novelraw Chapter 79 - 75: The Second Awakening I
Chapter 79 - 75: The Second Awakening I
Long Chen’s hand reached toward the portal, his fingers mere centimeters from the swirling energy that would take him into the Slaughter Line’s hidden vault. He could feel the pull of it, the promise of techniques and weapons that would make him stronger than he’d ever imagined.
Then time stopped.
Not metaphorically. Actually stopped.
Long Chen’s hand froze mid-reach, his body locked in place as if reality itself had pressed pause. Yan Shou’s form became a statue mid-breath, the guardian’s eyes fixed on the portal without blinking. Even the spiritual formations covering the walls went still, their energy patterns suspended mid-pulse.
Everything was completely, utterly frozen.
Except Long Chen’s consciousness.
He could still think, still observe, still feel the panic rising in his chest as he tried to move and found his body completely unresponsive.
’What’s happening? System? Azazel?’
Neither answered. The connection to both felt distant, muted, as if something had wrapped reality in cotton and blocked all communication.
Then a notification flared into existence.
Not the usual green text of his system. This was different—blazing red, the color of an emergency alert, pulsing with urgency that made his frozen heart want to race.
[ERROR ERROR ERROR]
[CRITICAL PRIORITY OVERRIDE DETECTED]
[FORCEFUL EJECTION PROTOCOL ACTIVATED]
[HOST EJECTION TO REALITY IN 3... 2... 1...]
’Wait—what? No, I’m not—’
The portal disappeared. Yan Shou disappeared. The entire fortieth floor chamber dissolved around him like smoke caught in wind.
Then something massive slammed into Long Chen’s chest with the force of a battering ram.
The impact knocked the breath from his lungs, sent spiritual energy scattering through his meridians in chaotic patterns, and tore his consciousness away from the cultivation world with violent finality.
Aiden’s eyes snapped open with a gasp that hurt his ribs.
He was lying on his back on the floor of his flat, the familiar cracked ceiling staring down at him. The transition from standing in the Tower to sprawled on cold tile was so jarring that for several seconds his mind couldn’t process where he was or what had just happened.
’I’m home. Back in London. But I didn’t choose to return. The system forced me out.’
He tried to sit up and his entire body protested. Every muscle ached like he’d been beaten with clubs, his qi—no, his cultivation reserves felt scrambled and unstable from the forced ejection, and his head pounded with a headache that made thinking difficult.
But he forced himself upright anyway, using the wall for support.
"System," Aiden said, his voice coming out rough. "What the hell just happened? Why did you eject me? I was about to—"
He stopped mid-sentence.
The pressure hit him all at once.
Not spiritual pressure like what cultivators radiated. Not killing intent like Yan Shou had demonstrated. This was something else entirely, something that felt wrong on a fundamental level, pressing down on reality itself from somewhere above.
Aiden’s head snapped toward the window.
The sky was wrong.
During his time in the cultivation world, it had been late afternoon in London. The sun should have been setting, painting everything in orange light. Instead, the sky outside his window was black—not the natural black of nighttime, but an unnatural darkness that seemed to absorb light rather than simply lacking it.
And through that darkness, red lightning flashed.
Not regular lightning that branched and split across clouds. This was different. Massive bolts of crimson energy that tore across the sky in straight lines, crisscrossing overhead like someone was drawing a grid pattern with blood-colored electricity.
The lightning didn’t make thunder. It made a sound that was somehow worse—a deep, resonant hum that vibrated through the air itself, through the walls of his flat, through his bones.
Aiden stared out the window, his mind struggling to process what he was seeing.
’This can’t be real. This has to be some kind of hallucination from the forced ejection. Or maybe I’m still in the cultivation world and this is—’
His thoughts cut off as memory surfaced.
Historical documentation. School lessons from thirteen years ago. Mandatory education about the event that had changed humanity forever.
The First Awakening.
Sixty years ago, when mana first returned to Earth, the sky had turned black with red lightning. For three days straight, the heavens themselves had bled crimson while reality restructured itself to accommodate the return of supernatural energy.
People had thought it was the end of the world. Religious groups declared it divine judgment. Scientists scrambled to explain atmospheric phenomena that violated every known law of physics.
Then the rifts had appeared. Tears in space leading to dungeons filled with monsters. And humans had started awakening abilities, developing mana cores, becoming something more than they’d been.
The First Awakening had been recorded extensively. Every detail documented, analyzed, taught in schools so future generations would understand what had happened.
And what Aiden was seeing outside his window right now matched those historical records perfectly.
Black sky. Red lightning. The oppressive pressure of reality itself changing.
"Isn’t this how the First Awakening happened," Aiden whispered, his voice barely audible.
His phone was on the desk where he’d left it before returning to the cultivation world. He grabbed it with hands that trembled slightly, his mind already racing ahead to what this might mean.
He needed to call his parents. Make sure they were safe. Find out if this was happening everywhere or just London. Get answers about what the hell was going on.
But before he could unlock his phone, before he could even pull up his contacts, the system notifications flared.
