Re-Awakened :I Ascend as an SSS-Ranked Dragon Summoner Chapter 799: Hand in all the institutions

A drone hung motionless above the clearing, its camera feed the last living thing broadcasting from a stretch of jungle that had gone completely, unnervingly silent.

[Xoxo124]: okay does ANYONE have eyes on what just happened

[nova_watcher]: one second they’re fighting something, next second the feed’s just... empty ground

[GreyStormFan]: did the stream cut or did they actually just VANISH

[PithonElite_07]: I’ve been watching this footage on loop for ten minutes. no bodies. no blood. nothing. just torn up ground and some vines

[user_Jace91]: this is the scariest thing ive seen on a stream in years and nothing is even happening

[VoidKingFan12]: two of the strongest factions on the planet just got taken out by SOMETHING and we don’t even know what it was

[StreamUser_847]: I’ve got a theory

[StreamUser_847]: I study cryptid folklore as a hobby, hear me out

[ArcadeGuru]: oh no

[StreamUser_847]: the amazon basin has legends going back centuries. beings that move fast, drink blood, avoid direct light. I think what took them out was a vampire colony

[nova_watcher]: a WHAT

[GigaRoseSimp]: sir this is a beast hunting stream not a horror podcast

[StreamUser_847]: laugh all you want. yetis are real. dragons are real. eclipse has THIRTY of them in a pocket dimension. why is a vampire suddenly where you draw the line

[PithonElite_07]: okay that’s actually a fair point I hate that it’s a fair point

[VoidKingFan12]: I refuse to believe in vampires on principle

[ArcadeGuru]: bro two months ago you refused to believe in yetis

The chat kept scrolling, theories piling on theories, nobody with an actual answer, and the drone drifted lower over the scorched clearing where the fight had ended, its camera sweeping slow across broken webbing and churned earth.

A shape rippled at the tree line.

Shade unmasked mid-motion, scales flickering into visibility one section at a time, and the moment his full body was solid he dropped low to the ground and began tearing at the earth with both forelegs, dirt flying in wide arcs, his tail whipping side to side with an agitation none of his usual composure ever showed.

[nova_watcher]: WAIT THE DRAGON’S BACK

[Xoxo124]: what is he DOING

[GreyStormFan]: he’s digging like a dog that smells something under the porch

[PithonElite_07]: that is exactly what this is. that is a dog behavior. a very large, very terrifying dog behavior

[StreamUser_847]: he’s confirming something’s down there. I’m telling you. underground. that tracks with vampire lore

[user_Jace91]: PLEASE stop saying vampire

[VoidKingFan12]: what if it’s just roots

[ArcadeGuru]: does a dragon get this worked up over roots

Shade kept digging, claws tearing through soil and root alike, working faster now, his amber eyes fixed on something the camera couldn’t see, and after nearly a minute he stopped, chest heaving, staring down into the shallow trench he’d made.

Whatever he’d found, he didn’t dig further.

He lifted his head instead, looked in a direction the camera hadn’t tracked yet, deeper into the jungle, and let out a low sound that carried none of his usual quiet, before folding back into nothing and vanishing from the feed entirely.

[GIGASimp]: WHERE DID HE GO

[nova_watcher]: he looked at something. he clearly saw something we can’t see

[PithonElite_07]: I don’t like that even the DRAGON looks spooked

---

The second drone, still holding its slow patrol pattern above the Dreamers’ camp, caught a conversation already in progress the moment its microphone array picked up voices.

Kesh stood near the central tent, arms crossed, tablet dark in her hand.

"We haven’t had contact in hours," she said. "Not from Priya, not from anyone. That’s not normal for this deep into a search grid."

"It could be interference," one of the remaining camp staff offered, though he didn’t sound convinced by his own suggestion.

"It’s not interference," Kesh said. "I ran diagnostics twice. The signal’s just gone."

A pause stretched, long enough that the drone’s audio pickup registered the ambient jungle noise filling the silence, insects, distant birds, the low constant hum of a basin that had never once felt fully safe.

