"So you're saying there's an invisible monster here right now?"
Lavere stared blankly at the only four members of Amali's squad who were still conscious.
No one had died—but that was only a matter of time if they didn't receive proper treatment soon. Healing potions could only do so much.
"Believe us or don't," Edren said, his gaze flicking past Lavere's shoulder every few seconds. "It'll probably attack again soon because there's more of us. We... only saw it once... but you need to be on your guard."
"Ahhh." Edam scratched the back of her head, her tone casually dismissive. "I thought you were finally starting to live up to your potential, but here you are, cowering again."
Edren flinched under her stare.
"No," Belonica cut in immediately. "The fool is right this time. There's a legitimate threat."
Edam raised a brow at the interruption, but the conversation didn't have time to continue.
"Edam," Lavere said. "These guys' wounds… they look familiar, don't they?"
The sniper's eyes narrowed as she examined them properly—and her expression shifted the moment recognition hit.
The image of the dead sludge dragon surfaced in her mind.
"…Well damn."
Lavere gave a short nod and turned toward the makeshift support team she had brought with her.
"Everyone, defensive formations! Stay sharp! The enemy is an unseen one!"
---
Crash
Reoloy sprinted across thin purple mana platforms conjured over the water, wincing as his injured leg buckled and disrupted his footing—but he kept moving regardless.
A series of yellow mana whips and slashes tore toward him.
He dove aside, crashed into the basin, and immediately surfaced again, scrambling onto another floating platform.
"These things are sturdier than I thought," he muttered, knocking against the purple disc beneath his feet. "You do have your uses."
Gaiskas frowned. "You talked big and still ended up needing my help."
"I didn't know I'd lose the ability to extend the claw." Reoloy shrugged weakly. "Honest miscalculation."
Unlike faux relics, true relics—especially Regalia—didn't overheat.
Their limitation was much simpler.
The user.
Reoloy had reached his limit.
Fortunately, he could still manifest a spectral claw extending a few centimetres beyond his finger.
And even more fortunately—
The prime wasn't doing much better.
'Odd...' Reoloy narrowed his eyes at the stag. It was panting heavily now, its body shuddering intermittently as though remaining conscious alone required immense effort. "A prime monster should be way stronger than this."
"Are you really going to say that right now?" The laikern looked over his battered state dryly before turning back toward the beast. "That thing isn't normal. I feel strange things within its flesh, and then there's those horns."
Gaiskas created a barrier, blocking the endless barrage of incoming attacks.
"The silver one created those intangible copies, and it's still active now—" It pointed toward the weakly flickering silver horn. "—yet there's no more of them here."
Its eyes narrowed thoughtfully.
"My theory is that it's been maintaining other copies somewhere else and that they're not autonomous. It controls each one consciously. Between the mental burden and the mana cost, it's no surprise it ended up like this."
Reoloy agreed with the reasoning, but something still bothered him.
"Then why keep the skill active?" he asked, hand against his chin. "There's still five horns' abilities it hasn't shown. It could drop the silver skill and switch to something else."
"Notice how it isn't using the blue skill to hide its pure mana attacks anymore."
Reoloy's head snapped forward.
It was obvious in hindsight, but he'd been too focused on reaching the creature to notice.
"It can't use the skills. It had a lot of mana, but its abilities consume such absurd amounts of energy that it can't enjoy such a blessing. It was probably using the other clone as part of some larger strategy to offset the weakness, but now it can barely sustain even that. It hasn't even used the frenzy skill we assumed it had to call for reinforcements. That should tell you enough."
Reoloy nodded slowly.
"What an unfortunate build," he muttered. "Especially for a prime."
Everything about this creature felt wrong.
Normally, he would've wanted nothing more than to pick apart the mystery, but he was running heavily behind schedule with just barely over two months left until he had to be at Academy City.
"Gaiskas. Drop the barrier. Save your mana for when we take on the ruins."
"Or," the laikern said flatly. "You could let me devour that monster after you're done."
Reoloy shrugged. "I'll consider it."
The moment the purple barrier collapsed, he exploded forward.
Platforms formed beneath each step just in time to support him. Yellow whips and slashes flew toward him, but he charged through them like a madman, desperate to reach an ending.
Only a few metres remained.
The final platform thrust upward the instant he stepped onto it, launching him straight toward the restrained stag.
Unable to flee, the creature could only strain violently against its invisible chains as Reoloy landed on its back and drove the shortened claw into the base of its neck.
