Chapter 87: Fighting Blind
"Above us," Rol breathed, his eyes wide with absolute terror. "Sothing giant is coming down."
There was no ti to run. There was barely ti to breathe.
The colossal, suffocating mass of violently swirling dark mana didn’t fall like a natural object. It descended like a teor, carrying a gravitational pressure so intense that the ruined asphalt began to crack and splinter before the entity even made physical contact.
Garret moved entirely on instinct. The giant Warrior threw himself in front of Claire, crossing his massive, gauntleted arms over his face and bracing his thick legs, fully prepared to take the brunt of an apocalyptic impact.
But the explosion never ca.
Instead, the descent abruptly decelerated. The suffocating mass of dark mana touched down on the broken street with a sickeningly controlled THUD.
The landing sent a shockwave rippling outward, blowing a massive cloud of concrete dust and pulverized moss into the pitch-black air.
Claire didn’t flinch. Her blood-red aura flared to life, illuminating the dust cloud with an eerie, crimson glow. Her massive greatsword hovered effortlessly beside her.
The dust slowly began to clear.
Standing in the center of the crater was a monstrosity. It was bipedal, standing easily over ten feet tall. Its legs were thick and muscular, covered in dense, dark plumage that ended in three-toed talons the size of short swords.
But its upper body was what truly invoked dread. It was a bloated, humanoid torso wrapped in iridescent black feathers, and where its head should have been, there was an enormous, grotesquely elongated beak.
The beak was the color of charred bone. It was so wide and so deep that it looked fully capable of devouring a large transport truck in a single bite.
It had no eyes. Instead, two deep, hollow sockets radiated a faint, pulsating black light.
It stood perfectly still amidst the swirling dust.
And then, it spoke.
Its voice was resonant and layered, a deeply unnatural sound. Yet, the tone was startlingly formal.
"Strong humans," the creature began, dipping its massive beak in a slow, almost ceremonial bow. "I greet you."
Garret’s gauntlets creaked as his fists tightened. Rol’s grey eyes narrowed, his hand slowly drifting toward the combat knife in his pocket.
"You stand in the presence of a loyal sword of the Higher Lord," the creature continued, rising to its full, towering height. "My Master has permitted your presence thus far. You have been allowed to breathe this air."
Rol’s eye twitched. "It’s introducing itself," he muttered quietly, his lazy deanor entirely replaced by cold tension.
"Who the fuck do you think you are?" Claire said, wincing.
"How Rude!" The Second Servant turned its eyeless sockets toward them. "Your kind stumbles through this world without understanding it. You carve at the surface of reality and call yourselves powerful. But true authority lies below."
"Save your useless rambling for soone else, what is your Master?" Claire asked directly, refusing to be intimidated by the overwhelming mana pressure radiating from the beast.
"A Ruler," the servant replied simply. "One of the Seven who govern Estopia."
Claire’s entire body went rigid.
Estopia.
The word detonated in her mind like a dormant bomb.
When a gate opens, it is treated like a random tear in the fabric of reality that leads to isolated pocket dinsions. But a few years ago, Claire had stood in the hallway outside the eting room of the commanders.
The door had been slightly ajar, and she had heard the usually unshakable Commanders speak that exact word in a hushed, terrified whisper.
It was a word completely scrubbed from databases. A secret kept by the very highest echelons of human authority.
"Estopia," Claire repeated, forcing her voice to remain steady against the sudden, icy dread gripping her heart. "What is it?"
The Lesser calamity lord tilted its massive, feathered head. The hollow sockets seed to regard her with genuine confusion. The creature frowned—a terrifying contortion of its dark feathers and charred beak.
"What is it?" the beast echoed. Slowly, it extended one of its enormous, talon-tipped arms outward, gesturing to the pitch-black, ruined skyline, the twisted terrain, and the suffocating air surrounding them. "The place you are standing in... this is Estopia. Don’t you know?"
