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  It was another m for the chairman of the hunter association. After the disaster that almost destroyed New York, the hunter association has been very busy dealing with all the aftermath, from the wild monsters having bee increasingly violent to the neearance of undead creatures, not the same as the army, but that emerged out of the leftover hat the undead monsters left behind over the surrounding ndscape.

  Because of this, the hunting of undead monsters has bee a rather urgent matter. And underground caves that people started to call “tombs” began to appear, dungeon-like areas oh that harbored a rge tration of Undead creatures, usually led by a strong boss-type Undead monster.

  However, the Hunter Association of America was well anized, and although these s were tiring, they were nothing pared to the disaster that could have happened if the ey had beeroyed by the Raid of the Bck Gates, as the people of Earth began to call this i.

  After that whole i, Nichos took a small break bae, deg to leave the paperwork and other things to the people who didn’t participate itle to begin with. After having almost died, he had grown rather exhausted.

  He wao be with his daughters and appreciate life for a moment, to take a breather and rex. It’s not as if the world hasn’t been terrible already, but at the very least, some time ago, he believed he had found some time of respite from time to time.

  However, since Bing Xue’s arrival, things have beeing out of proportion rapidly. He didn’t know if it was her fault or something, and he didn’t really want to bme her after she saved everyone, but something was lingering in his mind.

  “Daddy, daddy, look!”

  “Hm?”

  Nichos g his dear daughter, earing a colorful dress like those magical girls would do, lifting a small pstic staff with a pi on top. The pink and colorful dress trasted adorably with her bck skin, making her look even cuter.

  “I’ll heal you from all the exhaustion! Pinky Light!”

  The little toy in her hands glowed brightly as Nichos' you daughter tried to cheer up her father with her "magic." She had barely reached 7 years of age just a few days ago, and her bright blue eyes were full of innod purity. It made her father instantly smile.

  “Hahaha, maybe you just healed me with that!” He ughed, the burly maly hugging his little princess and kissing her forehead. “Somehow I feel all healed now; what’s this?”

  “It worked then! See? I am going to bee a magical girl when I grow up!” His daughter giggled.

  She was a bundle of joy and ess, and her exhausted father smiled as he gently patted her little head with his big hands.

  “I’m sure you will, my little Mary.” He sighed. “And your mom would be proud, of course.”

  “I’ve heard that iower there’s a floor that’s heaven! Is that true? we meet Mommy if we go there?” Mary suddenly asked.

  Nichos felt a bit shocked after that question; his strong-looking eyes suddenly felt slightly emotional as he resisted tears from flowing from his eyes.

  The innoce of his girl moved his heart; she was still holding on to the belief that she could meet her main.

  “M-Maybe… Haha, your daddy will do his best to bee the stro, so we meet your mom one day.” He smiled, feeding his daughter with lies. “Maybe…”

  “I will grow strong too! I will bee the stro magical girl!” Mary giggled.

  As she giggled and kissed her father’s cheek to cheer him up, Nichos’ sed daughter stepped out of her room. She seemed ready to go out.

  “Hey, Crisse, where are you going? Weren’t we going to spend the day together?” He asked her.

  His daughter looked at him with a desding smile. “Dad, I told you yesterday I was going to meet with my besties. We’re going to the mall to hang out for a bit. I’m all grown up already; I go on my own~”

  “You’re only fifteen! That’s not grown up at all to me.” Her father protested.

  “What? Why not? e on, New York is the safest city in the try!” Crisse protested, her long bck hair reag her shoulders and waving as she made an annoyed gesture.

  “Maybe from monsters, but not from people. Crisse, there are still some criminals on the loose around the city. Bing Xue is not our eternal protector either. She’ll only act when it is pletely necessary.” Sighed Nichos.

  Around the i, there have already been rumors about Bing Xue being some sort of eternal protector. This created a false sense of security in people, making them believe she would just e to save anybody. At least amongst the youngsters of New York. But that was far from the truth.