It cried out.
The restraints trembled from the force of its struggle, but it still couldn't move.
The reincarnator frowned, realising his weapon wasn't penetrating deeply enough to end the monster.
"Extend... Extend damn it!"
The relic gave no reaction, and just as his frustration was about to boil over—
Dread.
The space fell eerily silent, much more than it had been.
No wind. No birds. No scurrying in the leaves and trees.
The world itself seemed to tint slightly grey.
"...What?"
Reoloy slowly looked up toward the antlers.
The black horn radiated with ominous intent.
If Gaiskas possessed a physical body, it would have broken into a cold sweat. It immediately raised its arm to cast, only to freeze as unseen arms unnervingly wrapped around it, restraining it in place.
"Kill it now!" it shouted, eyes darting wildly.
Reoloy didn't hesitate.
Ignoring the limited claw length entirely, he began tearing into the beast manually.
He clawed into its flesh like an animal, ripping at its neck and sides in frantic desperation, hoping sheer brutality might end it faster.
He struck toward the antlers—
Clang
The hardened material repelled the blow entirely.
Reoloy cursed under his breath and continued stabbing wildly into its body to no avail.
Suddenly, a deep black pulse surged outward from the creature, blasting him upwards into the air.
As he fell helplessly—his body unresponsive, he watched as the grey trees and clear waters started to bleed black as weaker pulses rang outward from the stag.
Reoloy closed his eyes as the ground rushed up to meet him, borderline accepting his fate, but then—
Something caught him before impact.
A purple aura.
'Gaiskas...?' he wondered, weakly cracking his eyes open. 'No, this isn't mana.'
Ki.
And a powerful one at that.
There was only one person whose ki matched the description of what he was feeling and seeing.
The violet-haired man descended slowly through the air, hands behind his back, while his brown scarf fluttered under the pressure of his own power.
"Looks like things got pretty hectic for you," Leno said lightly. "I'll take it from here."
Reoloy forced himself upright, taking a single step and immediately eating dirt.
Leno barely spared him a glance, turning instead at the rupturing stag.
"I can still fight..." Reoloy gritted out. "This is my battle to win."
The chieftain sighed, mentally acknowledging the child's spirit.
"Sleep."
With a tap of his finger on the boy's head, he was unconscious, falling fully limp behind him.
He stepped forward, walking on the water's surface without so much as a ripple forming and then flared his ki, the mere force being enough to wash away the grey film that had settled over the area.
A wheel of violet light manifested at his right, spinning faster and faster until it resembled a massive luminous saw.
Water distorted.
Wind warped.
Even space itself flickered from the pressure of the phenomenon, prompting even Gaiskas to shudder from the force being exuded.
Leno's fist clenched, gearing to fling the attack forward, only to stop in his tracks and blink several times.
All his ki instantly dissipated.
Without another word, he walked back over, slung the unconscious Reoloy over his shoulder, and stared quietly at the stag.
"I'll be damned," he muttered under his breath. "This boy really is interesting."
Behind him, the stag had gone still.
Fractures spread from the black horn across its entire body before consuming it completely.
The once-grand creature began collapsing into unnaturally dark ash, the remains scattering into the wind before disappearing altogether.
Only seven "stones" remained behind, each bearing one of the horn colours the beast once possessed.
"You won."
Leno burst into the sky, heading back toward the town.
---
~ A week later ~
It felt like forever since Reoloy had a perfectly fine body that wasn't going to get wrecked immediately after.
A full week of uninterrupted bed rest was exactly what the doctor had ordered.
The doctor in question, however, happened to be a semi-sentient artificial intelligence constructed from overlapping mana sequences, apparently.
Reoloy's eyes had narrowed the moment he saw it.
Cardana was advanced—far more advanced than it should've been—and he had already formed a rough theory as to why. But something this intricate was beyond what the people here should realistically have been capable of creating.
Which meant...
"How come I'm the only one getting mocked for being injured?"
"Because your reactions are the funniest."
He had been taking the peace in, though he was also the slightest bit restless from delaying his ruin raid.
Turning from the window, he swung his body leftward and came face-to-face with Lavere's deeply unimpressed stare.
"I'm fine," Reoloy said immediately, raising his hands in mock surrender. "Honestly."
The blond frowned. "Almost every bone in your body was shattered."
"Ah."
He recalled the impact of the black wave that sent him into the air.
