The crimson notification burned across my vision.
[Minor Disaster Impending]
Objective: Defend the Safe Zone for 15 minutes.
Reward: 1 Epic Summon Ticket
Penalty: Most Painful Death.
[Special Quest: Minor Disaster starts in 10 minutes]
Ten minutes.
The system had given me ten minutes before the countdown began.
I took a slow breath and turned my gaze toward Aldric and Kaira.
"Talk. Everything about your abilities, strengths, and limits."
Aldric didn't hesitate. He seemed like the type who wouldn't stay quiet when he could clearly sense a threat.
"As I introduced myself before, I am an Elite Five-Star Swordsman. My sword arts have three forms..." He unsheathed his runic blade and pointed it at me with a chuckle. "Piercing Gale for speed, Iron Severance for raw power, and Rune Cascade when I need range. The runes on my blade amplify each strike, but the higher forms drain stamina fast."
I nodded genuinely.
"Kaira, what about you? I know it might be something you want to keep secret..however, now wasn't the time for it."
"...Physical Empowerment," she muttered, the tips of her ears going pink. "Elite Six-Star. My cultivation went entirely into physical enhancement. Strength, endurance, pain tolerance... I'm essentially just very strong."
Her posture told me she was embarrassed about the Physical Empowerment.
The typical story of a strong woman who hates herself for being too strong. They just never realize how valuable they are in combat.
"You're the most valuable person here." The words escaped my lips before I could stop them, and it clearly made her blush even more.
How cute.
I already knew everything about Napoleon, Timber, and Pride. I only needed Aldric and Kaira's information, which I now had.
"Alright, team.. let's build a barricade. It may not stop the enemy, but it could slow them down. Right?"
Every little thing matters in a battle, be it small or inconvenient .
With Kaira's strength, Timber's vines, and everything we could drag, cut, and lash together in ten minutes, we built a clumsy barricade.
Timber stood at the barricade's edge, vines already extended, his cracked bark-skin from Pride's crash still unhealed. The more I observed him, the more I liked him. loyal beyond any reason I had yet given him for loyalty.
Napoleon perched atop the highest log, scanning the treeline with those unsettlingly intelligent eyes. My first citizen and my alarm clock.
And of course, my Wyvern..my Pride stood behind me like a mounted shadow.
Everyone was in position, eyes fixed on the barricade.
[5... 4... 3... 2... 1...]
[Initiating Minor Disaster: Defend the SafeZone]
[Countdown: 14:57]
[Monster Restrictions lifted during the Minor Disaster]
Three shapes pushed through the treeline as if the forest itself was spitting them out.. slow, unhurried, as if they had all the time in the world.
Each one was the size of a war horse, two to three meters tall. Too low to the ground. Too much muscle packed into the haunches. Scales the color of old rust, overlapping so thick that the gaps between them looked like wounds.
Drakes.
Each one approached with a pressure that would have made a lesser person crumble.
[Juvenile Drake ★★★★★★★ — on the verge of evolution]
[Juvenile Drake ★★★★★★★ — on the verge of evolution]
[Juvenile Drake ★★★★★]
As they approached, the nearby trees began to heat up and then evaporate.
"How did these fire lizards track us down?" Aldric muttered beside me.
Which told me everything I needed to know. My writer's brain had already begun piecing together a picture — but now wasn't the time for questions.
In the meantime, the heat above my head started increasing sharply, forcing me to look up.
Pride was fuming thin streams of fire through his nostrils, the contempt in his eyes fiercer than anything he had ever directed at me.
"Quite the history you have with them, huh? Don't worry — we'll hit them back ten times harder than they ever hit you." I said it with a genuine chuckle.
[Loyalty: 54% → 60%]
It seemed easy to earn loyalty from a spoiled brat when he found itself in trouble. Huhu.
"Timber!"
At my call, Timber stretched his vines forward to wrap around the Drakes and hinder their movement. However, before the vines could reach, they were burned and evaporated instantly.
"It's fine! Switch to support ..keep your eyes on every teammate and pull them out of harm's way when needed!"
"Timber... helps... everybody!!"
[Loyalty: 73% → 76%]
"Kaira!"
She was already moving before the word left my mouth. She sprinted toward the seven-star Drake with the absolute confidence of someone who had decided the solution to a very large problem was to become a bigger one herself.
She grabbed the Drake with her bare hands — the scales were undoubtedly burning her flesh — but she didn't stop. She moved her grip to the creature's neck and drove her force into it. The impact sent a visible shockwave through the Drake's neck muscles.
"Aldric! The six-star!"
With Piercing Gale, Aldric closed the distance to the six-star Drake in seconds. He followed immediately with Iron Severance — only for his runic blade to bounce off from the sheer density of the scales. He reset without hesitation, falling into a hit-and-run pattern, probing for weaknesses.
Amidst it all, Napoleon used his Rallying Cry.
COCK-A-DOODLE-DOOOOOO!
[All physical stats temporarily increased by 25%]
[Fear resistance +50%]
"Pride!"
Pride took to the sky and immediately launched into a dive, weaving through shadows before erupting with his flame breath on the remaining Drake — keeping it pinned and occupied.
And I, at Initiate Three-Star, watched and commanded.
I skimmed through my status window, my eyes landing on the one soulbound ability I had never properly examined.
Writer's POV.
I stared at it for a moment. Then, quietly, almost to myself: "Writer's POV — Omniscient Draft."
My vision blurred.
Then cleared.
The battlefield transformed before me.
It didn't vanish — the sounds, the heat, the chaos were all still real and present. But layered over everything was something achingly familiar. The entire scene had become manuscript. A holographic narrative unfolding in real time, schematic and precise, capturing the very feeling of those countless hours I had spent writing
...imagining characters move, interact, breathe.
The battlefield had become a chapter. And I was reading it.
Everything became transparent to me. The Drakes' movements, their weaknesses, their strengths, their intentions — all of it surfaced like subtext rising to the page.
And then I saw it.
Every Drake ...all three, mid-combat .. kept stealing glances upward at Pride.
Not the hungry look of predators eyeing easier prey. Something more deliberate. More specific.
Kaira was manhandling the seven-star with her bare hands and its eyes weren't on her. Aldric's blade was searching for gaps in the six-star's scales and the creature's attention wasn't on him.
It was always above. Always Pride.
The way each Drake's breath hitched at the sound of his wingbeats. The micro-flinches when his shadow crossed them.
They were performing.
The stumbling under Kaira's grip. The apparent helplessness against Aldric's strikes. Every response slightly too slow, slightly too manageable for creatures standing on the threshold of evolution.
They were acting weak.
Buying time.
Waiting for an opening.
Their true target had never been any of us.
It was Pride. It had always been Pride.
And my Wyvern — proud, contemptuous, burning with the desire to make them pay for whatever history lay between them — was flying directly into it.
[Countdown: 10:57]