Ethereal Ascendance: A Journey of Transformation

"Great! It's Feliciana from our world! And Cyra from World 13 is here too..."

Just then, an H-country soldier walked over. When he saw the tag on my chest, he looked happy and quickly passed on an order.

"General Lee just gave instructions. He wants all of you to go to the meeting room now! It's an emergency meeting, so please hurry!"

By "all of you," he meant the four of us who were originally from this world: me, Adrian, Reed, and Cyra. After hearing this, I quickly took out my phone and checked my messages. Wayne Peng had already sent out this notice in the group chat.

"How many parallel worlds are there now? Did another special parallel world appear?" I asked, feeling a bit confused. Since more and more people had been coming out of the space portal, the base had almost treated it as normal! Usually, when visitors appeared, they didn't need such a big fuss.

"I think about 20 or so... But I'm not sure what the meeting is about. My job is just to pass on the message," the H-country soldier answered honestly. But Cyra from "World 13" next to me was clearly not included.

"Why are you looking at me? Go quickly! I want to keep reading the Bible with the other me," Cyrae pushed me hard from behind and gave me a look, hinting that we'd talk more later. Then she walked away.

"Does it feel weird? Do you often run into this kind of thing in that other world full of magic?" the H-country soldier asked me out of the blue as he watched Cyra leave. Seeing that I didn't understand, he explained, feeling a bit shy: "Actually, I met another colleague from a parallel world before. He was from World 3. You should know, that feeling is really strange... Oh yeah! He also mentioned that in their world, H-country has a superman with amazing powers like the people in your world! I think his name was Ray... ?"

"Raydwin?" I said, surprised.

World 3 was one of the first parallel worlds connected. Its history wasn't too different from our current world, so it was normal to sometimes see H-country soldiers from other worlds coming over too!

But what was this about Raydwin being a superhero in World 3?

"Yes, yes, that's the name! Do you know this Raydwin too?" The H-country soldier was surprised and looked excited. "That's awesome! So superhumans can appear on our Earth too, right? And it's even an H-country superhuman! Do you know where he is?"

"Uh, I'm not sure. I think I just heard that name before, so I guessed." I didn't want to get Raydwin involved in this, so I just made up an excuse.

But when we brought Cyra back, Raydwin was probably still at the Police station and hadn't come out yet. I suddenly had a bad feeling about it.

"Why are you the only one here?"

When I finally got to the meeting room, I was shocked to see only Adrian and some high-level officials like Wayne Peng there. Cyra and Reed, who were supposed to come, were nowhere to be seen.

"I'm not sure either. Let's just wait and see what's going on!" Adrian shrugged.

"Alright! Looks like everyone is here. Let's start!" General Lee walked in, holding a bunch of documents. He announced without looking up.

"This emergency meeting is about a very tricky issue. We're going to discuss some important intel we just got from inside the M-country consulate!"

"M-country?" I felt confused. M-country was on the other side of the Earth, very far from H-country! Even if there was suddenly some conflict between M-country and H-country, what did that have to do with the space portal crisis the base was facing?

"You're from another world, so you probably don't know much about the situation here, right? M-country is another big country in our world. They have very strong power and military strength..." Seeing my reaction, General Lee clearly misunderstood. He first explained the situation on Earth, then moved on to the main point. "According to what the purified traitor told us, his orders came from the M-country consulate, and his direct boss was the Consul General."

"If that's the case, why haven't you taken action against the M-country consulate yet?" I asked, confused. The H-country should know how dangerous vampires are by now. Is it because they're afraid of causing diplomatic problems? But things have already gotten this bad. All signs point to the M-country consulate probably being a vampire stronghold. If they hesitate, it will only make things worse.

"Actually, we have taken action!" Wayne Peng joined in, telling me everything. "After trying to communicate with the consulate many times without success, a few hours ago, the Shine Metropolitan police, together with the health control center, forcibly entered the consulate under the excuse of preventing a highly infectious disease. They successfully caught all the members in the consulate! Of course, all this was done in secret!"

"So what was the result?" since they caught people, they must have found out a lot, right?

"It was pretty much as we expected. Almost everyone in the M-country consulate had turned into vampires! We immediately let Cyra purify them..." General Lee had just received the intel about the operation not long ago. He continued, looking at the report in his hand. "Unfortunately, the results of the interrogation weren't very good. Most of the consulate staff had memory loss. They only knew that they rarely left the consulate, so the infection must have happened inside the consulate—almost all evidence points to the Consul General himself!"

This Consul General was, of course, the foreigner who Wayne Peng had shot dead in the space portal earlier. He had reportedly only been assigned to Shine Metropolitan half a month ago. Now his death not only caused the space portal to change strangely but also made almost all the clues we had come to a dead end.

Now there were only two possibilities left to investigate the origin of the vampires in the consulate: One was that an consulate staff was infected, then spread it to everyone else in the consulate, including the Consul General . But this scenario doesn't match well with the investigation results showing the Consul General as the vampire superior who infected others.

The second possibility was that the source of infection came from M-country! Although this guess seems a bit contradictory at first— the vampire ancestor came from the other side of the space portal, and the portal is in the heart of H-country, so how could we suspect something on the other side of the Earth? But connecting it with the intel we got, we found that vampire ancestors had already left Shine Metropolitan! Although one was killed, we can't rule out the possibility that other vampire ancestors crossed the ocean to M-country.

At least in my eyes, that Consul General 's fighting skills were really impressive, maybe even as good as the female "Director" we met. He didn't seem like a low-level vampire who had been infected several generations later!

"We should demand an explanation from M-country! No matter what, it was their people causing trouble on our land, and they even made a mess of our base!" Wayne Peng suddenly stood up, unable to hold back his call for action.

"Isn't that a bit too risky? Remember, we just invaded their consulate. If M-country decides to seriously pursue this matter, it will probably be very hard to deal with," one of the base's high-level official immediately opposed this view, reminding everyone, "After all, the existence of the space portal is our country's top secret. We don't know how much M-country already knows, and we can't carelessly risk leaking this secret!"

"If they can send out infected diplomatic staff, it means M-country is probably suffering badly from this too. I think at this stage, we don't need to worry about all that!" Wayne Peng argued. His view on this issue was quite similar to mine! No matter where it is, getting rid of the vampire threat early is the most important thing.

"But revealing top secrets to M-country isn't something we can decide. It must be approved by the supreme leader!"

"M-country probably already knows about the space portal! Do you think the world's number one superpower's spy abilities are useless? Moreover, finding traitors in this base is a fact we can't deny. The information has already leaked. Now it's just a question of how much has leaked!" General Lee suddenly slammed the table, stopping the two from arguing further.

"The situation now is very complicated. This is also the main reason why I called this meeting: About ten minutes before the meeting started, I received a search report from the M-country consulate. They found an email in the Consul General 's trash folder. It was a call for help from the M-country President to him!"