There was a small conga line of ADVs moving down at high speeds on the cleared highways of singapore's night. The first of which contained all the members of VGT Tyr. The second was dedicated to transporting Yajinn's drones. And the third and fourth were mobile armories which carried a lot of extra and different equipment to be made use of depending on the situation.

To be able to move this unobstructed was one of the many advantages of having a city that had switched to a fully automated driving infrastructure. When every vehicle on the road was capable of communicating with every other vehicle on the road– and the traffic systems also– it became possible for the road itself to part like the Red Sea for any sort of emergency vehicle. The effects of which were especially crucial when it came down to EMS response times, and the results of which were reflected by the significant decrease of medical emergency related deaths once the system had been adapted.

With only a few minutes left to spare before arriving at the rift outbreak event, the members of VGT Tyr slowly fell into the proper business mood. The ever vigilant, such as Nemeadas, took this time to check over all his equipment such that even if he had to jump out at a moment's notice and fight, he would be able to do so. Jackie, who had seen her leader, also followed suit by checking all her pockets and somehow pulled out a piece of unchewed gum at the bottom of her barrier stick holster. The relaxed ones of the group, namely Garmr and Iteza, simply sat in leisure, with the Oni even having the luxury to be scrolling through his social media on his phone. And then there was Krakjen, who had his eyes closed as he was no doubt repeating the mantras of his people as he always did.

"I guess no matter where they're from, warrior monks are still monks, huh." Someone had once pointed out.

…

"Here, everyone, take these and wear them on your body at all times." Yajinn said as they began to hand out these small metal tags to the group. Noticing this, Nemeadas suddenly remembered that he had already been given tags for two: One for him, one for Garmr.

"Here you go, love."

"Put it on for me, Neme."

Nemeadas obliged to Garmr's request. And though his hands were large, his dexterity was magnificent and he did not stumble at all with the beads.

"What's this, a dog tag?" Jackie asked as she dangled the piece of metal from its chain.

"An ornament for you, a trophy for your victor," Krakjen praised.

Iteza looked at him with doubt however, and said, "I don't know about that, man. I don't plan on dying anytime soon, least of all to another person."

"Persistence makes your trophy all the more desirable."

"Bruh."

"It's the new formation anchor for the brand new VAF system I've been working on," Yajinn began to explain once they handed the last tag to Krakjen. "All you need to do is to keep this on your body and stay within 50 meters of two other people holding the same tag. I know it may be a bit difficult, and I will try to expand the range more in the future, but if you can do just that much, then you should be able to receive all the benefits of being supported by a traditional stationary array formation."

"Really? Just that simple?" In typical fashion, the Oni was skeptical of everything put in front of him, though he had his reasons to be doubtful.

"Yep, it's just that simple, my dude! All you gotta do is keep it on, and then the drones and I will handle the rest."

"I didn't realize that we had such a genius in our midst. One capable of revolutionizing a design that has been in use for literally thousands of years no less," Iteza said dryly as he took an extra close look at the tag in his hand now. Although he did not doubt Yajinn's abilities, he found the claim was still quite a tall one to make.

Historically, array formations were an advanced branch of ritual artes, which took advantage of the harmonic properties of support artes to induce a resonance between the individual formation anchors. The product of such a formation would be a result which was greater than the sum of its parts. And depending on the number of individual formation anchors, support artes cast through this network could end up providing results which were more efficient by a factor of two, ten, or even more times. This in turn allowed a support caster to apply artes which were either much stronger than normal, or require much less aether to produce the same standardized result.

However, though the numbers were indeed great in theory, there was a critical and glaring flaw in the design which prevented it from achieving numbers anywhere near these practically. The issue therein lied with the way artes harmonics worked, which required the individual formation anchors to be a very specific set distance apart from one another, with a razor thin margin for error, lest the efficiency drop by an exponential amount.

And that– while it would be feasible for stationary anchors such as buildings– was quite the tall order to ask for anybody who had ever been on a battlefield before, which was why Iteza remained so suspicious about it.

"Well, to be entirely fair… it was only a matter of time before somebody did it given the level of technology we have available. Not to mention I didn't achieve everything alone." Yajinn felt the need to add a disclaimer to the feat, and the way they spoke gave off a strange sort of reservedness that was rarely seen coming from them. "I've been bouncing ideas with the aethertech R&D community about this for years now and it was thanks to them that I've managed to get over a few major roadblocks. So without their help, it most likely would have taken me years longer for me to have reached this point with a working prototype. And who knows, if that were the case, then somebody else might have even beaten me to it."

