Chapter : 977

  There was a series of sharp, sickening pops, like a thick branch being snapped over a knee. The Stalker’s body went limp, its spine severed. He contemptuously threw the dead weight aside and turned to face the next threat.

  While Lloyd was engaged in his brutal, close-quarters brawl, Rosa was a whirlwind of deadly, artistic precision. She was not a brawler; she was a fencer, a duelist of the highest order, and the rocky, treacherous terrain was her perfect arena.

  Two Stalkers, having recovered from their initial shock, charged her simultaneously, their strategy to overwhelm her with a pincer attack. Rosa did not retreat. She danced. She wove her Void power into the very fabric of her swordsmanship. With a flick of her wrist, a patch of black ice would appear, sending one attacker sliding helplessly past her. With a subtle shift of her weight, she would pirouette away from the other’s charge, her frost-coated rapier a blur of silver, leaving a long, shallow, and exquisitely painful cut along its flank.

  She was not trying to kill them with single, decisive blows. She was dismantling them. She was a surgeon, systematically cutting tendons, hamstringing legs, leaving a trail of small, debilitating wounds that bled their strength and their will to fight. Her movements were a beautiful, terrifying ballet of death. The two powerful beasts, who had been a coordinated hunting unit, were reduced to clumsy, bleeding, and increasingly frustrated individuals, their rage growing with every failed attack.

  The final Stalker, a younger, more reckless member of the pack, had hung back, its intelligent eyes watching, trying to process the impossible scene. It saw its packmates being systematically, brutally, and efficiently annihilated. Its pack instincts, the very core of its being, screamed at it to flee. But a deeper, more primal rage, the fury of a predator that has been made to feel like prey, took over.

  With a final, desperate howl, it ignored the deadly dancer and charged the source of the most brutal, direct violence. It charged Lloyd.

  Lloyd, having just dispatched his second kill, turned to meet the new threat. He saw the beast coming, a grey, snarling missile of pure, suicidal rage. He braced himself, his bladed gauntlets flashing in the dim light.

  But he was not alone.

  A blur of silver appeared at the edge of his vision. Rosa, who had been engaged in her own deadly dance, had seen the threat. In a move of breathtaking, selfless, and perfectly timed intervention, she abandoned her own fight. She launched herself forward, her body a low, graceful arc. She slid across the rocky ground on a path of her own created ice, a maneuver that was both a defensive slide and an offensive strike.

  Her rapier, a needle of pure, deadly frost, shot out. It did not aim for the charging Stalker’s heart or throat. It aimed for its front leg. The blade punched through the thick muscle and sinew, a perfect, crippling blow.

  The Stalker’s charge collapsed. Its front leg buckled, and it tumbled head over heels, crashing to the ground in a pained, ignominious heap, just feet from Lloyd.

  The last two Stalkers, seeing their final packmate fall, their will to fight finally, completely broken, turned and fled, their powerful forms vanishing into the grey, rocky landscape as silently as they had appeared.

  The battle was over.

  Lloyd stood amidst the carnage, his chest heaving, his body screaming with the strain of the brutal, physical fight. He looked down at the four dead beasts, at the dark, steaming blood that was already beginning to freeze on the black rock. He then looked over at Rosa.

  She stood twenty feet away, a solitary, silver-haired figure, her rapier held loosely at her side, its frosty aura having already dissipated. Her own breathing was ragged, a fine sheen of sweat on her pale brow. She looked… magnificent. Terrifying. And completely, utterly self-sufficient.

  His cold, tactical assessment of the mission had to be updated. His initial fear, that she would be a liability in this spirit-sealed world, a fragile noblewoman he would have to protect, was a catastrophic miscalculation. The woman who stood before him was not a liability. She was a weapon. A different kind of weapon from himself, one of grace and precision against his own brute force, but a weapon nonetheless. A competent, efficient, and lethally effective variable in the brutal, unforgiving equation of their survival.

  He gave a single, short nod, a silent, professional acknowledgment of her skill. A sign of respect from one soldier to another.

