The ancestral Black Forest reeked of copper, acid, and exposed viscera.
Arthur walked slowly, his heavy boots crushing the dead undergrowth. Under his steel soles, the ground was no longer earth; it was a grotesque carpet of corpses.
Hundreds of Taranpus lay shattered, but they weren't the only ones.
Scattered among the carcasses of the beasts were dozens of bodies of the elite elven support squad, bleeding into the darkened mud. The sight was macabre, for the elves' divine armor bore no marks of claws, teeth, or acid.
It was crushed inward.
Skulls were sunken, silver breastplates imploded, and ribs pulverized by an impact so blunt, absurd, and monstrous that it defied logic.
Arthur wasn't hunting monsters; he was clearing the board.
The few beasts that still breathed in the clearing didn't dare attack. Monsters three meters tall that once shredded steel with their teeth now fled limping, whining low with their tails between their legs, terrified by the absolute and apathetic presence of the warrior with the golden aura.
In the echoes of the devastated forest, the only continuous sound was a rasping, wet, desperate weeping.
A young elven scout dragged himself through the black mud a few meters away.
Both of his legs had been crushed from the knee down, the white bone shards piercing the skin and snagging on roots with every pathetic movement. His fingernails bled, snapping against the earth as he tried to pull his own weight away from the nightmare.
Slow, metallic, and calculated footsteps followed him.
Arthur stopped directly behind the elf. Without changing the blank expression on his face, he brought the sole of his steel boot down squarely onto the exposed fracture of the boy's right leg.
*Crack.*
The elf let out a scream so high and piercing it sent carrion birds in the canopy flying in panic. He rolled onto his back, his pale face completely stained with mud and thick tears, lifting trembling hands into the air in a pathetic gesture of defense.
"P-please..." the elf choked on his own blood, his eyes wide in pure terror. "Why?! We fought... we fought on the same side! I beg you, please, let me liv—"
Arthur's gaze was a golden abyss.
He didn't smile. He didn't feel pity.
It was like stepping on a noisy insect.
He simply lifted his boot again and brought it down with the weight of an anvil.
A wet, hollow, and sickening sound echoed through the clearing. The weeping stopped immediately, replaced by the sound of blood draining into the puddle in the dirt.
Arthur sighed, exhaling a cold mist.
He shook the red and black blood from his gauntlet with a sharp click.
"You can come out now," he said to the empty, silent forest without looking back. "I know you're here."
Ten meters away, the atmosphere simply folded. There was no sound, no flash.
A vertical, pitch-black fissure tore through the fabric of space silently, like a blade slicing through dark silk.
Two hooded, mysterious figures emerged from the shadows of that rift. Their presence was so lethal and dense that the diseased grass beneath their feet disintegrated instantly into gray ash.
"You're playing with time, Arthur," an androgynous, hissing voice cut through the air, icy as the deep sea.
The lead figure slightly lowered their hood, revealing long, silky red hair that seemed to trickle like fresh blood over the dark fabric of the cloak.
"We cannot remain in this lower domain for long," the being with red hair continued, eyes glowing lethally in the gloom. "The war outside is a convenient shield, but the gods here will soon notice the scent of the outsider if we keep breathing their air. Execute the plan. Now."
Arthur wiped the blood from his cheek with the back of his hand, his posture unwavering.
"The plan requires tactical perfection," Arthur replied, his voice grave and monotonous.
"I am simply waiting for the exact hour so that the fall will be irreparable."
The red-haired figure took a step forward, the killing intent making the dead trees around them creak.
"The contract deadline is nearing its end," the creature hissed, disdain dripping from every word. "Stop playing soldier in this ridiculous elven war. Be quick with this 'perfect opportunity'... that is, if you truly still want the power for which you groveled and begged us."
Arthur clenched his jaw.
The air around his fists flickered slightly with golden aura, but he didn't retort.
Without waiting for another word, the red-haired being turned their back.