"Well, damn. When you put it like that, it makes me feel bad for ever doubting you." Iteza looked towards the elemental spirit apologetically. "Sorry."

"Ehehe~ it's fine. It's still in its testing phase so the results won't be as good as you'd expect, so don't worry about it—"

"—SCREECH———!!!"

Suddenly, everyone's bodies all jerked forward as the ADV came to a screeching halt. Yajinn, who had been unbuckled at the time in order to pass out the formation anchors, was violently flung to the front of the vehicle like a ragdoll. Jackie too, would have suffered the same fate had it not been for Krakjen's arm reacting quick enough to wrap around her waist at that same instant.

"Yajinn, are you okay?" Jackie quickly released herself from the hold and checked on their support caster.

"I'm okay. Ow…" Yajinn groaned, upside down and legs dangling in the air. Aside from being tossed like a ragged chew toy, the exo-gear was doing its job in protecting them, so damages measuring to this extent was practically negligible. "Help me get up, won't you? And what's going on outside? Why'd we stop?"

Because of how close they were to the site of the outbreak event, they all had thought that the worst had happened involving the manticore. And with their training, they were prepared and able to jump out and fight at a second's notice. The real cause however, revealed itself to be nothing of the sort as the hues of blue and red light bled in through the windshields.

"Are they fucking crazy? Just what the hell are these assholes thinking?" Iteza's face soured like bad wine as his gaze landed onto the singular police cruiser cutting off all three lanes of the highway with the length of its body.

"What should we do?" Jackie asked.

"I will go talk to them." Nemeadas spoke simply. While he was also annoyed by this unexpected roadblock, there was no need for unnecessary conflict. They all worked under the same government of Singapore after all so he was sure this issue would be resolved quickly. "The rest of you stay here. I shall be right back."

…

…

Officers Lee and Wei, like their colleagues around the 24th district of Singapore, were pulled off their usual posts to respond to an abrupt emergency. That in of itself was nothing surprising to them as that was simply the nature of their work, however this time was a job which was more than out of the ordinary.

"They want us to do fucking what? Section off every road leading to the cemetery? Is the guild crazy? Just what are those morons even doing? You had one job, so do it properly! I swear, this is why we can't trust freaks to do the jobs of mindful and respectable people. Isn't that right, Wei?"

When Lee first heard the order, he ended up ranting until his partner's ears rang. Safe to say, Lee was quite the vocal man about his feelings on the matter. Still, as a law enforcement officer, he begrudgingly did as he was told. However, as they approached the cemetery, Wei had quite the brilliant idea.

"Instead of trying to block every entrance, why not just block it right over here? We'll be able to cut off traffic from the entire southside with just this. And we wouldn't have to be that close to the scene."

And so, with that idea and a few road flares, they were able to effectively cut off the entire arterial road leading to the cemetery. It was a job well done for them, and they could simply sit back until they received the order to leave.

An hour passed after that without much incident, that was, until they saw a line of what looked like black trucks rapidly drawing closer without any signs of slowing, and at a speed that was at least a half over the road speed limit.

Officer Lee reacted by flipping the switch to their vehicle pull-over designator system, which, when applied to any vehicles outside of those used by law enforcement and emergency response services, would force the embedded autopilot systems to slow down and eventually come to a stop on the side of the road.

"Uh… I don't think they're slowing down, Lee."

So when those vehicles made no move to slow down even by the slightest, he was quick– and perhaps too quick– to take manual override of their police cruiser and moved it to block the entire center lane and then some, all the while hoping to God that the emergency braking systems of the oncoming vehicles would activate— and if not that, then at least praying to the structural integrity of the metal death cage the two of them were both seated in.

And when Wei saw this reckless maneuver by his partner, he screamed at the top of his lungs, "LEE, WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING——?!"

"—SCREECH———!!!"

The sound of rubber skidding on the asphalt ensued, and the line of ADVs came to a screeching halt only just a couple meters away from hitting the cruiser.

"Holy shit I'm still alive." Lee breathed in raggedly, his heart racing a kilometer a second. Cold sweat soaked his back and he could not feel his face even as he touched it repeatedly. He had panicked and did what he just did on instinct. It could have gone any number of ways, and in all but one of them, both his partner's life and his own would have ended right there.

"Don't ever do that again!" Wei besides him was completely shaken. "Oh my god I thought I was about to die. You fucking idiot! Why would you ever do that?"

"It's okay, it's okay. Technology, right?" Lee was still in the middle of attempting to find feeling in his face. "It would have stopped no matter what, right? We have less than 5 traffic accident related fatalities per year, right?"

