The South Sector of Oakhaven was no longer a city street; it was a cratered wasteland.
Max skidded backward, his boots carving deep furrows into the asphalt, smoke rising from his tactical vest. He gasped for air, clutching his ribs. The leather-bound book in his vest felt heavier than a lead plate, a physical reminder of the dark secrets he was carrying.
Standing forty feet away, hovering a few inches off the ground, was the entity.
It was an M-Class, but it dwarfed the ones the others had faced. It stood nearly eight feet tall, draped in what looked like tattered robes made of solidified shadow-cloth. Unlike the armored knights or the agile twins, this creature didn't look like a soldier. It looked like a Monarch.
A crown of jagged obsidian shards floated in a halo above its faceless head. It didn't have claws; it had four arms, each hand manipulating balls of compressed gravity that distorted the air around them.
"You're... really annoying," Max wheezed, wiping blood from his chin.
The Void inside him was screaming. "RUN. PREDATOR. ALPHA."
Max had been fighting this thing for ten minutes. Every time he tried to use the Void to absorb its attacks, he hit a wall. This Guut's energy wasn't wild like the others; it was dense, refined, and overwhelming. Max felt like a cup trying to swallow the ocean.
The Monarch raised one of its upper hands. A sphere of black gravity shot toward Max.
Max didn't dodge; he couldn't. He was backed against the wreckage of a bus. He threw his hands up.
"Vacuum Shield!"
A violet disc formed in front of him. The black sphere collided with it.
CRACK.
Max's shield didn't absorb it. The shield shattered like glass. The impact threw Max sideways, slamming him into a brick wall. He slid down, his vision swimming.
The Monarch drifted closer. It didn't walk; it simply existed closer to him, as if space itself was bending to its will. It raised all four arms, gathering a massive ball of energy that crackled with purple lightning.
This is it, Max thought, his body refusing to move. I can't eat this one.
Suddenly, a high-pitched whine cut through the air.
ZZZZZZZT.
A golden blur shot out from an alleyway, moving at subsonic speeds. It wasn't an attack on the Guut; it was a rescue.
Eren appeared in front of Max, grabbing him by the collar.
"Hold onto your lunch!" Eren screamed.
Eren vibrated, phasing them both just as the gravity bomb hit.
BOOOOM.
The building Max had been leaning against vanished, disintegrated into dust. Max and Eren tumbled onto the street fifty feet away.
"You're late!" Max coughed, looking at his friend. Eren looked terrible—his uniform was shredded, and his left arm hung limp at his side.
"Traffic was murder," Eren groaned, helping Max up.
"Incoming!" a voice roared from above.
Malina descended from the rooftops like a meteor. She held a massive steel I-beam she had ripped from a construction site. With a war cry that echoed through the empty city, she brought the beam down on the Monarch's head.
CLANG.
The sound was deafening. But the beam didn't crush the Guut.
The Monarch had simply raised one hand. It caught the multi-ton steel beam with two fingers.
Malina hung in the air, her eyes wide. "Impossible. The structural mass..."
The Monarch flicked its wrist.
The steel beam crumpled like aluminum foil, sending a shockwave up the metal that blasted Malina backward. She landed heavily next to Max and Eren, rolling to her feet. She was favoring her left leg, and her hands were bloody messes.
"It caught it," Malina panted, staring at the creature. "It caught a Class-5 impact with fingers."
"Don't look at its hands," Edy's voice came over the comms, breathless.
Edy emerged from behind a wrecked car, clutching his head, his nose bleeding profusely. "Look at its mind. It's... it's not a single mind. It's a choir. There are thousands of voices in there. I can't jam it. If I try, my brain will melt."
The four members of Squad 5 stood together in the middle of the ruined street. They were battered, broken, and exhausted. They had defeated their individual monsters, but this... this was something else.
"Formation Omega," Malina ordered, her voice shaking slightly. "All out. No reserves. We hit it with everything we have left."
"I've got one charge left in my legs," Eren said, gritting his teeth.
"I can hold it for two seconds," Edy nodded, wiping blood from his lip.
"I'll open the hole," Max said, his eyes turning pitch black.
The Monarch waited. It seemed curious. It floated there, its four arms spread wide, the obsidian halo spinning lazily. It was inviting them to try.
"NOW!" Malina screamed.
The attack was a desperate symphony of power.
Edy went first. He dropped to his knees, screaming as he poured every ounce of his remaining psychic energy into a "Gravity Anchor." He tried to pin the Monarch to the ground, increasing the gravity around it tenfold.
The Monarch twitched, descending a few inches as the invisible weight hit it. It was pinned.
"GO!"
Eren and Malina moved as one.
Malina grabbed Eren's arm. She spun him around, using her Titan strength to act as a human catapult, launching the speedster at a velocity he couldn't achieve on his own.
