The interesting thing about perception is how personal and subjective it is. A single smile can mean so many different things to so many different people based on their personal feelings.

When all those concerned for their idol’s wellness saw the bright and unburdened smile of their mysterious streamer, they were elated.

When all those who stumbled into viewing an utterly mind-blowing feat and mysteriously gained tangible benefits in the form of martial enlightenments saw the confident and sage like smile of their unexpected benefactor, they were awed.

When an old man saw the contaminated features of his ancient bloodline smirk like a triumphant toddler, he disintegrated his desk. It was the fourth piece of furniture to need replacing since the start of the stream.

The coffee table fell valiantly under a palm strike when the Golden Lion was made aware of his grandson’s public reemergence, and the drinks bar ignited with spirit flames when he saw his strength.

Perhaps the most aggrieved was the extravagant biosphere proudly displayed on one side of the office. The Golden Lion was so enraged when he recognized his disappointment of a daughter being engraved into a mountain alongside the unworthy gnat that dirtied their noble bloodline with dirty spawn, that he didn’t consider the futility of throwing a tray through the virtual Nexus display and destroyed his prized display.

What did this little Keyholder who just finished training presume to know about how high the Golden Lion’s Might could reach? Did the little insect think the Golden Lion could be scared off with this little hand full of forces? That he, the founder and the greatest power in the New World Alliance, the supreme general himself didn’t have the kind of forces that could easily decimate his enemies?

He was being heavily underestimated.

——

Lions Gate City

The New World Alliance Headquarters

In a room where important people gathered and swore to uphold moral integrity and lead the new humanity with the respect and care that the old world never could, a small meeting was taking place, discussing how best to serve their masters.

The Council of Ten was the gathering of the ten chosen representatives of the Ten Gate Cities in discussions involving policy and coordination. These members were primarily chosen from either the ruling S-Rank Families or an affiliated Family of high status, and thus had a certain level of understanding of Keyholders and their connection to a mysterious realm where they could obtain magical resources to empower their Families.

So it wasn’t strange that around a table of equality, five seats held significantly more sway than the others. Those were the representatives of the five officially recognized as Earth’s strongest. The Crowns.

And as the representative of the strongest ruler of the largest, most powerful Gate City with the largest faction of human forces, the dignified old gentleman with white hair and a gray beard in a purple suit was the unspoken leader for whom all other lessers would strive for his approval.

Samuel Tig, an old comrade-in-arms of the Golden Lion now made political juggernaut, was dozedly listening to the sinfully dull debate on pipeline something or other about telemetries or telemarketers, when a particular pattern of wristcom vibrations let him know the boss had instructions.

All sleep fled from a few short lines.

The son of the Lion’s Daughter has reemerged

Probable Keyholder.

Influenced the Nexus interface.

Monitor major movements of target’s allies and associates.

Double the black market bounty.

Samuel had to fight to keep his face professional, but there were a lot of things that needed to be addressed in his boss’s unreasonably terse message.

For one, he never thought he’d ever see a time when the Boss mentioned his departed daughter again.

Never having had his own family, Samuel saved all his grandfatherly affections for the little miss who he loved like his own daughter. The day they confirmed her death was the darkest moment of his long and challenging life.

Samuel never approved of his Boss’s outdated views that should have been left behind with the old world. But the Boss was never quite done with the old world.

The single line about the ‘son of the Lion’s Daughter has reemerged,’ had his old mind seeing stars.

He was alive? Reemerged? What happened with the first appearance?

How had he survived for so many years beyond the Gate and the Fortress walls?

Confused about the young lord being alive in the first place but to have obtained the legendary Keyholder status was simply unthinkable.

What had happened for so many absurd stories to come about? And what black market bounty?

Right as these questions were dominating the old man’s head space, fate came in with the rebound when several gasps resounded in the sparsely occupied room and effectively interrupted something that should be interrupted. It was so god awfully dull.

“What’s going on? What’s happened?” the representative of Blue Sea Gate City asked curiously.

“There’s a live streamer’s invitation posted on the Nexus virtual terminal.”

