just above the floor, wondering why the climb stopped."

Her voice was steady. Almost casual.

"Those who last... they don’t win because they’re the most talented."

She took a few steps forward, back toward the center of the platform.

"They win because they adapt."

The silence that followed wasn’t empty. It was heavy. Sharp.

"They suffer correctly."

She let that hang for just a second longer than the others.

Then she stopped moving.

Dead center of the platform again.

She didn’t blink.

"Power was not a gift."

Her words cut straight through the air.

"It was a debt."

She wasn’t angry. She wasn’t trying to impress anyone. It was just the truth. And everyone knew it.

"And here," she said, quiet but firm, "you’ll learn how to pay it."

The Hall of Presence didn’t clap.

It never did.

But something changed in that room—not the light, not the sound. Just the way everyone was sitting.

The way they were breathing. The speech wasn’t long. It didn’t need to be. It wasn’t about showing off history or welcoming them warmly. It was a message—a reset.

Then the light overhead dimmed—not all at once, and not dramatically. It was subtle, like the Hall was breathing out.

A low hum started from the upper arches—a soft tone, steady. Above them, the dome ceiling shimmered.

And then it happened.

The floor held steady, but above it, the air twisted slightly. Not like a screen turning on. Not a hologram either. The dome didn’t display anything.

It became something.

The room expanded visually—space opened up, and the ceiling peeled away into a simulation. Full-scale. Immersive. The kind of thing you didn’t forget once you saw it.

No one announced it.

No one explained it.

It just began.

The Fall.

No introduction. No narrator. Just raw imagery.

Cities flickered and dimmed, one after another. Not from bombs. Not from direct hits. Just... shutdown.

Streetlights are failing in sequence. Tower blocks going dark like breath being pulled from their cores. People moved below—uncertain, confused, and then afraid.

Then the forests.

Twisted.

Real, yes—but not right. Leaves that shifted when nothing touched them. Roots cracked through pavement like drills.

Bark folded open in slow, pulsing motions. Some trees grew eyes. Others made sounds, like whispers in languages no one had spoken before.

Students leaned forward.

Others just stared.

Then came the oceans.

The water didn’t crash. It spun, curling outward in strange shapes. Something massive stirred underneath, but the simulation didn’t label it.

Just let it loom. Waves rolled into cities slowly, not fast, like hands dragging across a map, wiping coastlines clean. Bridges bent, rusted, and fell.

Then fire.

Then silence.

Then beasts.

Not like the ones from textbooks. Not categorized and not contained. Some had wings that blocked the sun.

Others had no faces—just hunger and motion. A few resembled humans—until they moved.

And then everything blurred.

People screamed. Some fought. Others didn’t get the chance.

Cities collapsed.

The Forbidden Zones began to grow.

Not rapidly. Not all at once. Just a steady spread—creeping, swallowing regions, pushing survivors inward.

Military strikes tried to hold the lines. They didn’t succeed. Bombs fell. Units vanished. Silence followed. Over and over.

But the simulation wasn’t just about death.

It showed what came after.

Bunkers. Hidden vaults. Fractured networks are trying to reconnect. Kids born underground. Families who’d lost everything were dragging carts of salvaged tech through snow.

Then the rules—brutal but clear.

Don’t steal from another shelter.

Don’t hide symptoms.

Don’t step outside after sundown unless you’ve made peace with dying.

Those weren’t laws. They were survival instincts passed down by the few who made it.

Then came Guild Law. Agreements between remnants of governments and the rising force of powerful individuals.

The world no longer rewarded political strength. It bowed to power—raw, brutal, and personal.

Then came the first megastructures.

Not cities.

Universities.

Three of them.

Built with everything humanity had left. Reinforced with tech no one could rebuild. Filled with sensors, barriers, arcane layers, and psionic steel.

One was carved from the southern polar cap. One was suspended across the broken satellite belt. One was buried inside a mountain’s spine.

Astralis was the last.

It wasn’t a beacon of hope.

It wasn’t clean. It didn’t welcome people with open arms.

It was a filter.

Built to separate survivors from stragglers.

Its gates stayed open, but nothing beyond the walls was guaranteed.

The simulation faded.

The present was returned.

The cities outside Astralis flickered into view. Student-governed. Student-policed. Student-sustained. Not towns.

Not dorms. But zones—each with its own markets, its own defense teams, and its own rules.

And just beyond the visible edge, the Forbidden Zones still pulsed.

The Hall remained still.

The simulation didn’t end.

Not yet.

Above them, the sky changed again.

Now it showed people.

Not the leaders. Not the heroes. Just survivors.

A man dragging his injured sister across broken glass, arm wrapped in torn fabric, glowing faintly with mutation scars.

A mother screaming silently through a sealed glass wall as the elevator carried her children up—but not her.

A group of young teens holding rifles too big for their bodies, their eyes wide not with fear anymore, but with something colder. Acceptance.

Then the cities returned.

But not as they were before.

Walled. Sectioned. Compromised.

Trade routes guarded by powered escorts. Drones patrolling from above—not against crime, but against wildlife that had stopped being predictable.

Streets where one side had clean light, and the other side had none at all.

And through all of it—

Symbols.

Insignias.

Guild marks carved into walls, scrawled onto crates, stitched into jackets.

Not the government.

Not military.

Just organized survival.

A flash of one corner of the world showed a floating island—barely staying aloft—home to a school built on top of an old air carrier.

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