Hide’s features contorted into a deep, aggressive scowl as he stared at the swirling, chaotic mass of Dark mana in front of him.

The emerald core at the center of this Vortex of Dark mana was easily distinguishable. The massive gem was the Beast Core of the Doom Overseer—the very first A-Ranked Calamity Beast he had ever laid his eyes on, and slain it in the basement of the Sihue clan estate.

Drogon’s small form appeared besides him, his hollow eyes locked onto the center as well.

"It will take two or three more cycles, My Liege." Drogon told Hide, his ancient, telepathic voice vibrating directly in Hide’s mind.

Hide’s scowl deepened. He clicked his tongue, his jaw clenching with intense frustration. He was not in the favor of doing this. The amount of time and effort this required was staggering, and every second he spent down here was a second he wasn’t securing his foothold in the Exterminator tournament back on Earth. But he had absolutely no other option!

He was currently in the agonizing process of forging a Phantom out of the Doom Overseer’s Core. And just like Drogon, because of the sheer quality and rank of the beast’s core, this new phantom would be fully capable of speech and, most importantly, it would retain the entirety of its past memories.

The memories that Hide desperately needed to know about. The Doom Overseer held the key to the deepest, darkest secrets of the world, the Rulers, and the insidious nature of the gates themselves.

And somewhere within all this. Hide hoped to understand himself and know about his mother.

But extracting a phantom of this magnitude was taking entirely too much time. It had already been a grueling seventeen cycles—seventeen exhaustive, bone-aching rotations of drawing in the corrupted Dark mana, forcing it to saturate completely through his Dark Abyssal Core, and then aggressively pushing that refined energy to merge with the massive emerald gem.

And Drogon had just calmly stated it would take three more cycles!

That would be a total of twenty cycles. Hide let out a dry, bitter laugh, shaking his head. This alone told Hide the staggering, almost incomprehensible difference between C-Ranked Phantoms and a true A-Rank Phantom.

All the phantoms he had created so far—Zenith, Aegis, Petra—had been forged in a single, effortless cycle. Even Drogon, had only taken two cycles to fully manifest. But this Doom Overseer? It was taking forever, consuming his stamina and draining his mental focus to the absolute limit. The density of an A-Rank core was on an entirely different spectrum of reality.

Hide sighed heavily, resigning himself to the monumental task ahead. He slowly lowered himself down onto the shattered stone floor, crossing his legs and settling into a lotus position. He closed his glowing blue eyes, focusing entirely inward. He opened the floodgates of his Dark Abyssal Core, pulling on the ambient environment.

The cavern reacted instantly. The dark, suffocating mana swirling around the emerald core intensified, but more terrifyingly, the very walls of the cavern began to change. The surrounding rocks, the scarred boulders, and everything that made up the insides of the colossal mountain slowly started to fracture and break down.

The stone turned into thick, viscous streams of pure Dark mana, getting forcefully sucked through the air and absorbed directly into Hide’s body.

This density of energy was exactly the reason he was here. He needed a catastrophic amount of Dark mana to forge an A-Rank phantom, and for that, he had previously roamed through several Loop gates. But even a fully matured 4-Star Loop Gate did not possess such concentrated mana required to fuel twenty cycles of his System.

It was during that frustrating dead end when Drogon had spoken up. The ancient phantom had informed Hide that he actually knew a way. A way for Hide to cross over into Rilth.

At first, Hide had been entirely confused. What the fuck was the dragon talking about? But as Drogon smoothly explained the ancient lore encoded within his draconic memories, Hide’s whole life, his understanding of the Exterminator world, and the very foundation of the gates flashed before his eyes in a paradigm-shattering revelation.

Rilth was the name of the planet.

It was the origin world. The very planet to which all the terrifying gates on Earth connected. And this alien planet, Rilth, was slowly breaking apart. Its core was failing, its environment collapsing into a corrupted wasteland of dark energy. To stop itself from completely crumbling into the cosmic void, Rilth was forcefully bridging the dimensional gap. It was intentionally merging with Earth.

But Hide had made one thing chillingly clear: that was not something to pity. The supreme entities that governed the dying world—the Rulers of Rilth—viewed Earth not as a sanctuary, but as a fresh resource.

If the worlds successfully merged, the Rulers would consume Earth, effectively turning Hide’s home into the exact same apocalyptic ruins that Rilth currently was. The smog-filled skies of Area 17 would be nothing compared to the absolute desolation of a world stripped of its life force. It was a parasitic invasion, and it absolutely had to be stopped.

If his mother, Erin Volter, had somehow stumbled onto this exact truth—that Earth was being systematically invaded and forcefully merged with a dying, parasitic planet—it perfectly explained why the government had ordered her assassination.

The geopolitical implications of this reality were enough to start a world war. The top Exterminator syndicates weren’t just fighting beasts; they were likely complicit in the slow sacrifice of Earth, hoarding secrets while civilians burned. Maddox, the Commander, had to know about this. The man had warned him not to pry, but Hide was far past the point of listening to warnings.

That harrowing conversation with Drogon had naturally followed to another mind-bending truth. Hide learned that there existed a Fourth Category of gates, an absolute secret completely hidden from the public, the media, and perhaps even the majority of the top-tier Exterminator Agencies.

The Reverse One-Way Gates.

While normal gates acted as portals for Calamity Beasts to invade Earth, these specific, ultra-rare anomalies allowed humans to pass directly through onto the surface of Rilth. According to Drogon, only three of them existed in the entire world. They were heavily guarded, mythic passageways that completely defied the standard laws of spatial distortion.

And Hide had just stepped through one. He was currently standing on the soil of the enemy. He was on Rilth.

Hide opened his eyes, the violet ring around his blue pupils glowing with a terrifying, predatory intensity. He looked around the massive, hollowed-out cavern. These mountains weren’t made of normal stone or earthly minerals.

These walls were completely made up of solidified, hyper-compressed Dark mana. The Mountain Corpse Land was literally a massive geological formation of the very energy Hide used to fuel his powers. It was a literal goldmine for someone with the Dark Liege talent.

He took a slow, deep breath, feeling the corrupted energy flood his lungs without harming a single cell in his body. His Dark Abyssal Core spun furiously, greedily digesting the crumbling mountain walls.

Let the tournament continue without him for a few hours. Let the corrupt human agencies and the Rulers of this dying planet scheme in the shadows. He was going to drain this mountain completely dry, forge his A-Rank Phantom, and extract every single secret the Doom Overseer possessed.