But the next challenge was not Damian. It was hunger. Not mine. Aster's.
A massive rift opened in the old industrial district, swallowing an entire food storage complex. Monsters poured into the warehouses and contaminated the supplies. Prices jumped overnight. People panicked. Smaller crews tried to clear the area, but the rift kept spitting out armored boars made of stone and sparks. Their hides reflected normal attacks. Their tusks carried enough charge to fry a truck.
The city needed those warehouses back.
Damian announced he would handle it with his elite team. Then he waited. He waited while prices rose. He waited while people got scared. He waited until cameras gathered and everyone begged for his rescue. That was his style. Create a stage, then enter like a savior.
I hated it, so I entered first.
Owen guided us through drainage tunnels into the complex before sunrise. Harper's drones carried battery packs. Riley drove a cargo truck through a hole in the fence and called it stealth. Grace brought medical kits, water, and an expression that said she would personally haunt us if we got hurt for stupid reasons.
The warehouses were a maze of metal shelves, conveyor belts, freezer rooms, and emergency robots that had been left behind. Perfect.
The first boar charged us between two storage racks. I stood still. Riley shouted that I was about to become soup. At the last second, I magnetized the racks. They slammed inward, catching the boar between them like a giant stone sandwich.
It squealed, sparks flying from its tusks. I touched one tusk and felt the creature's charge push back. Lightning resistant. Interesting.
I smiled, because resistance is not immunity. It is just an invitation to be creative.
Instead of shocking the boar, I shocked everything around it. Conveyor belts roared to life. Forklifts rolled forward without drivers. Freezer doors opened. Automated packing arms swung from the ceiling like metal spiders. I turned the warehouse into a factory of humiliation.
The boars charged, and the machines redirected them. One got flipped onto a conveyor and carried into a freezer, where I locked the door and dropped the temperature until its stone legs froze to the floor. Another smashed through a rack of canned peaches, slipped, and slid straight into Riley's truck bumper. Harper's drones lured three into a loading bay. Then I dropped the metal door and rang it like a bell until they passed out from the vibration.
The boss boar was different. It was the size of a bus, with crystal tusks and a back covered in glowing stone plates. It smashed through the central warehouse wall and charged the food silos. If it destroyed them, the whole district would lose half its supply.
Damian's camera crew arrived outside right then. Perfect timing.
The boss boar lowered its head. I ran toward it. Not away. Toward.
Riley drove beside me, matching my speed. Harper's drones formed a spinning halo over my head. Owen shouted something about how this was not part of the tunnel plan. Grace shouted that my bones were not decorative.
The boar charged. I jumped onto Riley's hood, then onto the spinning drones, then kicked off the air itself by forming a magnetic step beneath my foot. I flew over the boar and landed on its back. The stone plates tried to shock me. I drank the current.
Then I grabbed both crystal tusks from behind and pulled. Not with muscle. With magnetism.
Every scrap of metal in the warehouse answered. Shelving, beams, forklifts, broken pipes, nails, cans, tools, even the zippers on Harper's jacket. The entire complex groaned as I built an invisible harness around the boss boar. Then I turned it.
The monster fought, hooves tearing concrete, but I dragged its head away from the silos and toward the open rift. It squealed so loudly windows shattered. I dug my heels into its stone back and poured electricity into the crystal tusks until they glowed blue.
Then I used them as antennas.
A bolt from the storm crack in the sky dropped through the broken roof, hit the tusks, and turned the boss boar into a screaming lightning chariot. I rode it straight into the rift.
For one second, I saw the other side. A red wasteland under a black sun, filled with stone beasts waiting to cross. They turned toward me. I waved.
Then I overloaded the boss boar's crystal core and jumped backward through the portal as it exploded, sealing the rift behind me in a ring of blue fire.
I landed in a pile of rice sacks. The entire warehouse went silent. Then Owen peeked over a crate and asked if the rice was still edible.
That clip became a legend by lunchtime.
Damian's team arrived after the fight ended, standing in clean boots outside a saved warehouse while people chanted my name. He smiled for the cameras because he had to, but his eyes were cold enough to freeze the rain.
He stepped close and offered a handshake. The crowd held its breath.
I looked at his hand. I could feel the hidden device in his ring. A little pulse needle, probably meant to test my resistance or tag me with a tracker. Subtle, expensive, cowardly.
I shook his hand anyway.
The device activated. I sent the pulse back into his ring, up his sleeve, and into the tiny hidden microphone clipped under his collar. The microphone squealed, broadcasting his own heartbeat through every nearby speaker. It was fast, angry, afraid. Only for a second. Long enough.
Damian pulled his hand away. I smiled and said, "Careful. Static shock."
The crowd laughed. He did not.