Demonic Po*nstar System

Chapter 880: Answering the Questions of the World

Vespera’s gaze swept the staging plain once, cataloging every non-Eclipse presence in a single pass.

Foreign guild fighters lingering near the perimeter. Association officials milling between vehicles. Camera crews from four continents.

She nodded at Kaiden and turned toward Soren, who was already moving.

Eclipse’s veterans began the methodical work of clearing every unauthorized person from the ground surrounding his dungeon’s entrance, and the Association officials fell into step beside them without needing to be asked.

They’d received their instructions after the Chairman’s meeting.

The staging plain started shrinking.

Kaiden began walking toward the press cordon with his hands in his pockets, and the girls fell into step behind him.

Pebble moved behind all of them, six burning eyes sweeping the press line, tail still swinging in long, lazy arcs.

Kaiden stopped three meters from the cordon.

The cameras had been trained on him since he left the tent, but this was the first time he’d faced them willingly, and the reporters knew it.

The shouting died on its own as he stood there and announced, ”I’ll take a few questions.”

A man with shaky fingers took him up on the offer first. ”The mana apocalypse...!! Awakened events have been escalating in frequency and severity in the recent months. The Kaiju emergence was entirely unprecedented. Do you believe more events of this magnitude are coming?”

Kaiden decided not to mince his words.

”It would be wishful thinking to assume the mana apocalypse has shown us its worst. There’s no basis to believe otherwise.”

In São Paulo, Lúcia’s grip tightened on the phone.

In Ohio, Catherine’s son looked up at his mother.

”Can you tell us what was discussed in the meeting with the Chairman?”

”The specifics aren’t mine to share yet. The talks went well, and both Eclipse and I hope for a strong, cooperative relationship with the United States going forward.”

Behind him, the first wave of foreign guild fighters was being politely directed past the perimeter by Eclipse veterans working in tandem with Association officials.

The process was orderly, firm, and left no room for negotiation.

”The creature behind you!” A different reporter, voice pitched higher. ”The emergence today killed hundreds of people! Can you tell us what it is? What exactly are we looking at?”

Kaiden glanced over his shoulder at Pebble, who was sitting behind the girls with all six eyes locked on him, tail curled around his forepaws, looking for all the world like a dog waiting for his owner to finish a conversation so they could go for a walk.

”My cute dog.”

The staging plain went quiet.

Pebble’s tail twitched.

Then it swung.

Then it swung again, harder, sending a shockwave that knocked a camera off its tripod.

Then it swung a third time, and a fourth, and a fifth, each wag punching displaced air across the plain in concussive bursts that flattened press badges against chests and sent a correspondent’s notes spiraling into the sky for the second time today.

Then Pebble arched his massive body back, all six burning eyes aimed at the heavens, and howled.

”AWOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!”

The sound hit the staging plain like a second apocalypse. Low and vast, it climbed through registers that human ears weren’t built to process, rattling teeth in skulls, shaking the ground hard enough to bounce equipment cases off the dirt, cracking windows on the remaining command vehicles.

The howl held no hostility, no warning. It was joy, pure and unfiltered. His master had called him his cute dog in front of the entire world.

”PEBBLE!” Luna’s scream cut through the wall of sound, both hands clamped over her ears. ”SHUT UP!”

”Close your mouth this instant!” Bastet’s ears had flattened against her head, her tail puffed to three times its normal size, and the dignity she’d maintained all afternoon was being shredded by acoustic assault.

Pebble did not shut up. A second howl followed, louder than the first, and Aria pressed her face into Kaiden’s shoulder with her hands over her ears, caught between laughing and wincing.

In São Paulo, the alley erupted. Lúcia snorted first, then the boy beside her started laughing, then the entire crowd of forty lost it, howling right along with the Guardian on the screen, because the man who had just told them the apocalypse wasn’t over had turned around and called the monster his cute dog, and the pressure that had been sitting on this alley for nine hours cracked down the middle.

In Ohio, Catherine’s daughter stirred against her arm. Her son looked at the creature on the screen, then at her, and said, ”Mom, can we get one?”

She laughed. It was the first sound she’d made since the shaking started that wasn’t a whisper.

”What are your plans for Eclipse going forward?”

The howling had subsided. The staging plain behind Kaiden was noticeably emptier than when he’d started speaking, the perimeter tightening around the dungeon entrance with every passing minute.

Eclipse territory was taking shape in real time.

”Eclipse is built upon mother’s legacy and houses the hopes and dreams of my loved ones. I consider it my family’s future.” Kaiden looked directly into the nearest camera. ”That’s why I intend to make it bloom to heights no one thought possible.”

”Me, me next!” The voice came from deeper in the press cordon. Older, male, a veteran journalist who knew exactly what he was throwing. ”What about your father?”

The warmth left Kaiden’s face like a switch had been thrown, and what replaced it was a stillness that made the reporters in the front row step back without meaning to.

”Magnus Morvane,” Kaiden said, and every journalist present registered the full name instead of ’father’, ”is being investigated by the Awakened Association and the government.”

He did not elaborate.

The silence that followed lasted four seconds, which was three too many for a press scrum, and in those four seconds every person watching understood: he would not call that man his father, he would not discuss the investigation, and no follow-up would change either fact.

Questions fired again, overlapping, urgent. Kaiden raised a hand and the cordon went quiet.

”I’ve run out of time. If you want to know more, follow Valhalla’s Sinners for updates. We’ll stream later, answering viewer questions and analyzing the fight.”

A vein materialized on the nearest correspondent’s forehead.

Behind her, a veteran journalist closed his eyes and breathed through his nose.

This man had just become the most recognized figure on the planet and he was plugging his stream. On live television. To their faces.

The shamelessness was so pure it was almost admirable.

Kaiden ignored the twitching foreheads entirely, and spoke with absolute seriousness.

”I’ll say one last thing.”

He looked past the cameras, past the reporters, past the staging plain and into the broadcast itself.

The people watching on cracked phones and shelter screens and flickering interfaces felt the shift as if he’d looked them in the eye.

”Humanity has not only survived until now. In the face of dungeons, monsters, and disasters, we adapted and we grew. We built guilds, trained fighters, and turned the mana apocalypse into a system in which we thrived.”

His voice carried across the plain, steady and certain. ”That won’t stop. No matter what comes next, no matter what walks out of the next gate or falls from the next sky, we face it together. No apocalypse and no invader will take this planet or our freedom away from us. Not while I draw breath.”

In São Paulo, the alley went quiet.

Lúcia lowered the phone and looked at the faces around her.

Nobody was shaking anymore. The woman with the rosary had her chin raised, and the boy who hadn’t blinked in two minutes was standing straighter than he had all day.

In Ohio, Catherine stood.

She picked up her sleeping daughter with one arm, took her son’s hand with the other, and walked toward the shelter exit because a young man on a screen had told her that humanity would be fine, and her legs believed him.

Three months ago, the world knew Kaiden Grey as an F-tier streamer with a harem, a pervert with a big dong and a talent for making the internet argue about whether he was a genius degenerate or just a degenerate.

The man standing on the staging plain bore the same name and cast a very different shadow.

The streams were still important parts of who he was.

The same women were still beside him.

But the man who used to make people laugh and blush and argue was now the man who had fought a Kaiju, bargained with a government, called an apocalyptic Guardian his cute dog, and told the whole world that he would stand between them and whatever came next.

And billions of people believed him.