Re-Awakened :I Ascend as an SSS-Ranked Dragon Summoner

The jungle had thickened again after the yeti clearing, canopy pressing lower, light going dimmer and greener, and the group moved through it with the particular quiet of people who’d stopped expecting anything easy from this place.

Kelvin walked close beside Diana, close enough that his shoulder brushed hers every few steps, and his voice had dropped into something low, meant only for her.

”You pushed yourself hard back there,” he said. ”With the yeti.”

”I know.”

”I mean it, Diana. You’re not fully recovered. Not from Kruel, not from any of it, no matter how capable you feel right now in the moment.” His jaw tightened slightly. ”What you did to that thing, holding that level of control that long, that’s not nothing. That’s not free.”

”I know,” she said again, softer this time. ”The situation was dire, Kelvin. Corran was already gone. I wasn’t going to let it walk away clean after that.”

”I understand why you did it,” he said. ”I’m not angry. I’m scared, is what I actually am, if you want the honest version. I watched you push past something I don’t fully understand the cost of, and I don’t know what that cost actually looks like until it’s already happened to you.”

Diana was quiet for a few steps.

”I’ll be more careful,” she said finally. ”I promise. I’m not trying to prove anything out here. I just couldn’t watch it happen again without doing something.”

Kelvin reached over and took her hand, fingers lacing through hers without breaking stride, and neither of them said anything else about it, the gesture doing the work words hadn’t quite managed.

Ahead of them, Priya crouched near a patch of undergrowth, her scanner sweeping slow across the ground.

”I’ve got something,” she called back. ”Energy signature. Weak, but it’s worth checking out.”

The group converged. Half-buried in packed soil and a thick carpet of moss, something angular caught the dim light, and Boran crouched to clear it with careful hands, brushing away decades of growth to reveal a rifle stock, the barrel corroded but unmistakably manufactured rather than grown.

”That’s a ravager blaster,” Wren said, crouching beside him. ”Old model. Nobody’s made this configuration in years.”

”How’d it end up out here,” one of the younger Dreamers asked.

”Scanner flagged it as low-level beast signature before I dug it out,” Priya said, frowning at her readout. ”Category two range. But it’s not a beast at all, it’s a weapon.” She tapped the readout. ”There’s a beast core embedded in the receiver. Powers the charge system. That’s what’s throwing off the scan, the core reads exactly like a low-tier creature would, because functionally it’s producing the same energy signature.”

”So the scanners can’t actually tell the difference,” Kelvin said, crouching to examine it himself, ”between a weak beast and a weapon that happens to run on beast core power.”

”Apparently not,” Priya said. ”Not without direct visual confirmation.”

They found more the further they pushed. A blade, half-sunk in soft earth, its edge dulled by rust but the crystal setting near the hilt still faintly glowing, a beast core fused into the metal itself, the kind of modification that gave a weapon real teeth beyond what steel alone could manage. Another rifle, this one snapped clean in half. A boot, sole still intact, laces rotted away entirely.

”Hunters,” Boran said quietly, looking at the scattered gear. ”This is what’s left of hunters. Whoever came looking for the same thing we’re looking for.”

”And didn’t make it,” Wren said.

The group stood with that for a moment, the weight of it settling in slow, nobody quite ready to say the obvious thing out loud, that whatever had killed these people was still very likely somewhere ahead of them.

”Keep moving,” Priya said finally. ”Carefully.”

They pushed on, the canopy thickening further still, and it was Wren who noticed the a growth up ahead first, a strange pale bloom clinging to the base of several trees ahead, soft and almost luminous in the dim green light, clusters of it spreading across bark and root alike.

”Don’t touch that,” Priya said automatically, scanner already up. ”Reading nothing on this. No beast signature, no energy signature, nothing at all. It’s not registering as anything hostile.”

”Fungus, probably,” Kelvin said, scanning it himself. ”Passive. Environmental. Not everything out here has to be trying to kill us specifically.”

Boran, closest to the bloom, reached out to brush a low-hanging vine away from his path, his shoulder passing close to one of the clusters as he did.

