The footsteps weren't just sound. They were like the sinal of death encroaching.
THUD. The stone floor cracked.
THUD. Dust rained from the rafters.
THUD. The darkness at the far end of the shrine moved.
I looked up at the hole I'd crashed through, at the pale moonlight filtering through broken wood and snow. Then I looked back at the corridor and at the thing emerging from it.
The Guardian? wasn't alive. Not in any way that mattered. It was animated, three meters of volcanic stone carved into the shape of a wrathful deity whose name had been lost to time. Cracks spider-webbed across its torso, glowing dull red like magma beneath cooling earth. Its joints ground together with the sound of tectonic plates shifting.
In its right hand a iron tetsubo studded with rusted spikes. Large enough to flatten a horse. Its eyes, two burning pits of crimson locked onto the scattered offerings at my feet.
Then onto me.
[Grace]: Oh, this is going to be fun. [New Objective: Survive the Temple Guardian.] [Recommended strategy: Run.] [Secondary: Pray.] [Tertiary: Die quickly so I don't have to watch.]
I laughed. Jagged. Hysterical. The sound scraped my raw throat.
"You know what, Grace?" I rasped, my hand diving into my pocket. My fingers closed around one of the stolen crystals. "I'm getting real tired of your shit."
The Guardian roared. It didn't have lungs, so this wasn't a vocal sound. This was the sound of a mountain screaming — avalanches and divine fury compressed into pure vibration.
It charged.
II. Phase One: The Stone Shell
The floor shook with each step. I couldn't run; my legs were held together by spite and borrowed regeneration. I couldn't block; my left arm was gone.
Survival is an equation, I reminded myself. Mass times velocity equals death. Unless you change the variables.
I didn't throw the crystal. I crushed it.
[SYSTEM ALERT: Curse of Greed Active]
The blue crystal didn't explode outward. It imploded.
Cold flooded my veins—not metaphorically. I felt the mana being violently sucked into my core, bypassing skin and muscle, going straight for the bone marrow. My circuits—Anko's pathetic, underdeveloped circuits—groaned under the pressure.
The Guardian swung. A horizontal arc designed to turn my ribcage into paste.
I lunged. Not away, but toward. Into the "dead zone"—the space between its body and the killing end of the club.
My fist slammed into its knee just as the golden cubes in my chest ignited.
BOOM.
The absorbed mana met the Firekeeper's Flame. The result wasn't fire; it was a kinetic punch from God.
The Guardian's knee shattered. Volcanic rock sprayed like shrapnel, burying fragments into the shrine walls. The giant stumbled, the red glow in its cracks flickering like a dying star.
I didn't stop. I climbed its back, my single hand digging into the glowing fissures. The heat scorched my palm—skin bubbling, turning black—but [Semi-Immortal] kept the cells from dying.
"My turn," I hissed.
I pressed my stump—the raw, regenerating flesh—directly into the main crack running along its neck. And I let the Curse of Greed loose.
I wasn't trying to hit it. I was trying to eat it.
The red glow began to drain, flowing into me like water down a drain. The Guardian shrieked—a sound of stone grinding against itself in agony—as I sucked the very mana animating it into my starving core.
It tasted like molten lead. Like swallowing fire and regret.
The Guardian collapsed, its stone body crumbling into gray, lifeless dust. I fell to the floor hard, gasping, my body steaming.
"Too easy," I wheezed.
[Grace]: Analysis complete. You are an idiot.[Warning: The shell has been broken.][The real host is waking up.]
"What—"
The dust moved.
III. Phase Two: The Pale Yasha
The pile of ash didn't settle. It swirled, caught in a vortex that had no source. From the remains of the stone giant, something thin and white and impossibly long began to uncoil.
She had been a woman once. Maybe. Now she was a Yasha—a spectral parasite of the Divine Blood. Seven feet of corpse-pale skin stretched over too-long limbs. Hair floating like ink in water, defying gravity, defying sense.
No face. Just a void where eyes should be, leaking obsidian smoke.
In her hand was no tetsubo, but a nagamaki. A long-handled blade that looked carved from frozen moonlight.
The temperature didn't drop; it died. My breath turned to ice before it could leave my lips. The warmth I'd stolen from the Guardian fled my body like it was afraid.
[Grace]: Entity identified: Spectral Yasha (Rank: Calamity-Fledgling) [Note: This is what was using the stone giant as armor.]
The Yasha moved. Not a walk, but a spatial displacement. She flickered—
CLANG.
I barely raised my broken blade. The impact didn't vibrate; it froze. My right hand went numb instantly, ice spreading up my forearm. The nagamaki didn't cut flesh; it cut the soul.
