Re-Awakened :I Ascend as an SSS-Ranked Dragon Summoner Chapter 784: A show off

The clearing burned steady around the fallen weavers, and somewhere beneath the fissure of red light, Noah felt the two presences he’d summoned move off into the trees, not visible yet, but there, hunting.

[BEAST KILLED — MINOR PREDATOR]

[XP GAINED: 50]

[BEAST KILLED — MINOR PREDATOR]

[XP GAINED: 50]

The notifications kept coming, one after another, small and steady, Ash and Ember working their way through whatever else the disturbance had drawn close, clearing a perimeter Noah couldn’t see but could track through the system’s quiet, relentless bookkeeping.

"They’re already earning their keep," Kelvin said, glancing sideways at Noah. "You gonna show them off eventually or just let them be a rumor forever?"

"When it matters," Noah said, and left it there.

The group pushed forward once the last of the webbing had burned itself out, moving deeper into the basin as the canopy overhead climbed higher and thicker, trees so wide at the base that three people couldn’t have circled one with their arms outstretched, roots rising above the soil in twisted arches that the group had to climb over rather than walk around.

Priya kept her tablet up nearly the whole time, cross-referencing readings against the map, occasionally stopping the whole group with a raised hand while she confirmed something wasn’t about to walk out of the underbrush at them. Kelvin worked alongside her when he could, his scanner arm extended, comparing frequencies, the two of them falling into an easy technical rhythm that had them finishing each other’s sentences within the hour.

Zahir walked near the back with Mira, close enough together that their conversation stayed low, meant for each other rather than the group.

"We should tell them," Mira said quietly, eyes forward, not looking at him. "Especially now, with everything showing up ahead of us the way it has."

"Not yet," Zahir said.

"Zahir."

"I know," he said. "I know what you’re going to say. But Lucas isn’t here. Noah is." He glanced ahead, toward where Noah walked with Diana a short distance in front of them. "Lucas would understand faster. He’s fought beside us. Noah’s still deciding what we actually are to him." He shook his head slightly. "I need more time to earn that first. Before we hand him something this heavy."

Mira didn’t answer, but her jaw tightened in a way that made clear she disagreed, even if she wasn’t going to push it further right now.

Ahead of them, Diana had drifted closer to Noah’s side, her steps quiet against the soft ground.

"You feeling anything," she said.

"Feeling what."

"I don’t know how to explain it," she said, frowning slightly, like the words weren’t cooperating. "Something’s off. Not the energy signature, something else, underneath that. I can’t place my finger on it."

Noah paused, actually turning inward for a second, testing the air the way he’d learned to over the past year, feeling for the particular pressure that usually announced something worth worrying about.

"I don’t sense anything," he said. "But if you do, stay careful. Keep me looped in on whatever you find. I’ll put my ear to the ground too."

Diana nodded, though the frown didn’t fully leave her face, and she drifted a step ahead again, scanning the trees with that same unplaceable unease sitting behind her eyes.

Noah kept walking, and his own thoughts wandered somewhere he hadn’t let them go in a while.

’This planet,’ he thought, looking up at the endless green stretching overhead, thick enough in places to blot out any real sense of sky. ’Can we actually save it. From Harbingers. From beasts evolving faster than anyone can track. From whatever else keeps showing up the second we think we’ve got a handle on things.’

’It feels like every time we close one door, three more open somewhere else.’

"I’m picking up heightened activity," Kelvin said, cutting through his thoughts, voice sharpening with focus. "Multiple signatures, closing fast, from the northeast."

And then the buzzing started.

It came low at first, a hum that could’ve been mistaken for wind through leaves if it hadn’t been building, rising, until it filled the whole space around them, vibrating up through the soles of Noah’s boots.

They broke through the canopy in a wave.

Hornets. Hundreds of them, wings a blur of gold and black, each one the size of a large dog, segmented bodies gleaming with plated chitin, mandibles snapping, thin curved stingers trailing beneath them long enough to gut a man from a full body length away.

[BEAST DETECTED]

[NAME: SUNSTINGER SWARM]

[CLASS: HORNET]

[RANK: CATEGORY 3]

[BEHAVIOR NOTE: SCENT-TRIGGERED AGGRESSION]

"They’re scent triggered," Noah said, reading it fast. "Something in the group is drawing them in specifically."

He looked around at everyone.

"Who’s wearing perfume."

Nobody answered right away. Then Kelvin’s face did something complicated.

"That would be me," he said. "Sort of. Not perfume. Beast musk. I bought it off a guy online a few weeks back, he reached out saying he was a fan, starting a business, wanted feedback from an actual Eclipse member." He paused. "I figured I’d support the little guy."

Diana closed her eyes and pressed her palm flat against her own forehead.

"For someone genuinely brilliant," she said, "you do the single dumbest things sometimes."

"I see my mistake now," Kelvin said, already reaching for the auxiliary arms extending from his shoulders, the gold plating catching what light filtered through the canopy above.

The first wave of hornets dove.

Stingers dropped from their curled position and thrust forward, each one large enough to be mistaken for a paddle, wide and barbed, moving with enough force behind them that Noah watched one punch clean through a fallen tree trunk in a single strike, splitting the wood in half like it was nothing.

