Inside the carriage, the world seemed to have shrunken, as if it were a box of wood and leather being shaken by the mud and the rush to flee. Outside, the sound of claws tearing at the bark of trees echoed like knives cutting through thick leather—a noise that set teeth on edge. Maria pressed her lips together, each scream from the beasts piercing her ears like needles.
She felt a suffocating anguish. She wanted to step out, raise her hands, and make the earth swallow all those creatures that threatened her brother, her children, Isabel, and the knights. But her body refused to obey.
Maria looked at her lap. Little Kaelion was sleeping soundly, a fragile slumber. She watched his chest rise and fall in a steady rhythm, like a balloon inflating and deflating—a delicate air pump keeping alive the flame of a life that had emerged on the brink of death. Beside him, Emanuelle trembled, terrified by the thunder, but it was the screams of the beasts that truly filled the silence of the carriage.
Maria was a genius of Elemental Magic, with a potential few nobles dared to imagine, but now she was trapped by the immutable rules of the world. The culprit was the Elixir that Isabel had handed her in the alley. That substance was as rare as it was dangerous; a luxury item used only in the elite training of Mages, Arcane Swordsmen, and Spiritual Mages to break physical and magical limits. The ingredients for such a potion cost fortunes and, often, the lives of those who risked harvesting them in suicide missions.
The benefit was enormous, but the cost of reckless use was devastating. Normally, the body could withstand one dose every twenty-four hours without major damage. However, taking two doses in a short period made the pressure on the mana circulatory system unbearable.
In Maria's case, the situation was even worse. The effort of giving birth to Kaelion had already drained her vital and magical energy, an effect that naturally compromises the Arcane Energy and Mana of a woman for an entire day. Forcing her body with two elixirs to ensure the escape from the alley, she now dealt with the full backlash. All the "boost" received returned as a crushing weight. Her Mana Gate, which should have been a river of energy, now seemed locked with cast iron, preventing her from gathering mana even to lift a small pebble. Maria was a queen without a crown, a spectator to her own struggle for survival, a hostage of a body paying dearly for having defied its own limits.
Through the carriage window, Maria saw the moment the forest stopped whispering and began to scream. Ancient trees fell like twigs, not just from the wind, but from the passage of a mass of horror that ignored nature's resistance.
The creature emerged from the shadows, illuminated by a lightning bolt that seemed to freeze time. It was a monster two meters tall of pure strength and nightmare, walking on two legs like a man, but with a hunched and predatory posture. Its fur was as black as the abyss, with tips of a sickly red from which a viscous liquid dripped. Maria did not know if it was rain or acidic sweat, but where the fluid fell, the grass withered and the earth hissed.
The creature's face was a visual heresy. Glowing red eyes, like two miniature suns burning in a morning of massacre. Two short horns curved forward on its temples seemed like accusing fingers, pointing directly at the carriage. The most bizarre detail was the ears: long and pointed like an elf's, but made of a substance that resembled molten pitch, dripping eternally without ever detaching from the flesh. With a slow movement, it scratched the trunk of an oak, slicing through the solid wood as if it were soaked paper.
Claude did not hesitate. He was no longer the worried brother; now he was the Commander of Asterion.
With a solemn gesture, he placed his right hand over his heart, pressing the symbol of the shield and sword engraved on his golden armor. The effect was immediate. An explosion of white and golden light erupted from his chest, so intense it seemed to tear through the veil of night. For an instant, the Askov Forest was no longer plunged in darkness; it was as if the sun were rising in the middle of the storm.
From within that radiance, the magical matter condensed. A massive sword, a two-handed blade that seemed too large for any mortal, emerged from the splendor. Claude wielded it with an ease that defied logic. Despite his stature not suggesting such brute force, he held the gigantic weapon with just one hand, as if the blade were merely an extension of his own soul.
The gems encrusted in the pommel and guard of the sword began to pulse, sucking in the surrounding Arcane and glowing with increasing intensity. The energy accumulated in the blade made the air vibrate, and Maria, even with her mana channels blocked, could feel the overwhelming power emanating from that weapon. Claude was ready for the slaughter.
