The Calamity-class Phantom had six huge arms, each ending in razor-sharp claws. The sheer ambient pressure of its existence made the loose rocks in the ravine float upward into the air.
Gareth swallowed hard. His arrogant grin vanished. A Calamity-class? he panicked. That is a Phantom meant for entire armies to fight!
Lexi's eyes narrowed. She dashed forward, her dagger spinning in her hand.
Gareth froze for a second, his heavy boots rooted to the dirt. But seeing the tiny pink-haired Thief charge a Calamity without any fear, his pride flared. He let out a loud roar and charged right behind her.
Lexi jumped off a stone pillar and launched herself at the Phantom's chest.
Point Zero.
She slammed both boots into the fused shale, releasing an explosion of force.
The Phantom stumbled backward, a huge chunk of its chest caving in.
Gareth leaped up and brought both his fists down on the Phantom's knee, shattering the bone.
But the red light pulsed. The Phantom's chest instantly reformed. The bone in its knee snapped back together.
Lexi narrowed her eyes.
To a normal person, the air behind the Phantom looked completely empty. It was entirely invisible.
But her Thief senses caught a heavy, pulsing thread of raw Mana stretching from the Phantom's back all the way to the huge glowing Deep-Earth Crystal in the camp.
"Why is there a string connected to its back?" Lexi asked aloud, completely confused. She did not know anything about dark magic rituals. "It is healing too fast. Bizarre."
She ignored the glowing thread and gripped her dagger, focusing entirely on the fight.
The Phantom shrieked, a sound like grinding tectonic plates. It lashed out with its lower right arm, driving its stone claws directly into the bedrock.
It violently ripped its arm upward, launching a devastating, massive storm of flying rocks and broken bones across the camp.
"Get behind me!" Gareth roared at the freed Sterling knights. He crossed his arms and flared his Aura to its limit to form a dense physical barricade. The massive boulders and bone spikes slammed heavily against his glowing Aura, cracking and bouncing harmlessly onto the ground.
Without blinking, Lexi flipped backward through the air, completely avoiding the shrapnel wave. She landed lightly on the tip of the Phantom's swinging claw and sprinted straight up its skeletal arm.
Chained to the wooden posts, the captive Sterling knights watched with their jaws unhinged.
"By the gods," the Lead Knight choked out as he struggled against his bindings. "That is a Calamity. An entire imperial battalion would be wiped out in seconds."
He watched the pink-haired girl casually spin in mid-air, deflecting a huge bone spike with the flat of her plain dagger.
"And she is just playing with it," another knight whispered, his eyes wide with absolute reverence. "If the party member is this much of a monster... what is their party leader capable of?"
Inside the carriage, Kian felt the ground shaking. The noise had not stopped. It had gotten worse.
He opened the window again.
He looked up and saw a fifteen-meter-tall giant made of fossilized bone and bedrock swinging six arms at Lexi.
Kian's brain completely stopped working. A cold, suffocating terror gripped his throat.
WHAT IS THAT?! Kian screamed in his mind. His hands shook violently. Lexi didn't turn them off! She summoned a demon! It is going to step on my carriage! It is going to crush me into paste!
"Orphan!" Kian yelled, his voice cracking. "Drive! Get us out of here!"
Mirelle did not hesitate. She saw the towering giant of stone and bone. She cracked the reins hard against the horses' backs.
"Hyaa!" she shouted.
The two black horses screamed. Their scraped, bleeding legs bunched up. They surged forward, pulling the heavy carriage away from the ritual circle and sprinting wildly toward the wide exit of the ravine.
Lexi saw the carriage moving. She landed on the ground.
"He is leaving," Lexi stated calmly. Without looking at the Phantom, she ran after the carriage.
Gareth saw Lexi run. He was not about to stay alone with a Calamity so he turned and sprinted after the carriage, his heavy boots pounding the dirt.
The Calamity-class Grave-Stone Asura roared. It turned its huge, hollow skull toward the fleeing carriage. It took a heavy, lumbering step forward and began to chase them down the ravine path.
The carriage burst out of the ravine and onto the wide, open grassy plains of the Sterling territory.
Mirelle kept whipping the reins. "Go! Go!"
But the black horses had nothing left. They had used all their strength braking down the gravel slope, and sprinting in a blind panic had pushed their muscles past the breaking point.