"Shut the fuck up Lee. Goddamn it just get out of the fucking car and do your fucking job."

It took a minute, but once Lee regained his composure, the two officers got out of their cruiser and were ready to interrogate. Already in Lee's mind were the list of charges he was about to lay on the riders, of which the charge of illegally modifying the autopilot system to ignore the pull-over designator signals being at the top of that list. However, as the two got closer, Wei noticed the markings on the side of the vehicle.

"Hold on, don't these belong to GS?"

If memory served him right, then Wei was certain that these were the ADVs of the Guild of Singapore.

"What…?"

Then, what the two saw next made them falter in their tracks. The closest ADV to them rocked back and forth before the back opened and the massive towering figure of an albino lionman, with arms and legs that looked like they had been grafted with tree trunks, stepped out.

Both officers gulped hard at that moment. They had risked their lives to stop a monster, but for what? Those arms looked as though they could snap the both of them like twigs, at the same time. More than that, the lionman was kitted out from head to toe with more gear than ten police officers put together.

It was at that precise moment that the two of them began to genuinely fear for their lives, far different from the panic induced fright from earlier. They had plenty of time to fester in their thoughts now. Just one wrong move, and it could all be over for them.

—One. Just one, and their lives would come crashing down like a potted vase and be left in pieces, just like what those razor sharp teeth could do to them.

Just what could the two of them even do? What would happen to them after tonight? Those teeth were sharp enough to easily tear off their faces. Would they appear on the news the next morning as two mangled and unidentifiable corpses found in the middle of the road? And their families? What horrors would they have to endure knowing what had happened to them? Wei had a son who had just reached the tender age of ten only two months ago. And Lee too, his third child was about to be born soon. They would have to do DNA testing to figure out who they were. Oh gods, what if the lionman was a clean eater? Those teeth could probably crush bone if the lionman was hungry enough. What if there was not even a single piece of them to be found come morning? Their families would not even be able to have a proper funeral for them.

—No, there was one thing they could still do. They still had the chance to fight for their survival, however slim the chances may be. Wei was still frozen in fear, but Lee knew that he had to at least try. His hands trembled as they reached for the firearm at his side. It was man's ultimate equalizer. No matter where someone came from, rich or poor, weak or powerful, everyone was judged the same down the sight of its barrel.

But against a monster like this, Lee was unsure of his chances, but it would be enough to injure it— and enough to end both his partner's life and his own in the worst case scenario. Compared to the fate of being ripped apart piece by piece and devoured alive, Lee would at least grant his partner this one last act of mercy. Pressed against the cranium, the exploding shockwave and gas would pulverize the brain and death would be instantaneous.

Lee gulped once more. Then, as the cold harsh metal of the firearm touched his fingertips—

"Pardon, Officers, but I must ask you to let us through. We are the vanguards from the Guild of Singapore and we have an outbreak event to attend to."

The smooth and polite voice that came from the lionman's mouth ended up being so detracted from their expectations that the two officers could only let out one single stupefied word.

""…What?""

…

…

"What?" Iteza asked Nemeadas once again.

"It was a forgivable mistake. They were told to blockade the road, but they were not aware that we were coming."

"No no no, before that."

"One of them looked like he was about to pull his gun out, but I resolved the issue before anything could happen."

"Seriously?"

"As I have said, it was a forgivable mistake."

"…Seriously?" the Oni was in disbelief as he shook his head. He wanted to know why Nemeadas could not be this forgiving towards him. But it was as though Nemeadas could read his mind, because what was said next made him want to cry.

"That is because you are still young. It will do you many favors to learn discipline now, instead of being punished for the lack of it in the future."

Even though they were about to fight a manticore, Iteza ended up getting lectured yet again.

"Seriously…?" Iteza groaned loudly.

…

…

"Seriously?"

Watching the ADVs drive off to the cemetery, both Officers Lee and Wei were zoned out in utter disbelief.

"I can't believe we're still alive," Lee said.

"Yeah… We're still alive, huh…" Wei nodded blankly.

"Did you see the lionman's teeth? One bite. That's all it takes…" As if it had been carved into his eyeballs, Lee could still vividly see the lionman's grisly appearance in his mind: The tree trunk limbs, razor sharp teeth, and millions of dollars worth of gear.

"Did you say teeth?" Wei asked. "Just one bite… I don't think I'll be able to sleep at all for the next week at least."

"You and me both…" Lee agreed and Wei repeated.

"You… and me both…"

…

…