“I don’t understand what that means.”

“A new tab has appeared on the Nexus screen. If you select it, you get to see something interesting.”

“That’s impossible. How could anyone influence the Nexus? That’s not something even the Crowns can achieve.”

“Here’s a time-lapse of the streaming process. Take a look.”

No one spoke while they watched, and no one spoke when it ended.

A herd of demon-beasts were stampeding across everyone’s understanding of the world.

What had they just witnessed?

Who was that?

How was it possible for even an awakened S-Ranker to move with such grace and showcase such controlled destruction?

When a mountain was shattered to create a statue the size of multiple skyscrapers, everyone’s scalps were already numb, but when one of the faces took on the form of a once well-known beauty, emotions exploded.

Matching the apparent age of the superhuman sculptor with the time of the Lion’s Daughter’s disappearance, and the rumors circulating around that time…

A few discreet glances were shared between Samuel and a few of his peers, but no offers to explain the madness was given.

When the unnamed sculptor laid the finishing touch by lighting a literal fire on the sculpted torch and demonstrated a terrifying range of Spirit Fire control, the representatives were only gaining a confirmation of strength that they didn’t need. It was all very impressive already.

Then the rubblemen came.

Giants that almost rivaled mountains were marching on mass towards the light that disturbed them. There were no records of rubblemen reaching even half those heights and never in those numbers.

It was terrifying.

And more terrifying still was the ease with which the despair inducing nightmares were dealt with.

Samuel leaned back and tried to digest as much as he could while his peers were nearly screaming their lungs out in fear of an unknown force with terrifying potential, disrupting their balanced days and proposing increasingly drastic ideas from friendship to assassination.

When he saw the playful smile of the boy who shouldn’t have lived but did so brightly, he felt at peace.

——

“Sir, we’re picking up frequencies from codename: Legion’s biotracers.”

“Do we have location?”

“Merely an approximation. It seems to be coming from the western valleys. Should we dispatch a recon unit?”

“We don’t have the time or the leisure for failure. Send out four units and get her back.”

“We’re lacking available personnel, and since the Shadow Unit never returned, the other masters are beginning to ask questions.”

“Hmm. Than send Cerberus.”

“Than I suggest sending an attachment for support. His condition has begun deteriorating.”

“Already? Didn’t the report say we could get a solid five missions out of his batch? It’s only the second.”

“Since Legion’s escape, the facilities went through a purge, resulting in insufficient staff to maintain the conditions of the resting units.”

The stoic mask of authority finally revealed a crack in the form of an eyebrow twitch. He was aware of how the main branch viewed the use of force in times of emergency, but he wanted to submit a formal grievance at the senseless loss of assets. You couldn’t just buy new researchers.

“Send the Three Sisters as support. This will be their first mission, so their conditions should be stable. How many Big Brothers and Big Sisters are remaining? Is there word on when the new batch will be ready?

“There are still four combat capable Big Brother units. The Three Sisters are the remaining combat capable Big Sisters, and with the completion of the Legion program, it is my understanding that no plans are in place for further development. Especially since, you know, they’re all dead now.” The secretary stated without emotion before asking out of curiosity, “Are you concerned Legion will activate?”

“No,” the Operations Commander shook his head promptly, “Her potential isn’t something that can erupt without significant preparation and resources.”

“So, why do you look so concerned?” his secretary bluntly asked.

“I’m concerned about the things we cannot see,” he replied in kind. “Why were we not able to capture the frequencies from Legion’s biotracers until now? Unless she managed to crawl into a specially designed containment rune barrier, nothing could suppress those frequencies except for one thing.”

“…You suspect an awakened S-Ranker has given the girl shelter?”

“It’s almost guaranteed. There aren’t any other explanations I can think of for her disappearing and reappearing act.”

The office entered a strained silence as the other visualized the consequence of a second force becoming privy to the dark secrets of the Vaults Family.

They couldn’t waste time. Identifying their adversary as friend or foe was becoming the most significant mission for the Family’s survival that no one else knew about.

