The winds over the wasteland howled like wolves.
Liergu stood with his arms folded across his chest, his sharp eyes scanning the distant wilderness beyond Astris City’s walls. A faint smirk curled across his face, touched with arrogance and a hint of boredom.
"Which one of you feels like taking action this ti?" he asked casually, his tone more like a man discussing the weather than an impending battle.
The last ti, he’d slain an ancient barbaric beast single-handedly — and his fa in Astris had exploded overnight. Songs had been sung in taverns. His na whispered with awe. He could still taste the glory.
But that was last ti.
"I’m not interested," ca the cold, tallic rasp of the flying corpse — the sound of rusted iron grinding against iron.
"I’ll handle it," Dorian replied, his voice soft but firm. "Can’t let you have all the fun, can I?"
He stepped forward, brushing dust from his sleeves. Truthfully, it wasn’t about fun. Liergu had already claid enough credit — and Dorian wasn’t the type to stay idle while another reaped the rewards. Besides, if he killed a beast today, it gave him an excuse to take that half-year break he’d been quietly planning. Duty shifts were always easier to pass along when you’d just saved the city.
Liergu stretched lazily. "Fine by . You take this one. I’ll just sit back and relax."
Before Dorian could reply, a low voice cut through the wind.
"...Here."
Fuzi’s tone was flat, but his head was tilted toward the horizon.
"What?" Liergu frowned and looked where Fuzi pointed.
At first, all they saw was a black dot — tiny, distant, unthreatening. But as seconds passed, the dot grew, swelling into sothing imnse. The earth trembled with each distant step. The three of them stood in stunned silence as the figure in the distance took shape.
It was not a beast.
It was a mountain — moving.
Dorian’s jaw slackened. "You’ve got to be kidding ..."
The shadow of the creature swallowed the sunlight as it drew near, a titanic form crawling with slabs of living rock. Its shell glimred with the sheen of obsidian and earth. Its breath ca out like thunder.
"This one’s... going to be a problem," Dorian muttered, grimacing. "I thought it’d be like last ti — small, manageable. Why is it three or four tis bigger?"
He wasn’t even sure he could stop sothing like that. A single collision might crush the entire city wall. His instincts scread retreat, but pride chained him to the spot.
"Then we go together," Liergu said, his tone suddenly serious. "If we don’t, Astris City won’t survive."
He dropped his hands, and with a sharp sound of cracking bone, a jagged spike of ivory erupted from his palm. Bone manipulation — his awakened ability. His skeletal armor began to form, crawling up his arm like living armor.
Fuzi exhaled through what was left of his lips. "Once we slaughter that beast, the city won’t starve for a year."
The wrappings that clung to his decaying fra flapped in the dry wind, revealing patches of darkened flesh beneath. A foul odor rolled from him — rot and toxin, heavy enough to make even the crows in the sky swerve away. His power, corpse poison, was a rare variant of toxic affinity — the ability to absorb and command every kind of decay-born venom. He often wandered the wastelands to collect new poisons, each one stored within his wretched body like a cursed library.
"Just... stay away from ," Liergu muttered, stepping aside in disgust. "Every ti you show up, I feel sick."
"Can’t argue with that," Dorian said, leaping lightly onto the battlents. "Let’s get this over with."
Below, the city guards and awakened fighters of Astris City were already backing away from Fuzi, covering their noses and retreating from the spreading miasma. With their strength — Tier Four, maybe Tier Five — even a trace of that toxin could kill them within a day.
"Enough talking," Fuzi rasped. "It’s almost here."
The monstrous shadow was now only a kiloter away. Each of its steps sent tremors racing through the city’s foundations. Dust cascaded from the walls like rain.
"Do it," Dorian commanded.
He moved first.
His black hair exploded outward, growing and twisting until it ford a living mass — a writhing ocean of shadowy tendrils. The hair fused into thick, sinewy cords that coiled around him like an octopus, each one ten ters long and as strong as steel.
He sprang forward, his feet hamring against the battlents, and the tendrils lashed out, aiming for the beast’s forelegs to halt its charge.
The earth roared in answer.
A wall of rock surged upward, jagged and dense, blocking the strike entirely. The tentacles smashed into the stone, leaving deep cracks but failing to break through.
"—What?" Dorian froze, eyes wide. "It defended itself?"
The wall shattered a heartbeat later, but the ssage was clear.
"This one’s... not normal," Liergu said darkly. "It’s an upgraded species."
Dorian landed beside him, breathing hard. "You an—"
"It can manipulate earth," Liergu said, his expression grim. "If that’s true, Astris is in real danger."
