The morning of the final assault arrived with a heavy, suffocating sense of destiny. After exactly one year of surviving the Great White Forest, the group had evolved into something far beyond a band of desperate survivors; they were now a coordinated, lethal unit ready to dismantle the domain's ancient hierarchy.
Kage, the veteran mercenary who had traversed this world for four years, returned from his scouting mission with a detailed report. The central ruins were the throne of the Great King, a massive Golden Knight standing over twenty feet tall, wielding a radiant golden halberd. Two formidable guardians stood in their way: the Stone Sentinel, a seven-foot-tall monolith on the western flank, and a ten-foot Snow-White Wolf patrolling the eastern perimeter.
Commander Neil finalized the tactical assignments. Kage would engage the stone Sentinel alone, while Shiori, Oliver, and Alisa moved to eliminate the wolf guardian. Neil, Erza, and Eliot would focus their combined might on the Golden King himself. Emmet and Violet remained hunkered in the brush; they were the reserve, though everyone knew Emmet's Fist Sentinel ability was a double-edged sword that could save them at the cost of his humanity and the sparking of a new holy war.
As Kage moved toward the western ruins, his footsteps were silent against the ancient, weathered stone. Standing before him was the seven foot tall Stone Sentinel, its eyes flickering with a cold, blue light as it raised a massive great blade made from stone. Without a word of greeting, the monolith swung its heavy weapon in a crushing overhead strike. Kage shifted his weight with the poise of a master, his own golden-hilted great sword meeting the stone edge in a violent shower of sparks.
With a flurry of motion, Kage diverted the force of the blow, causing the stone Sentinel's blade to bury itself in the earth.
Seizing the opening, he drew his second sword and lashed out, landing a clean hit on the Sentinel's arm. With a loud clang Cracks began to spider-web across the rock of the guardian.
The Sentinel let out a guttural scream of grinding stone and swung again, intending to crush the intruder in a single blow. Kage knew he possessed superior speed, but he also understood that trading blows directly with a creature of this mass would result in catastrophic damage to his body. He began a dance of death, parrying and dodging while waiting for the perfect moment to strike and slay the stone sentinel.
After minutes of precise attrition, and landing continuous strikes on the stone sentinel, Kage shattered the Sentinel's sword arm causing it to be unable to strike him effectively at close range.
He dashed forward, using both great blades to deliver a lethal strike to the creature's neck. The stone body crumbled into fragments, hitting the ground with a loud thud, but as the dust settled, the expected reward did not manifest. There was no system notification, no glow of victory, simply nothing.
"What the hell is going on?" Kage muttered, his brow furrowing in confusion. "Where is the notification? Was this even a boss?"
Kage began to wander around the ruin trying to see if he had missed something, was the stone sentinel just a puppet, was its real body somewhere else. After a few minutes of searching he came up empty handed he then returned to whether the body of his slain enemy was lying.
Nothing happened for a few seconds before His veteran instincts screamed. The silence was a lie.
Suddenly, the space where the Sentinel's chest had been began to distort, rippling like heat rising from sunbaked asphalt. A nightmare of white, jagged plates and dark, nebulous energy emerged. Standing nearly ten feet tall, its body was covered in dozens of unblinking, dark eyes that wept shadows. Its face was a void of darkness illuminated by two piercing, violet orbs.
"So, the statue was just a cage," Kage whispered, a predatory grin spreading across his face." I don't know what you are but it's about time you died."
The Void Husk lunged forward with blinding speed. Kage barely parried a clawed strike that carried enough force to crack his silver plate armor. Unlike the lumbering Sentinel, the Husk moved with erratic, fluid grace, intent on ripping its prey into pieces of flesh.
Four glowing, cyan orbs orbited the creature, firing bolts of concentrated dark energy that forced Kage to weave through crumbling pillars. Every time Kage advanced, an orb would intercept him with a shot of darkness, aiming to kill him in a single shot.
For fifteen minutes, the stalemate held, Kage was unable to get close to land a hit and the void husk was not skilled enough to land a hit without Kage dogging or deflecting the attack, until Kage deciphered the attacking and defending pattern of the void husk.
Whenever he landed what should have been a lethal blow, the Husk's body rippled, his blades passing through it like smoke before it solidified for a counterattack.
Realizing raw strength was insufficient, Kage channeled his Hero's power. His golden-hilted claymores ignited with a brilliant, holy light, acting as a beacon against the encroaching shadows.
Timing the creature's cycle, Kage dashed in and slashed one of the orbs in half, giving him a chance for a follow up strike that almost landed. Enraged, the Void Husk absorbed the remaining three orbs and blasted an energy beam directly at him.
"Shit, not good," Kage hissed.
He used all his strength to sprint behind one of the three standing pillars. The beam followed, turning the first pillar into molten stone instantly.
The Husk followed up, systematically destroying the second pillar cornering him and leaving no possible route of escape. It then charged all its mana into its massive center eye, letting out an inhuman screech before firing at the final pillar where Kage was hiding. The resulting thunderous explosion reduced the ruin wall and the base of the pillar to nothingness, Causing it to fall down into a large pile of stone.
The Void Husk searched the debris, letting out a sound like a distorted laugh, assuming its prey was ash. But Kage was gone. There was no body to be found, and it was sensing no mana in the rubble, its prey was gone, reduced to nothingness.
As the creature turned to join the other battles, it sensed a presence too late. Looking up it saw Kage descended from above, his claymores smashing into the Husk's head, pulverizing it into a pulp of shadow and blood. However before kage could follow up with another attack, the Husk rippled and reappeared nearby, its head reforming instantly.
"Wow, that's some bull shit," Kage remarked angrily. "Of course it can regenerate why does everything I fight regenerate or can self heal" he said, shaking his head in frustration.
The fight continued, but after a few close calls, Kage noticed the creature's movements were slowing, and its regeneration was failing to keep up with the holy mana of his blades. He stopped relying on his eyes and began to time his strikes with the "flow" of mana. As the Husk vanished into a dimensional ripple to reappear behind him, Kage didn't turn. Instead, he drove his rear blade backward with a surge of holy energy.
The blade caught the Husk mid-solidification. A screech of tearing metal and distorted reality echoed through the ruins as the holy light burned through the void-matter. The eyes on its body squeezed shut in agony.
"I've got you now!"
Kage roared. He spun in a whirlwind of steel, his twin blades carving glowing arcs that severed the Husk's spindly limbs until it was pinned against a ruined wall. With a final, concentrated thrust, Kage drove both swords through the central violet eye. The Husk erupted in a violent explosion of shadow and light, throwing Kage back several feet.
He planted both swords into the ground, slowing him down to a complete stop, dismissing his swords, kage stood up and wiped the soot from his face, a genuine gold light shimmered in the air. But before he could celebrate, the space around the slain creature began to glow with a bright neon blue light.
The smile was gone from his face in an instant for kage knew what was about to happen taping into his heros ability he armed his entire body turning it into a living wall of steel, hoping that the damage he received was not going to rip him into chunks of flesh since regenerating that would take too long and was quite painful.
In an instant, the entire ruin was engulfed as a massive, final explosion went off—the creature's last attempt to take its killer with it.
Kage was thrown into a wall, his armor crushed and melted, his body mangled and held together only by the broken silver plates he wore. He was a bloody mess, but he was breathing. He was victorious; the first guardian was finally slain.
[System Alert: Void Guardian Slain]
[Mission Progress: 1/3 Guardians Defeated]
[Skill Obtained: Auto-Mending]