A glasslike scream—sharp enough to ache in the bones—split the sky from north to south.

  It was not thunder.

  Nor an explosion.

  It was the sound of something ancient breaking from within.

  The Emerald Veil, the translucent lattice that had protected Eldoria since forgotten ages, did not fall.

  It shattered.

  It cracked like a colossal mirror struck by an unseen blow, and its fragments rained down.

  From those fractures, black monstrosities began to seep through—

  like spilled oil crawling over the beauty of the frontier, turning green into hell.

  It was a warped army born of chaos:

  towering trolls, twisted ghouls, massive rabid wolves, and wolfrines with blade-like fangs.

  Their hides resembled cracked stone plates, leaking a corrupted violet fluid.

  Behind them marched the orcs, their breath a living rot.

  Every step they took weighed heavily upon the earth itself.

  Before them, as the village’s final line of defense—

  stood the Guardians.

  Bronze armor gleamed under the dim sky.

  Spears were planted firmly into the soil.

  Behind them stood two ranks of sword-bearing soldiers,

  and behind those, archers with drawn bows.

  High above, upon the wooden towers, veteran marksmen took position.

  Among them… was Luna.

  The moment the shadows drew near—

  “Engage!”

  Chief Eldred’s voice tore through the paralyzed silence, already heavy with the growls of monsters.

  “If the Veil has fallen—then we are the final shield!”

  Arrows launched like rain into the black tide.

  They struck.

  Some hit their targets.

  Some shattered.

  Some deflected.

  Others vanished—swallowed whole, as if the darkness itself had consumed them.

  The archers exchanged grim glances.

  “They’re not affected…”

  “Steel isn’t enough…”

  “Reload!”

  But with every passing second, the darkness crept closer.

  Some of the Guardians stepped back—one pace, then another.

  Not in retreat… but instinct.

  Hope had not died.

  But it wavered.

  From the northern watchtower—

  a different light ignited.

  Luna drew an arrow with trembling hands.

  Not from fear… but doubt.

  What if I miss?

  Then she saw it—

  a blue radiance cutting through the black below.

  Yuma’s will.

  Something inside her responded.

  The silver bracelet around her wrist shimmered, a thin filament of light spiraling around her arm, as though remembering the hand that had forged it.

  It was not power.

  It was a promise.

  The wind coiled around the arrowhead.

  She whispered,

  “Fly.”

  The arrow burst from the string, charged with blue energy that intensified as it traveled.

  It struck near the point of engagement—and detonated.

  A searing arc of light erupted outward, erasing monsters from existence as though they had never been.

  This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

  Luna froze for a heartbeat.

  Then she raised her bow again—without hesitation.

  Black-winged carrion birds, their beaks dripping with tar-like sludge, dove toward the towers.

  Luna and the other archers fired relentlessly—precise, unwavering.

  Below—

  Yuma stood at the center of hell.

  He did not run.

  He did not shout.

  He walked.

  Each step altered the rhythm of the battlefield.

  Blue energy surged from him like visible heat.

  A pack of Void Wolves lunged.

  He did not flinch.

  He did not hesitate.

  With a single strike, they disintegrated into drifting ash.

  But—

  With every strike, something was taken.

  [Vessel Assimilation: 14%]

  With every blow, the pressure inside him grew.

  [Vessel Assimilation: 22%]

  Crimson filaments began to coil around the blue glow of his blade.

  His breathing grew heavy.

  His focus fractured.

  He stopped.

  His free hand tightened around the hilt as he tried to contain the surging power.

  The sword began to vibrate.

  From within the chaos—

  a massive troll advanced.

  It hunched forward, crimson eyes locked onto Yuma, dragging its cursed club along the ground, black sparks trailing behind it.

  When it stood before him, it straightened abruptly and swung.

  The strike came fast—brutal.

  Yuma raised his blade on instinct.

  Metal met crystal.

  He was driven into the ground.

  The battle was no longer only external—

  it raged within him as well.

  He rose on one knee, blood spilling from his mouth, his left eye shut tight.

  Above—

  Luna saw the cloud of dust where he had fallen.

  She seized the opening.

  Her arrow flew, charged and true, striking the troll’s raised club.

  The explosion shattered its balance.

  The weapon slammed into the ground beside Yuma instead of into him.

  In that instant—

  he remembered her words.

  “Perhaps one day, Yuma… you’ll find someone who can save you.”

  He smiled.

  Despite the blood.

  Despite the pain.

  The dust cleared.

  His eyes ignited—blue, purer, sharper.

  [IGNITE]

  He roared—not in rage, but declaration.

  “Witness now the steadfastness of my will!”

  The troll attacked again.

  This time—

  Yuma did not yield.

  He raised the shattered hilt.

  The iron pillar struck the blade’s edge.

  There was no impact sound.

  Only a blinding flash of white and blue.

  Time itself seemed to slow.

  The kinetic force was not repelled—

  it was consumed.

  The club disintegrated into fine metallic dust, drifting away like smoke.