"The locals warned us," someone else said, quieter. "First scouting trip, before any of this. Man-eaters, they said. Something in the deep basin that doesn’t show itself to outsiders unless it wants to."

"I remember that," Kesh said. "Zahir and Mira took the report. I never saw what they did with it."

Nobody answered that directly.

"There’s something else," the first voice said, hesitant now. "Older stories. Not about the man-eaters specifically. About something bigger, further in. Nobody could ever tell me exactly what it was supposed to be. Just that it was there, and that it was the reason the man-eaters existed at all."

"What do you mean, the reason," Kesh said.

"I don’t know," the voice admitted. "Nobody who told me the story knew either. Just that whatever’s out there made the other thing possible."

The drone hovered, capturing all of it, streaming it live to an audience that had gone very quiet across every platform carrying the feed.

[user_Jace91]: hold on hold on

[StreamUser_847]: SEE. i TOLD you something was hidden

[GreyStormFan]: so the dreamers knew there was a threat out here and didn’t tell eclipse??

[PithonElite_07]: that’s a massive problem if true. that’s a partnership built on withheld intel

[nova_watcher]: to be fair we don’t know if zahir actually saw that report or just didn’t act on it

[VoidKingFan12]: doesn’t matter. if he had it and sat on it, people he brought into this could be dead right now

[GigaRoseSimp]: EXCUSE ME. eclipse has kept plenty of secrets too. remember lucas being a literal prince and nobody knew for MONTHS

[ArcadeGuru]: that’s different that’s personal family stuff not a warning about man eating creatures

[GigaRoseSimp]: is it though

[Xoxo124]: guys this is turning into a whole thing

[StreamUser_847]: EVERY faction hides things. that’s not new information. the question is whether the dreamers hid something that got people hurt

[PithonElite_07]: eclipse fans calling dreamers shady in 3... 2...

[VoidKingFan12]: THEY ARE SHADY THOUGH

[GigaRoseSimp]: says the faction whose leader disappeared into an EDF station for weeks with zero explanation

[VoidKingFan12]: that’s not the same thing

[GigaRoseSimp]: it is EXACTLY the same energy and you know it

[nova_watcher]: can everyone please chill we don’t even know if any of them are still alive

[ArcadeGuru]: that’s not helping nova

[StreamUser_847]: THANK YOU for saying vampire didn’t age so badly now

[VoidKingFan12]: nobody said you were right about vampires calm down

The chat kept splintering, factions of viewers forming their own camps within the argument, Eclipse loyalists and Dreamers loyalists trading accusations back and forth faster than either side could actually be answered, and underneath all of it, nobody, not the streamers, not the chat, not Kesh standing quiet and worried near her tent, had the first real answer to where the group had actually gone.

Meanwhile, somewhere far away from the Amazon, away from all the noise and speculation lighting up a hundred thousand screens at once, a ship moved through open space toward a destination nobody outside it had been told.

Inside, men dressed in black moved through the narrow corridors with the quiet efficiency of people who’d done this a thousand times before, checking systems, exchanging low words, none of them paying particular attention to the woman seated near the center of the bridge, in the one chair positioned to see every display at once.

Lila sat with her legs crossed, one boot swinging slow, watching the star field scroll past the forward viewport.

She was smiling.

Not the wide, reckless grin she wore in a fight, and not the softer one she saved for Noah when nobody else was watching either. Something quieter than both. Something patient.

Something that looked, more than anything else, like a woman who had finally found her way back to exactly where she’d been trying to go.

----

Back on planet Vel’kai, underneath the battleground where the Sterlings had just rescued One’s caged prisoners.

Evangeline had them moving through the corridor in a tight formation, three of the five freed captives leaning on Matthias’s suit for support, when the passage ahead simply stopped being empty.

Two figures stood there, unhurried, dressed in dark tailored coats that had no business looking that clean in a place still smelling of scorched stone and old blood. Behind them, a line of men in black stood at rest, hands folded, patient in a way soldiers rarely managed to look.

