The North American War Zone's last line of defense—the ruins of Freedom City.
"General! The eastern defenses have collapsed! The Third and Seventh Regiments have been wiped out!"
"The Rotten Monarch is moving toward us! Ten minutes at most!"
"We're out of healing potions! The priests have no mana left!"
The communications channel rang with desperate screams and final farewells.
General Adams leaned on a broken spear, kneeling on one knee atop the fallen head of the Statue of Liberty.
He raised his head and looked at the enormous thing writhing toward them in the distance.
It was a calamity of flesh formed from tens of millions of players, countless monster corpses, and the ruins of cities.
The Rotten Monarch.
It had no fixed form. It simply devoured and assimilated everything in sight by instinct.
Behind Adams, fewer than a hundred thousand players remained, forming this laughably fragile final line of defense.
Every face was ashen.
The plea for help they had sent to the Yan Country War Zone was their last struggle, the final straw grasped by drowning people.
But would a miracle really happen?
The Rotten Monarch stopped.
For the first time, the monster, vast enough to blot out the sun, halted its ceaseless advance.
Across its immense body of countless corpses, twisted, agonized faces all turned toward the sky.
Adams instinctively looked up too.
The sky had changed.
At the eastern horizon, space rippled like water struck by a stone.
A figure in black stepped out. The moment he appeared, the howling wind and swirling dust slowed, as though trapped in amber.
It was Dawn.
In the southern sky, light bent strangely. Thousands of crystal-clear mirrors appeared from nowhere, each reflecting the figure of a girl.
The next instant, the countless reflections became one, and Mirror's form