“Maybe you are right,” Neo spoke after a few seconds.
His voice carried a faint note of unease.
He closed his eyes and tried to sense any change in the surroundings.
The rooftop was eerily quiet, save for the distant rustling of leaves and the faint hum of city noise far below.
Minutes passed, and nothing happened.
Just as he was about to let out a sigh of relief, Gaia coughed.
Her coughs grew violent.
She doubled over, and blood spilled from her lips as grabbed Neo’s hand with a trembling grip.
“N-Neo…..”
Her eyes were bloodshot.
She kept opening and closing her mouth, as if trying to say something, but unable to do so due to the coughing.
Before Neo could react, her eyes went wide with panic, and her body slumped forward as she lost consciousness.
There was no time to rest.
The air grew heavy, and Neo felt an unnatural shift in the world around him.
A cold shiver ran down his spine as his instincts screamed that something was terribly wrong.
“The Divine Energy disappeared from the air…?” Neo muttered, his voice barely audible.
The rooftop doors burst open with a deafening crash, splinters of wood scattering across the floor.
Kronos stormed in.
“There is bad news! None of us can use mana anymore!” Kronos exclaimed. “We can’t use any ability without mana—”
His words faltered as his gaze fell on Gaia. His eyes widened in shock as he crouched beside her.
His hands moved swiftly to check her pulse.
Before long, his brows creased and his face hardened.
“It’s just as I thought,” Kronos said gravely. “Something happened to the World Core.”
“What do you mean by that?” Neo asked.
He glanced around, sensing the commotion below.
Inside the building, the awakeners were panicking.
The disappearance of mana had rendered their abilities useless, and confusion spread like wildfire.
For reasons Neo couldn’t understand, he could still sense the Divine Energy within himself.
He hadn’t lost his Divine Energy like others
“The World Core is responsible for creating ambient mana. Since the mana has disappeared, it means something happened to the World Core,” Kronos explained with a heavy tone. “Gaia is connected to the World much deeper than any of us. The damage to the World Core must’ve been transferred to her too.”
As the two talked, faint purple cracks began to spiderweb across Gaia’s pale skin, emitting a faint, ominous glow.
‘Beelzebub,’ Neo called telepathically, his mind’s voice urgent. ‘Come back here. Quick!’
The caterpillar spirit, startled to hear Neo’s voice after years of silence, hesitated briefly before sensing the urgency in his tone.
It abandoned the notion of protest and rushed toward Neo’s location.
“What is this….” Kronos muttered.
His brows furrowed as he noticed the cracks spreading across Gaia’s body.
He carefully lifted her into his arms.
“We need to get her to the healers,” Kronos said.
Without mana, he couldn’t use his time affinity to halt Gaia’s injury or regress her condition.
The two rushed into the headquarters.
Their footsteps echoed through the halls.
The air inside was charged with tension as the awakeners, though initially thrown into chaos, began regaining their composure.
Veterans of countless battles, they understood the importance of staying calm in a crisis.
When they saw Kronos and Neo enter, murmurs rippled through the gathered crowd.
“Is that Kronos? And… who is that with him?”
“What are they doing inside the association?”
Ignoring the curious whispers, the duo entered the medical wing.
Kronos gently placed Gaia on a bed.
The doctors worked swiftly.
However, no matter what they tried, they could neither determine the cause of Gaia’s condition nor devise a treatment.
Ares and Athena arrived soon after.
Their expressions turned grim as their eyes fell on Gaia’s fragile state.
The dim light of the medical room mirrored the deep concern inside their hearts.
Hours later, the highest-ranked awakeners present within the association headquarters convened in an emergency meeting.
The tension in the room was palpable, thick as a storm cloud.
Many of them exchanged uneasy glances when they noticed Neo among them.
His presence both a surprise and a mystery.
However, they kept their doubts to themselves, knowing this wasn’t the time for such questions.
The meeting stretched on for hours as Kronos outlined the situation to the grim-faced assembly.
The summary was short and direct:
Mana had vanished from Earth a few hours ago.
Gaia had lost consciousness at the exact same moment.
The group swiftly agreed on an emergency evacuation.
Citizens were to be relocated into fortified bunkers designed for worst-case scenarios.
‘The bunkers are useless. No place is safe if the world is getting destroyed.’
Everyone in the room shared the same grim thought, but no one dared voice it aloud.
Exactly one day later, Neo sensed Beelzebub’s arrival.
The air around the headquarters was heavy with foreboding as Neo stepped outside to meet him.
The sky was overcast, a pale gray that seemed to reflect the growing unease of the world.
Far in the distance, the ground began to tremble violently before caving in on itself. With an earth-shattering roar, a massive worm erupted from the ground, its segmented body glistening with an otherworldly sheen.
The creature twisted in the air before shrinking.
Its colossal form collapsed and transformed into a tiny caterpillar no larger than a pinky finger.
Beelzebub landed gently on Neo’s outstretched palm.
“Thanks for coming back on such short notice,” Neo said, his voice soft but grateful. He rubbed the top of Beelzebub’s head in a gesture of praise.
The caterpillar let out a small, playful groan, though it had initially planned to act annoyed. The affection melted its pretense, and it squirmed happily in Neo’s hand.
Neo’s expression turned serious as he quickly shifted the conversation to business.
“We’re going to the North Pole,” he announced.
Kyuu?
Beelzebub tilted its tiny head.
“The World-Time Spell can’t be activated since mana has disappeared. But I can still use my Divine Energy. So…”
Neo believed he could activate the World-Time Spell. Theoritcatlly at least.
Practically, the energy required to cast a spell capable of sending dozens of people 30–50 years into the past was not something he possessed.