System Reborn Vol 3: A LitRPG Adventure

Chapter 1. The Other Side of DangerThe massive [Red Rift] rippled. The surface bending outwards in a wave of unstable power. Those stationed on the cordon line pulled back immediately. “We’ve got movement!” The nearest man stationed near to the [Red Rift] shouted.The message passed along the line of those assigned.An officer ran over to the one in charge of the operation to deliver the news.“Sir, the [Rift] has turned-”“I know that! I can see it with my own eyes,” Luther said with a lash of his tongue as the frightened B-Rank officer cowered beneath the detective’s harsh look and the agitated aura that permeated the command center.Retracting his aura before things went to a level of violence that wasn’t warranted by the situation, Luther forced himself to calm down and managed to gain some amount of self-awareness. “Grab a sensor from the car. We need a new reading.”The B-Rank Office ran off to obey the new orders and soon Luther found himself in front of the massive [Rift] waiting.He’d been there for ten minutes but things weren’t getting back to normal. The pulses coming from the [Rift] had continued, but they were stronger than ever before. The energy emitting out of it was ominous.Luther hadn’t even needed to get close to the surface of it before he could feel the raw power of every pulse of energy out of the [Rift] the outburst from the pulse almost reaching his position in the headquarters. There was a moment where he had feared it had reached beyond the limits of A-Rank and into the S-Ranks.The pace of the energy increased, but just as it seemed to hit a critical point, the worry gave way as the pulsing peaked and then started to come down. The ominous energy started to fade.Thank the gods above that it seems to be settling.Luther wasn’t sure what they could’ve done if it reached those levels and breached. They didn’t have the manpower to handle it. They only had two A-Rankers on the scene that could handle what might come out of that [Rift].The other A-Ranker, Miranda approached and stood at his side and watched the scene more passively than he did. She didn’t seem to worry as much. Luther surmised that maybe she hadn’t read the same records he’d been privy to. Luther knew full well what a [Red Rift] could entail. He knew the utter destruction that would follow if there was a break. The lull in pulses didn’t mean a break wasn’t imminent. Neither did the retreat from the peak.When it came to [Rifts] Luther had learned to trust nothing.Luther scanned around and looked for the backup he had long requested. “Have the guilds responded to the request for assistance yet?” Luther asked when he saw nothing. Instead, he turned and saw blonde hair swirling idly as Miranda’s finger traveled across the tablet at a speed he couldn’t possibly follow. The woman had the minor movements down to an art and was able to use the technology faster than his eyes could comprehend. While the other detective didn’t have the raw fighting power of a regular A-Ranker, she had the finesse when it came to her abilities of somebody one rank above and skill at that level was hard to quantify.“They responded in half measures. Red Oath promised they would send groups B and C out, but they haven’t sent any estimates of when they will arrive,” Miranda explained as she looked down at a tablet in her hands. Luther looked towards the [Rift] and cursed as a dark future was set into motion. The [Rift] was close to breaking.A whirlwind of energy starting to spark off of the [Rift]. Above them, the sky was almost black, and the city seemed empty. The late hour wasn’t an excuse for the guilds to have left one of the zones without support. The guilds had been told to anticipate a call and they had ignored it, those arrogant cowards. It was another innocent in the long list of grievances. “What are your orders?”“We stay and hold,” Luther said. They had ten other officers at B-Rank. While the lot of them wouldn’t hold back a true tide of A-Rank beasts, they would more than likely delay them for long enough for upper command to get a handle on the situation.A few of the S-Rankers would certainly get involved at the point before the situation deteriorated further. Which ones though Luther wasn’t sure and depending on which ones could decide whether it did more harm than good. “We don’t know for certain it’s breaking. Doing anything irrational won’t do us good.”The [Rift] has to be breaching. There’s no other reason for it to open up. There’s no way the team who got caught up in it survived to clear it. This is it. He leaned forward. Holding on tightly to a metal pole as winds started to push against him, Luther looked outwards and onto the [Rift]. The swirling energies became more rapid, devolving into chaos as sparks hit the ground with an intensity that made it crack. Flickers of gold sparks made his blood run cold. Was the [Rift] truly going to overflow and break to spill out onto the streets? Were the predictions of cataclysm to come true?Luther couldn’t accept the truth. Standing against the hard winds as the other officers stepped back, he went to meet the situation firsthand. The [Rift] was opening itself up, the barrier barring entry was gone like everything else. The surface appeared unstable but passable. If he wanted to, Luther was relatively sure he could jump in.Not that he would. He just needed a better look, a moment to understand the chaos whirling within the shifting void. The [Rift] wasn’t working like it should be. The area around it was becoming too damaged. The insides were leaking out. Too much power within couldn't be contained. A small piece of lightning sparked out to smash on the detective’s shoulder. It was