Evangeline stopped the group with a raised hand.

"Who are you," she said, "and why are you standing in our way."

The woman smiled first, slow and pleasant, the kind of smile that had clearly been practiced somewhere very far from a battlefield.

"We’ve simply come to collect what belongs to us," she said. "Nothing more dramatic than that."

Matthias stepped forward, suit humming as it recalibrated its stance. "Belongs to you. What exactly are you claiming belongs to you down here."

"Our assets," the man beside her said, gesturing lightly toward the five prisoners with two fingers, as though pointing out furniture in a room he’d once furnished himself. "We’d appreciate their return."

"Assets," Matthias repeated, incredulous. "You mean people. Do you work for One?"

The laugh that came out of both of them was immediate and genuine, the kind of laugh that came before either of them had fully decided to be insulted by the question.

"Work for him," the woman said, pressing a hand lightly to her chest. "Darling, we’ve been doing this work since before that boy learned to walk, let alone conquer. We don’t work for children. We simply happen to find ourselves, from time to time, in the same business as one. I mean we are your informants afterall,"

"Then why," Evangeline said, "would you feed the Sterling family his exact location, unsolicited, and then show up here demanding we hand back the people he’d been feeding on."

"An informant provides information," the man said. "That’s the whole of the transaction. We never once implied the merchandise itself was included in the arrangement." He tilted his head slightly, and something in the gesture managed to be both perfectly civil and deeply condescending at once. "You’ve had your use of the location. We’d simply like our property returned. It seems a fair enough exchange, given the circumstances."

"We got that information from the EDF," Evangeline said. "Through an official channel. Nothing about that transaction involved you."

"And who," the woman said, drawing the words out with obvious relish, "told you those were two separate things."

Evangeline said nothing.

"The Purge. The EDF." The woman waved a gloved hand between the two names as though flicking away something insignificant. "Infinite Soldiers, if you’d prefer the older name, back when it still had teeth worth mentioning. Semantics, all of it. Different letterhead, same filing cabinet, if one bothers to actually look inside instead of trusting the label on the outside." She smiled wider. "We’ve had people embedded in that institution longer than most of its current officers have been alive. It costs us very little to let one hand reach through their channel while another reaches through ours."

"You’re saying the EDF is compromised," Matthias said slowly.

"I’m saying nothing so crude as compromised," the man said, sounding almost offended by the word. "I’m saying influence is patient. It doesn’t announce itself with a headline. It simply sits, quietly, in the right rooms, for exactly the right length of time." He looked past them, at the five gaunt figures still leaning against Matthias’s suit. "Now. The merchandise, if you please. We’ve a schedule to keep, and I’d rather not make a genuine mess of your lovely tunnel."

"They’re not merchandise," Evangeline said, and her voice had gone hard enough that the man across from her actually paused. "They’re people. Human beings that boy tortured for however long it took to keep himself functioning. We’re not handing you anything."

The woman’s smile didn’t waver, but something behind her eyes cooled several degrees.

"I sense hostility," she said, almost wounded by it. "Which strikes me as remarkably poor manners, considering. That’s simply no way to treat an informant, is it? We handed you a gift. The least you might offer in return is a bit of civility."

"You handed us a location," Matthias said. "You didn’t hand us a gift. You made a play, and now you’re here to see what else you can take off the top of it."

The woman sighed, theatrical and put-upon, and glanced at her companion.

"They’re simply not going to be reasonable about this," she said.

"They rarely are," he agreed, straightening his cuffs.

"Well then," she said, looking back at Evangeline and Matthias both, her tone shifting into something bright, almost cheerful, the way a hostess might announce the start of a game everyone had already agreed to play. "Shall we begin?"

The men in black stepped forward as one, and where their hands had been folded a moment before, a pale, glowing red-white light began to bleed up from their knuckles instead, spreading slow across their fingers like something waking up after a very long, very patient sleep.