Chapter 60: End [ 1 ]

The death of the second Regal Coil Lion changed the battle immediately. Its enormous body had barely finished collapsing beside the Palladium Tree when a roar of alarm spread through the remaining Lesser Monsters.

Until that moment, the two Greater-ranked predators had been the strongest creatures in the valley, living walls between every hungry beast and the white fruit hanging above the island.

Now both were dead, their golden blood running between fractured stones and spilling into the pool.

Some of the surviving Lessers turned toward the tree with renewed desperation. Others finally understood that the humans who had killed the valley’s rulers were even more dangerous.

The result was chaos. Monsters rushed in opposite directions, packs broke apart, wounded creatures abandoned fights, and several predators tried escaping toward the forest while others charged the pool in a final attempt to reach the treasure.

The Raid Team did not give them the chance. Marcus raised his bloodied polearm and shouted for the western line to close, while Cassian moved toward the shoreline with his broad sword resting against one shoulder. Safiya and Odhran had already repositioned after killing their opponents.

Bastian, despite one arm hanging stiffly at his side, planted his tower shield beside two younger Walkers and blocked the easiest route toward the northern trees.

Across the ruined basin, smaller combat groups tightened together. Nobody pursued blindly. They compressed the surviving monsters toward the open ground between the pool and the western slope, reducing the number of directions from which attacks could come.

Jet and Frey were already moving with them. A wounded reptilian monster tried limping between two shattered trees, only for Jet to cut across its path. It snapped at him with a mouth slick with blood.

Jet shifted outside the bite and drove the Vorpal Blade through the damaged joint beneath its skull. The creature collapsed before he had fully withdrawn the sword. To his right, Frey sent two Vritra Coils around a boar-shaped Lesser that was charging a support Walker.

The spectral serpents tightened around its forelegs and jerked them apart. Its chest slammed into the ground, and the support Walker buried a short axe behind its ear before Frey had to do anything else.

There was no longer any resemblance to the orderly valley they had observed from the hill. Grass had been ripped away across huge sections of the basin.

Craters filled with muddy water and blood. Broken trees lay half-submerged along the shoreline, while scorched earth marked the places where Divine Rune abilities had detonated.

Monster corpses were scattered everywhere: some cleanly pierced, others burned, crushed, dismembered or buried beneath collapsed stone. Materialized Cores hovered above many of them like small points of light amid the destruction.

The air stank of blood, churned soil, smoke and the acidic fluids of several dead species.

A cluster of seven Lesser Monsters made the mistake of gathering near the southern bank. They had been driven together by three combat groups and now faced Walkers approaching from two sides.

The largest, an armored quadruped with a shovel-shaped skull, charged first. Spectral chains erupted around its hind legs. The creature tore one apart, but the delay allowed the woman with Cinder Maw to bring her glowing forearms together. Burning jaws manifested around its flank and snapped shut with a violent boom!

Fire rolled over its armor. Before it escaped the flames, pale disks curved through the smoke and sliced into the joints of its forelegs.

Jet saw the opening and accelerated. He reached the monster as its front half collapsed, stepped onto the shovel-shaped skull and drove the Vorpal Blade through the narrow gap behind its crown.

Frey passed behind him almost simultaneously. One Vritra Coil seized a wolf-shaped creature by the waist and slammed it into another Lesser hard enough to crack both against the ground. Two nearby Walkers finished them with spear thrusts.

The remaining monsters attempted to scatter, but compressed wind struck one sideways, an arrow pierced another through the mouth, and a stone pillar erupted beneath the last.

CRACK!

The creature was thrown several meters into the air, twisted helplessly and crashed onto its back. Before it could recover, three spears entered its exposed abdomen from different angles. Its legs kicked twice before becoming still.

The Walkers immediately separated rather than gathering around their kill, each searching for the next threat while the glowing Core materialized above the corpse.

The coordination was noticeably sharper now than it had been during the opening minutes. They had learned each other’s rhythms during the battle, and with fewer monsters remaining, every individual creature found itself facing several Awakeners instead of one.

Then Adesewa entered the battlefield.

Jet noticed her because every monster in front of him suddenly reacted. Heads turned toward the island. Bodies stiffened. Even creatures already engaged with other Walkers hesitated when the pressure of a 3-Star Awakener approached.

Adesewa walked through the shallow water with her bronze spear resting in one hand, armor streaked with golden blood from the Regal Coil Lions.

Adesewa swung once.

BOOM!

The spear did not merely cut the creature. The force behind the strike crushed through its skull and upper torso, spraying blood, shattered bone and strips of flesh across the grass. What remained of the body spun away and hit the ground like discarded meat.

Several nearby Walkers stared for half a second before remembering they were still fighting. A second Lesser came from her left, and Adesewa stepped forward before sweeping the spear horizontally across its chest.

THOOM!

Its rib cage collapsed inward. The monster left the ground, flew through a broken bush and struck a tree hard enough to split the trunk. It never moved again.

Jet understood the lesson immediately. Against the Regal Coil Lions, Adesewa had needed her Divine Rune, positioning, accumulated wounds and repeated attacks because Greater-ranked bodies could withstand her raw physical output.

Against ordinary Lessers, the gap was completely different. Her 3-Star foundation alone turned attacks that had required coordinated effort from younger Walkers into executions.

The difference wasn’t subtle, and watching it firsthand gave Jet a far clearer understanding of the distance separating Star Ranks than any explanation could have provided.