Chapter : 145
His voice, cracking with strain and adrenaline, echoed through the terrified silence of the glade. Faria stared at him, her eyes wide with a mixture of bewildernt and dawning, incredulous hope. Was he… calling for help? From whom?
For a heart-stopping, agonizing mont, there was nothing. Only the heavy, suffocating silence, the cold gleam in the serpent’s golden eyes as it prepared to strike, its forked tongue tasting their imminent demise.
Did it work? Lloyd’s mind scread. Is he too far? Did my 'severed limb' clause not cover 'imminent, whole-body ingestion by colossal mythological reptile'? Gods, the fine print on these bodyguard contracts is always a killer!
Then, from the deepest, most impenetrable shadows at the edge of the glade, a darkness deeper than the forest’s own gloom seed to detach itself. It wasn't a sudden appearance; it was more like reality itself was reluctantly yielding, allowing sothing that had always been there, unseen, to finally step into the dim, eerie light.
Ken Park.
He stood there, not as the impassive butler in dark livery, but as sothing… more. Sothing terrifying. Sothing that radiated an aura of power so imnse, so overwhelming, that it dwarfed even the colossal presence of the obsidian serpent. The air around him didn't just shimr; it warped, crackling with an energy that was part raw Void power, part sothing else, sothing fiery, primal, utterly untad.
His form seed subtly altered, larger, broader. His dark, practical clothing had been consud, replaced by, or perhaps transford into, a suit of articulated armor that pulsed with a dull, internal crimson glow, like cooling embers. It wasn't ornate, but stark, functional, radiating imnse heat and power. And from his temples, two massive, wickedly curved horns, exactly like those of his spirit, Redborn, but far larger, far more nacing, now swept upwards, framing his face, which remained, almost incongruously, Ken Park's own – impassive, stoic, utterly calm amidst the inferno of power that wreathed him. He looked, Lloyd thought with a sudden, bizarre flash of genre awareness from his Earth life, like so kind of incredibly handso, terrifyingly powerful, impeccably dressed Demon Lord who had inexplicably decided to take up a career in high-end personal security.
This wasn't Manifestation. This wasn't even Ascension. This, Lloyd realized with a jolt of pure, unadulterated awe that montarily eclipsed his terror, was Transcend. Ken Park, the quiet butler, the stoic bodyguard, was a Transcend-level Spirit User. He had rged with Redborn, becoming a single, devastating entity, wielding a power that was, as the System often dryly noted, at least a hundred tis greater than his already formidable Ascension stage.
"Apologies for the delay, Young Lord," Ken Park’s voice sounded, still his familiar flat baritone, yet now resonating with a deep, subterranean rumble, like tectonic plates shifting, the voice of the rged entity, the Demon Lord butler. "The… 'Code Whatever-Color-ans-Giant-Monster-Is-About-To-Eat-Us'… took a mont to process. Standard protocols are being updated." A flicker of sothing that might have been dry, almost imperceptible humor touched the corner of his lips, gone as quickly as it appeared.
The gigantic obsidian serpent, which had been re inches from striking Faria, froze. Its colossal head, which had seed the apex of power monts before, now looked almost… hesitant. Its golden eyes, fixed on Ken Park, no longer held cold, possessive hunger, but a flicker of sothing new, sothing alien to its primal nature: surprise. Caution. Perhaps even… a dawning awareness of profound, existential threat. It sensed the shift in power, the arrival of a predator far higher on the Galla Forest food chain than itself.
Ken Park – or rather, Ken-Redborn, the rged entity – took a single, deliberate step forward. The ground didn't tremble beneath his tread; it seed to yield, to respectfully compact itself. He raised one crimson-armored hand, palm outwards, towards the colossal serpent. The air around his hand began to shimr violently, not with Void energy, but with pure, incandescent heat. A miniature sun seed to coalesce in his palm, a sphere of swirling, white-hot fla that pulsed with unimaginable power, growing rapidly from the size of a fist to the size of a small boulder, its heat so intense it made the very air around it waver and distort. The sickly green fungi on the forest floor near him withered and crisped instantly. The damp moss stead.