"Then there’s no choice," the flying corpse said quietly. "We’ll need to ask that one to intervene."
Even Fuzi hesitated. He didn’t dare step too close. If the creature could command rock, a single tremor could bury him alive.
"Let’s at least hold it back," Liergu said, lowering his hands to the ground. "Bone Spear Formation!"
The earth shuddered violently. A dozen massive bone spikes — each over ten ters long — burst from the soil, spreading outward like a forest of ivory. For a mont, the battlefield glittered with the gleam of bone.
Then ca the sound — a rumbling crack, deep and resonant.
The ground itself turned over like a book page.
The bone forest crumbled, sinking into the heaving earth as if devoured by an unseen force.
Liergu froze, his mind blank. It countered my formation? Just like that?
Fuzi and Dorian stared, equally dumbfounded. The monster had crushed one of Liergu’s strongest techniques with a casual step. None of them had ever seen anything like it.
"Did that thing just... solve your move?" Dorian muttered.
Before Liergu could answer, a voice — clear and calm — drifted through the air.
"Quite the welco party."
The three froze.
A figure stood atop the enormous beast — high above the battlefield, haloed by dust and light. On the creature’s shell, a tall black tower rose into view, its structure refined and alien against the wilderness. It was one of the four main towers of Black Tortoise — The Watch Tower.
And standing proudly at its edge was Luciel.
The Lord of Black Tortoise City.
He stood before his city’s wall — no, his fortress, for Black Tortoise itself was a city, carried upon the back of a colossal beast. Behind him, the curved landscape of the shell stretched wide, dotted with buildings that glimred like stars against stone.
From that high vantage, he could see everything — the desolate plains, the stunned defenders of Astris, and the chaos he had just caused.
Mirean Moon stepped beside him, her posture elegant even amid the chaos.
At the foot of Astris’s walls, Liyi Yi covered her face in disbelief. "Oh no... not again."
Luciel’s sudden visits had beco infamous across the continent — and every ti, they started with panic and ended with trade. The last ti, it had taken days for people to calm down. She couldn’t decide whether to laugh or cry.
Carson, standing beside her, stared at the massive tortoise in awe. "Unbelievable... The wild beast’s size— It’s changed so much. It’s ten tis larger than before!"
The familiar absurdity of it all washed over him. It felt like reliving the siege of the Tenth-Floor City all over again.
Above, the warriors of Astris were in turmoil.
"Who the hell is that?" Liergu barked, retreating a step as he gazed up at the tower.
"Soone’s controlling the beast," Dorian said tightly. "That explains everything."
"Let’s not be rash," Fuzi muttered. "We don’t know their intentions."
Mirean’s voice rang out, graceful and clear as silver.
"We co in peace! Black Tortoise City bears no malice toward Astris. Our lord simply wishes to trade."
Luciel blinked, a flicker of amusent crossing his face. Trade, she says, after nearly giving them a heart attack.
He sighed. "You really know how to make an entrance, Mirean."
Below, the soldiers exchanged bewildered looks.
"So we were terrified for... what, a business visit?" soone muttered.
On the city wall, Carmilla groaned. "That woman’s going to drive insane."
Beside her, Mia flicked her cat-like tail with irritation. "I’m not angry," she said flatly. "Just stating facts."
"You sound angry," Hibbeck said, rubbing his forehead. "You always sound angry."
The wolf-headed and bear-headed orcs behind them tried — and failed — to stifle their laughter. The tension broke like a thin wire snapping.
anwhile, the three senior defenders of Astris — Liergu, Dorian, and Fuzi — slowly backed away from the walls, their instincts screaming caution. Through narrowed eyes, they could make out two figures standing on the tower’s balcony — Luciel and Mirean Moon — both calm, unafraid, and impossibly confident.
"What now?" Dorian asked under his breath.
"Talk first," Liergu said, lowering his weapon. "We don’t start a war over a misunderstanding."
Fuzi nodded. "Agreed. My poisons won’t even dent that monster."
"And I’m not eager to get crushed by a walking mountain," Dorian muttered.
They all turned to Liergu.
"Soone has to speak with them," Fuzi said dryly.
"Yeah," Dorian added without hesitation, "you."
Liergu blinked. "?"
They both stared at him, blank and silent.
He exhaled heavily. "Fine. I’ll go."
As he stepped forward, he muttered under his breath, "Sly bastards... always pushing the youngest to do the talking."
The wind picked up again, carrying dust and laughter across the plains — the uneasy calm before negotiations, and perhaps, before a new alliance.
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