A fine mist puffed outward from it, invisible almost, barely more than a shimmer in the humid air.

Nobody thought anything of it for three full seconds.

Then Boran staggered.

”Boran?” Wren said, reaching for him.

His eyes had gone yellow, pupil to iris, all of it, the color bleeding through fast and complete, and he dropped to his knees with a sound that wasn’t quite pain, his whole body seizing, muscles locking and releasing in violent, arrhythmic waves.

Wren was already at his side, and the mist reached her too, close enough that a second wisp of it caught across her face before she could pull back, and her own eyes followed his a heartbeat later, the yellow spreading through them with the same terrible speed.

”Get back,” Diana shouted, already moving, shield forming around her arm on reflex. ”Everyone get back from them, now—”

The jungle answered before anyone could retreat.

Vines tore free from the canopy above, thick as a man’s arm, some studded with thorns the length of fingers, others slick and glistening with something that looked less like sap and more like venom, and they came down in a wide, coordinated sweep that had nothing accidental about it.

”INCOMING,” Priya screamed, diving sideways as one lashed the ground where she’d been standing, splitting soil open in a deep gouge.

Kelvin’s arms reconfigured fast, blade extending from one, cannon barrel opening on the other, and he cut two vines clean through before they could reach Diana’s position, the severed ends whipping and thrashing on the ground like something still alive.

Diana’s shield caught a thorned vine head on, the Living Reef hardening across its surface, and the impact still drove her back a full step, the barbs scraping deep gouges across the shield’s outer plating.

Then Boran got up.

He rose slow, wrong, his movements carrying none of his usual controlled strength, replaced with something jerking and mechanical, and his eyes, fully yellow now, no white left visible at all, fixed on the nearest person he could reach.

Which happened to be Priya.

”Boran, no—” she started, and then he was moving, faster than she could get her weapon up, and his fist caught her across the shoulder hard enough to send her sprawling.

Wren moved next, her body already shifting, form dissolving into something lower and faster, claws extending, and she came at one of the younger Dreamers with none of the coordinated hesitation she’d shown in every fight before this, her attack purely, brutally instinctual.

”They’re not in control,” Kelvin shouted, deflecting a strike from Boran’s fist with his blade arm, careful, pulling back on the force behind the parry, refusing to actually cut him. ”Whatever that spore did, it’s not them anymore.”

”I know,” Diana said, shield up, blocking a swipe from Wren’s claws, wincing as the force of it rattled through her arm. ”Don’t hurt them, just hold them—”

The vines kept coming, thorned and grasping, forcing the rest of the group to split their attention between the environmental assault and their two turned teammates, and the fight collapsed into something ugly and chaotic, nobody willing to strike back with real force against Boran or Wren, everyone taking hits meant to subdue rather than harm and paying for the restraint in bruises and cuts.

A vine caught one of the younger Dreamers across the calf, thorns tearing through fabric and skin both, and he went down hard, and Diana was there in a heartbeat, shield sweeping the vine aside before it could strike again, dragging him back with her free hand.

Kelvin finally got close enough to Boran to act. He dropped his blade arm entirely, both hands empty now, and when Boran’s next swing came, wild and uncoordinated, Kelvin ducked under it and drove forward, wrapping both arms around Boran’s torso from behind, using the sheer mass of his mechanical frame to lock the bigger man’s arms down at his sides.

”Diana,” he shouted, straining against Boran’s thrashing. ”Wren, get Wren too, I need you to hold her still—”

Diana broke off from the vine assault, sprinting toward Wren’s still-shifted form, and threw herself into a full tackle that pinned the smaller shape against a tree trunk, using her own weight and the shield’s hardened surface to keep her from breaking free.

Kelvin’s free hand reached for something on his belt, a canister that hissed as he twisted the cap, and he sprayed a fine cooling gas directly across Boran’s face, the mist settling over him in a pale cloud.

Boran’s thrashing slowed.