  Chapter : 978

  She met his gaze, and for a long, profound moment, they simply stood there, two survivors in a world of death, the unspoken acknowledgment of their new, brutally forged partnership hanging in the silent, cold air between them. The first trial was passed. But the mountain was far from finished with them.

  ----

  The aftermath of the battle was a pocket of grim, panting silence in the oppressive quiet of the mountain. The bodies of the three Ridge-back Stalkers lay cooling on the black rock, their dark blood a stark, visceral testament to the brutal, efficient violence that had just occurred. Lloyd and Rosa stood apart, each in their own space, their chests heaving as the fire of adrenaline slowly gave way to the deep, aching fatigue of a life-or-death struggle.

  Their unspoken partnership, forged in a shared objective and baptized in the blood of their first trial, was now a tangible thing. It was not a bond of warmth or affection. It was the cold, hard, and brutally efficient understanding of two professional soldiers who had just confirmed the other’s competence in the field. He was the hammer, the brute force instrument of overwhelming, close-quarters violence. She was the scalpel, the artist of terrain control and precise, debilitating strikes. Together, they were a surprisingly, terrifyingly effective killing machine.

  But their moment of grim satisfaction was fleeting, a single, fragile heartbeat of relief before the mountain decided to remind them of their true place in its primordial, unforgiving hierarchy.

  The new threat did not come with the silent stealth of the Stalkers. It came with the force of an avalanche, the sound of a world being torn apart. A deep, guttural roar, a sound so powerful it seemed to shake the very foundations of the mountain, echoed from the dark, twisted forest that bordered their rocky clearing. It was not the roar of a simple predator; it was a declaration of absolute, territorial dominance. It was the voice of a king.

  Trees, ancient ironwoods that had stood for centuries, began to splinter and fall, their massive trunks snapping like twigs. A new, far greater threat was coming, and it was not going around the forest; it was coming through it.

  Lloyd and Rosa, their brief respite shattered, instantly fell back into their defensive, back-to-back posture. Their eyes were wide, not with fear, but with a new, profound sense of awe and dread. They had just defeated a pack of formidable, Tier-4 level beasts. The thing that was coming, the thing that treated a forest of ironwood like a field of tall grass, was of a different order of existence entirely.

  It burst from the tree line, a behemoth of muscle, fur, and rage that seemed to suck the very light from the clearing. It was a Monolith Bear, a creature of myth, the undisputed apex predator of this spirit-sealing environment. It was twenty feet tall at the shoulder, a walking mountain of black, shaggy fur and corded, impossibly dense muscle. Its hide was not just thick; it was interwoven with plates of what looked like solid granite, a natural, impenetrable armor. Its claws, each one the size of a short sword, were not made of keratin, but of jagged, unpolished obsidian.

  Its power was purely, absolutely physical. Yet, it radiated an aura of overwhelming pressure, a crushing weight of pure, primal dominance that was easily equivalent to a Transcended-level spiritual beast. This was what evolution created in a world without magic. A perfect, biological engine of absolute, irresistible force.

  The bear’s small, intelligent, and utterly malevolent eyes fixed on them. It saw them not as a threat, but as an annoyance. An infestation in its territory. It let out another, deafening roar, a sound that was a pure, unadulterated promise of annihilation, and it charged.

  Its charge was not the loping run of a normal bear. It was a thunderous, earth-shaking avalanche of fury. The ground trembled with each of its massive, pounding steps. It was not just fast; it was a force of nature, a living battering ram that was coming to erase them from existence.

  “Ice!” Lloyd roared, his voice a sharp, tactical command. “I need ice! Slow it down!”

  There was no time for a complex plan. Their only hope was to disrupt its unstoppable momentum, to turn its greatest asset, its overwhelming force, into a liability.

  Rosa did not hesitate. The exhaustion from the previous fight was forgotten, burned away by a new, desperate surge of adrenaline. She became a blur of motion, her hands a graceful, weaving dance. She poured her will, her entire remaining reservoir of Void power, into the ground before them.