The two figures retreated into the dark abyss of the rift. The spatial tear stitched itself shut rapidly, shrinking until it vanished, leaving not a single physical or energetic trace that they had ever been there.
Arthur stood alone once again in the middle of his own sea of corpses.
He slowly lifted his face, his golden eyes locking onto the dark canopies, turning toward the exact direction of the eastern flank, where the most chaotic carnage was occurring. His fists clenched until the thick leather of the gauntlet creaked.
"Your time of freedom is running out, Laura," he muttered to the shadows.
And then, a massive, distant roar hit him.
The shockwave of a sonic boom vibrated through the leaves miles away, shaking the earth beneath his boots. Arthur paused, opening his blood-stained hand to feel the sudden shift in atmospheric pressure.
A divine hurricane was forming in the center of the forest.
The aura—pure, cutting, and unmistakable.
He knew exactly whose wind that was.
*Suki.*
A thorn in his side that had become an annoyance, interfering with his plan.
The sound of destruction echoed for miles.
The ground beneath my boots was no longer solid earth. It was a repulsive swamp of soft mud and coagulated blood.
Every miserable step required monumental effort, a torturous negotiation with gravity.
My lungs pulled, and every intake of the valley's toxic air tore my throat as if I were inhaling shards of glass.
The injury to my right arm had long since passed the threshold of simple pain; it felt as if someone had injected molten, bubbling lead directly into my bone marrow. My knees knocked against each other, uncontrollable, as warm blood tracked down to soak my boots.
A few steps away, Sillys collapsed her back against the trunk of a massive, half-split oak.
Her divine silver armor, once flawless and arrogant, was now dented, cracked at the joints, and covered in a thick layer of acidic soot. The queen's pale gaze, always so sharp, was wide and opaque, fixed on the darkness where the sound of kilometer-long trees being shredded and leveled echoed deafeningly.
"She... is a mountain-sized aberration..." Sillys' voice came out as a faltering whisper.
We weren't just retreating.
We were hiding like terrified rats behind the wood, desperately trying to steal enough breath not to pass out after a first frontal clash that proved to be a sick joke against that natural disaster.
The elf leaned the back of her head against the bark and let out a heavy sigh, wiping a streak of black blood that stained her pale cheek.
"Suki... the skin of that wretch doesn't obey physics. She is absurdly hard."
I slid my back down the wood until I hit the mud, my muscles finally giving out.
"Well..." I gasped, my chest heaving frantically, fighting to keep my eyes open.
"If I recall correctly, my queen guaranteed that the two of us were enough to slaughter this main nest with ease, wasn't that right?"
Sillys turned her dirty face toward me. For a second, I saw the crushing tension completely crack her mask of stoic commander.
She let out a harsh, dry, and genuinely nervous laugh—a sound so deeply bizarre and vulnerable to hear coming from the warrior goddess that it sent a prickly chill down my spine.
"But of course I guaranteed it," she murmured with an exhausted smile, clenching her trembling fingers around her own spear.
That was when a shadow eclipsed the little light we had left.
The Mother Taranpus had found us.
Her roar didn't just shatter the air; it blew out my eardrums. It was no longer blind anger—it was pure, concentrated vengeance for her slaughtered brood.
The sound waves literally tore the bark off the oak we were hiding behind.
She advanced.
For something the size of a mountain, her speed was a glitch in reality.
Trees snapped like dry twigs under her massive limbs.
I gritted my teeth and forced my burning muscles to raise the spear. But before I could even firm my stance…
I didn't see the colossal paw coming.
I only felt the catastrophic impact against my ribs.
I was launched like a cannonball.
I tore through thick branches, shattered two tree trunks with my spine, and finally collided against a solid boulder.
The impact didn't just crack the ton-heavy rock behind me; it turned it into dust beneath my spine.
All the oxygen was ejected from my lungs in a red mist.
My vision flashed in blinding white, followed by absolute darkness.
My body stopped screaming in pain just to collapse; it was a macabre symphony of bursting blood vessels, torn muscles, and fractured bones.
