The Last Catalyst : My 100th Regression

The First Harvest

The heat under Harrison’s skin didn't fade; it settled.

It was a strange, intoxicating sensation like drinking liquid fire that refused to burn. Every nerve ending from his heels to his temples vibrated with a newfound frequency. When he blinked, the world seemed to slow down by a fraction of a millisecond. The gritty texture of the pulverized concrete beneath his boots, the distant, frantic shouting of the newly arrived Vanguard guards, the precise trajectory of a stray leaf drifting through the damp air he could feel it all without even looking.

[Spatial Awareness - Rank F: Fully Integrated.]

The system confirmation blinked softly in the corner of his eye before minimizing itself into a small, pulsing golden icon. Harrison slowly rolled his shoulders, feeling the structural changes within his body. His posture, previously weighed down by a century of psychological exhaustion, naturally squared.

"Hey! I asked you a question!"

Lydia’s voice snapped him out of the sensory rush. She was standing barely two feet away, her dark eyes wide and blazing with a turbulent mix of suspicion, awe, and sheer frustration. She had a streak of black soot across her left cheek, and her pristine academy applicant uniform was damp from the fountain explosion, but her presence was already commanding.

"You're glowing," she hissed, lowering her voice as two heavily armored Vanguard soldiers began jogging toward their alcove, their heavy boots clattering against the wet pavement. "Or at least, you *were*. Your skin was throwing off pale gold light, Harrison. Don't tell me you're an unranked civilian analyst. I know what a breakthrough looks like."

"Adrenaline is a funny thing, Vance," Harrison replied, his voice calm, cool, and entirely unbothered by her intensity. He casually wiped a smear of purple beast fluid from his sleeve. "Some people sweat. Apparently, I get a little radiant."

"Don't lie to me," she snap whispered, stepping even closer, completely ignoring the approaching guards. "You predicted a micro-incursion before the sector grid. You knew my name, my father, and my exact catalyst limitations. And then you cracked a Tier-1 carapace with a rusty construction rod. Who the hell are you working for? Is this a test from the Central Command?"

Before Harrison could answer, a shadow fell over them.

"Hold it right there. Both of you, hands where I can see them."

A burly Vanguard sergeant stepped into the alcove, his heavy tactical rifle held at a low ready position. His armor plate bore the stylized crest of Sector 4 an anvil overlaid with a crossed pair of aether blades. Behind him, three more guards quickly fanned out, pushing back the lingering, gossiping civilians who were trying to peer into the construction zone.

Lydia didn't flinch. She immediately pulled a sleek, silver identification token from her inner coat pocket and held it up. "Lydia Vance. Academy applicant serial number 9-Delta-442. My father is General Vance of Central Command."

The sergeant paused, his visor retracting to reveal a rugged, scarred face. He glanced at the token, then at Lydia’s face, and his aggressive stance instantly softened into a respectful military posture. "Miss Vance. My apologies. We received a report of a sudden spatial anomaly, but the automated sensors"

"The automated sensors are lagging because the western wall conduits were rerouted last quarter without updating the local grid parameters," Lydia cut in smoothly, utilizing the exact tactical data Harrison had given her just ten minutes prior. She didn't miss a beat. "The beast was a Tier-1 *Shadow Stalker*. It utilized a micro-rift to bypass the perimeter."

The sergeant blinked, clearly taken aback by her precise technical breakdown. He cleared his throat, looking over her shoulder at Harrison, who was standing quietly with his hands lazily stuffed into his jacket pockets. "And who is he? An accomplice?"

Harrison opened his mouth to give a generic civilian excuse, but Lydia cut him off before he could speak a syllable.

"He's my personal tactical consultant," Lydia said, her voice dropping into an authoritative, aristocratic cadence that brooked no argument. She cast a sharp, warning glare at Harrison. "He was conducting a field assessment of my environmental awareness when the breach occurred. If it weren't for his early detection, I would have been forced to initiate a high-grade aether discharge inside a crowded civilian zone. You can check his credentials through my family's registry later."

The sergeant looked between the two of them, his eyes lingering on Harrison's plain, unranked appearance. It was clear he had his doubts an unranked kid acting as a consultant to a General's daughter was absurd but the name *Vance* carried enough political weight in Nova City to silence any minor questions.

"Understood," the sergeant said, tapping his earpiece. "We'll need an official statement later, Miss Vance, but for now, the area is unsafe. We have to clear the remaining temporal residue. Please exit through the western medical transit."

"We will," Lydia said.

She turned on her heel, her heavy combat boots clicking sharply as she walked out of the alcove. She didn't look back to see if Harrison was following, but her rigid, tense shoulders told him everything he needed to know. He was locked in. She wasn't letting him out of her sight.

Harrison smiled faintly, stepping over a piece of shattered stone to follow her. As he walked out into the open courtyard, his gaze naturally drifted upward.