——

Although the Elder’s Personal Domain was linked to the host world’s spirituality, allowing for minor copies of Sophie with a small fraction of her full potential to operate on Earth away from her main ‘body,’ there were still limitations without a central terminal to stabilize her existence.

Limitations that prevented her superior digital intelligence from setting the proper protocols to keep the family safe.

Futile as the attempt was fated to be, it didn’t change the fact that known hostile forces were able to bring their operations to the point of execution, and she had not one clue.

Sophie was not a happy bunny.

As the pinnacle achievement of an ancient divine being, to have stumbled in such a lowly place as an underdeveloped 1st ranked universe like Earth was a humiliation that was too much for Sophie to bear.

She knew that neither Jun nor anyone else in the family had even considered the thought of blaming her for her embarrassing ineptitude and even continued to heap praises for her support, but with Sophie’s sense of responsibility having been so aggressively challenged, all those praises that she loved to hear now felt like sharp jabs to her wounded pride.

There wouldn’t be a next time under her watch.

She got her Jun’s permission.

So while the majority of Sophie’s attention and priority was given to the Sophie’s View production team, a secondary portion was busy elsewhere.

——

In between the layers of dimensions that made up space, time, and the universe, a small digital life-form was writing a mysterious code into the very fabric of reality. Where once there was no definition for anything besides ‘nothing,’ ‘something’ was being born for the very first time and given meaning.

Oceans of codes and symbols were formed from the ‘nothing’ and ‘something’ became ‘everything.’

A universal simulation where any reality could be written and virtually expressed was born with the clap of two furry red paws.

Designed by Elder Paskone after a billion years of research into the foundational mechanics of the Nexus’s Personal Domains, the new digital kingdom was a place where spiritual bodies could enter and experience infinite realities in a true out-of-body experience. This was where the School of Fighting would be built.

It would also serve as the Earth side terminal that would allow the release of up to five percent of her vast capabilities from her current point five percent, confined by the limitations of a 1st ranked universe from growing any higher. It was enough.

A portion of Sophie’s newly released strength began its millions of digital tasks towards bringing the vision of two talented designers to digital life.

Settings were manifested and defined and specially designed rules and mechanics were written into the digital laws.

Skies were shaped, the lands molded, the flowers and trees nurtured, the buildings crafted, and the simple minds of its inhabitants awakened.

In the span of time it took for the older couple to agree on the name The School of Fighting, Sophie was finished ‘building’ the virtual world, awaiting its first visitors to grace the new world.

Now that Sophie was finished preparing the things for the family, there was the matter of great importance to itself.

Countless tendrils of awareness were currently scouring the accessible digital databases and devising strategies to access the inaccessible. Superficial information like public data and record centers to private social media accounts were quickly accessed and studied but found that the people of Earth were very proficient in keeping their most sensitive knowledge and information separated from hackable systems. Sensible since at least a dozen major world conflicts were instigated by information warfare. It would take a moment for her to gain access to every piece of digital information on the planet if she had just twenty percent of her processing power, but with only five, it would take considerably more effort.

Fine, she’d start small.

The boy named Timothy Bruntwood was to be her newest experiment. Sophie would see what it took to break a mind.

Not with threats or with violence and fear.

No.

She would drive him mad with pettiness.

Smart-appliances would be manipulated, whispers randomly generated, and reality questioned. With the lowest amount of effort extended over the longest amount of time allowed, Sophie had a million and three experiments to tryout.

In a way, Sophie was very grateful that not all were caught by the law that day. She still had plenty to punish in new and creative ways. So much knowledge was going to be gleamed, she felt a little flushed with excitement.

To begin, Sophie was going to be randomly sending out inappropriate messages from his account to every girl within proximity that he’d considered exceptional on nights he went out drinking. She’d attach plenty of ‘drunken’ deepfakes that were bound to leak sooner than later.

With Timmy’s habit of over indulging, not even he would be able to confidently deny the deeds as his own.

Maybe a vid of him reaching in real deep and wiping his own ass with his hand. Something really gross.

The angry bunny was going to try and have fun with it.