[EMERGENCY PLANETARY ANALYSIS COMPLETE]
[DETECTING HOST PLANET IN SECOND STAGE OF EVOLUTION]
[CLASSIFICATION: EARTH - STAGE 2 PLANET]
[STAGE 1 COMPLETION CONFIRMED: 60 YEARS AGO]
[STAGE 2 INITIATION: NOW]
[INTERPLANETARY WAR PROTOCOL ACTIVATED]
Aiden’s breath caught. "War protocol? What—"
[PLANETARY CONFLICT DETECTED]
[AGGRESSOR PLANET: VALDRIS]
[CLASSIFICATION: STAGE 3 PLANET]
[TECHNOLOGICAL ADVANCEMENT: SUPERIOR]
[MILITARY CAPABILITY: SUPERIOR]
[MANA INTEGRATION: COMPLETE]
[TIME UNTIL DIMENSIONAL BARRIERS COLLAPSE: 72 HOURS]
A countdown appeared in Aiden’s vision, hovering in the corner like a death sentence.
[71:59:47... 71:59:46... 71:59:45...]
Three days. Seventy-two hours until whatever was holding those armies back failed and they could pour through the rifts into Earth.
"Valdris," Aiden whispered, staring at the name. "A Stage 3 planet. We’re Stage 2. They’re an entire evolutionary stage ahead of us?"
[CORRECT]
[STAGE 3 PLANETS POSSESS: Advanced mana weaponry, Widespread awakened population, Established cultivation systems, Dimensional travel capability]
[EARTH DISADVANTAGES: Limited awakened population (23%), Primitive mana integration, No unified planetary defense, Technological reliance over cultivation development]
[ESTIMATED COMBAT EFFECTIVENESS RATIO: 1 VALDRIS SOLDIER = 8.7 EARTH HUNTERS]
Aiden’s breath caught. "Second stage? What do you mean second stage? Mana awakening was a one-time event. Everyone knows that. It happened sixty years ago and then it was done."
[INCORRECT ASSUMPTION]
[PLANETARY EVOLUTION OCCURS IN STAGES]
[STAGE 1: MANA INTEGRATION - Atmospheric energy returns, rifts appear, human awakening begins]
[STAGE 2: INTERPLANETARY CONFLICT - Planet meets requirements for dimensional warfare]
[STAGE 3: COMPLETE MANA SATURATION - Planetary cultivation network established]
[EARTH STAGE 2 REQUIREMENT FULFILLED]
"What requirement?" Aiden demanded, though part of him already suspected the answer wouldn’t be good.
[REQUIREMENT: SUFFICIENT MANA DENSITY ACHIEVED]
[REQUIREMENT: DIMENSIONAL BARRIER WEAKNESS DETECTED]
[REQUIREMENT: STAGE 3 PLANET INITIATED INVASION PROTOCOL]
[RESULT: INTERPLANETARY WAR - MANDATORY]
The single word hung in Aiden’s vision, stark and terrible.
War.
Not conflict. Not tension. Not the small skirmishes and dungeon raids that had defined the past six decades.
War.
Actual, large-scale, civilization-threatening war.
Aiden’s mind reeled as he tried to understand what that meant. "War? What kind of war? Between who? Countries? Hunter guilds? What—"
His phone buzzed violently in his hand.
Not a call. An emergency broadcast notification. The kind that overrode all settings, that blared alerts even if your phone was on silent.
Aiden looked down at the screen.
EMERGENCY ALERT - NATIONAL THREAT LEVEL: CATASTROPHIC
ALL CITIZENS ADVISED TO SEEK IMMEDIATE SHELTER
MULTIPLE SIMULTANEOUS DIMENSIONAL RIFTS DETECTED NATIONWIDE
WARNING: HOSTILE FORCES VISIBLE THROUGH BARRIERS
COUNTDOWN DETECTED: 72 HOURS UNTIL BARRIER COLLAPSE
PREPARE FOR INVASION
THIS IS NOT A DRILL
The message repeated three times, then his phone buzzed again with incoming calls. His mum. His dad. Messages flooding in from numbers he didn’t recognize.
Aiden ignored them all and ran to the window, pressing his face against the glass to get a better view of the sky.
The red lightning was intensifying. Each flash came faster now, the bolts growing thicker and brighter until the darkness itself seemed to pulse with crimson light.
And between the lightning flashes, Aiden could see something else.
Rifts.
Not the small, controlled dungeon gates that appeared occasionally and were managed by hunter guilds. These were massive—tears in reality itself, some of them large enough to swallow buildings whole.
They were opening everywhere.
Aiden counted six from his window alone, and he could only see a small section of London. The rifts hung in the air like wounds in the fabric of space, their edges crackling with energy that made the air shimmer and distort.
From the nearest rift—maybe a kilometer away, over the rooftops—something started emerging.
It was too far to see clearly, but Aiden’s enhanced vision from his cultivation caught glimpses. Massive shapes, moving with purpose, pouring out of the tear in reality like water from a broken dam.
Not the random monsters that usually spawned from dungeon gates.
These moved in formation. Coordinated. Organized.
’An army,’ Aiden realized with growing horror. ’That’s an army emerging from the rift.’
His phone buzzed again. This time he looked.
A video call from his mum. He answered it immediately.
His mother’s face appeared on screen, pale and frightened. She was in her car, the steering wheel visible in frame, and her voice came through with static interference that hadn’t been there during previous calls.