Claude launched himself at the beast like a golden lightning bolt cutting through the mud. He did not run like an ordinary man; each stride was propelled by a controlled explosion in his muscles. His colossal sword rose, its tip aiming for the creature's neck, but the monster would not be easy prey.
The beast reacted with surprising speed. Its eyes, now saturated with a sickly crimson that pulsed with its wild heart, fixed on the Commander.
Claude leapt from his mount while still in full gallop. In the air, the blade hummed—a sharp, electric sound that vibrated in the teeth of anyone nearby. He brought the blow down with the strength of an executioner, but the impact did not find soft flesh. A metallic snap, deafening like the clash of two anvils, echoed through the forest. The beast had crossed its immense claws, blocking the blow with a resistance that defied biology.
The force of the impact pushed him back. Claude landed heavily, sliding in the damp earth before stabilizing himself. He growled, his patience vanishing faster than the rain that soaked him. He tried to channel energy again into the gems of the sword, seeking a definitive Arcane cut, but the beast was faster. Before the glow on the weapon's pommel could stabilize, the creature was already upon him, its claws descending like guillotines.
He was forced to raise his guard in a desperate block. His concentration broke; the energy accumulated on the blade dispersed in useless sparks.
"Damn it..." Claude hissed, a sigh of exhaustion and impatience escaping his lips.
He cast a quick look at the carriage. Maria and the children were moving away, but not fast enough. Time was a luxury he did not have. Beatrix was on her way, and every second lost to that aberration was one second less of life for his family.
Claude shifted his posture. He stopped trying to feed the sword and turned his attention inward.
As a 3rd Circle Arcanist, he operated under different rules than Maria. While his sister depended on Mana Gates to filter the world's energy, Claude possessed his Arcane Nucleus. Located outside his spiritual system, the nucleus was a furnace of pure energy, derived from the muscles of the Creator God himself.
He closed his eyes for a fraction of a second, feeling the pulse of the nucleus. Instead of projecting power into the weapon, he forced it to circulate through his own veins. If the beast wanted to fight with speed and brute force, he would show it what happens when an heir to the muscles of Hakamiah decides to stop holding back. The golden light around his body ceased to be a soft glow and became a dense, vibrant aura. Claude was about to surpass human limits.
To Maria, watching everything from inside the carriage, her brother seemed to have ceased being a man and transformed into a phenomenon of nature. In the blink of an eye, Claude vanished from his original position, turning into a golden beam that cut through the curtain of rain, reappearing moments later, directly in front of the beast.
That was not the gentle Claude she knew; he was a true war machine. He delivered a precise thrust, seeking a swift end to the combat. However, the beast possessed an agility that defied its raw mass. With a light leap, the creature evaded the tip of the sword and, mid-air, spun with perfect animal coordination. The beast's heavy foot struck Claude in the back.
The sound of the impact was that of punished metal. The blow hurled the Commander forward with violence. Claude fell face-first into the thick mud, the impact muffled by the sound of splashing sludge. For a second, he remained motionless, his face buried in the cold, damp earth, while the beast prepared to pounce upon him, claws ready for the slaughter.
But a 3rd Circle Arcanist does not fall so easily.
In a foul, reflexive movement, Claude rolled to the side while still on the ground. He did not stand up immediately; instead, he raised his sword at a defensive angle. The mana gems on the weapon's guard glowed intensely, pulsing with the elemental energy he forced outward.
Unstable, bluish lightning began to course through the blade, crackling against the raindrops and the mud covering the steel. With a sharp snap, the electric charge leapt from the sword and struck the beast in mid-air. The shock, though limited by the forty percent power his system allowed, was enough to seize the creature's nervous system. It collapsed heavily beside him, its muscles spasming in forced paralysis.
Claude rose quickly, spitting out the dirty water and wiping the armor's visor with a swift gesture. He wasted no time.
