From his perch atop the golem's head, Oberon felt more than heard the final, desperate beat of the Black Dragon's heart.
It thrummed through the ancient stone beneath him—a dying echo against the mountain of earth and will that was Varda. For a thousand years, this creature had been a nightmare given form, a shadow that haunted the edges of every map, a name whispered in prayers meant to ward off evil.
Now?
Now it was just a cornered animal.
All instinct. All fury. Its obsidian claws screeched uselessly against Varda's immortal hide, sparking against stone that had weathered millennia.
But Oberon's eyes weren't on the beast.
They were fixed on something far more precious—the faint, verdant glow pulsing deep within the dragon's chest. A captive star, beating in rhythm with a heart that wasn't the monster's own.
The girl. Trapped inside the crystal.
The Black Dragon had weakened. Its movements grew sluggish, its massive form shrinking as whatever powered it bled away into the air. The creature was dying—and it knew it.
It's time.
Oberon's jaw tightened. He raised his hand, palm flat against Varda's crown.
"VARDA! "
His voice ripped through the silence like thunder.
"AS YOUR COMMAND, MY MASTER! "
Mana erupted from his palm, cascading through Varda's colossal frame like lightning through a mountain range. Deep below, the very bones of the earth shuddered in response.
Then—crack.
With a grinding roar that split the heavens, the crater floor tore open. From its depths rose a shard of impossible darkness—a blade forged not from steel or stone, but from pressure. Oberon poured his will into it, compressing layer upon layer of bedrock, fusing molecules with the invisible weight of a collapsing star.
The sword that Varda's massive hand closed around wasn't metal.
It was a vessel of pure, chaotic mana—compressed to impossible density with gravity magic.
The dragon saw its death descending.
And made its choice.
It didn't flee because there is no way to escape.
It coiled—a serpent of shadow and scale, muscles bunching beneath obsidian hide—and launched itself upward. A black comet, trailing despair, streaking straight for its executioner.
Oberon's gaze locked onto a single point on the dragon's body: the girl in her crystal cocoon. He could see her now—a tiny, perfect doll with hair like spun moonlight, frozen in eternal sleep.
This isn't an ordinary sword.
Five feet.
I made this to kill immortal demon lords.
One.
I named it—
"DEAD END. "
*SHIIIIING—KABOOOOM! *
The sound wasn't a cut.
It was a thunderclap that ripped the sky in two.
A shockwave of pure force flattened the air itself, carving a mile-wide spiderweb of fissures into the crater floor. Wind and dust screamed inside the barrier, caught in a chaotic rotation that turned the battlefield into a maelstrom of debris.
For one heart-stopping second—
Silence.
Then the dragon didn't fall.
It unraveled.
Its ancient, indestructible body dissolved into a cloud of fine grey dust, billowing outward in silent, terrible finality. And from the heart of that ashen cloud, a single point of green light tumbled free—its crystal prison shattering into a rain of glittering shards against the broken ground.
"Master!"
"I know!"
Oberon didn't think.
He moved.
Gravity bent to his will, reality itself reshaping around his desperate lunge. She was falling—falling—and he propelled forward, arms outstretched, catching her small body with a gentleness that belied the destruction he'd just wrought.
He cradled her against his chest, afraid to breathe, afraid to move.
A child.
Five years old. Maybe six.
Her skin was like fine porcelain—so pale it was almost translucent—and a shock of long, platinum-blonde hair spilled over his arm like liquid moonlight. She wore a simple white shift, threadbare and ancient, and she was as cold as the deepest stone.
Oberon pressed his long ear to her chest.
Nothing.
His heart stopped.
Then—
A breath. Faint. Barely there.
A heartbeat. Slow. Struggling. But present.
"She's alive," he breathed. "She's alive—like someone waking from a long sleep."
Behind him, Varda's titan body crumbled, collapsing into nothing more than rubble. From the debris, the real Varda emerged—exhausted, her stoic maid demeanor cracked at the edges, leaning heavily on her staff as she struggled to stand.
