I Can Devour Monsters' SSS Talents

The guards who were on the other side of the area could only stare.

The returnees almost did not look like the people who had been sent off nine months ago, dried blood covered all of their clothes.

Their armor was broken and their faces were thin, wounded, and tired.

Rindo only looked at the familiar area around him for a few seconds, and that alone gave him a sense of relief, and his shoulders finally dropped after so long.

It was over, at least for now he did not need to worry about anything.

Selina sat down on the same ground, her legs could no longer support the weight of her body.

Liana also had a bitter expression on her face, her eyes were wet, she had lost both her friend and her summon.

She tried to say something but did not feel like talking...

Seraphina looked around once, the walls, the guards, the humans, and there was no sign of the Titan, no Ancient Cindari, and no Calamity.

They had really returned, and that certainty was the last thing her body needed to keep standing.

Her eyes closed and she fell to the ground.

”Seraphina!” Rindo called out with concern, but he was also barely staying conscious.

Cassian sat down a few meters away, his weapon fell from his hand and he rested his head against the wall behind him.

”Finally...” he whispered in a weak voice.

Aren was the only one whose reaction could not be turned off immediately even by exhaustion.

He was standing and looking at the area around him.

He had escaped from that damned world...? The same world where he had lived for 25 years...? He had been trapped there for 25 years?

His eyes kept moving between the towers, the lights, and the people running toward them with equipment.

Was this his own world? He looked at the sky, and when he saw its color, he became certain that this really was his own world...

But why did he not remember this place? Could it have been built during the years he was gone? It was possible, and even likely, after all, a lot of time had passed.

Unfortunately, he still did not know that he, Lian, and the rest of his saviors... were not even from the same world.

One of the officers recognized their faces and his eyes widened.

”They’re back!” he shouted in disbelief.

Several others immediately turned around.

”What?!”

”They’re them!”

”The Special Area group is back!”

”Nine months...” the man said in shock.

”After nine months, they finally came back!”

The area exploded in an instant, and the sound of sirens, the shouts of commanders, and the running of soldiers and medical teams came from several entrances.

The officers tried to count the number of people, but they did not even know where to start.

Nine months had passed since the expedition team entered that rift, and now that they had returned after nine months, all of them were in terrible conditions.

Nine months was not enough time for them to think that all the members of the expedition had died or that something had happened to them, exploring Special Areas was normally something that took time.

Especially considering that in the past, there had also been cases where differences in time had existed.

Seris could barely see any of them properly, the voices were far away, the lights were too bright, and her eyes could barely stay open.

Her body was lying on the ground and she could not even lift her head, she could only see shadows running around them.

Someone knelt beside her and said something about her blood pressure, and another person became more serious and acted faster after seeing her wounds.

The healers were quickly treating all of them.

She did not care, her eyes only moved to the other side for a few seconds to look at the surroundings, but her mind no longer had the strength to analyze anything, and without being able to see anything, her eyes slowly closed.

The last thing she heard was the voice of one of the healers.

”Take this one immediately!”

Then darkness covered everything.

Three days later

Their return took less than an hour to become the biggest news in the world.

Nine months.

Almost nine full months had passed since hundreds of young Awakened entered the Special Area.

The families had waited for months and the governments had no exact explanation, they could not see what was happening inside the rift, and it was even possible that there was no rift anymore.

But this did not mean that they had been terrified and had uncontrollable worry, everyone knew about Special Areas and knew that spending months, and in some cases even years, inside them was normal.

There were even times when differences in the passage of time happened, which could make everything more complicated.

Some of the worry came from the fact that most of the Awakened who had entered and been sent there were young people with good talents and promising futures.

Their families and the people behind them were waiting for their return and to see how much they had improved.

And suddenly the survivors returned, on a completely normal day and in a way that nobody expected.

But their number was only about one-third of the people who had entered.

And even that one-third had not returned safely, some had lost parts of their bodies, some had permanent damage to their mana paths.

Some had almost completely healed bodies, but their minds had not.

A young man who hid under his bed at the smallest sound of an explosion.

A girl who, after waking up, refused to stay alone even for a few minutes.

A man who shouted the names of his dead friends every time he fell asleep.

Some survivors only cried when they saw their families.

Some had no reaction at all and only stared, as if their minds still had not understood that they had really returned.

This caused the related organizations to fall into shock, wondering exactly what had happened to these young Awakened that such fear had taken over them.

Something that could create such serious trauma was not just a few fights with some monsters, and it was clear that much bigger and more frightening things had happened to them.

Something that even now they could not move past.

The interviews started very quickly.

And stories came out from the mouths of the Awakened, healers, soldiers, and families.

Stories of Awakened who had been in Glassthorne, those who, with the help of a Vorhelm, had brought down an entire city called Crystal Line.

Stories of Awakened who had acted alone and looked for their own opportunities and had avoided forming groups.

And finally, stories of the Awakened who had been trapped in Vhalaris, a story that caused the most noise and different reactions.

Intelligent creatures called Cindari, a giant tree that was connected to the life of the world.

A war with a non-human civilization, being captured and capturing them, and how with the help of an Awakened named Lian Vorhelm, they had taken the entire Vhalaris within a few hours.

Being forced to cooperate with them and trying to stop the war that had happened between them, a war that ended in a huge massacre on both sides, the same war in which they had managed to stand their ground with the help and leadership of an Awakened named Rindo.

And that terrible madness and corruption that had suddenly spread everywhere and caused madness, the desire to kill, and massacres.

And for several hours, one word appeared everywhere, Calamity.

Several survivors had talked about a creature named Black Silence.

One said it was a monster that had corrupted a world, another claimed that it had taken the body of a human, and another person claimed that if they had not stopped this Calamity, it would have entered their world.

The names Lian Vorhelm and Seris Pendragon were also repeated in some of the stories.

But a few hours later, everything changed.

Videos that directly talked about the ”Calamity” disappeared.

Parts of the interviews were removed, and the major media no longer used that word.

The official statement only talked about ”a very powerful and unknown creature at a level beyond recorded threats.”

Even some survivors who had spoken freely on the first day were unwilling to answer questions about that part on the second day.

It was clear that much higher powers had entered the matter, but even censorship could not erase the entire story.

But everything spread only as rumors and unclear stories, and no complete explanation was published by the organizations, official institutions, or the Awakened Federation.

For three full days, the return from the Special Area remained the number one news story in the world.

And during those three days, they started waking up one by one.

Rindo woke up earlier than many of the others.

Cassian a few hours later.

The first thing Liana did after waking up was ask about Selina.

Aren was placed under heavy supervision almost immediately after his initial treatment, an unknown man who spoke an unknown language, and after questioning, it was discovered that he was a native of the Ruined Realm.

He never expected that after returning to his world, the first thing that would happen to him would be getting arrested and being questioned.

But some people needed more time to fully heal and recover, and one of them was Seris Pendragon.

Three days after their return, her eyes slowly opened.