The creature roared.

  The sound alone shook the surrounding forest.

  Then it moved.

  Its massive body lunged forward with shocking speed, cws tearing through the ground as it charged directly toward Jericho.

  Jericho didn’t move.

  At the st second—

  He vanished.

  The beast’s cws smmed into the ground where he had stood, shattering the earth.

  Jericho reappeared above it.

  A dozen silver weapons formed instantly around him, liquid mercury shaping itself into bdes.

  “Silver Barrage.”

  The weapons fired downward like arrows.

  CLANG. CLANG. CLANG.

  The bdes struck the creature’s armored skin—but instead of piercing it, they deflected with sparks.

  William whistled.

  “Well that’s annoying.”

  The creature lifted its massive tail and swung it violently.

  Jericho flipped backward, nding lightly beside the others.

  “That armor is tougher than it looks,” he said calmly.

  But before anyone could respond—

  The creature suddenly raised its head and released a deep vibrating roar.

  The forest responded.

  Branches cracked.

  Leaves rustled violently.

  And from the darkness between the trees…

  Dozens of glowing eyes appeared.

  Alice’s expression darkened.

  “…You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  Monsters began emerging from the forest again.

  But this time…

  They weren’t attacking randomly.

  They were moving in formation.

  Drako narrowed his eyes.

  “So that’s its ability.”

  The beast roared again.

  The surrounding monsters charged forward.

  Erica stepped forward.

  “Then we burn through them.”

  Her sword ignited with bzing energy.

  “Soul Technique… Hurricane Inferno.”

  A swirling tornado of fire erupted around her bde as she swung it.

  The fmes exploded outward in a spiraling storm, incinerating a wave of charging monsters instantly.

  The forest lit up with burning light.

  But more creatures continued rushing in.

  Alice smmed her sword onto the ground.

  “Soul Technique… Tree Golem.”

  The earth cracked as roots surged upward.

  Within seconds, a massive wooden giant rose from the ground, towering above the battlefield.

  “Hold them back!”

  The Tree Golem charged forward, crushing several monsters beneath its massive limbs.

  But the creature in the center of the clearing wasn’t finished.

  Its crimson eyes glowed brighter.

  The ground beneath Jericho suddenly exploded.

  A massive cw erupted from below.

  Jericho twisted in midair and nded smoothly.

  The beast had burrowed again.

  William cracked his neck.

  “Guess it’s my turn.”

  He unched forward with explosive speed.

  His enhanced body tore through the battlefield as he punched straight through a monster’s skull.

  Another lunged toward him—

  He grabbed it mid-air and smmed it into the ground.

  But the beast suddenly erupted from the earth again—directly beneath the Tree Golem.

  Its cws tore through the wooden construct, ripping the golem apart in seconds.

  Alice gasped.

  “My golem—!”

  Drako stepped forward.

  His bones began to glow faintly beneath his skin.

  “this is so exciting.”

  He raised his arm.

  “Soul Casting… Osto Vrechei.”

  Dozens of bone spears erupted from the ground like a deadly rainstorm.

  They shot upward and pierced through the surrounding monsters, pinning many of them to the earth.

  The clearing was suddenly filled with bone spikes.

  But the creature smashed several aside with brute force.

  Drako’s eyes sharpened.

  “Persistent.”

  The beast roared again—

  And the remaining monsters surged toward them.

  Alice raised her sword again.

  “Soul Technique… Vine Trap.”

  Thick vines exploded from the ground, wrapping around the charging monsters and holding them in pce.

  “Commander!”

  Erica grinned.

  “Already on it.”

  She raised her bde toward the sky.

  “Soul Technique… Inferno Cloud.”

  A massive cloud of burning energy formed above the trapped monsters.

  Then it colpsed downward.

  A fiery explosion engulfed the entire area.

  When the fmes cleared…

  Nothing remained of the creatures.

  But the main beast stood untouched.

