Billie stumbled back, chest heaving, his bloodied blade sinking into the final wolf's lifeless form. Its whimper echoed a chilling note on the wind, the only punctuation in the sudden stillness. He looked away, the metallic tang of blood clinging to his tongue.
The Sylvanwood mage rushed forward, tears glistening in her emerald eyes. She enveloped both Billie and the Inferno boy in a tight embrace, their hands interlacing at their backs. Strangers mere hours ago, they now stood united, forged in the crucible of shared peril.
A shaky laugh escaped the Inferno mage, the first since the wolves' howl had shattered the night. "Well, that wasn't exactly picnic in the park, eh?" he rasped, his voice choked with exhaustion and a hint of newfound camaraderie.
Billie grunted, a smile tugging at the corner of his lips despite the throbbing ache in his arm. "No, more like sinking into the mud." He glanced at the girl, her tears glistening like tiny constellations against her soot-streaked face. "But we made it, didn't we?"
Their triumphant cheers shattered into shards as the earth ripped open beneath them. A crevice belched dust and debris akin to a colossal sneeze, unleashing the rocky colossus. Its emergence catapulted the trio backward, caught in the impact. The Sylvanwood noble thrust her hands skyward, her emerald eyes ablaze with power. Leaves, summoned from the forest floor, surged to meet her, but the force of the fall stole her breath. Pain screamed through her limbs, her vision swam, the world tilting on its axis.
Eydis gripped the Ethereum crystals in her hand, their facets reflecting the glistening moonlight. Perched on a gnarled branch, high above, she observed the scene below with narrowed eyes.
Duke Theomund's gift, two silver pistols inlaid with intricate elven runes, felt weighty in her hands. Taking a deep breath, she began loading the Ethereums, shaped to fit the guns, their potent energy tingling against her fingertips.
From the clearing below, a tall and dark figure emerged, shrouded in dust and shadows. Despite bloody streaks on his arms and bruises marring his face, he stood resolute—a bulwark against the monstrous creature, shielding his Inferno and Sylvanwood comrades with unwavering determination. The boy, once shaken in fear, now had eyes filled with determination, as if death itself held the promise of glory. Eydis marvelled at the unpredictable and fleeting nature of human emotions, revealing unexpected depths of courage.
From the corner of her eye, she saw the Sylvanwood girl rise, swaying slightly, supported by the crimson-eyed boy. These three unlikely comrades, heroes, battered but unbowed, stood shoulder-to-shoulder, their gazes fixed on the looming behemoth.
"Should we use the gun?" rasped the Inferno boy, his voice barely audible over the pounding of his own heart. He fumbled blindly through his pack, fingers scrabbling for a hope that might not exist.
"We're not done yet," Billie growled, his voice raw with determination. "We made it this far. We ain't giving up now." His shirts now a tapestry of crimson wounds. He ripped a strip from his garment and bound it around his arm, wincing as the rough cloth pressed against his torn flesh. Sweat beaded on his brow, glistening like tiny diamonds against his dark, bruised skin.
"What honourable fools, leaping into impending death," thought Eydis. Her plan had been to hide until cavalry arrived, knowing that Sir John was somewhere in the forest, thanks to a secret message from Duke Theomund. The blood curdling screams echoing at the far distance had confirmed her earlier suspicion: Astra, the Silverkeep prodigy, could handle this, anyway.
But then, the earth quaked. The rock colossus, wielding the very soil beneath their feet as a weapon, summoned an iron wall, a suffocating cage of earth and stone closing in on the exhausted defenders. Even the Inferno boy, the least wounded, could have escaped. Yet, he stood defiant, summoning the last embers of his magic, a wall of crackling fire erupting at the precipice of their doom. His eyes ablazed, his screams echoed.
Impressive.
But even that firewall couldn't hold forever. The boy's magic, like his body, wavered under the crushing weight of the attack. The trio held their breath, trapped in a tomb of their own making. But just as the iron wall reached its deadly embrace, a shriek of unimaginable pain tore through the air. The colossus stumbled, clutching at its severed foot.
"Who's there?!" The trio spun, eyes darting wildly through the dust and shadows. Yet, the forest stood silent, offering no explanation for the echoing whisper.
"RUN! It's gonna regenerate!" the green-haired girl shrieked, her voice cracking with desperate energy. She latched onto her comrades' arms, pulling them towards the safety of the trees. But they remained rooted, transfixed by the sight before them.
