"MICAH!"
Ti seed to stop. Elio watched, paralyzed, as his friend's head fell to the ground.
The monster, for the first ti, showed sothing close to surprise in its black eyes.
The realization that it had lost its source of information hit the creature quickly. With a roar of fury, it launched itself at Elio, determined not to lose its last informant as well.
Elio barely registered the movent.
His eyes remained fixed on Micah's body, on the smile that still remained on his lifeless face. The sa face that years ago had helped him overco his father's death, that had taught him to transform pain into sothing else.
Today he would have to transform this pain into sothing else too.
FURY!
The damned monster would die by his hands.
The monster's claws almost reached him when he finally reacted, entering his book at the last second.
♢♢♢♢
The familiar start of the challenge tunnel welcod him, dark and silent.
But Elio didn't move, didn't begin the challenge.
Instead, he fell to his knees, a heart-rending scream escaping his throat.
The sound bounced off the tunnel walls, mixing with his sobs. The tears fell freely now, with no witnesses to his pain in the solitude of the challenge.
"Idiot," he whispered between sobs. "I was supposed to be the martyr..."
In the tunnel's darkness, Elio cried for his friend, for the boy he had known, for the man he had beco, for the hero who had died protecting not just the information, but Elio himself.
The echo of Micah's last words resonated in his mind: He never let Elio say he was the "Von" bearer... Until the end, he had been thinking of him, protecting not just the city, but his friend.
The tears kept falling, but sothing began to change inside Elio.
The stabbing pain in his chest transford, crystallizing into sothing harder, darker.
Every mory of Micah, every shared mont, every smile, every lecture... all beca fuel for a burning hatred.
"I'll kill you," he whispered in the tunnel's semi-darkness, his fists clenched until his skin bled under his fingernails' edge. "I swear I'll kill you."
Red lines running along the challenge tunnel's walls Ironically provided an unnatural illumination, which exacerbated the thirst for vengeance. The red tunnel extended as far as the eye could see, marking a path that, for now, he couldn't follow.
Without mana, trying to advance would be dangerous, even suicidal.
And he couldn't die without having the damned spawn's head.
Elio sat, his back against the cold wall, and began thodically analyzing his encounter with the creature.
Its speed was supernatural, at least double that of the King Locus. Its movents weren't just fast, but precise, calculated. And worst of all: it was intelligent, capable of planning, of negotiating... of torturing.
He closed his eyes, replaying each movent in his mind. The way it dodged, how it anticipated his attacks, the pattern of its movents. He had managed to wound it once, even if superficially.
That ant it wasn't invulnerable.
"Forty points of speed," he murmured, making ntal calculations. "I need to find a way to counter that advantage."
The red lines pulsed, as if responding to his thoughts. "This ti will be different," he promised to Micah's mory. "The next ti we et, I'll be ready."
The pain was still there, latent beneath the surface, but now it had a purpose.
Each tear shed beca determination, each mory another reason to fight. The monster had made a fatal mistake: it had given Elio sothing to beco stronger...
Sothing he could never forgive.
♢♢♢♢
Lucien studied the urgent reports with growing concern.
Sothing had changed drastically in the last few minutes.
The anomalies in the Locus sea near the tunnel area were too specific to be coincidence.
"Call Selene," he ordered, his voice conveying an urgency that made the ssengers move with unusual speed.
Minutes later, both Summoners were at the wall's top, surrounded by hundreds of soldiers in formation.
The gaps in the barrier had been expanding day by day. Although they hadn't yet reached the point of no return at 5 seconds, the three-second duration of today was concerning.
But more importantly...
In the distance, an extraordinary phenonon developed before their eyes.
The monster sea began to separate, as if an invisible force was parting the waters. A red glow erged from the separation's center, forming what appeared to be an inverted triangle, its thinner point aiming directly at the city.
"What do you think it is?" asked Selene, her eyes narrowed while studying the pattern.
It wasn't natural, of that she was sure.
Lucien observed the phenonon in silence for a mont. "I'm not sure," he finally responded, "but it seems the Locus have stopped erging in that specific area."
He pointed to the movents at the triangle's edges. "Look how the Locus on the sides are gradually occupying the empty space. It's as if sothing was... refilling the monster source in that area."
The triangle's base continued expanding, confirming Lucien's theory. A small smile ford on his lips. "It seems Elio and the others have achieved sothing significant there."
But the satisfaction was short-lived. A commotion arose among the nearby soldiers, and a ssenger ca running toward them, his face pale.
"Lord Lucien!" The soldier could barely speak, terror evident in his voice. "You... you have to see this."
Lucien and Selene exchanged looks before following the ssenger.
What they found froze their blood.
A soldier lay dead on the wall's stones, his level 4 armor pierced as if it were paper right in the heart. The weapon was a maximum level dagger.
But who could do sothing like this?
Could there be more people from Cassandra's or Angela's faction?
Before they could investigate further, another commotion erupted in another section of the wall. The soldiers' screams guided them to the new disturbance.
"Lord Lucien! Lady Selene! There!" The soldiers pointed toward the wall's exterior.
When they reached the spot, Selene stifled a cry. "Lucien," her voice trembled, sothing rare for her, "what is that thing?"
Floating on the other side of the barrier, suspended in the air as if the laws of physics didn't apply to it, was a being that defied human comprehension. Its vaguely humanoid form and dead flesh-colored skin were disturbing enough, but it was its eyes, black as bottomless wells, that caused true terror.
The being observed them with almost scientific intensity, as if cataloguing every detail of their reactions.
In its claws, it held daggers, a spear, and sothing familiar caught Lucien's attention: a system's book.
The book's title was...
Elio Elian
"Is that...?" Selene began, but Lucien had already noticed the na on the cover.
"Elio's book," he confird, his voice grave.
The soldiers around them began to murmur, fear spreading like a plague.
The creature tilted its head in a disturbingly human way, and then, to everyone's horror, smiled. It wasn't a human smile, but sothing that seed a grotesque imitation of one, as if it had learned the gesture from observing its victims.
In a movent almost invisible to Lucien's sight, the monster threw another dagger and another soldier fell.
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