Investing in My Crippled Wife: Every Return Makes Me Stronger

Outside the fragile sanctuary of the vehicle, the chaos consuming the city had reached its absolute zenith.

Fortunately, the civilian evacuation protocols had already been completed in time. The underground subway systems and reinforced bunkers were sealed tight, clearing the streets and vastly lessening the heavy burden on the hunters’ shoulders. Without civilians to protect in the immediate crossfire, they could focus entirely on fighting the invading horde.

And high above the skyline, the strongest of those hunters were locked in a fierce battle against the ultimate threats of the seventh-circle gate: the dragons.

Though they had initially been fighting against a single target, the situation had rapidly spiraled out of control when two more of them emerged from the swirling vortex right after the first. With three of the cataclysmic creatures now hovering together, the air itself seemed to splinter under the sheer weight of their presence, the sky darkening completely as the colossal beasts spread their wings over the metropolis’s structural canopy.

Side by side, the trio unhinged their jaws and unleashed a massive, combined torrent of fire. A sea of apocalyptic flames surged downward, threatening to swallow the entire city and everyone within it in a matter of seconds.

”Hold your positions! Brace for impact!” Tactical channels erupted with frantic shouting as the sky turned into a sea of fire. ”It’s too wide! We can’t intercept a blast this scale!”

However, just before the catastrophic strike could wipe the city completely off the map, salvation arrived in an instant.

As the only seventh-circle awakened hunter in the city, Bram the Bastion Emperor, acted right in time to prevent the disaster.

Stepping directly into the path of the apocalypse, he unleashed his domain.

[Domain Manifestation: Iron Citadel!]

The space warped violently, a monumental structure of absolute force manifesting in the fabric of the sky. The domain forcefully dragged two of the dragons inside the isolated pocket dimension to handle them alone, cutting off the deadly flames at their source and leaving the remaining threats to the others.

With the two dragons sealed away within his domain, the pressure fell squarely on the remaining hunters still airborne.

Engaging the threat high in the sky, the rest of the S-Rank hunters rallied instantly to lock down the perimeter. Though sitting only at the sixth circle, their elite status was well-earned; they were more than capable of managing a threat of this scale when unified.

Working in perfect synchronization, they threw themselves directly into the path of the last remaining dragon and the swarm of its drake underlings. Every strike and spell was executed with absolute control, keeping the battle high above the clouds and successfully containing the beasts so that no further damage was done to the city below.

However, their relief was short-lived.

A sudden, violent tremor rippled through the center of the seventh-circle gate, freezing the blood in the hunters’ veins. From the depths of the swirling vortex, a fourth dragon emerged.

Unlike the massive, cataclysmic beasts currently tearing up the sky, this creature was significantly smaller, its sleek scales a deep, abyssal blackish-blue. Yet, the pressure radiating from its compact frame was suffocating, instantly eclipsing the weight of the giant beasts around it.

The new dragon did not join the airborne battlefield. Instead, it folded its wings and went into a steep, vertical dive, aiming like a spearhead straight into the city below.

”Intercept it! Don’t let it reach the city!”

A barrage of high-tier spells and physical strikes rained down from the airborne vanguard, tracking the creature’s trajectory in a desperate attempt to blast it out of the air. But the dragon moved with terrifying agility. With fluid, sweeping tilts of its wings, it effortlessly carved through the net of intercepting attacks, leaving a trail of shattered magic in its wake as it plummeted toward the skyline.

”Karen, Theo! Follow me!”

One of the S-Rank hunters shouted loudly, their voice cutting through the panic before they immediately pivoted their flight path to chase after the descending threat.

Hearing the urgent command, the two called hunters exchanged a swift, tense glance. Without a second thought, they broke away from the main formation and headed down immediately, pushing their speed to the absolute limit.

”Take this!”

Makil, the first one to chase the dragon, soon caught up. Closing the distance as much as he could, he channeled his mana into his blade and swung with absolute precision. He knew this wouldn’t hurt it; his main goal was to force a reaction, disrupt its trajectory, and break its terrifying downward momentum.

A barrage of powerful, concentrated energy strikes slammed directly into the creature’s back.

Yet, the dragon didn’t even flinch. It completely ignored the impact, refusing to alter its course by even a fraction of a degree. If anything, the kinetic force seemed to slide off its sleek scales as it unfurled its wings slightly, using the sudden shift in air currents to increase its speed even further.