Foam flew from their mouths and their front legs buckled.
With a loud whinny, both horses collapsed into the tall grass. The heavy carriage skidded to a violent, jarring halt, throwing Kian against the front wall of the cabin.
Mirelle gripped the wooden bench, her breath catching in her throat.
The ground shook. Thud. Thud. Thud.
The Grave-Stone Asura lumbered out of the ravine, its six arms reaching toward the stalled carriage.
---
Far down in the dust of the ravine, the heavy iron chains rattled. The Lead Dark Mage dragged his bruised body up from the dirt, a twisted, bloody smile spreading across his face.
The knights had captured them, yes. The pink-haired Thief had ruined their camp.
But it did not matter anymore. He stared at the humongous Phantom lumbering out onto the plains.
You fools, the Lead Dark Mage gloated internally, coughing up dust. Arrest us! Execute us! It changes nothing! The summoning is complete. That is a living Calamity. Not even your precious Thousand Strings can stop it now. It will eradicate this entire territory, and you will all burn with us!
But as the humongous Phantom took another heavy step onto the grassy plains, the Lead Dark Mage's smile faltered. He squinted through the dust and stared intently at the Phantom's big footprints pressing into the earth.
Wait... why is the grass still green? his mind raced, a sudden, cold knot forming in his stomach. That is impossible. The Grave-Stone Asura is a parasite. It must drain the Life Force of the soil to sustain its massive weight. It should turn the plains to ash just by standing on them. Did it fail? No! No way! We spent months preparing the earth-leeching sequence! All that hard work! If the grass isn't dying... did the sequence actually fail?!
A terrible, suffocating panic gripped his chest. If the Phantom was not draining the earth, it should be collapsing under its own massive weight.
So what is feeding it right now?
The Lead Dark Mage violently snapped his head around. He looked at the huge Deep-Earth Crystal still pulsing brightly in the center of their ruined camp. The well.
Oh no, the Lead Mage thought, all the color draining from his face. It isn't feeding on the earth. It is drinking directly from the crystal's well! It is still connected to the base where the Deep-Earth Crystal is located!
He whipped his head back toward the distant plains. He stared at the fifteen-meter Phantom, his mind frantically drawing an invisible line between the Phantom and the glowing crystal behind him.
The Lead Dark Mage watched the black carriage violently halt in the deep grass. He watched Thousand Strings step out.
The legendary level 8 Adventurer was not drawing a blade. He was not glowing a protective Aura. He just stood there, completely still, letting the Humongous Phantom approach him.
Why did he run when he saw the phantom? the Lead Dark Mage agonized, his mind spiraling into absolute terror. Why run away just to stop in the middle of an open field? He isn't even fighting! Is he... is he baiting it?
The Lead Mage stared at the patch of green grass beneath the Phantom's feet, and then stared back at the unmoving man.
Could it be? Did he notice the grass wasn't rotting the exact moment he looked out his carriage window? Did he realize the earth-leeching sequence failed just from that single glance? Even if the summoning failed, that phantom is still strong. Not even you, Thousand Strings, can defeat it. You fool!
---
Half a kilometer away from the crash site, standing on a high grassy hill, Earl Sterling gripped the hilt of his sword.
Behind him stood five hundred fully armored knights, horses shifting nervously.
The Earl had seen the red pillar of light. He had mobilized his entire force to defend the mansion.
Now, he watched in absolute, paralyzing horror as the fifteen-meter tall Phantom stepped onto his lands.
"It's over," the Earl whispered, his face pale. "The dark Mages succeeded. That Phantom will slaughter us all."
"My Lord! Look!" a knight shouted, pointing at the plains. "A carriage!"
The Earl squinted. He saw the black carriage stopped in the grass. He saw the horses down.
Then, he saw the carriage's wooden door was open.
Kian was standing.
He did not step out to fight. He stepped out because the carriage had crashed, and he thought running on foot was his only chance to survive.
But when his boots hit the grass, his legs completely locked up. The sheer, overwhelming fear of the towering Phantom bearing down on him paralyzed his brain and body.
Kian stood perfectly still in the grass. His arms hung limply at his sides. He stared directly up at the humongous, rotting skull of the Phantom.
He did not draw a weapon or cast a magic spell. His face was entirely frozen in a blank, rigid mask of pure apathy.
I am dead.