Eren became a golden arrow. He held his vibro-daggers forward, aiming for the center of the Monarch's chest.
At the same time, Max moved.
He didn't attack physically. He reached out with the Void.
"Null Field!"
Max projected a cone of silence—an anti-energy field—directly at the Monarch. He tried to drain the density of its armor, to make it soft for Eren's blade.
It was perfect coordination. The anchor pinned it. The null field softened it. The speedster struck it.
Eren collided with the Monarch's chest.
SKREEEE!
Sparks flew. The sound of tearing metal and energy filled the air. Eren's daggers dug into the shadow-armor. Max's field ate away at the defenses. Malina charged in behind Eren, delivering a flying dropkick to the back of the daggers to drive them deeper.
For a second, they thought they had done it. A crack appeared in the Monarch's chest. Light leaked out.
"DIE!" Eren screamed.
Then, the Monarch moved.
It didn't scream. It didn't struggle. It simply... expanded.
A pulse of pure, concentrated Void Pressure exploded from its body. It wasn't an attack; it was simply the creature flexing its power.
WOOSH.
The shockwave hit them at point-blank range.
Edy's psychic hold shattered instantly, throwing him backward into a shop window.
Max's Null Field was overwhelmed, the feedback loop sending a jolt of pain through his body that felt like lightning.
Eren's daggers snapped. Shards of metal flew into his face as he was blasted away.
Malina, closest to the impact, took the brunt of it. She was lifted off her feet and hurled through the air, smashing through a concrete pillar and landing in a heap of rubble.
Dust covered the street. Silence returned.
Max groaned, pushing himself up on shaking arms. His vision was blurry. His ears rang.
"Squad..." he rasped.
He looked up.
The Monarch was still floating. The crack in its chest was already closing, the shadow-flesh knitting together like liquid. It hadn't even taken a step back.
It looked at the fallen teenagers. It seemed bored.
Slowly, the Monarch raised all four arms. Above its head, a massive sphere of black energy began to form. It grew larger and larger—the size of a basketball, then a beach ball, then a car. It hummed with enough energy to level the entire city block.
"We... we can't kill it," Eren whispered from the ground, clutching his broken arm. tears of frustration mixing with the dust on his face. "It's too strong."
Edy was unconscious near the storefront. Malina was trying to stand, but her leg was visibly broken; she collapsed back down, gasping in pain.
Max looked at the massive sphere of death hovering above them. He looked at his friends. They had fought valiantly. They had leveled up. They had become a team.
And it wasn't enough.
The Monarch lowered its arms. The sphere began to descend, slowly, inevitably.
Max scrambled to his feet. He staggered to the center of the street, placing himself between the bomb and his friends.
"Max, don't!" Malina croaked out. "Run!"
"I can't eat it," Max whispered to himself, staring at the apocalyptic ball of energy. "I can't eat it..."
He reached into his vest. His fingers brushed against the leather book.
The Void is the Key to the cage.
Max didn't try to use his powers to fight. He didn't try to create a shield. He realized he couldn't win this with force. The gap was too wide.
He looked at the Monarch. For a split second, the creature paused. It seemed to be looking at Max—not as an enemy, but as... something else.
The sphere stopped ten feet above Max's head. The gravity was crushing. Max fell to his knees, the asphalt cracking under him.
"Why..." Max gasped, looking up at the faceless entity. "Why don't you kill us?"
The Monarch drifted down. It landed on the ground, towering over Max. The sphere of destruction dissipated into smoke.
The creature reached out with one of its lower hands. It didn't strike Max. It pointed.
It pointed at the book in Max's vest.
And then, for the first time, a Guut spoke.
It wasn't a voice. It was a vibration that rattled Max's bones.
"THE... RECORD."
Max froze. The monster knew about the book.
Before Max could react, a blinding white light flooded the street. The roar of engines drowned out the hum of the Void.
"INCOMING!" Jod's voice screamed over the comms.
A barrage of missiles slammed into the street between Max and the Monarch. Explosions rocked the ground, creating a wall of fire and smoke.
An HPF Gunship swooped down, its gatling guns tearing up the pavement, forcing the Monarch to retreat into the shadows.
"Team! Evac! Now!"
Jod leaped from the gunship, landing next to Max. He grabbed Max by the vest and hauled him up.
"Move, kid! Unless you want to be dessert!"
Max stumbled toward the ship, looking back. Through the wall of fire, he saw the Monarch standing there. It wasn't fighting the gunship. It was just watching Max.
And in the flickering light of the flames, Max realized something terrifying.
The Monarch hadn't been trying to kill them.
As the gunship lifted off, carrying the broken, defeated Squad 5 away from Oakhaven, Max clutched his chest. They had survived, but the victory of killing the smaller Guuts felt hollow now. They had seen the top of the food chain.
And they were nowhere near the top.