Diana’s shield came up instantly, the Living Reef expanding, orbital fragments spinning into a defensive rotation around her and Kelvin both, catching three stingers in a row and absorbing the force with a deep resonant thud each time.

One of the Dreamers stepped forward, weapon raised.

"We’ve got this," Kelvin said, not even looking at them, both mechanical arms already reconfiguring, plating sliding and rearranging into something new, longer, bladed at the joints.

Noah folded his hands behind his back and stepped clear, watching.

The chat overhead, visible only through the drone’s live feed that none of them could see but all of them knew was running, exploded into motion.

[nova_watcher]: KELVIN AND DIANA THE POWER COUPLE FOLKS

[GreyStormFan]: shade just came out of nowhere again im gonna have a heart attack

[PithonElite_07]: the man is literally an SSS ranked being and he’s just standing there with his hands folded watching his friends work lmaooo

[VoidKingFan12]: honestly? respect. let them cook

[xoxo124]: if I could summon a hornet blocking shield I wouldn’t lift a finger either

[StreamUser_847]: this is the most unbothered ive ever seen noah eclipse look during a fight

Diana pushed forward through the swarm, the shield’s orbital fragments breaking off from their rotation one at a time, launching outward and slicing through wings and thoraxes with clean precision, the Tidal Rebound catching a direct stinger strike and firing the stored force back into the hornet that had delivered it, sending the creature spiraling backward into two of its own swarm.

Kelvin’s arms had finished their transformation, one now a long curved blade humming with a faint electric charge, the other a compact cannon barrel that pulsed with gathering energy. He fired the cannon into a cluster of hornets diving toward Priya’s position, the blast punching a hole clean through three of them at once, and followed immediately with a sweep of the bladed arm that cut down two more attempting to flank him.

Shade unmasked at the edge of the fight, scales rippling into visibility, and reared his head back before releasing a breath of corrosive acid that burst outward in a cloud of hissing green bubbles, catching a whole cluster of hornets mid-flight, their wings dissolving on contact, sending them dropping out of the air one after another.

"Now that’s just showing off," Kelvin called over to him, and Shade’s tail flicked once in what might have been acknowledgment.

The Dreamers held their ground at the periphery, ready, weapons raised, but every time one of them stepped forward to engage, Kelvin or Diana was already there, the fight collapsing inward toward the two of them like the swarm itself had decided they were the only real threat worth focusing on.

"They’re not letting us do anything," one of the younger Dreamers said, half amused, half genuinely annoyed.

"Let them have it," Zahir said from the back, arms crossed, watching with the same quiet approval he’d shown during the arachnid fight. "This is clearly their thing."

Diana drove her shield forward into the thickest press of hornets, the Coral Fortress expanding around her in a wide defensive dome that pushed the swarm back in a rippling wave, and from inside it she fired fragment after fragment outward, each one finding a target, wings and legs and stingers scattering across the jungle floor.

Kelvin moved beside her, blade arm and cannon arm working in tandem, cutting down anything that slipped past her fragments, the two of them settling into a rhythm that looked less like coordinated combat and more like two people who’d fought beside each other so many times their bodies had stopped needing to communicate the plan out loud.

The swarm thinned. Dozens fell. Then a hundred. The buzzing that had filled the whole clearing began to fracture, breaking apart into smaller, scattered clusters rather than the single overwhelming wave it had been.

And then something larger dropped through the canopy above them.

It was easily three times the size of the others, its body thicker, wings broader, a crown of jagged chitin ridging along its skull, mandibles the length of short swords snapping open as it descended, and every remaining hornet in the clearing shifted its attention toward it instantly, reforming into a tighter, more coordinated defensive ring.

[BEAST DETECTED]

[NAME: SUNSTINGER MATRIARCH]

[CLASS: HORNET]

[RANK: CATEGORY 3 — APEX SPECIMEN]

Diana’s shield staggered under the first strike from the queen’s stinger, the impact rattling through the fragments hard enough that she took a full step back to hold her footing.

Noah moved.

He crossed the distance in a blink, appearing directly in the matriarch’s path as it wheeled back for a second strike, and drove his fist forward with energy gathered behind it, chi and raw strength fused into a single point of impact that caught the creature square across its thorax.

PUEEEEHHH

The sound it made wasn’t a screech. It was closer to something bursting, the massive body folding inward around the strike before it left the ground entirely, hurled backward through three trees before finally coming to rest, unmoving, half buried in the churned earth.

The remaining swarm scattered instantly, wings carrying them up and away through the canopy in every direction, the coordinated defense collapsing the moment their queen went down.

The clearing went quiet.

Diana lowered her shield slowly, breathing hard, looking at the ruined body of the matriarch and then at Noah, who stood there flexing his hand once, like the punch had barely registered as effort at all.

She turned to the Dreamers, several of whom were still standing frozen mid-stance, weapons half raised at a fight that had already ended.

"Welcome," she said, and there was nothing but dry amusement in it.

The group started moving again a few minutes later, boots crunching over scattered wings and broken chitin, the drakes still out there somewhere ahead of them, hunting whatever else the disturbance had drawn close, Noah’s system quietly logging kill after kill in a steady rhythm that hadn’t stopped since the clearing first caught fire.