"Huffff..."

Elane awoke with a deep breath of air, half panicked. Her heart was beating like crazy, and those last few moments where she was hit and sent flying by the hoplite replayed over and over again in her mind.

"W-Where am I..."

For an awful instant, she didn’t even know where she was.

Her body lurched upright on instinct. One hand flew toward her chest while the other clawed at the ground beside her for a weapon that wasn’t there. Her bow.

Where was her bow? Where was Rohan? Where was the ruined town...?

Where... was the hoplite?

Only after those frantic thoughts had already surged through her head did the real world begin to settle into place around her.

She was laying in a bed. Her bed.

Her mind began to stabilise, and she realised that her situation was nothing like she woke up thinking it would be.

Elane’s breath came harder for several long seconds anyway, because her body clearly hadn’t received that message yet. ’I’m safe now. I’m back... There’s no need to worry.’

She understood what happened now. She’d died in the Origin Realm and been expelled out like any other Awakened who failed to survive would.

"Elane! What’s wrong?"

At that moment, her father came bursting into the room after hearing the commotion coming from inside. A few hours ago, he was heading home after finally getting a break from his extremely stressful job, only to receive an alert from Rohan’s home security system that Elane had collapsed inside his apartment and was unconscious.

This was something Rohan, and most Awakened for that matter, prepared for before entering the Origin Realm again. Most apartments that Awakened rented came with good security systems that could detect when someone was conscious or not, and automatically sent an alert out when they appeared back from the Origin Realm like this — as it only meant one thing; they’d died inside.

Which led back to the present — after Elane’s father sped over to Rohan’s apartment and took her for a check up, before bringing her back to their own home.

"What happened, darling?" Harland asked, concerned.

But as the memories started to come back to Elane after she’d calmed down, she began to rapidly hyperventilate and became even more panicked than when she first awoke.

"Huff.... I — I died! Dad... I was so scared..." Tears immediately began streaming down her face. Although death inside the Origin Realm wasn’t permanent and one would be sent back to the outside universe in just a weakened state, that didn’t make take away any of the pain one would experience, both mental and physical.

After all, the fear of death was a natural ingrained instinct every living being has, so experiencing it first hand was quite a mental scar for any Awakened, no matter how tough they believed themselves to be.

Harland quickly embraced his daughter in a hug, calming her down and gently consoled her. "It’s okay." He whispered quietly. "You’re safe now. They can’t get you here."

***

15 minutes continued to pass before Elane fully calmed down enough to recount the events of her death to her father.

"Me and Rohan... We discovered a ruined town after venturing into E rank territory, and then..." Her breath began to falter.

But at the encouragement of her father, she continued. "...And then... we encountered a hoplite."

Harland’s entire body went still.

"You said what...?"

For a second, he looked like he hadn’t heard her properly. Like his mind had rejected the word before it could settle into any meaning.

Then his expression changed so sharply that Elane felt herself become incredibly tense under the suppression of his aura.

"A hoplite?" He repeated. "Of THE hoplite race?"

There was no mistaking the shock and disgust in his voice.

Nobody knew how serious Elane’s revelation was than him. Harland had spent his entire life in a state of war. He’d killed hundreds of hoplites in his time as an Awakened, and so ordinary people would never understand how bad that was.

A hoplite appearing so deep within human territory in the Origin Realm was not some unlucky encounter like others may be led to believe, as they are not just some wondering enemy who’d lost their way.

Especially so close to an occupied tier 2 city like Erenhot. This hoplite would have long been discovered and hunted down to the ends of the human dominion.

He knew from that instant that something had gone terribly wrong long before Elane and Rohan ever stumbled into that ruined town.

Harland slowly pulled away from the hug, but kept both hands still on his daughter’s shoulders and stared at her face like he was checking for any sign she might be delirious.

"Elane," he said sternly. "Are you absolutely certain that’s what you saw?"

If she weren’t still so traumatised by that whole experience, she might’ve felt offended that her own father didn’t even fully believe her.

But she answered as honestly as she could.

"Yes. It was the hoplite that killed me..." She said meekly.

Her father looked sickened by what he was hearing.

A deep crease formed between his brows, and the hands on Elane’s shoulders tightened, causing her to wince.

Elane had never seen her father like this. Never once had she seen the man she’d looked up to as her own personal superhero her whole life look so rattled.

Most people only ever saw the stern Colonel of the self defence forces, but she was one of the very few people who ever got to witness the real man behind the uniform — and he was nothing like she was looking at right now.

"You need to tell me everything you can remember. Everything. Down to every last detail. I don’t care how minor or inconsequential you think it may be, I need to hear it." Harland stopped gripping Elane’s shoulders after realising he was starting to hurt her.

Elane nodded timidly.

She knew meeting the hoplite in that place was abnormal, but never did she expect her father to react like this.