The job change is a bizarre and calamity; the nation begs me to tone it down.

Kolya's words were very practical and made a lot of sense.

After hearing this, the new recruits, though still unconvinced, did quiet down considerably.

After all, they were just gatekeepers. Things of the higher-dimensional realms were none of their business, being gun-wielding warriors.

The atmosphere inside the tent calmed down a bit.

Vodka continued to be poured, enamel mugs continued to clink, and the recruits began to chat idly about girls from their hometowns and their future plans.

Some say they want to make money to go back to their hometown, open a small tavern, and then listen to other people's adventure stories.

Some say they want to establish a professional guild and make it bigger and stronger.

Another guy said he wanted to use his saved military pay to take the entrance exam for a professional academy.

Kolya listened to the brats rambling on without interrupting, and just slowly drank from his cup.

When I took the third sip—

Ok?

Kolya stopped.

The vodka in the glass was sloshing.

It wasn't because his hands were shaking.

The cup is shaking on its own.

No—it's not the cup that's shaking. It's the table. No—it's not the table that's shaking either.

The ground is shaking.

Kolya's pupils constricted sharply.

The vibration was so slight that unless you were a veteran ready to deal with any emergency, you would not have been able to detect it.

But Kolya noticed.

He stayed on this mountain for three and a half years, sleeping with his eyes half open every night.

He reacts faster than the detection barriers in the camp to any slight movement on the ground.

"Shh-"

Kolya raised a hand to stop the recruits who were still bragging.

The tent fell silent instantly.

The new recruits looked at each other, wondering what had happened.

one second.

two seconds.

Three seconds—

The vibration came at the fourth second.

It wasn't the faint, almost imperceptible tremor that I felt before.

It truly comes from deep underground.

With a loud crash, two enamel cups on the table fell over.

Vodka spilled all over the table, running down the edge.

The tent's support poles creaked, as if someone was trying to pry them off.

The recruits' expressions suddenly changed.

But this is just the beginning.

What truly made everyone's expression change drastically was what happened the next second.

boom--!

A deafening explosion came from the horizon.

How loud was the sound?

To put it another way—Koria has been stationed here for three and a half years and has witnessed no fewer than twenty unusual events from the Royal Court of the Dragon King.

He's heard all kinds of noise, big and small, noisy and quiet.

But never once—the sound was loud enough to make his ears ring.

there has never been.

until today.

The loud noise wasn't like an explosion; it was more like something unimaginably huge had forcefully smashed open the wall between the two worlds.

The sound waves generated by the impact traveled from the direction of the crack, carrying a low-frequency vibration that made one's teeth ache. They passed through layers of barriers, across the entire mountain range, and poured into every tent along the way.

Then—an earthquake.

This time, it wasn't the same tentative little shake as before.

It was a shaking that made the entire Ural Ridge Mountains tremble.

Two of the tent's support poles broke off.

Half of the canvas collapsed.

The table overturned.

The chair tipped over.

The enamel mug rolled along the ground with a "clink-clink" sound.

The half-finished bottle of vodka fell off the table and shattered on the floor, scattering shards of glass everywhere.

"Damn it!"

Koria grabbed the greatsword leaning against the wall, uttering a vulgar curse at the same time.

The volume of his voice was raised to the maximum.

"All personnel, advance! Battle stance!"

His voice was mostly drowned out by the roar of the earthquake.

Fortunately, he didn't need to shout it a second time.

The second command came from the camp's public address system.

"Level One Combat Readiness! Level One Combat Readiness! All personnel, immediately to combat positions! Repeat—Level One Combat Readiness!"

The tent erupted in chaos.

Kolya led his recruits out of the tent.

At the same time, a large number of soldiers poured out of the surrounding tents.

Some people were still wearing their belts, some were only wearing one shoe, and one unlucky guy was even completely wrapped up by the collapsed canvas of the tent.

It struggled for several seconds before rolling out like a rice dumpling.

But no matter how messy the preparations were, everyone's first reaction after coming out was the same—to look up.

then.

Everyone stopped moving.

They just stood there, frozen in place.

It felt like someone had pressed the pause button.

Because they witnessed a scene that deeply shocked them.

The sky was full of fire.

It's not a metaphor.

It means literally—the sky was full of fire.

The night sky above the Ural Ridge Mountains, usually shrouded in thick clouds, was now completely covered by an intense, suffocating crimson.

It wasn't a sunset, it wasn't the aurora borealis, and it wasn't any natural phenomenon.

Those were real flames.

It's as if someone used the entire sky as the bottom of a pot, and then lit a fire underneath that could burn through the sky.

Flames began to spread from the edge of the dimensional rift.

It spread in all directions.

It swallowed the clouds, burned through the atmosphere, and turned the night into day.

That brightness was no longer "illumination," but "burning."

Your eyes hurt when you look at the sky.

"this……"

A new recruit next to him murmured something.

Just one word; I couldn't say anything more.

Kolya did not turn around to look at him.

Because he himself couldn't explain it.

Three and a half years.

He guarded this mountain range for three and a half years.

There have been many disturbances at the Yalong Royal Court.

Every time there's trouble, they reinforce the perimeter, set up defenses, and fight when necessary and defend when necessary.

But it has never—never—become like this before.

Just as everyone was still reeling from the sight of the blazing inferno overhead, the camp's alarm system went completely off the rails.

"Buzz——————"

At the same time, the second wave hit.

A violent energy surge, accompanied by scorching heat, swept across the entire camp at a speed that left no time for anyone to react.

The instant the blast wave passed—

The outermost three layers of tents were blown away.

The canvas and support poles tumbled in mid-air like a flock of startled birds.

The supply crates piled at the edge of the camp were pushed dozens of meters away, carving a deep furrow in the snow.

Several soldiers who lost their footing were thrown to the ground by the blast wave and rolled several times on the snow.

Kolya crouched down, pressing one hand to the ground and using the other to protect the new recruit beside him, and endured the ordeal.

After the shockwave subsided, he suddenly looked up.

This time, he saw it clearly.

far away.

The dimensional rift in the sky, stretching from east to west, is widening.

It's not just expanding little by little.

It was tearing apart at a speed that made one's pupils dizzy, with the edges of the cracks looking as if something was forcibly prying them open from the inside.