  Jericho stared at it calmly.

  “So brute force won’t end this quickly.”

  The creature suddenly charged again.

  This time straight toward Alice.

  But she didn’t freeze.

  She smmed her sword into the ground again.

  “Soul Technique… Nature Dome!”

  A massive barrier of intertwined roots and trees erupted around the group. Her sword shattered this time, as it has taken all the energy it could.

  The creature smashed into it violently.

  The entire dome shook—but held.

  Jericho stepped forward slowly.

  “Alright.”

  His silver aura intensified.

  Mercury began flowing around his arms like liquid armor.

  Behind him, Drako’s bones extended slightly as his body began shifting.

  Scales formed along parts of his skin.

  The beginning of his half-dragon transformation.

  Erica’s fmes intensified.

  Alice’s eyes glowed with deep green energy.

  William cracked his knuckles again.

  Jericho looked at the beast.

  “You wanted a real fight.”

  The creature roared and smashed through the Nature Dome.

  Jericho raised his hand.

  “Then let’s end this.”

  Dozens of mercury weapons formed in the air.

  Something stirred beneath the surface of them — a subtle shift, a ripple that sted half a second too long before settling. Nobody noticed.

  Nobody was looking at him.

  Drako stepped forward beside him.

  Bone energy surged around his arm.

  Erica raised her bzing sword.

  Alice lifted both hands toward the sky.

  The battlefield trembled.

  Because the next exchange…

  Would decide everything.

  ?

  The creature roared as it burst through Alice’s Nature Dome, shattering the massive roots like they were brittle wood. Splinters of bark and stone scattered across the clearing.

  Its crimson eyes burned with something beyond fury.Hunger.

  Jericho stepped forward slowly, mercury flowing around his arms like living metal. Behind him, the others prepared themselves.

  This had gone on long enough.

  “End it.”

  The creature lunged — and the clearing exploded into motion.

  William moved first.

  His body unched forward like a fired cannon, the ground cracking beneath his feet with each explosive stride. He ducked under a sweeping cw that would have taken his head clean off, felt the wind of it graze his ear, and drove a devastating punch directly into the creature’s jaw.

  The impact rang out like a struck bell.

  The massive beast staggered — one step, then caught itself.

  Its head turned slowly back toward William.

  Then it smiled.

  A row of jagged teeth parted, and it lunged — faster than before, one enormous cw driving downward with enough force to crater the earth. William barely twisted aside, the blow grazing his side and sending him skidding back across the clearing.

  He hit the ground hard. Exhaled.

  Grinned anyway.

  “Now!”

  ?

  Alice, now with a new sword, lifted it above.

  The air shifted immediately. Wind began to spiral inward around the clearing’s edge, and the temperature dropped sharply — a sudden, unnatural cold that had nothing to do with weather.

  Her eyes ignited with deep green light.

  “Soul Technique… Climate.”

  The sky obeyed.

  Thunder split the air above them. Dark clouds churned overhead and colpsed inward as if drawn by gravity that didn’t exist. Massive vines erupted from the earth at the creature’s feet, coiling upward around its legs with crushing force. The ground beneath it hardened rapidly, stone locking over earth, sealing its movement.

  The creature roared and tore through the first yer of vines — raw strength ripping them apart like rope.

  New ones repced them instantly.

  It tore through those too.

  More repced them.

  The beast was winning that exchange — but it was spending everything on the vines.

  Which meant it wasn’t watching Erica.

  ?

  The heat arrived before she did.

  Fmes erupted violently around her bde, far greater than anything she’d produced before — intense enough that the air itself distorted around her, the ground at her feet beginning to bcken and scorch. Even William, still recovering across the clearing, had to shield his face from the radiant heat.

  Erica raised her sword high.

  “Soul technique… Grand Burst Inferno.”

  The sphere that formed above her wasn’t fire. Not really. It was compressed heat, bzing so white it hurt to look at — a miniature sun that grew heavier and brighter with every second she held it.Then she swung.