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  Chapter : 979

  The black, volcanic rock did not just frost over. A massive, ten-foot-high, thirty-foot-wide wall of jagged, impossibly thick ice erupted from the earth, a miniature glacier brought into existence by a single, desperate act of will. It was a magnificent, beautiful, and utterly desperate defense.

  It was not enough.

  The Monolith Bear did not slow. It did not try to go around the wall. It simply… ran through it.

  The sound was a cataclysmic explosion of shattering ice. The massive wall, which could have stopped a cavalry charge, was annihilated. It was not broken; it was vaporized into a cloud of glittering, frozen dust. The bear did not even seem to register the impact. It emerged from the cloud of ice-dust, its momentum completely unchecked, its malevolent gaze now fixed on the small, silver-haired woman who had dared to put a pebble in its path.

  Lloyd saw the shift in its intent. He saw the beast lock onto her as the primary threat. “Rosa, move!” he screamed, his own body already surging forward, his bladed gauntlets flashing into existence.

  But he was too slow. The bear was impossibly, terrifyingly fast.

  It covered the remaining distance in a single, massive bound. Its colossal, obsidian-clawed paw swiped through the air, a black, blurring arc of death.

  Rosa tried to dodge, her fencer’s reflexes screaming at her to retreat. But her power was spent. The creation of the ice wall had drained her to the very dregs. Her movements were sluggish, a fraction of a second too slow.

  The claws, each one a razor-sharp shard of volcanic glass, tore through the reinforced leather of her leg armor as if it were paper. The sound was a sickening rip of leather and flesh.

  Rosa cried out, a sharp, high-pitched sound of pure, unadulterated pain. She was thrown back, her body tumbling like a broken doll, to land in a crumpled heap twenty feet away, a deep, bleeding, and instantly crippling gash running from her thigh to her knee.

  Her greatest defense had failed. Her speed had failed her. And now, she was down. She was wounded. She was bait.

  The Monolith Bear, its first target neutralized, now turned its full, undivided, and utterly furious attention to the second, smaller, and now completely isolated annoyance in its path. It turned its gaze on Lloyd.

  Lloyd stood his ground, a solitary figure against a tide of fury. He saw the beast’s massive chest heave as it prepared for another, final charge. He saw the crippled, bleeding form of his partner, his only ally, lying helpless on the rocks. He felt the cold, hard calculus of the soldier’s mind take over. Their current tactics, their beautiful, brutal synergy of hammer and scalpel, had been a catastrophic failure. Continuing on this path was not a strategy. It was a suicide pact.

  He had to change the rules. He had to change the very nature of the fight. He had to do something that was not just unconventional, but was fundamentally, beautifully, and absolutely impossible. And he had to do it now.

  The world seemed to slow down, the frantic, chaotic violence of the battle contracting into a single, focused moment of absolute, terrifying clarity. The Monolith Bear, a twenty-foot-tall god of pure, physical rage, was preparing to deliver the final, crushing blow. Rosa, his partner, his only ally, was a broken, bleeding figure on the cold, black rocks, her magnificent swordsmanship rendered useless by a single, brutal swipe. And he, Lloyd Ferrum, was standing directly in the path of an avalanche of muscle and fury, his own considerable strength a pathetic and utterly meaningless variable in the face of such overwhelming, absolute force.

  He could feel the cold, hard logic of the strategist’s mind screaming at him. Retreat. Disengage. Find higher ground. The tactical manual was clear. But the tactical manual had been written for wars between men, for battles governed by the predictable laws of physics and strategy. It had not been written for this. For a fight against a primordial god on a mountain that ate magic for breakfast.

  He realized, with a chilling and exhilarating certainty, that his own powers, his Steel Blood, his Black Ring Eyes, were not enough. Not here. Not against this. He could reinforce his body to the hardness of iron, but iron shatters against a moving mountain. He could manifest his chains, his blades, but they would be as effective as threads against the beast’s granite-laced hide. He needed a new weapon. A new paradigm. A new way to fight.