The silence that followed was absolute.
Garret’s heavy breathing hitched. Rol’s glowing grey eyes widened in the dark.
"This... place is Estopia?" Rol repeated in confusion. "Isn’t this a... a loop gate?"
Before Claire could process the sheer magnitude of that revelation, the beast suddenly froze.
Its hollow sockets flared with a violent, pulsating energy. It stared out into the darkness, as if receiving a silent, telepathic signal from miles away.
Then, its massive beak parted, and it chuckled.
It was a deeply wrong, vibrating sound that completely shattered the ceremonial atmosphere.
"Ahh," the beast sighed, its voice dropping to pure malice. "It seems our talk has ended."
Claire shifted her stance, her greatsword tilting forward.
"I have been ordered to kill you," the Servant stated coldly. "Bla the other humans for it."
’Hide, Elara and Evelyn. what did they do?’
The thought flashed through Claire’s mind. "What did those other humans do?" She asked.
"A grave mistake."
"Garret, Rol! Form up!" Claire barked.
But the air around them instantly violently inverted.
The beast spread its arms wide. A massive, perfectly circular do of absolute, impenetrable blackness erupted outward from the creature’s body. It expanded at the speed of sound, crossing hundreds of ters in a fraction of a second and sealing shut around the entire city block.
And then, all light ceased to exist.
Claire’s blood-red mana shimr vanished. The faint, glowing veins of environntal mana that Rol relied upon to see were completely devoured. They were plunged into a state of absolute, sensory-depriving blindness.
"Rol!" Claire shouted in the dark.
"What the hell!" Rol yelled back, his voice tight. "I can’t see anything!"
A deafening, wet CRACK echoed through the pitch-black do. The sound of massive bones violently snapping and reforming, followed by the thunderous beat of wings expanding far beyond natural limits.
Inside this do, the beast was no longer bipedal. It was a colossal, flying predator. And while they were completely blind, it could see them perfectly.
A massive rush of displaced air scread downward from above.
"Incoming!" Rol barked, feeling the shift in pressure.
Garret roared, throwing a blind, incredibly heavy punch upward. But the beast was too fast. A talon the size of a sword grazed Garret’s shoulder, effortlessly tearing through his reinforced armor and drawing a spray of hot blood.
The giant Warrior grunted, stumbling back.
"It’s diving from the ceiling!" Rol yelled, moving continuously to avoid being a static target.
Claire closed her eyes. Sight was useless here, because sight didn’t exist here at all.
Claire used her mind like a scalpel. She instantly deployed fifty small objects—pebbles, broken glass, bullet casings and sent them orbiting out to the absolute maximum range of her telekinetic field.
She wasn’t trying to hit the beast, with them... but use them as a radar!
Whenever the massive bird moved, the sheer wind pressure of its wings pushed against her floating pebbles.
’Left side.’
"Rol," Claire said, her voice deadly calm in the suffocating darkness. "Can you create an point directly above us? A wide one?"
"I can," Rol said, his breathing heavy. "But I need an exact coordinate, or it’ll just dissipate in the dark!"
"I’ll give it to you," Claire promised. "Garret. Catch its feet. Do not let it fly away."
"Understood," Garret rumbled, his massive fists locking into a ready stance.
Claire felt the wind shift violently across her telekinetic web. The pebbles on the upper right quadrant of her periter were violently shoved downward. The beast was folding its wings.
It was entering a terminal dive, aiming to crush them all under its massive, truck-sized beak.
She tracked the displacent.
Ten ters.
Five ters.
"Now, Rol! Directly above!"
Rol threw both hands toward the sky. His talent flared, and a massive, pale grey sphere of mana violently expanded exactly where Claire directed.
The descending bird slamd face-first into the space and at the point of contact it lost its magical powers.
The beast’s massive beak crashed against the invisible barrier, violently halting its dive and sending a shockwave of air outward that blew Claire’s hair back.
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