Huff… huff… "Damn it…"
Gareth dragged his half-frozen, bleeding leg across the snow, his breath ragged and shallow. A weary old man, chasing faint tracks in a dying storm—his combat skills barely worth mentioning. And yet, he had volunteered for this suicide mission. All for those cursed Contribution Points… points that might just help his son craft a World Core Vessel.
Talent? Mediocre at best. Pride? Long gone. All that remained was a father desperate to spare his child the cruelty of the Academy—those endless volunteer shifts, tending to wounded warriors just to earn Core Shards. Those gleaming fragments, each one a key, aligning the soul to the World's Essence… leading the flow to the navel, and with enough force, cracking open the sealed Vessel within.
Where did that damned beast go?
Gareth leaned hard on his right leg, his left now a ruined mess. The creature that had mauled him… it wasn't natural. A walking nightmare—half-human, with the skeletal head of a stag and split hooves like a goat from the abyss. And now, it had vanished into the snowstorm.
Maybe it left…
The thought had barely taken shape when a sound reached his ears—a wet, guttural heaving.
What…
Before him, towering like a living mountain of shadow, rose the same beast… but this time, it was real.
Seven meters tall. Obsidian fur glittering with frost. Gareth's body locked in place, frozen by instinct.
A Tier-III Beast.
"No… no, I can't…" he whispered, his knees giving out as he collapsed into the snow. "Please… I have a son… a boy…"
The beast hissed in the language of men—its voice like shattering steel. Gareth's spine turned to ice. Intelligent Tier-III beasts… those were supposed to be legends.
Thud. Thud.
He clutched the locket at his chest, the one holding his son's portrait, as the monster stepped forward—its clawed hand dripping with Gareth's own frozen blood.
"You bastard…" Gareth spat, forcing himself upright. "I may be human… but I haven't forgotten my duty—to purge your kind!"
A blade of glacial ice formed in his hand, forged from his essence. He lunged with everything he had, plunging it into the creature's core—directly through the Core Shard embedded in the weapon's hilt.
Frost raced up the monster's legs. For one heartbeat… it halted.
Then it shook its massive arm like a wolf casting off rain, and shards of ice exploded from its hide.
Gareth's pupils shrank. Crack! The blade shattered against the beast's chest, leaving only a thin, barely visible fracture.
And then, the wind whistled.
He looked up—
—just in time to see the creature's fist crash down.
And obliterate his skull.
For you… my little Naim…
Then—only darkness