  The troll froze, staring at its empty hands in primal disbelief.

  Yuma lowered his blade slowly.

  “My turn.”

  In a blur, the crystalline edge pierced its chest.

  There was no blood.

  The body evaporated into black smoke, devoured by the sword.

  Yuma inhaled deeply.

  He became a storm of blue and silver, carving through the Void army with surgical precision.

  Every strike burned light into the darkness.

  This was no longer a battle.

  It was restoration.

  The Guardians stopped retreating.

  Captain Elara wiped blood from her eyes and whispered,

  “He isn’t just fighting… he’s consuming them.”

  Fear transformed into a unified roar.

  “For the Tree!”

  From her tower, Luna spotted movement among the roots.

  “Yuma!” she cried.

  “Vildred is heading for the western roots! He’s trying to poison the Heart!”

  Without looking, Yuma decapitated an orc.

  Then he turned his gaze toward the massive roots.

  A serpent-like trail of black smoke slithered across the ground.

  He wiped blood from his cheek.

  “The harvest isn’t finished.”

  He ran.

  His footsteps burned glowing blue prints into the scorched earth.

  A vow carved in blood and radiance:

  Eldoria will not fall tonight—

  for the Smith has finally found something worth protecting.

  The air around the Western Roots didn’t just shimmer with heat; it had become a physical weight, a suffocating blanket of sulfur and ozone that scorched the lungs with every gasping breath. Yuma moved through the undergrowth not as a man, but as an arrow of desperate intent, his boots pounding against ground that felt increasingly like a cooling corpse.

  He reached the epicenter of the corruption, and the sight that met him was a desecration.

  The Great Roots, once the emerald conduits of life for all Eldoria, were being violated. Vildred stood there, a silhouette of jagged shadows and twitching limbs, framed by two hulking trolls whose skin looked like wet, bruised stone. The traitor’s staff—a gnarled thing of black bone—was buried deep into the primary root. From its tip, a viscous, tar-like fluid pumped rhythmically, a necrotic ink that seeped into the tree's veins. Where the emerald radiance of the dragon-spirit once pulsed, a deathly, bruised pallor now spread, turning the sacred bark into something brittle and cancerous.

  Vildred turned his head, his neck snapping with an unnatural, dry crack. His eyes were no longer human; they were pits of oily darkness reflecting a mind long since shattered by the Void.

  “You are too late, Yuma!” Vildred’s voice was a discordant screech, cracking with the high-pitched glee of the damned. “The poison is no longer a guest; it is the master. It flows through the very heart of this world. Once the tree withers, the final veil—the thin skin of reality—will fall. And then... oh, and then my master, Obsidius, shall tread upon this scorched earth and turn your bones into his footstool!”

  Yuma stopped. He didn’t tremble. He didn’t shout. Instead, a terrifyingly steady calm rose from his depths—the cold, hard stillness of a blacksmith looking at a piece of ruined iron.

  “You made a grave mistake, Vildred,” Yuma said, his voice vibrating with a resonance that seemed to hum in the crystals around them. “You thought power lies in the act of destruction. You thought that because you can break a thing, you own it. But you forgot where I come from. I was born amidst the wreckage of rusted iron and the soot of a dying world. I know how to smelt shattered metal. I know how to take the impossible and forge it into a blade that cuts through gods.”

  Yuma raised the shattered hilt. In response to his will, a diamond-blue flare erupted from the broken edge, a jagged tooth of celestial light that sliced through the black mist like a surgeon's scalpel through rot.

  He didn't wait for a signal. He launched himself.

  The Duel of the Desecrated Root

  Yuma’s speed was a blur of blue and steel. He ignored the trolls—massive, slow-witted mountains of flesh—treating them as mere obstacles of terrain. His target was the source of the rot.

  Vildred shrieked, slamming his staff into the ground. A shield of bone and tormented souls manifested, a wall of screaming ethereal faces that wailed in agony as Yuma’s blade collided with it. The sound was like a thousand nails on a coffin lid.

  “The Crystal’s blessing?!” Vildred spat, his teeth blackened by the Void. “It is a mere illusion! A child’s dream before the absolute reality of pain! Taste the bitterness of your own helplessness, Protector of Ash! This is the power of the Dark Master!”

  Vildred thrust his hand forward, unleashing a wave of "Black Venom." The fluid didn't just spill; it took the form of shadow serpents, hundreds of them, their fangs dripping with the essence of non-existence. They pounced, wrapping around Yuma’s limbs, their weight like lead, their touch like liquid ice.

  Yuma fell to his knees. The force of the darkness was a crushing gravity.

  [ System Alert: Corruption Levels Rising ]

  [ Warning: Soul-Vessel Integretity Compromised ]

  Vildred laughed, a sound that echoed the hollowness of a tomb. “Your legend ends before the ink is even dry on the page!”

  The traitor began to chant, his voice warping the air. Above his head, a massive black sphere began to coalesce, sucking in the light, the heat, and even the sounds of the forest. It was a localized singularity of erasure. With a triumphant howl, he launched it.