"Foul beast of Galla," Ken-Redborn’s voice rumbled, no longer just human, but layered with the guttural roar of the ox-spirit, the sound of grinding stone and erupting volcanoes. "You have threatened the heir of Ferrum. You have disturbed the balance. Your existence in this glade… is no longer tolerated."
Chapter : 146
The obsidian serpent hissed, a sound like a thousand steam vents rupturing, coiling back slightly, its golden eyes now wide with what looked suspiciously like reptilian panic. It recognized true, overwhelming power. It recognized its own imminent demise. It had picked a fight with sothing it could not possibly comprehend, let alone defeat.
Ken-Redborn didn’t waste ti on further pronouncents. He didn’t engage in dramatic posturing. He simply acted.
With a grunt of effort that was less strain, more focused application of unimaginable force, he launched the colossal fireball.
It didn't fly; it erupted from his hand, a searing, incandescent teor of pure, destructive fla, trailing sparks and superheated air, moving with terrifying speed directly towards the obsidian serpent’s massive, now recoiling, head.
The impact was not an explosion in the conventional sense. It was… an erasure.
The white-hot sphere of fla slamd into the serpent’s head, and for a fraction of a second, the world turned white, a blinding, searing incandescence that forced everyone, even Lloyd, to squeeze their eyes shut against the sheer, overwhelming intensity. The heat was a physical blow, washing over them in a searing wave, making their skin prickle, their hair singe.
Then, as quickly as it had appeared, the light subsided, leaving behind dancing afterimages on their retinas and the overwhelming, acrid sll of vaporized… sothing. Vaporized ancient evil, perhaps.
When Lloyd could finally force his stinging, watering eyes open, blinking against the lingering glare, he stared, utterly, comprehensively, speechless.
The gigantic obsidian serpent… was gone.
Not wounded. Not driven back. Not even a smoking corpse.
It was simply… gone. Vanished. Obliterated. Utterly, completely, comprehensively vaporized from existence.
Where the colossal head had been monts before, there was now only a vast, circular patch of scorched, blackened earth, glowing faintly with residual heat. The ancient trees behind it were flash-charred, their leaves instantly incinerated, their branches skeletal black claws against the bruised sky. The air itself still shimred with heat distortion. Of the serpent, of its imnse coils, its obsidian scales, its golden eyes… there was nothing. Not a trace. Not a whisper. Not even a lingering scent, save for that overwhelming, acrid sll of sothing vast and powerful reduced to its component atoms by unimaginable fire.
Ken-Redborn stood calmly in the center of the devastated patch, his crimson armor still glowing faintly, the horns on his head seeming to absorb the dim light. He lowered his hand, the miniature sun that had resided there extinguished as if it had never been. He looked, for all the world, like a Demon Lord who had just casually swatted a particularly irritating, slightly oversized, interdinsional fly.
The silence that descended upon the glade was absolute, profound, broken only by the faint, incredulous gasps of Faria’s guards and the whimpering of Fang, who was now trying to burrow his way under Lloyd’s boots, presumably convinced the apocalypse had arrived and Ken Park was its herald.
Lloyd stared at his bodyguard, his butler, the man who usually brought him tea and occasionally offered dry, laconic advice on sword stances. Ken Park. Transcend-level Spirit User. Capable of casually vaporizing mythological monsters the size of small mountains.
His mind, already reeling from the day’s escalating chaos, finally, officially, short-circuited.
Well, a small, dazed, utterly bewildered voice whispered from the depths of his eighty-year-old soul, that… that was certainly… efficient. Note to self: Never, ever, under any circumstances, get on Ken Park’s bad side. Or forget to tip him properly at Winter Solstice. Or ask him to do the washing up if he’s feeling particularly… fiery.
He looked at the scorched earth, then back at Ken-Redborn, who was now calmly brushing a speck of non-existent dust from his glowing crimson pauldron, as if he’d just finished a particularly vigorous round of spring cleaning rather than atomizing a creature of legend.
The fifty-silver "ecological survey" had, Lloyd concluded with a certainty that was almost Zen-like in its absurdity, officially gone completely and utterly off the rails, into a different dinsion, and was currently being dissected by interdinsional beings with a penchant for irony. And he still needed a hundred bloody System Coins. Life, he decided, was just one damned flower after another.
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