The once monstrous creature, a titan carved from living rock, now cowered in anguish. It roared, not in fury, but in a primal wail of agony. It clawed at the ground, attempting to reattach its severed feet, but its efforts were futile. The wounds refused to heal, a pulsing white light emanating from them, spreading like a luminescent virus towards its hearts.
"Look!" Billie gasped, voice barely above a whisper. He pointed a trembling finger towards the towering beast. Its chest convulsed, the glow intensifying until it erupted in a kaleidoscope of colour, flooding its rocky body with unnatural radiance.
Eydis, perched unseen in the branches above, her keen eyes narrowed. Even these behemoths of stone had their chinks in the armor. And in this case, it wasn't just a flaw, it was a gaping wound. A soft, fleshy skin peeked through the cracks in its rocky hide, exposed and vulnerable. The source of the white light? Tiny silver shards, pulsing with potent energy, embedded deep within the wound.
Her Ethereums. Dean Gidion Swans' 'impotent' invention.
A grim smile graced Eydis' lips. Even brute force needed a finesse it didn't know it possessed. And Eydis had just delivered that precision, finding the Achilles heel of a seemingly invincible enemy. The monster thrashed, its once earth-shaking roars choked into whimpers of pain. Its immense body stumbled, the ground trembling beneath its weight as it lurched towards its fallen brethren.
The trio watched, frozen in a mix of awe and apprehension. Instead of regenerating, the light emanating from its chest intensified, bathing the clearing in an unnatural glow. It was as though the light was learning, responding, and ultimately, dismantling the behemoth from inside out. Then, with a thunderous CRACK, the colossus crumbled. Not into lifeless stone, but into a thousand shimmering fragments, scattering like stardusts.
Silence descended, thick and heavy. The forest held its breath, waiting for the next act in this strange, deadly ballet. The green-haired girl, eyes wide with disbelief, finally broke the spell. With a shaky laugh, she turned to her companions, eyes sparkling with newfound pride.
"It's...over," she whispered, her voice barely a tremor in the still air. "We did it!" The trio, once strangers, hold each other in a tight hug, tears swelling from their eyes, from bitter ash and pain and joys. They could not decipher what had just happened, the only closest explanation they could think of, was their attacks somehow met its vital core.
At the same time, within the heart of the capital, hidden within the prestigious academy, a hum of activity pulsed like a beating heart. An advanced analytical machine, bathed in the blue glow of its own evolution, devoured the data it thirsted for.
Eydis's battles weren't merely displays of recklessness; they were data streams feeding the MRI's insatiable hunger for knowledge. It wasn't just sterile numbers from controlled environments; it was the raw experience of low-tier monster clashes, the desperate struggles of academy contestants, and the earth-shattering might of an S-Class earth colossus. Each encounter was a brushstroke painting a vibrant picture of reality, rewriting the machine's algorithms in real-time. Ethereum served as the conduit through quantum entanglement; Gidion was undoubtedly a genius, but in the realm of brilliance, so was Amelia. In the domain of audacity, she surpassed him, by a considerable margin.
The machine's interface, a canvas of vibrant data streams, flickered with the speed of a hummingbird's wings as it recalibrated. It registered the thrumming energies, the shockwaves that rippled through the earth, and the intricate dance of power dynamics.
In response, it whispered subtle instructions, like a puppeteer pulling unseen strings. Its creations, the ethereal energy woven into the Ethereum stones, pulsed with dormant potency within the monsters. They weren't weapons, not explicitly, but seeds of change, subtly nudging the creatures' internal processes towards a controlled, if inevitable end.
Dean Gidion Swans' creation was complete.
A secret not even he knew.
The once-monstrous creature writhed in agony, her Ethereal bullets dissolving into its flesh, leaving no trace of her intervention. Beneath the Emperor's watchful gaze, her secret remained buried, yet a disquieting unease gnawed at her.
Why had she intervened? The trio's desperate stand, their unwavering courage, had somehow pierced through the icy wall she'd built around her heart. Her mission was to gather data, not engage in heroics. Yet, her fingers had sought the smooth metal of her pistols, her hand instinctively aiming before logic intervened.
Eydis slipped deeper into the shadows, the forest canopy a welcome cloak for her troubled thoughts. The cool air felt foreign against her sweat-slick skin, a stark contrast to the inferno of emotions flickering within. A river, she recalled, glimpsed on her journey here. Perhaps its cleansing waters could wash away not just the grime of battle, but the unexpected tremor of empathy that had shaken her composure.