  “I think you’re exaggerating. I’ll be FINE. Anyway, give me some money; maybe I go with an Uber, so you don’t get upset?” Sighed his daughter, resting her hand on her hips.

  “Big sister, you shouldn’t be mean to Daddy! Also, Daddy is on vacatio’s spend the day together instead!” Mary said, pointiaff at her sister. “Or else… Pinky Light will punish you in the name of justice!”

  “Hmm? Is that so? Maybe I’m the vilin then, haha!” Crisse stole the staff from her sister. “Hehehe! I stole your precious on now; whatchu gonna do now?”

  “Hey! You thief! Take this! Super pinky kick!” Mary responded by kig her big sister in the knee.

  “OUCH! Hey, what the hell is wrong with you?! Oww! Dad, she hit me out of nowhere!” Crisse cried.

  “Hahh…” Nichos sighed. He finally remembered that having two daughters was quite a moal task by itself without a wife to help him take care of a part of the burden. “Well, there you go; I transferred you some bucks. Take care and use Ubers to move if the pces you go are too far away, okay? Mary, stop hitting your sister.”

  “But daddy, she is insulting the justice of pinky light, and-”

  RUMBLE!

  However, the chaotic yet harmonious family time was broken as a sudden tremor made the ey shake. Nichos panicked as he ran towards his daughters and hugged them with his big arms. The tremor tinued for a few seds, making them both panic.

  “W-What’s going on?!” Crisse screamed.

  "Daddy, I’m scared! Buaaaah!” And Mary broke out into tears right away.

  “Calm down; Dad is here! Stay still…” Nichos said, hugging his daughters and waiting for the tremor to end.

  Thankfully, the building didn’t fall apart or anything. Quietness returo the city, and as he looked at his daughters, they were fine.

  “I-It’s over?” Crisse asked.

  “Sniff… Was it a big monster?” Mary wondered.

  “I-I don’t know,” Nichos said. “But it came from outside the city. Something so big and strong that it made the whole city tremble... W-What in the world?”

  And just at that moment, he heard his phing. He quickly answered the call.

  “Yes?”

  “Nichos! Oh my god, are you okay?!”

  John, the guild master of the Justice Guild, called him.

  “John! Yes, yes, I am alright. My daughters, too. What’s going on? Did you see something?”

  “Didn’t you?! Just look outside the window, man!”

  “What…?”

  As Nichos was told that, his daughters suddenly fell silent.

  They were bnkly staring through the window of their apartment building.

  Across the near-invisible barrier that covered the city.

  There was something—a distortion in space, gray energy p out, creating a psychedelic view.

  And from that gate, something started ing out—a massive, gigantic, scaled thing.

  “Daddy… What’s… that?” Mary asked.

  “It looks like... some big lizard?” Crisse wondered.

  “That’s a brachiosaurus." Nichos couldn’t fet such a shape.

  Before the apocalypse began, he was rather fasated with paleontology and studied a lot of that through his young years. He articurly fasated with dinosaur fossils and the ways dinosaurs were all shaped.

  He knew Brachiosaurus were gigantiosaurs, the rgest to have ever stepped oh. Yet the ohat came out of the gate was bigger than all the found fossils.

  Yes, it was so massive that it easily dwarfed most of the buildings in New York!

  At least a hundred meters tall!

  “GROOOOHHHH!”

  It gave a loud groan as more of these absolutely gigantiosaurs, which looked very accurate to stific depis, started p out oer another.

  They didn’t look to have any elemental powers or something; they were just titanic-sized dinosaurs!

  A rge horde of at least fifty brachiosauruses started rushing towards New York’s barrier.

  And smashing it, stantly hitting it.

  The tremors the ey felt were because of these giants trying to break in!

  “There’s no fug way… Are they S Rank? No, even higher?” Nichos asked John.

  “We don’t know, but we’re already mobilizing the hunters outside!” John said. “But this isn’t even the biggest problem; this is pretty new!”

  “What? Has something been happening?” Nichos, who hadn’t answered his phone for a while, suddenly gasped.