Everything burned with the intensity of red-hot iron.
"SUKI!!!" Sillys' scream tore the air, sounding muffled, as if it came from underwater.
I dug my trembling fingers into the cold earth, desperately trying to push my weight up.
My legs were dead. The nerves had simply refused the command.
*THUD. THUD. THUD.*
The earth shook with the steps of the Taranpus Queen; the aberration was coming to finish the job.
And looking at the thick pool of dark blood forming beneath me, staining the mud, I knew it was the end.
Through my cracked and blurred vision, I saw the flash of Sillys' armor.
She was firing around the colossal legs of the monster like a silver wasp, screaming divine insults, shooting hyper-compressed blasts of light, doing the impossible to attract the beast's attention.
But it was useless.
The Mother ignored the elven queen completely, advancing like a hurricane of flesh and hate focused entirely on crushing me.
My hand gave way, sinking deeper into the icy mud.
Helplessness.
That familiar, cold, and suffocating grip strangling my throat.
My memories didn't just flicker; they tore through my mind.
My father's face.
My home planet turning to ashes while I watched from my knees.
The paralyzing, sickening fear of seeing everyone I cared about die, while I bled in the dirt like a useless pawn.
And then, plunged on the edge of the abyss of death, a memory emerged.
I remembered the day my mother said she was a goddess; if I die here, all this will be in vain.
The lineage she left me—I had only used it for strength and agility until now, but is that all there is?
NO!
Within me was a divine authority, ancient and dormant, etched deep into my genetic code.
My teeth ground together so hard a dry snap echoed in my jaw, and the taste of copper flooded my mouth.
*No.*
*Not this time.*
"I..." The whisper tore from my bloodied throat, hoarse and broken, but carrying an abnormal weight.
"...will not fall here."
The wind around the rock didn't stop abruptly.
It died.
An absolute vacuum swallowed the clearing.
Every sound from the battlefield disappeared, sucked out of existence.
And then, the atmosphere imploded.
It was a detonation of pure atmospheric pressure. A colossal pillar of white, super-compressed air erupted from my own blood spilled on the ground, tearing the sky like a pillar of divine light.
The earth beneath me gave way and collapsed under the sudden reverse gravitational pressure.
Dead leaves, massive rocks, and drops of my own blood began to float around me, completely defying gravity, spinning in a perfect orbit.
My body was lifted from the floor by the storm itself.
The agonizing weight and the fractures that kept me broken in the mud didn't disappear; they were obliterated, incinerated by the ancestral energy that finally awakened in my veins.
In the midst of the chaos, the echo of Silver's voice, etched in iron and fire in my memory, reverberated as loud as the roar of the storm around me.
"Your muscles and veins, in their current state, will not withstand the pressure of your own strength. You will tear yourself apart from the inside out."
I remembered the night in the courtyard, the implacable seriousness in his eyes as he spoke about the elixir, "It is the only thing capable of anchoring your power without destroying your mortal body."
In that moment, as the divine light tore through my skin, I understood the complete truth.
The elixir hadn't just given me strength; it had been the foundry.
During those two years, he hadn't just trained my spirit or my technique; he had rebuilt my physiology, remade every muscle fiber, and reinforced every tendon so that I would stop being a mortal vessel and become a divine one.
The elixir had molded my body to be the perfect vessel for that force.
I wasn't just using my mother's power; I was finally fulfilling the biological purpose for which Silver had prepared me with such brutality.
A white, ethereal, and blinding light danced through my pores.
The luminous lines that drew themselves across my arms, face, and my entire body pulsed in sync with my now-strengthened heart.
My mother's forgotten lineage was no longer a foreign body corroding me; it was my own blood, circulating through a structure that could finally contain it.
I was flourishing.
I opened my hand.
The black wooden spear, fallen meters away, shot up trembling in submission, cutting the air until it violently collided against my palm, merging into my grip.
A hundred meters away, Sillys stopped mid-dodge.
