Ren Sihue's left the barrier behind as he broke into a dead sprint.
He moved like a ghost. His boots barely grazed the scarce, uneven earth as he navigated through the sparse forest. The twisted, unyielding trees cast long, skeletal shadows that had grown more ghostly now that the sun was gone, leading directly toward the colossal, hyper-futuristic watchtowers looming in the distance.
He was completely focused, his eyes tracking the microscopic shifts in the environment.
Suddenly, the silence of the place shattered.
The ground directly beneath Ren's boots ruptured. A geyser of pulverized rock and dark earth exploded upward as a massive, grotesque monstrosity burst from the subterranean depths. It was a Calamity Beast—a colossal, crab-like abomination possessing four heavily armored, scythe-like limbs and a pair of jagged, membranous wings tucked against its carapace.
