Not from a normal creature.
It was heavier. Slower. More ancient. A sound that seemed to come from the very bowels of the planet, from a time before any ship had arrived.
The gatherers stopped dead. Their bodies tensed, and then, as if they had received an order, they fled toward the tunnels with a speed that contrasted with their earlier slowness. They disappeared into the depths within seconds.
Something bigger was about to come out.
Omega activated red alert. Her voice in Dorian's mind was urgent, sharp:
Greater entity detected. Category: unknown. Threat level: high. Recommendation: prepare for combat. Recommendation: consider retreat.
"Retreat?" Dorian repeated. "To where? We're at the bottom of a crater surrounded by tunnels and steep walls. Retreat is not an option."
The ground shook again.
This time harder.
Stones split apart. Large rock blocks shifted like puzzle pieces.
The corroded metal of the Sigma-12 arched upward, creaking, as if something enormous were pushing from below. The ship, which had been there for over a century, twisted like paper.
Dorian took a step back, his arms tense, his sword steady in his hand. The energy blade hummed with intensity, as if it too sensed the danger.
The earth exploded.
It wasn't a metaphor. It really exploded. Rocks, dust, fragments of the ship, and organic remains flew through the air in an eruption of brute force. And from that chaos, a colossal figure emerged.
It had six limbs, each as thick as Dorian's torso, ending in claws that looked like curved swords. Its carapace was black as obsidian, so dark it absorbed the light of the lichens instead of reflecting it. And its eyes—multiple, distributed across its skull like the beads of an abacus—gleamed with an ancient, malevolent intelligence.
The worst part was the jaw.
Divided into four independent sections, each vibrating with a deep hum that made the air tremble.
Omega took a few seconds to process. Then said:
…New temporary classification: Apex.
"Apex?" Dorian repeated, as if he hadn't heard correctly. "Why not just call it princess or cupcake? I bet that would suit it better than Apex."
The Apex raised one of its limbs and slammed it into the ground. The impact fractured rocks within a ten-meter radius, sending fragments through the air like shrapnel. One of them struck Dorian's shoulder, spinning him around.
Dorian dodged to the right, putting distance between them.
The Apex struck again, this time more precisely. The claw embedded itself exactly where he had been a second before, as if the creature could feel the vibrations of his body through the ground.
It wasn't just strength.
It was perception.
It was as if the Apex could see without eyes, hear without ears, feel every beat of his heart through the rock.
Dorian spat to release tension. The sword's core glowed brighter, responding to his will.
"Alright," he whispered, and in his voice was determination, defiance, everything that had kept him alive so far. "Then let's see how far up the food chain you really go."
The Apex answered with a roar so fierce it shook the environment around them. The crater walls vibrated, small stones broke loose, and Dorian felt the sound punch through his chest like a fist.
The battle for the crater had truly just begun.
Dorian adjusted his stance, bent his knees, and waited. The Apex watched him with its multiple eyes, evaluating, calculating, deciding.
And then, without warning, it attacked.
Its six limbs moved at the same time, creating a pattern of strikes impossible to fully dodge. Dorian jumped back, then sideways, then rolled, feeling the claws pass centimeters from his body again and again.
The ground around him was turning into a field of miniature craters, each impact kicking up dust and rock fragments.
"Omega," he gasped while dodging. "Give me something. Anything. A weak point. A strategy."
Analyzing… Omega's voice was tense. The carapace is too thick for the sword. The limbs are armored. The eyes… the eyes might be vulnerable, but they are protected by a membrane. Estimated success rate for a direct attack: 7%.
"Seven percent," Dorian murmured as another claw whistled over his head. "I love those odds."
The Apex roared again and charged at him, its six limbs moving in perfect synchrony. It was like a biological tank, unstoppable, inexorable.
Dorian waited until the last moment. Until the creature's shadow covered him completely. And then, instead of dodging sideways, he leaped forward.
Straight toward the monster's jaws.
The Apex opened its four mandibles, anticipating a feast. But Dorian wasn't heading into them. At the last instant, he threw himself sideways, slipping between two of the limbs, and with all the strength he had left, he drove the sword into one of the Apex's eyes.
The energy blade pierced the protective membrane and sank into the eyeball.
The Apex roared.
Not in fury, but in pain.
A sound it had never made before, had never needed to make. Its body shuddered, and Dorian was flung away, slamming into a rock ten meters distant.
Pain bloomed in his back, his ribs, every bone in his body. But he was alive. And the Apex, for the first time, recoiled.
One eye. Just one eye. But it was enough.
Dorian stood, staggering, his sword still glowing in his hand.
"See?" he said, his voice hoarse but defiant. "Even gods bleed."
The Apex stared at him with its remaining eyes, and in them there was no longer only fury. There was something new. Something true predators never show.
Respect.
Or maybe it was just the prelude to something worse.
The night continued, implacable, infinite.
And the battle for the crater… had only truly just begun.
Dorian stood several meters away, distance between him and the new enemy, classified as Apex by Omega.
Distance was his only advantage for now, that small space of safety that allowed him to breathe, think, evaluate. The obsidian monster loomed on the other side of the crater, its six limbs moving slowly, like the legs of a giant spider caressing the ground.
But now something unusual had happened. Or perhaps it wasn't unusual at all. Dorian is a warrior trained since childhood; it is normal that in these life-threatening situations, his Helion metabolism supports him so that his life force does not go out like a candle in the storm.
Helions were not like other people in the galaxy; generations of adaptation, training, and—some whispered—genetic manipulation had created something different. Something that could keep functioning when anyone else would have already collapsed.
Dorian had done some damage to it. In video game terms—that analogy he always used to process combat—about 7% of the thousand HP that obsidian monster carried. A laughable amount. Almost insulting. But the greater damage, if we continue with the same gaming traits, we could say that the six-limbed monster had received at least ten thousand points of psychological damage from Dorian.
And that could trigger—or perhaps unleash—something Dorian should not have done to the Apex. Because there is always a phase two. There is never a missing second round. It's a universal law, as true as gravity or death.
The monster, wounded in its hunter's pride, in its status as the planet's supreme predator, let out a roar. But it was not like the previous one, which was more to announce its arrival than to transmit fear. That earlier roar was an "I'm coming, get ready." This one was different.
This time there was no "I'm on my way." Now it was "I'm already here."
After the Apex's roar, the environment where Dorian stood—no, where they stood—was shaken. Not only geographically, but… mentally. The sound was not just a roar. It was something deeper. More ancient. As if the beast had absorbed the screams of all its victims over the centuries and spat them out all at once.
It emitted a kind of malignant aura. Rather, a corrupt one. Chilling… nauseating.
Dorian felt his legs turn to stone.
It wasn't fear. Not exactly. Dorian knew fear, had felt it many times, had tamed it, turned it into another tool in his arsenal.
This was something more primitive. More animal. The most ancient part of his brain, the part that Helions had learned to silence with years of training, meditation, controlled exposure to danger, had suddenly awakened and was screaming one thing:
Run.