A soft crunch of gravel announced her approach.
Oberon didn't need to turn. He felt the familiar, comforting weight of her silence.
"Varda." His voice was gentle but firm. "You can go back now. Let me handle the rest."
"Understood, Master."
But she didn't leave.
Her gaze—calm, perceptive—drifted past him to the jagged rim of the crater.
"But before I go... the outside has become quite crowded." A pause. "One of them carries the same divine essence as the goddess Artemis. Her gaze toward you, Master—" Varda's lips thinned. "It made my skin crawl."
Oberon's eyebrow twitched.
He followed Varda's gaze, borrowing her sight.
Through her eyes, he saw a beautiful woman with long silver hair and captivating purple eyes. When their eyes met across the distance, she smiled—and something cold crawled down his spine.
A goddess. Great.
"And," Varda continued, her voice devoid of inflection yet somehow carrying the weight of an avalanche, "there is a woman with green hair among them. It is highly probable she is Princess Riveria of the Elven Kingdoms."
A pause.
"So, Master... I will take my needed rest?"
"Wai—"
He was speaking to empty air.
The connection severed.
He was alone.
Oberon looked down at the tiny girl in his arms, then at the empty plain around him, then back at the distant crowd of adventurers.
I can't bring her home. I can't leave her with Varda—she's exhausted. I can't just... keep her underground with Varda alone. Without anyone her age? That's clearly child abuse!
He ran through the scenarios.
Every single one was a disaster.
He let out a long, shuddering breath.
What a pain.
He looked around the shattered landscape—the monument to his power, unleashed with only a fraction of his true strength.
"I need to clean up the mess first."
====x====
Meanwhile, Beyond the Barrier
"He really defeated it?"
Finn's gaze pierced through the shimmering barrier, desperate to catch any shadow of the dragon through the swirling dust. He relied on his hearing next—straining, waiting—
Nothing.
Silence.
"What the hell happened in there?" Finn's voice carried clear frustration.
Everyone had witnessed the battle. The dragon against the golem-creature. The black-armored knight resting atop the giant's head, commanding the monster like a general directing troops.
Then Finn had seen it.
A giant black sword materializing from the golem's right hand, growing like a tree sprouting from fertile soil, longer and longer until it defied all reason.
Finn's instincts screamed.
"BRACE! "
What followed was a small earthquake—the ground bucking beneath their feet—and then the barrier's interior filled with chaotic dust that obscured everything.
When the shaking stopped, Finn scanned the party. Everyone seemed fine. Ottar and Freya cared only about what was happening inside.
That barrier blocked most of the danger, Finn thought, relief washing through him. Thank the gods.
"Captain."
A Loki Familia member materialized from the shimmering wall of light, face pale as death.
"Just as you suspected. There's no way through. It's more than a hundred meters wide—tall, too. Unknown height. It's like a bubble with no entrance."
Finn nodded, expression unreadable. "Good work. Fall back. You need rest."
His gaze drifted to Riveria.
The elven princess stood before one of the massive pillars ringing the barrier, her fingers tracing symbols that made even her look confused.
"What kind of language is this...?"
To Riveria's eyes, it was gibberish—but each word was different, clearly some form of magical incantation carved into each pillar. They were positioned precisely:
North
South
East
West.
Finn walked toward her.
"Riveria. Did you find anything?"
She didn't look away from the monolith.
"It's clearly a barrier spell—one that restricts anything inside from escaping, and outside from entering. The language..." She shook her head. "I don't know it. I'm sorry, Finn."
She doesn't even recognize it.
Finn sighed inwardly but kept his composure.
He felt the weight of every eye on him. Dozens of adventurers from a dozen different Familias, every face wearing the same mask: confusion warring with primal fear. They needed words. They needed a framework for the impossible.