  The Forge of Fortitude

  In that split second, Yuma felt the "Cup of Blood" within him begin to boil. It was the primal, violent energy of his own life-force, screaming to be released. But as the heat surged, the Crystal Blessing within his marrow acted as a filter. It didn't suppress the heat; it refined it. It took the chaotic rage and forged it into absolute, unyielding fortitude.

  His sword suddenly flared. A new rune etched itself into the air, burning with the blue of a dying star.

  「 He who protects the roots... inherits the strength of the earth. 」

  Yuma didn't dodge. He struck the ground.

  CRACK.

  Walls of pure, translucent crystal erupted from the soil, jagged and magnificent. They didn't just block the black sphere; they acted as a parabolic mirror. The Void-energy hit the crystal, was refracted, amplified, and reflected back at Vildred with doubled ferocity.

  The traitor’s eyes bulged. He was thrown back by the recoil of his own malice.

  Yuma didn't give him a second to breathe. He leaped into the air, his silhouette blotting out the sickly sun. With a strike imbued with searing blue flame—the fire of the forge and the light of the star—he brought his blade down.

  The bone-staff didn't just break; it detonated.

  The black aura exploded into a thousand dying embers. Vildred let out a scream that shook the very foundation of the village, watching his source of power crumble into ash between his fingers. The black fluid receded from the roots, shriveling like salted slugs, and the Great Tree began to groan as its emerald hue fought its way back through the bark.

  Yuma landed, the tip of his glowing blade inches from Vildred’s throat.

  “Where is Obsidius?” Yuma’s voice was a low growl. “And how do we reach him?”

  Vildred looked up, blood leaking from his ears and eyes, his face a mask of terrifying ecstasy.

  “Obsidius is not a place you reach, little smith...” Vildred grinned, showing teeth that were falling out of his gums. “He is the time that will devour you all. With the death of my staff, the beacon has been lit. The signal is released. Look to the sky, Protector of Ash! Look at the end of your world!”

  Suddenly, the world went cold.

  The sky above the village didn't just change color; it split. A horizontal tear appeared in the firmament, and through it, a massive claw of black lava emerged—jagged, ancient, and large enough to crush a mountain. It pressed against the edges of reality, the sound of tearing fabric echoing across the horizon as something monstrous began to force its way into their world.

  ( The Roar of Hell and the Shattering of Stone)

  Chief Eldred stood in the village square, his staff falling from his nerveless fingers. He was paralyzed by the sheer cosmic horror of the sight. The sky, the source of light and rain, was being torn apart like frayed silk.

  From within the fissures, the beast began to manifest.

  First came the hide—obsidian plates as dark as hardened coal, pulsing with an inner, tectonic heat. Then the eyes—two suns of absolute malice that burned with the desire to see every living thing turned to carbon.

  The Dragon unfurled its wings. They were not made of membrane, but of smoke and solidified shadow. Each beat unleashed a shockwave that flattened ancient trees miles away. As the dust cleared, the Lord of Magma stood revealed. Glowing veins of liquid fire coursed through its body, tracing a map of destruction from its eyes to the tips of its claws.

  Eldred fell to his knees, his shadow stretched long and thin by the dragon’s terrifying glow. “The World-Ender...” he whispered, his voice trembling with the weight of a thousand-year-old prophecy. “The Lord of Magma whose fire never dies... It is Obsidius.”

  Obsidius descended.

  The impact was not a landing; it was a seismic event. The earth buckled, sending a shockwave through the village that leveled homes and threw the defenders like ragdolls. The dragon turned slowly toward the Crystal Tree, its neck scales grinding like tectonic plates.

  It opened its maw. The roar that followed wasn't just sound—it was a vibration that shattered the soul. Then, it spoke. Its voice was a deep, soul-shaking rumble that felt like it was coming from the center of the planet.

  “Asterion...” the dragon addressed the Tree, its tone dripping with millenia of hatred. “Our battle... which you thought was eternal... ends with this? You sacrifice your divine body just to banish me for a few heartbeats? And for what? To protect these... these weak insects? These crawling things of no value?”

  Obsidius’s chest began to glow. A deep, rhythmic orange light pulsed behind his ribs.

  “What a shame,” the dragon hissed, smoke curling from his nostrils. “What a pathetic state you are in. Let me end your misery, and this forest along with it.”

  Obsidius erupted in fury. Pitch-black magma boiled in his throat, distorting reality around his mouth until the very air began to melt. He unleashed it—an infernal beam of pure, concentrated annihilation aimed directly at the heart of the Tree.

  But the Tree was not yet dead.

  As if sensing its impending end, a massive crystal wall erupted from the earth. It was a fortress of light, expanding with impossible speed to shield the sanctuary. Obsidius’s fire collided with the crystal, and the world was erased in a blinding flash of white.

  Under the terrifying thermal pressure, the "invincible" crystal began to fracture. Red cracks—veins of the dragon’s heat—began to gnaw at the shield.

  And in the center of that storm, the Vessel began to wake.