Her pale eyes widened as she stared at the glowing whirlpool surrounding me.
The shock melted into a sharp, reverent smile.
"A transformation," she whispered, her voice loaded with deep respect.
"Suki... What exactly are you?"
I took a single step forward.
The air, fearing the pressure of my new form, retracted, bending around me as if trying to flee from my presence.
I was only intent and movement.
With a single impulse, the sound barrier was shattered.
The sonic boom was so brutal that, around me, the century-old trees were uprooted from their foundations and thrown backward like twigs.
I transformed into a trace of white light, a blur of pure cutting wind that tore the distance between me and the beast in a few seconds.
The Queen roared, lowering her armored head to intercept me, but it was too late.
I was already on her flank.
My spear, imbued with my essence, didn't just pierce the scales; it ignored them.
The black metal sank as if the armored plating were made of wet paper.
As it passed through the wound, the compressed wind expanded violently, exploding the tendons and flesh from the inside out.
A geyser of black blood erupted, staining the sky dark.
Each strike I delivered was a contained hurricane, an explosion of pressure that left trails of vacuum in the air.
Sillys emerged in my field of vision like a vengeful deity.
She dissipated her bow into shards of light and summoned the wind spear.
For the first time, we weren't just fighting; we were in a telepathic synthesis, a perfect death dance.
The air between us vibrated, alive and wild.
She spun low to the ground, forcing the Queen to expose her joints, and I used the vacuum left by her spin to propel myself onto the beast's back. When I delivered a downward blow, she followed with the precision of a goddess driving her blade exactly where mine had opened the path.
Our attacks drew spirals of white and silver light in the sky, marks of kinetic energy so intense that the reality around us seemed to bleed sparks. The Queen's shrieks, once arrogant, turned into wails of pure agony.
Down below, the Taranpus horde collapsed; without the command of the hive mind, the beasts ran in circles, slamming into each other in a frantic, irrational panic.
We didn't touch the ground.
We navigated the chaotic air currents we created, using the vacuum of the explosions as stepping stones for impossible maneuvers.
"SILLYS!!!" I roared, my voice reverberating with the frequency of a growing thunderclap.
She leaped, riding a thermal current that rose like a tower of energy.
Her spear glowed, capturing the sunlight.
"LET'S END THIS!" I shouted, pulling the spear back.
The black wood groaned, creaking under the power I forced through it.
"NOW!" her voice came loaded with divine authority, her pale eyes aflame.
We ascended in absolute symmetry, two white cyclones rising toward the apex of the sky.
Left and right.
Two storm gods in a clash of wills, our auras collided, merging into a single hurricane of wind that erased the nearby clouds in the sky.
"RAIJIN NO TATSUMAKI!!!"
A silent lightning bolt that stopped time.
Our spears crossed the air, drawing a gigantic, glowing 'X' of pure, destructive wind pressure. The strike crashed down precisely on top of the Queen's armored skull with enough force to curve geography itself, the ground collapsed.
The earth, the forest, the valley—everything was flattened into a plain of dust and silence.
The crater opened so deep that the underworld, with all its endless maze of roots, was exposed to the light.
The Queen's final roar died out... choked on her own black blood.
She staggered.
Her colossal legs, once monuments of strength, buckled.
She tried to rise, but the world itself seemed too heavy for her.
She fell.
The impact of her massive corpse made the entire continent tremble one last time.
Then, silence.
The violent gales ceased.
The air, previously electric and insane, calmed down. A single gust of breeze swept the plain, carrying the metallic scent of victory, ash, and the end of an era.
Miles away, at every coordinate of the Black Forest, the platoons felt it.
The sudden and brutal drop in atmospheric pressure. The hive mind had died.
Absolute silence took over the world.
And then, a roar erupted.
Not from monsters, but from thousands of elven throats, a unified cry of victory, a rumble that made the very roots of the earth tremble.
It was the sound of life, finally breathing again.
"The Mother Taranpus had finally fallen."