"I've healed now, though," he replied sheepishly. "I'm genuinely okay."
To prove his point, he hopped twice, skipped once, dropped into a series of push-ups, then sprang back onto his feet.
"See?"
Lavere shook her head.
"You were reckless," she started. "You said you didn't need help and then went and nearly died. That's not funny."
The room fell silent.
"...Sorry."
Lavere let out a quiet sigh. "Be careful next time."
"Hey, ease up on him a little," Roy chimed in. "If you'd gone with him, you probably wouldn't have been there to help preserve everyone's lives before Master Gordoi and Meyer arrived."
"…Captain Meyer," Lavere corrected automatically, only to receive a dismissive wave in return. "And even then, even if that's somewhat true, we could've figured something out."
"But I heard that invisible monster became way more erratic toward the end," Amali said from where she lay sprawled across Reoloy's hospital bed.
The reincarnator flinched slightly.
He hadn't told them that the spectre had been an offshoot of the prime monster he had been facing. It was likely that whatever purpose it served, the stag had gotten much more desperate to fulfil it the more he cornered it.
'No one died though, so it worked out...'
"Did you hear?" Amali continued, a grin creeping onto her face. "The townspeople are calling us the golden generation because we managed to survive something like that."
She glanced at Reoloy.
"Though it was originally only supposed to be a simple favour."
The outsider laughed nervously.
"...Sorry again."
"It's fine," she said casually, standing up and smacking his shoulder. "That's what friends do."
Reoloy went quiet for a moment.
His eyes drifted across their faces one by one.
The people he'd called friends in the past had really only been acquaintances in the traditional sense. He'd never truly connected with them, never fully relaxed around them, never genuinely enjoyed simply existing beside them.
'Friends, huh?' he thought, clutching at the unfamiliar feeling. 'This isn't bad.'
"I should thank you too, Roy," he said suddenly. "I heard you caught the sabre wolf alpha. That should count for something, right? Even though I didn't get it myself."
Roy grinned. "It's nothing. It was fun. Besides, you ended up doing something way crazier, so I'm sure Master Gordoi will give you a pass."
Reoloy glanced outside the window toward the enormous crimson beast lounging around like a common household pet.
Apparently, by the time Meyer and the reinforcements regrouped with Roy, the boy had simply had it with him.
He'd somehow tamed the thing.
Reoloy honestly wasn't that surprised. This was one of the future top ten strongest people in the world, after all.
Despite how far from that stature he still was.
His gaze lingered on Roy briefly before the futuristic doors suddenly slid open.
"Guys!" Boyd yelled, sticking only his head into the room. "The guys went patrolling earlier, and they're saying they found something at the beach!"
Fen wandered into view behind him, yawning while shaking her head.
"They're dragging everyone from the last expedition along with them," she said tiredly. "Apparently, 'no' isn't an acceptable answer."
Amali smirked. "Makes sense."
"We went through that hardship together," Avron declared with a firm nod. "It only makes sense we stick together for whatever comes next, too."
Everyone stared at him like he'd suddenly grown a second head.
"...What?"
Ignoring him completely, the group continued chatting amongst themselves as they began heading out of the room toward this new mini-adventure.
Reoloy watched them go, a faint smile tugging at his lips before he turned and started walking back toward his bed.
"What are you doing?" Amali asked incredulously.
"Huh?"
He looked up to find everyone staring at him in confusion.
"What do you mean, 'huh'?" Lavere asked, tilting her head slightly. "Aren't we going?"
Reoloy's eyes widened, a wave of emotion surging through his system.
A laugh escaped him before he could stop it, a genuine grin finally spreading across his face.
"Sure. Lead the way."
---
Once they arrived at the beach, Reoloy's earlier brightness vanished completely, his expression collapsing into pure disappointment.
"So this was it?"
"Hm, from your reaction, it seems like you know them," Roy remarked curiously.
Reoloy dragged a hand down his face with a long sigh as memories resurfaced.
'It feels like it was forever ago now...'
He stepped past the group, the Cardanians instinctively parting to let him through, before crouching directly in front of the pair they had discovered.
"Oi," he called flatly. "Graham. Hugo. Where are the others?"
The two black-clad teenagers stared at him in utter disbelief, clearly unable to process the fact that he was still alive.
"I don't have all day," Reoloy said, scratching the back of his neck. "Well, technically I do… just not for you two bastards."
Then he leaned closer, his gaze sharpening.
"Where are Selene and Cisco?"