Concentrating all his will on the Arcane Nucleus in his chest, he redirected the flow of energy. Maria, watching from the carriage, could not see his body beneath the metal, but she noticed the effect: Claude's golden armor began to vibrate violently. An intense white light started to leak through the joints of the gauntlets and pauldrons, as if his body were about to explode. The air around his arms flickered with the heat generated by supernatural muscular pressure. He raised his sword, now driven by a force that no normal human fiber could generate.
Claude's final blow was ready to descend like a judge's hammer, but the forest still hid horrors in its shadows. Before the steel could split the paralyzed beast, a frenzied figure burst from the lateral foliage. It was a mass of fur and chaotic movement that collided against Claude's flank, shoving the Commander back with a force disproportionate to the creature's size.
Claude stumbled in the mud, his feet sliding as he tried to stabilize himself. Before him, the new threat revealed itself: a creature less than a meter tall, agile as a hare, with the physiognomy of a distorted chimpanzee. However, its nature was profane. Six arms sprouted from its torso—two large and powerful ones, and four smaller ones that moved with independent coordination. Behind it, what should have been a tail revealed itself as a living serpent, hissing and whipping the air with cold eyes.
"Shit! Another one to get in my way," growled Claude, his hot breath escaping through the armor's visor like mist.
He did not allow surprise to paralyze him. Ignoring the pain of the side impact, he dashed toward the small primate, the sword accumulating the golden glow of the Arcane Nucleus. He intended to crush the new beast's agility with a broad sweep, but the plan crumbled before the first step.
The first beast, whose muscles finally overcame the electric paralysis, rose with renewed fury. At the moment Claude advanced against the chimpanzee, an immense, viscous claw closed around the blade of his sword.
Claude felt a violent jerk in his shoulders. It was as if a war carriage had hooked him by a rope. He was pulled brutally backward, losing contact with the ground and digging deep furrows in the mud as he was dragged into the first beast's domain.
Claude spun his torso to face the aggressor, but it was too late for a clean defense. The two-meter beast was upon him, its mouth open in a snarl that exhaled the scent of death and acid. Its claws, sharp as obsidian daggers, were already in an arc, descending in a lethal trajectory aimed directly at Claude's heart. Time seemed to slow as the gleam of the armor's golden metal reflected the approaching death.
Time crawled in milliseconds as death, in the form of black claws, advanced against Claude's chest. His mind, accelerated by the Arcane, calculated his options. He could invoke the Shield embedded in his armor, but the cost would be too high. The energy required to materialize it—and, more importantly, to retract it into the symbol after use—would exhaust his 3rd Circle Arcane Nucleus to a dangerous level. If Beatrix appeared after such a drain, he would be finished.
He was about to accept the impact when a mass of shadows and soil erupted beside him.
With a sharp crack, the beast's attack was interrupted. Onir, who until then had been holding the rear, had acted at the right moment. He summoned a Mid-Level Earth Spirit—a robust entity composed of dense clay, forest stones, and twisted roots, resembling a primordial Golem. The spirit's heavy hands grabbed the beast's wrists, locking them in the air with the strength of a giant.
The beast, frustrated at having its prey denied, let out a howl that seemed to tear through reality. The sound was a mixture of agony and pure hatred, capable of paralyzing the heart of any ordinary man. But Claude was no ordinary man. He was a commander trained in blood.
Taking advantage of the distraction and the support of Onir's spirit, Claude swung his sword in an upward arc. The golden steel flashed one last time before finding the creature's flesh. With a fluid and brutal movement, he severed half of the hand that held him.
The spray of blood that followed did not carry the familiar crimson of life. The liquid that splashed in the mud and stained the golden armor was a deep, viscous purple, glowing with a sickly luminescence under the rain. Claude recoiled two steps, watching the stump from which the purpūreous fluid gushed like pitch. The smell rising from it was not of iron, but of something rotten, chemical... something that should not exist.
"A Corrupted Beast!" Claude shouted, his voice thick with urgency.
He wiped his visor with his free arm, his eyes fixed on the creature that now seemed even more dangerous. Ahead, the small six-armed chimpanzee was already preparing to spring at Onir, but the battlefield had changed. Now, they were not just fighting the forest's hunger, but the venom of Corruption.