I rolled behind a pillar, breathing in short, panicked bursts. My stump was throbbing—the purple flesh turning black from the necrotic aura.
"Grace! Give me something!"
[Grace]: The Curse of Greed is still active.][Suggestion: Everything in this room is fuel. Including her.]
"Right. Fuel."
The Yasha flickered again, appearing directly in front of me. She raised her blade for a vertical execution strike. I didn't move. I looked into her non-existent eyes.
"You're hungry too, aren't you?"
I threw the remaining two crystals into the air. She reached for them—instinct, hunger, greed—and I triggered the golden cubes.
But this time, I didn't discharge. I linked.
I created a tether between the fire in my chest and the mana in the crystals, using the Yasha's spectral body as the bridge.
"Burn."
Gold and blue collided inside her.
The Yasha shrieked—a sound that shattered every window in the shrine, made stone crack and wood splinter. She wasn't solid, but the Firekeeper's Flame was conceptual. It burned what it touched, and it touched her essence.
She thrashed, her ghostly form becoming a chaotic blur of black smoke and golden fire. She lunged—fingers becoming claws—desperate to tear the source of heat from my chest.
She pinned me. Cold. Dead. Face inches from mine. I could feel my life draining, skin turning gray, heart slowing.
"Go to hell," I whispered.
I reached up with my one good hand and grabbed her throat. The Curse of Greed flared one last time. I wasn't absorbing mana; I was absorbing her.
Black smoke poured into my eyes, my mouth, my pores. Like drowning in frozen oil. Like swallowing the void.
I was winning, but I was dying. The world was fading to a dull gray. My heart slowed. Vision tunneled.
Is this it? Again?
Then—a shadow fell over us. So large it blocked the moonlight.
IV. The Mountain That Walks
A hand.
That was all it took.
One hand—the size of a dinner plate, calloused, warm as hearthfire—reached down and simply grabbed the Yasha by the back of her neck.
The spectral entity froze. She shrieked in terror—not rage, terror—flickering wildly, trying to phase through the grip. She couldn't.
The man holding her didn't even look at her. He was a mountain. Three meters of bronze-toned flesh wrapped in heavy saffron robes that smelled of sun-dried herbs and temple incense. Massive. Belly rounded like a temple dome. But arms like stone pillars.
He didn't speak. Didn't roar. He simply squeezed.
CRACK.
The Yasha shattered. Not into smoke, not into essence. Just... gone. Erased by sheer presence.
I lay on the floor, gasping. My body was covered in frost and black bile. I looked up at the titan.
A Monk. Shaven head. Serene face. Eyes closed. Like a statue that had decided to take a walk.
The monk exhaled—long, deep—steam clouding the ruined shrine. He turned his head slowly, like a planet rotating, and looked down at me.
I gripped my broken sword. "Who... what are you?"
He didn't answer. He didn't need to. The pressure coming from him was so immense that my Grace interface flickered in and out, unable to even scan him.
[Grace]: Warning. Entity power exceeds local reality parameters.][Recommendation: Don't breathe too loudly.]
The monk sat. The ground groaned.
He reached into his robes and pulled out a small wooden bowl. Rice. Plain. White. Perfectly cooked. He placed it between us and gestured—a thick finger pointing to the bowl, then to my mouth.
"You want me to... eat?"
The monk remained silent, his closed eyes seeing through armor, through skin, into the raging fire in my soul. I took the bowl and shoved the rice into my mouth.
It was Order.
The chaos in my circuits stilled. The necrotic rot retreated. The hunger was silenced.
When the bowl was empty, I looked up. The monk was standing, looking toward the valley—toward the distant, sickly green glow on the horizon: The Ashen Temple.
He looked back at me. Reached out. Tapped the top of my head. Once. Light. Heavy.
Like a mountain settling onto my skull.
I blinked. He was gone.
No footprints. No sound. Just lingering incense and warmth in my stomach.
[Grace]: Gift received: The Monk's Mercy.][Status: Curse of Greed suppressed (12 hours)][New Objective: Descend the mountain.][Note: You survived a Calamity-rank entity, Light.][But the monk? He didn't even think it was a fight.]
I stood, my body feeling lighter than it had in lifetimes. I looked at the pile of dust, at the shattered shrine, and at the hole in the ceiling showing dawn's first light.
"A player, huh?" I muttered, my cynical smirk returning. I gripped my broken blade.
The real game had just begun.
[Dawn has arrived.][The Asura is 39 kilometers away and closing.][The Divine Blood knows your name.][Time until Curse reactivates: 11 hours, 47 minutes.]
[Grace]: Move, Firekeeper. Or die here.