  It was a good thing he had just gone shopping.

  Chapter : 980

  The memory of the ambush, of Jager’s cunning and Kael’s speed, had been a humiliating lesson. He had been outmaneuvered, his own movements, for all their preternatural grace, bound by the familiar, predictable laws of motion. He had identified the weakness in his own arsenal. And in the quiet, desperate hours after that battle, in the secret, star-filled space of his System interface, he had addressed it. He had spent the hard-won spoils of that victory, the coins earned from the capture of Kael, not on a bigger sword or a stronger shield, but on something far more fundamental. On a new way to move. On a way to break the very rules of the game.

  He had purchased a B-Rank movement art from the deepest, most esoteric archives of the Shopping Tree. An art called [Void Steps]. A technique that was not about speed, but about a localized, instantaneous manipulation of space itself. A way to be here, and then, in the space between heartbeats, to be there. A shunpo of pure, unadulterated will.

  He had not yet had time to practice it, to master it. He had only read the theory, the complex, mind-bending principles of its mechanics. To attempt it now, for the first time, in the heart of a life-or-death battle, was not just risky. It was an act of pure, unadulterated, and perhaps suicidal, insanity.

  The bear roared, its voice a physical, concussive force that shook the very air, and it charged.

  Lloyd did not dodge. He did not retreat. He did not brace for impact. He closed his eyes, and he took a step.

  There was no grand surge of energy. There was no flash of light. There was only a quiet, internal command from his will to the Void. A single, focused thought: move.

  The world did not blur. It simply… ceased to be. For a single, infinitesimal fraction of a second, he was nowhere. And then, with a sharp, almost inaudible hiss of displaced air, he was somewhere else.

  He was at Rosa’s side.

  The bear’s massive, obsidian claws, which should have pulped him into a red paste, tore through the empty space where he had been a microsecond before. They hit nothing but air, the force of their passage creating a small, localized sonic boom.

  Before Rosa, her eyes wide with a mixture of pain and shocked disbelief, could even register his presence, a strong, unyielding arm scooped her up. Her world dissolved into a dizzying, nauseating blur of blue-white light, the color of a dying star. The crushing, thunderous pressure of the bear’s charge, the very sound of its rage, vanished, replaced by a strange, high-pitched hum.

  A moment later, she was deposited with a jarring, almost clinical gentleness behind the solid, unmoving safety of a massive granite outcrop a hundred feet away. A faint, ethereal after-image of their path, a trail of fractured, blue-white light, flickered in the air for a single, impossible moment and then shattered like glass.

  Lloyd was already gone.

  He reappeared twenty feet to the bear’s left, his posture calm, his breathing steady. The first, desperate, and wildly successful test of his new power was complete. He had not just saved her. He had changed the fundamental reality of the battlefield.

  Now, the true dance began.

  The bear roared, a sound of pure, frustrated confusion. Its simple, predatory mind could not process what had just happened. Its prey had been there. Now it was not. And now it was over there. It was a violation of the natural order, and it was infuriating. It shook its massive head and changed direction, its charge now a clumsy, lumbering avalanche of pure fury aimed at the new location of its tormentor.

  Again, Lloyd simply took a step. A shunpo of pure will. He vanished.

  He reappeared atop a nearby boulder, fifty feet away, a silent, untouchable phantom. The bear skidded to a halt, its massive claws tearing deep gouges in the black rock, its small, intelligent eyes burning with a new and unfamiliar light. It was no longer just rage. It was the dawning, terrifying understanding that it was no longer the hunter.

  Lloyd was no longer a man fighting a monster. He was a ghost, a disorienting, unpredictable phantom, and he was playing with a lumbering, powerful, and increasingly terrified beast. Each step was an instantaneous, jarring leap across space, a staccato rhythm of existence and non-existence.

  Step. He was directly behind the bear, his presence a silent taunt, a blue-white trail of fractured light marking his impossible path.

  Step. He was fifty feet to its right, his calm, analytical gaze drawing its attention, pulling its fury like a matador taunting a bull.