  The sphere hit the creature like a colpsing star. The explosion consumed the beast entirely, an inferno that swallowed its armored body in a roiling storm of fme and pressure. Trees at the edge of the clearing bent backward from the shockwave.For three full seconds, no one could see anything through the fire.

  Then the smoke shifted.

  The creature stepped forward.

  Burned. Bleeding from gaps in its pting where the heat had found the seams. One eye had gone dark, seared out entirely.

  But moving.

  Its surviving eye found Erica. Something in its expression — if it could be called that — had changed.

  It was no longer hunting.

  It was angry.

  It charged.

  “Drako.”

  Drako was already moving.

  His body shifted mid-step — bone structures extending along his arms and shoulders as faint dragon scales formed across his skin in rapid succession. His eyes sharpened to something inhuman. He pnted both feet between the creature and Erica and raised both hands as the beast bore down on him.

  The ground answered.

  “Soul Casting… Osto Fengari.”

  The earth around the creature detonated upward. A massive crescent of bone erupted from beneath the surface — expanding rapidly, rising like a pale moon ascending from the ground — and smmed into the beast from below and both sides simultaneously. The structure closed around it: a cage of jagged bone bdes, each one angled inward.

  The creature thrashed with everything it had.Every movement drove the bdes deeper into the gaps in its armor.

  For the first time since they’d entered this forest…

  It screamed.

  Not a roar. Not fury.

  Pain.

  Jericho stepped forward.

  The mercury surged — but not into weapons.

  Not this time.

  It separated.

  Erica’s head turned first. Then Drako’s. Then Alice’s.

  Because what pulled away from Jericho wasn’t metal. It was him — dozens of him, peeling from his silhouette in liquid silver, each figure a perfect mirror, gleaming and weightless and utterly silent. They fanned out across the battlefield with the same stance, the same stillness.

  The same raised hand.

  “Jericho—” Erica’s voice came out smaller than she intended. The sword in her grip wavered for just a moment. “When did you—”

  Nobody answered her.

  When Jericho’s fingers curled — every copy’s fingers curled with him. And the mercury in their grasp didn’t just form weapons. It became weapons, pouring out of each figure simultaneously — swords, spears, needles, bdes without name — multiplied across dozens of bodies at once.

  Hundreds of them, suspended above the trapped creature, catching what little light remained in the clearing and scattering it like broken gss.

  His voice was perfectly calm.

  “Silver Rain.”

  The sky fell.

  Every bde dropped at once across every copy, a meteor shower of shimmering silver from every angle, each one finding the gaps that Erica’s fire had burned open and Drako’s cage had exposed.

  They didn’t stop. More formed as others nded, an unrelenting storm of liquid metal driving deeper with every second.

  The bone cage held.

  Alice’s vines pulled tighter, working with the structure rather than against it.

  Erica’s fmes still burned across its body.

  The creature was pinned, burning, pierced — and it still hadn’t stopped fighting. Still tearing at the cage. Still trying.

  William was already in the air.

  He’d climbed nothing. Just jumped — an absurd, impossible height that said more about what he was than anything else. He hung at the apex for a single suspended moment, looking down at the creature below him.

  His fist clenched.

  “Let’s finish it.”

  He fell like judgment.

  The impact didn’t just hit the creature. It hit the ground, the shockwave radiating outward in a visible ring that split the earth and shook the trees at the forest’s edge. A crack ran through the bone cage. Dust and debris erupted in every direction.

  Then silence.

  The creature’s massive body swayed once.

  Then it colpsed — slowly, like a tower coming down — and struck the earth with a sound that rolled through the forest like distant thunder.

  The crimson glow in its one remaining eye dimmed.

  Went out.

  The oppressive pressure that had saturated this forest for days — the weight that had felt like something watching from everywhere at once — lifted.

  Gone.

  Just gone.