"First things first." His voice carried—calm, measured, a captain steadying his ship in a storm. "The monster. We all saw it. The silhouette, the scale, the presence." He paused, letting silence stretch. "It shared features with the one monster we all fear. The One-Eyed Black Dragon. On that, we can all agree."
Uneasy nods rippled through the crowd.
Finn's eyes swept over them, cataloging, assessing.
"Whoever—or whatever—fought that creature to a standstill possesses strength that rivals a Level 7. Or higher. If—"
The ground screamed.
Not a tremor.
A convulsion.
The adventurers moved as one, weapons clearing sheaths in a chorus of steel, battle instincts flaring.
"Finn!" Riveria's composed voice cracked for the first time. She wasn't pointing at the sky or some new monster.
She was pointing at the pillars.
The great monoliths—those ancient markers of the barrier's edge—were crumbling. Not falling. Dissolving into waterfalls of fine grey sand that hissed as they hit the ground.
But that was only the beginning.
The crater.
It was rising.
Like a sleeping giant drawing its first breath in millennia, the entire bowl of devastated earth began to lift. Rock flowed like water, swirling and dancing in silent, impossible currents, filling the massive depression from its center outward.
It was beautiful.
It was terrifying.
It was creation happening in reverse—chaos being forced back into order.
"By the gods..." someone whispered. "He's not just repairing the land. He's unmaking the damage."
"Is that thing a god?"
Minutes passed. It felt like hours.
When the earth finally stilled, the crater was gone.
In its place stretched a flat, unbroken plain—so pristine it looked like the world had been born again five minutes ago. No scar. No evidence. Nothing.
"The barrier," Ottar rumbled, his massive frame the first to move. He took a step forward. Then another. His eyes widened, just fractionally. "It's gone."
Freya's gaze—burning with a hunger none dared acknowledge—followed Ottar's lead.
The group advanced as one, crossing the threshold where reality had once ended.
And there, in the center of that newborn plain, stood a figure.
Black armor, pristine and unblemished, caught the fading light. A mantle of pale fur draped across broad shoulders, stirring in a wind that touched nothing else. The helmet was a work of art—a stylized beast, its eye slits revealing nothing but shadow beneath.
And behind the knight, planted in the earth like a monument, stood a sword.
It was nearly twice Finn's height—a slab of impossible darkness that seemed to drink the light around it.
One word echoed in every mind, every soul present.
Strong.
Dangerous.
Before anyone could speak, before a single weapon could be raised, the knight moved.
Not to attack.
To bow.
A graceful, formal gesture that sent a shockwave of confusion through the assembled adventurers.
Then a voice emerged from the helm. Young. Tired. Carrying a weight that had nothing to do with the sword behind him.
"Please take care of her, Princess Riveria."
He rose.
Not standing—levitating. Gravity unclasping its hold on him like a servant dismissed.
"WAIT! "
The cry didn't come from Finn, or Riveria, or any of the warriors.
It came from Freya.
The goddess of beauty, who had watched the whole display with an expression shifting from hunger to shock to raw, desperate frustration. Her voice cut through the air like a whip.
Too late.
The knight was already a speck against the horizon.
Then nothing at all.
Gone.
As if he'd never existed.
Freya bit down on her thumbnail—hard enough to draw a bead of golden ichor. Her eyes, usually half-lidded with bored amusement, were wide and blazing. She'd seen something in that fleeting moment. Something she wanted.
Something that had just slipped through her fingers.
No one noticed.
Because Riveria was already moving.
She walked.
Then ran.
Toward the small altar that hadn't been there a moment ago—a simple construction of smooth white stone, incongruous and pure on the scarred plain.
And on it, wrapped in a fold of pristine cloth...
Riveria's breath caught.
"A... girl?"
The child couldn't have been more than five.
Hair like spun moonlight spilled across the white stone. Skin so pale it was almost translucent. She slept, one tiny hand curled beneath her cheek, utterly peaceful.
Utterly vulnerable.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
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