Not stopped, but slowed, his violent convulsions dialing down into something more manageable, his breathing still ragged but no longer erratic, and Kelvin held on through it, watching the readout on his own forearm scroll fast, analyzing whatever the compound was doing in real time.

”Same for Wren,” he called, and Diana grabbed a second canister from his belt without needing to be told twice, applying it the same way, and slowly, agonizingly, both of them began to settle.

Kelvin didn’t let go of Boran, even once the worst of the thrashing had faded, his mechanical arms still holding him steady while his eyes flicked between the compound analysis and the vines still lashing at the edges of the clearing, the rest of the group holding a defensive perimeter around all three of them.

”I’ve got a partial breakdown,” he said, fast, focused, fingers moving across a projection only he could fully read. ”The compound’s spore-based, some kind of neurotoxin that hijacks aggression centers. I can synthesize a counter for this one since I know the compound but I need a minute, maybe two.”

”Take your two minutes,” Diana said, shield still up, watching the vines continue their assault against the rest of the group. ”We’ll hold the line.”

Kelvin worked fast, one arm still locked around Boran, the other extending a thin needle-tipped injector from its housing, drawing something from a reserve compartment and mixing it against readings he was pulling in real time. The whole process took closer to ninety seconds than two full minutes, and by the time he finished, sweat had beaded along his hairline despite the humidity doing most of that work already.

He injected Boran first. The reaction was immediate, the big man’s whole body going slack, the yellow in his eyes bleeding back out into something closer to their normal brown, and he blinked hard, confusion flooding his expression.

”What—” he started, voice hoarse. ”What happened. Why am I—”

”You got hit with something,” Kelvin said, already moving to Wren, injecting her the same way. ”Don’t worry about it right now. Just breathe.”

Wren’s yellow faded the same way, her shifted form settling back into something more human, and she stared at her own hands like she wasn’t entirely sure they belonged to her.

”Did I hurt anyone,” she said, voice small.

”You’ll all live,” Diana said, finally lowering her shield now that both of them had stabilized, though the vines had finally begun to retreat back into the canopy, apparently satisfied that whatever had triggered them had passed. ”That’s what matters right now.”

The clearing settled into an uneasy quiet, everyone checking wounds, Priya pressing a hand against her bruised shoulder, the younger Dreamer with the torn calf getting patched up by whoever was closest.

Diana straightened, breathing hard, looking around at the scattered damage, and something in her expression shifted, a thought surfacing that clearly hadn’t had room to land until this exact moment.

”Kelvin,” she said. ”How long has Noah actually been gone.”

Kelvin blinked, still crouched beside Boran, checking his pulse manually despite the readout already confirming it was steady.

”He left when the yeti showed up,” Kelvin said slowly, working the timeline out loud as he said it. ”That was a couple hours ago now. He hasn’t radioed in since.”

”That’s true,” Diana said, her voice tightening. ”That’s a long time for a chase.”

Kelvin stood, his eyes flicking green, the familiar wash bleeding in from the corners as his technopathy reached outward, pulling every signal he could find within range.

He went quiet for a long stretch, longer than usual, longer than a simple grid search should have taken.

”That’s weird,” he said finally, frowning.

”What.”

”His tracker’s stationary,” Kelvin said. ”So’s his radio. Both of them, sitting in the same spot, haven’t moved in a while.” His eyes stayed distant, scanning harder now. ”But I’m not detecting any life signs from his gear. Nothing. No heartbeat telemetry, no thermal signature, no biometric feed at all.”

The clearing had gone quiet around him.

”That doesn’t make sense,” Priya said. ”His gear should still be reading something even if he’s just sitting still.”

”I know,” Kelvin said, and something in his voice had gone flat, careful, the same tone he’d worn back in the bay before he’d told Noah about Lila. ”Unless whatever he’s near is blocking the signal entirely. Or unless—”

He stopped himself.

”Or unless what,” Diana said.

Kelvin looked up at her, the green fading slowly from his eyes, leaving something much more worried behind it.

”So where the hell is Noah,” he said.