The brilliant blue sky was still split open by the massive, bloody red numbers ticking away in the upper atmosphere. To the rest of the world, the sky was clear. To Harrison, it was a literal clock counting down to the execution of humanity.

[Global Catastrophe Countdown: 365 Days, 23 Hours, 48 Minutes Remaining.]

One year. Three hundred and sixty five days to do what he had failed to accomplish in ninety-nine lifetimes. In his previous loops, by the time he reached this level of tactical clarity, the world was already half destroyed, the sectors fractured, and the human population decimated. He had always been playing catch up against a monster that was already ten steps ahead.

But this time, he was starting on day one. With an EX-Rank talent.

They reached the perimeter of the mall plaza, where ambulances and tactical transports were parked with their sirens wailing. The crowd was dense, filled with crying children and frantic shoppers being ushered behind energy barriers by local law enforcement.

Lydia stopped near a quiet corner behind a parked medical transport, away from the prying eyes of the guards. She turned around, crossing her arms over her chest. The pale blue residual light of her aether was completely gone now, but her eyes were brighter than ever.

"Alright, 'consultant,'" she said, her tone dripping with sharp sarcasm. "I just lied to a Vanguard sergeant and risked a military inquiry for you. You owe me the truth. How did you know?"

"I told you, Vance. I'm an analyst," Harrison said, leaning his back against the cool metal of the transport. He tilted his hat back slightly. "A exceptionally good one."

"Analysts read data logs, Harrison. They don't predict spatial tears down to the exact second using a broken fountain," she countered, stepping closer until she was directly in his personal space. "And they don't look at a future A-Rank Catalyst like they've seen her ghost. When you sat at my table, you didn't look at me like a stranger. You looked at me like you knew how I was going to die."

Harrison's expression didn't change, but deep down, he felt a sharp pang of respect. Even at eighteen, without her battlefield experience, Lydia Vance’s instincts were terrifyingly sharp. She was a natural-born commander.

"If I told you the truth, you'd think I belonged in a Sector 0 psychiatric ward," Harrison said softly.

"Try me."

Before Harrison could formulate an answer that wouldn't completely derail her sanity, a faint, metallic *ping* resonated directly inside his head. It wasn't the loud, triumphant chime of a successful harvest, but a low, vibrating hum that made the golden icon in his vision pulse with a dark, warning light.

Harrison’s eyes narrowed. His newly integrated **[Spatial Awareness]** skill instantly triggered, sensing a subtle, unnatural fluctuation in the ambient kinetic energy... not from the sky, but from the lower levels beneath their feet.

A new, targeted system prompt locked onto his retinas, the text bleeding into reality with an icy, urgent precision.

> [ ALERT: Butterfly Effect Sequence Initiated. ]

> [ Event Log: By altering the fate of 'Lydia Vance,' the causal threads of Sector 4 have been violently destabilized. ]

> [ Current Directive: A corrupt sector official is currently moving to purge the evidence of the unauthorized micro-rift catalyst from the lower levels. ]

> [ Time Remaining: 23 Hours, 59 Minutes. ]

> [ Failure Condition: If the catalyst is purged, a localized Level 2 Spatial Breach will detonate within Sector 4, resulting in a 94% civilian casualty rate. ]

> 

Harrison’s breath hitched.

A corrupt official. A forced catalyst.

In his past lives, he knew that Sector 4 had suffered a massive, mysterious disaster around this time, a tragedy that had crippled the sector's defensive capabilities for years and forced the military to abandon the lower residential rings. In those lives, it had been labeled an "unpredictable natural anomaly."

It hadn't been an anomaly at all. It had been sabotage. An inside job. And by saving Lydia, Harrison hadn't just changed her personal fate he had accidentally thrown a wrench into a massive, hidden conspiracy that was currently running beneath the city.

"Harrison?" Lydia asked, her brow furrowing as she noticed the sudden, icy stillness that had taken over his posture. "What is it? What's wrong?"

Harrison looked down at his palms, then up at the dark, looming structures of the lower industrial district visible past the plaza gates. The F-Rank stats were still there, but the raw power of the extracted spatial energy was humming in his veins. He had twenty-four hours to stop a conspiracy he didn't fully understand, or the very sector he was standing in would become a mass grave.

"Lydia," Harrison said, using her first name for the first time, his voice turning entirely devoid of hesitation. "Do you still want to pass that academy exam?"

She blinked, caught off guard by the sudden shift in his demeanor. "Of course I do. More than anything."

"Then stop asking questions, go home, and recalibrate your aether catalysts for a close quarters environment," Harrison said, straightening up from the transport vehicle. "Because tomorrow, the real exam begins. And I'm going to need you alive."

Without waiting for her reply, Harrison turned and melted into the dense, chaotic crowd of evacuating civilians, his mind already mapping the dark, subterranean tunnels of Sector 4's lower underbelly. The first harvest was over. The real hunt was about to begin.