Bairan's eyes remained fixed ahead, his face carved from stone. The young soldier's words might as well have been wind whistling through empty branches—they left no mark on him.
The soldier had already raised his trembling hand, light bleeding from his fingertips as he carved a rune of light into the air. Sweat beaded his forehead, mixing with the steady trickle of blood seeping from his nose. Each movement looked like he was trying to lift a mountain with his bare hands.
Above them, reality tore apart. A shimmering blue wound opened behind the demented soldier, its edges spreading like a ripple in still water. The earth itself seemed to hold its breath as something vast began to emerge from within.
Bairan's eyes became slits.
Northern had suspected the truth all along—that strange rift in Lithia had been no accident. His master's instincts had been sharp as ever. Someone out there possessed the key to opening rifts, and they were passing it down to these human whelps like a family heirloom.
How they managed it remained a mystery to Bairan. These portals that vomited out monsters hadn't existed in his time. Back then, monsters had been woven into the fabric of their world like the sun and moon.
'...hadn't they?'
His brow furrowed as the memories shifted like sand beneath his thoughts.
The questions fell away as the creature began to reveal itself.
First came the stench—thick and choking, like a battlefield left to rot under the summer sun. Death itself seemed to pour from the rift, coating the air in invisible filth.
Bairan muttered, though the words barely captured the putrid reality.
"The smell of death."
Power radiated from the beast like heat from a forge. Each footstep sent shockwaves through the ground, announcing its arrival with the force of a small earthquake. This was no ordinary demon—this was something that should have sent entire armies running for the hills.
The soldier stood his ground despite trembling legs. A Paragon, perhaps, but still just human. Still breakable.
The pieces clicked into place like tumblers in a lock.
'Someone handed this to him... along with those other tricks up his sleeve.'
The soldier's talent had become clear during their brief dance. The impure and simple art of death. Immortality that bent like a willow in the wind—never quite breaking, no matter how hard the storm blew.
The man had been stealing body parts like a child stealing sweets, using others as his personal flesh market. And those slaps Bairan had delivered—each one powerful enough to crack boulders—had barely left lasting marks. The soldier's body was like putty, reshaping itself after every blow, an infuriating mockery of mortality.
The creature's legs crashed down like falling trees, each step sending tremors through the earth as it emerged with the bearing of an ancient king.
A living mountain of flesh and calm fury, the creature moved among the buildings as if they were mere saplings in its path. Its legs—massive pillars carved from primordial stone—groaned beneath moss-covered hide that seemed to pulse with its own verdant life.
Hidden deep within its skull, the creature's eyes peered out like forgotten stars. They had witnessed eons pass, held wisdom older than memory, yet now they reflected nothing but the hollow stare of death itself.
From either side of its trunk, curved tusks jutted into the air like scythe blades forged by titans. Each one could reduce a city block to rubble with a single sweep, turning stone and steel into dust with casual indifference.
Moss clung to every inch of its body, transforming the monster into a walking ecosystem—a mountain that breathed and moved with terrible purpose.
Even Bairan, with all his accumulated power, felt something cold settle in his stomach at the sight.
'What force could fell something this ancient?'
The soldier before him was a gnat compared to this behemoth. No mere human could have brought down such a titan and lived to brag about it.
Someone had done the killing and gifted this walking nightmare as the soldier's ace in the hole.
Bairan's lips curved into a grim smile. Time to get serious.
His fingers found Dark Mortal's hilt, and for a heartbeat, he closed his eyes. When they opened, they burned with the light of a predator who had just found worthy prey.
Dark sparks danced across his outstretched palm before condensing into solid steel—a yellow odachi that pulsed with lightning as it materialized. He strapped it to his waist, creating a deadly constellation of blades.
Another gesture, and a silver whisper of metal appeared in his grip.
Illusioned Hefter balanced across his shoulders like a sleeping serpent as his ice-blue eyes tracked the lumbering giant.
Three swords would dance tonight.
He extended one leg forward, muscles coiling like springs. With practiced ease, he clamped Illusioned Hefter's grip between his teeth, then drew Stainless and Dark Mortal in smooth, deadly arcs.
Triple steel gleamed in the dying light as Bairan's eyes became chips of winter frost, their gaze dropping the temperature around him by degrees. Even the air seemed to shiver in anticipation of the coming storm.
The sun was sinking and darkness was descending upon the world. With that cold dread permeated the air, there was something strange, something primal, something different, something… suffocating.
Bairan's upper body coiled like a drawn bow, then his eyes erupted with celestial fury. Blue light exploded from his gaze, unfurling into luminous wings that carved themselves from pure radiance.
He moved—or perhaps the world moved around him.
In the space between heartbeats, Bairan ceased to exist in place. A hair-thin trail of azure light marked his passage—the ghost trace of movement too swift for mortal eyes to capture, stretching across the behemoth's form like lightning captured in glass.
The line zigzagged with surgical precision, carving patterns through air and flesh alike—up, down, across, creating a deadly geometric puzzle over the ancient mountain's living hide.
Reality held its breath.
Then came the shockwave. It tore outward three times like creation's first explosion, the mere displaced air reducing stone walls to memory and buildings to scattered dust.
Following those impossible lines, the colossal beast began its swan song. Flesh parted along the traced paths, the body toppling in sections like a mountain range being carved apart by a god's blade wielded with the precision of a surgeon's scalpel.
When the dust settled, Bairan stood exactly where he had begun—as if he had never moved at all. Illusioned Hefter slipped from between his teeth, clattering to the ground with a metallic whisper.
He straightened from his crouch, rolling his neck until vertebrae popped in a cascade of satisfied cracks, releasing the battle tension like water from a dam.
The destruction spread beyond the estate's borders. Fhugal itself trembled beneath the aftershock, the ground rippling in waves that split the earth into spiderweb fractures. Cracks raced across the city like seeking fingers, crawling over walls and through streets, an unstoppable network of destruction that honored no boundaries.
The cursed veins of shattered stone spread without mercy, transforming the city's foundation into a mosaic of broken earth that spoke of power beyond mortal comprehension.