  “Yeah, this m they found a group of hunters massacred inside one of those Uombs, but not by Undead; the Undead Monsters were all sin already!” John said. “There are reports of huge men, of humans the size of orcs, if not twice as big, walking through the road towards the city.”

  “Humans?!” Nichos wondered. “Wait, how did they look?”

  “Kind of... ape-like? They looked like... a human aors.” John spoke, incapable of believing his own words.

  “Australopithecus?!” Nichos readjusted his gsses as sweat started p out of his bald head.

  “I just got a call that a huge group of like a hundred of those ape-men started attag more huhat were hunting around the city!” Said John. “They just started a few minutes before the dinosaurs appeared out of thin air!”

  “Just what the hell is going on? This isn’t like anything we’ve ever faced! It’s not like they’re ing from another world… Right?”

  “Yeah… It feels like they’re ing from... like our past? But a very exaggerated one.”

  “Do we even know if our past was like we believe it was, anyway?”

  As Nichos calmed dowook off his shirt, revealing his big, muscur torso.

  “Girls let’s go to the shelter below the building,” Nichos said. “I have something to take care of.”

  He quickly led his daughters to the underground shelter, secured with the highest magic teology prote devices.

  “Daddy! Are you ing soon?” Mary asked as she was being held by her big sister.

  “Yeah, don’t worry!” Niiled. “Crisse, take care of your sister… Please.”

  “O-Okay.” Crisse nodded.

  “And… And if I don’t e back…” Niuttered, making his oldest daughter’s eyes widen. “Please make sure she grows up to be a nice girl, okay?”

  “D-Dad…” Crisse’s eyes started g. “Stop saying sh*t like that, dad! You’re not dying! You’re S Rank!”

  “Hah, yeah… I used to think like that…” Nichos sighed. “I’m going.”

  .

  .

  .

  “UNGA! BONGA! GRAAAH!”

  A furious paonstrous ape-men roared. Their bodies resembling the apex physique that the body a human could achieve bined with the burliness of a goril and the flexibility of an ape, and further enhanced with wild, primal ford strength. With a furious roar, they rushed toward the hunters who had been hunting horned wolves just a couple of minutes ago.

  “Shit, shit, they’re catg up!”

  “What the heck are those things?!”

  “They look like us, but not?!”

  “Fuck, they killed Roslier!”

  BAAAM!

  However, before the party of four could escape, something suddenly jumped from the skies, nding right in front of them.

  It was another of those "things"—another of those a humans—that provoked such a strange sense of fear within the geic memory of all humans.

  “OOOHH…”

  Its giant body of over three meters i dwarfed all the hunters in front of him. His giant, log-like arms rushed towards them.

  A simple punch.

  CRAAASH!

  The tank that put himself in front saw his powerful Mithril Shield shatter into pieces in mere seds; his armor broke, and so did his ribs.

  “Guuaagh!”

  He vomited blood as he felt his crushed innards almost ing out of his own mouth; his lifeless body quickly fell over the ground, spttering blood and flesh everywhere.

  “Uuaaagh!”

  His party members all screamed in utter horror at the se.

  Their bodies felt paralyzed as the giant humans approached.

  One of them grabbed the corpse of their friend and started mung on it.

  Mana and essence began flowing into their bodies as he ate the corpse, bite after bite.

  “Oooggh! Oga! Bunga, bungaaahaha!” It ughed happily as it gained a power it didn’t have before.

  “Ooohoho…” The other quickly extes arms towards them, lig its lips.

  They were not even enemies.

  These hunters, these humans.

  They were nothing but prey!

  “S-Someone… Someone help!”

  “Heeeelp!”

  As they were about to be crushed...

  FLASH!

  A bright amount of light surged from the skies.

  And a sword of light pierced the caveman’s back.

  Yet it didn’t die!

  “Guuuaaggh! Bungaaagghh!”

  The caveman screamed in agony, though, blood flowing out of the rge wound.

  “Oh? You didn’t die from that?”

  The figure of a woman made entirely out of golden light surged from the skies.

  “You guys… Are quite tough.”

  -----

  Pach