By then, Karen and Theo had arrived in tight formation, flanking Makil as they dive-bombed toward the rushing skyline. The three of them locked their focus onto the beast, ready to coordinate a combined attack to halt its descent.

However, before they could launch the assault, the entire world vanished.

Their vision instantly went pitch-black, a sudden, suffocating weight pressing down on their minds from all sides.

”It’s a mental attack! Protect your psyches!” Makil barked at the top of his lungs.

Acting on raw instinct, he instantly activated his armor’s protective enchantments to shield himself. He then expanded his spiritual sense outward, relying on his sensory radar to maintain his high-speed flight path and keep his tracking lock firmly fixed on the beast’s massive signature.

But the moment his spiritual sense mapped out the surroundings, a chill ran down his spine.

The dragon was gone. Both its physical presence and its mana signature had completely vanished from his perception.

Just as suddenly, the mental pressure evaporated, and the city’s bright skyline rushed back into view. The three hunters pulled up hard, hovering in midair as they scanned the empty streets below in absolute shock.

”Report status! Did anyone keep a physical eye on it before the blackout?” Makil asked, his voice tight.

”Negative, it broke line of sight completely,” Karen replied, her eyes darting across the skyscrapers.

Theo gave a similar response.

”...”

Makil forced his racing heart to calm down, analyzing the situation.

”Keep your heads cool, couldn’t have gone far,” he ordered, his voice steadying the others. ”A dragon that fast doesn’t use a mental blind spot just to run away. It probably used the illusion to mask its landing site and hide its residual energy signatures so we couldn’t track its trajectory from the air.”

He pointed toward the sprawling commercial sector directly beneath them, his expression grim.

”Listen to me carefully: we cannot win a direct confrontation against a seventh-circle threat. If we engage, we die. Our only objective right now is to locate it and stall for time until the Bastion Emperor finishes his domain or reinforcements arrive.”

He quickly divided the tasks to ensure they stayed alive while tracking it.

”Karen, stay high and maintain an aerial web. Do not descend under any circumstances. Keep your detection spells active and look for any structural anomalies, collapsing roofs, or sudden dust plumes from a distance. Theo, with me. We drop to street level, minimize our mana output completely to stay off its radar, and track it purely by ground tremors. If you spot it, do not engage. Broadcast its coordinates immediately, stay in the shadows, and play for time.”

They separated to execute the tracking strategy.

Makil descended toward the lower skyline, keeping his flight at a steady pace. He stretched his senses to their absolute limit, tuning his perception to the slightest vibrational shifts while tightly masking his own presence so he wouldn’t stand out.

As he hovered between two glass skyscrapers, he spotted a freshly carved crater in the center of a main avenue, followed by another shattered expanse of asphalt a block away. The dragon was moving on foot or in low bounds to stay beneath the radar. Makil immediately began tracking the trail of destruction. Calculating the trajectory of the impact points, his eyes narrowed as he deduced the beast’s path.

It was heading directly toward the central district—the heart of the city, where the primary shelters were located.

Realizing the stakes, Makil picked up his pace, rising slightly higher to gain a broader field of view over the towering structures.

As he navigated the air, the brutal reality of the wider invasion unfolded below him. Even with the civilian evacuation complete, the city streets were a war zone. Hundreds of low-ranking beasts and lesser drakes that had bypassed the main airborne vanguard were swarming the lower levels, clashing violently with squads of elite-to-low-tier hunters fighting on the ground to keep the perimeters secure.

Passing over a wide plaza, Makil spotted a defensive line of hunters on the verge of being overrun by a pack of feral drakes. Sticking to his mission was paramount, but he couldn’t let them be slaughtered. Without breaking his forward momentum, Makil flicked his wrist, sending down a precise, condensed volley of wind blades. They sliced cleanly through the beasts, instantly killing all of them and wiping out the threat in a single strike.

The leader of the ground forces looked up just in time to spot the fleeting silhouette. Recognizing the S-Rank hunter, he nodded in deep gratitude before turning back to his squad.

”Keep moving! Move to the next block!” the leader shouted, rallying his team to press forward while Makil was already gone. ”That’s the power of an S-Rank, don’t waste the opening he gave us!”