The Weaver unhinged its jaws and unleashed a shrieking, metallic roar that forced Seiyuu to clap his hands over his ears.
Garrick did not hesitate. The veteran sergeant leveled his crossbow and fired. The heavy iron bolt struck the beast squarely in the center of its bone-masked face. The bolt shattered into useless splinters against the impenetrable armor.
The creature whipped its massive head toward Garrick. It lunged, clearing the distance in a single, terrifying bound.
Garrick dropped the crossbow and drew his heavy broadsword, raising his thick oak shield. The Weaver's scythed foreleg crashed into the shield with the force of a falling boulder. The oak splintered instantly. The impact lifted the heavy sergeant off his feet, hurling him backward into the trunk of a massive pine. Garrick slumped into the mud, his breath leaving him in a ragged, bloody cough.
The Weaver did not pause to admire its work. It advanced, its mandibles clicking in a sickening, rhythmic anticipation, intending to rip the veteran apart. Garrick, half-conscious and bleeding from his scalp, desperately brought up his heavy broadsword. He braced the iron pommel against the frozen earth just as the beast snapped its jaws downward.
The Veridian steel shrieked violently as it caught between the monster's needle-like teeth, sparking against the hardened bone mask. Garrick roared—a guttural sound of pure defiance—holding the monstrous weight at bay with one good arm while his boots dug deep trenches into the freezing mud. It was a contest of strength he was biologically destined to lose. The heavy broadsword began to bend, the tempered metal groaning under the impossible, crushing pressure of the Abyssal jaws.
"Sergeant!" Seiyuu shouted, drawing his shortsword.
Before the Weaver could advance to finish the old soldier, Kaelen struck.
She moved faster than the human eye could comfortably track. Darting beneath the creature's sweeping scythes, a blur of boiled leather and cold steel. Kaelen targeted the joints, driving her daggers into the narrow gaps between the chitin plates of the beast's legs.
Dark, viscous blood sprayed across the frost, hissing as it melted the ice. The Weaver shrieked in pain, thrashing wildly.
She danced through the chaos, her agility absolute. Then severed a tendon in the creature's back leg, forcing the massive beast to buckle slightly on its right side. But the Weaver was too large, its armor too thick for her short blades to reach any vital organs.
The beast spun with impossible speed. A backhand strike from its armored thorax caught Kaelen mid-leap.
The sickening crack of breaking ribs echoed through the clearing. Kaelen was thrown through the air, crashing hard into the frozen earth. She tried to rise, her face twisting in agony, but her left arm hung uselessly at her side.
The Weaver loomed over her, raising a scythed limb for the killing blow.
Seiyuu stood twenty feet away. He was terrified. The primal instinct to drop his sword and run screamed in his blood. But the his calculating mind refused to yield. Kaelen was his greatest asset. Garrick was a loyal pillar of his house. He could not afford to lose them.
Before he could formulate a plan to draw it away from Kaelen, the creature's featureless bone mask snapped toward him. It had sensed the sudden spike of adrenaline radiating from the small boy. The monster dismissed the broken assassin at its feet and lunged at the fresh prey.
A scythed foreleg swept through the freezing air, aimed squarely at Seiyuu's chest. Seiyuu dropped to his knees, his newly acquired swordsmanship instincts taking over entirely without conscious thought. The heavy chitin blade whistled mere inches above his head, the sheer wind of its passage tearing a shallow, bleeding gash across his cheek. The physical force of the near-miss sent him tumbling backward into the frost. He scrambled to his feet, tasting the copper of his own blood, realizing just how fragile he was.
He analyzed the beast. Kaelen had crippled its back leg, forcing it to rear up on its remaining limbs to strike her. In doing so, the creature exposed the soft, unarmored underbelly of its thorax, where the purple Aether veins pulsed brightest.
He had one chance.
Seiyuu engaged the River's Breath. He drew a massive, reckless breath into his lungs, abandoning the safe, controlled circulation he had practiced for two years. He reached out and violently pulled the ambient Aether into his sealed channels.
Agony exploded through his veins. It felt as though his blood had turned to liquid fire. The sheer pressure threatened to shatter his internal architecture, but he forced the searing energy down into his legs.
The Aether acted as a explosive propellant. Seiyuu launched himself forward, crossing the clearing with a sudden, unnatural burst of speed that tore the muscles in his calves.
He slid through the bloody mud directly beneath the rearing monster.
He remembered Kaelen's advice by the campfire. Let the edge do the work. Seiyuu planted his boots firmly into the frozen dirt, anchoring his stance. He gripped the hilt of the Veridian shortsword with both hands, aiming the point directly upward at the glowing, purple cluster of veins exposed on the beast's underbelly. He did not swing. He allowed the massive creature's own downward momentum to provide the force.
The Weaver brought its scythe down to execute Kaelen, dropping its entire colossal weight perfectly onto Seiyuu's waiting blade.
The steel drove deep into the soft tissue, sinking all the way to the crossguard.
The monster froze. A gargling, horrific screech tore from its vertical maw. Corrupted purple blood rained down in a hot torrent, soaking Seiyuu from head to toe. The beast thrashed in its death throes, one of its flailing legs clipping Seiyuu across the shoulder and sending him tumbling into the snow.
The Abyssal Weaver collapsed in a heap of twitching chitin and dark blood. The silence of the forest slowly returned.
Seiyuu lay in the freezing mud. His chest heaved painfully. The reckless influx of Aether had scorched his dormant channels, leaving a phantom fire burning beneath his skin. His shoulder throbbed with a dull, sickening ache.
He heard the heavy, limping footsteps of Garrick approaching, followed by Kaelen's ragged breathing as she knelt beside him. He saw the scarred face of the veteran and the pale, wide eyes of the assassin looking down at him with profound shock.
He wanted to speak, to confirm they were alive, but the darkness was already rushing up to claim his vision.
The final thing Seiyuu experienced before slipping into absolute unconsciousness was the crisp, celestial chime echoing through the void of his mind.
[Quest Complete: Abyssal Weaver Slain] [Calculating Rewards...]
[Status: Seiyuu Walderose]
Age: 8 Years, 0 Months
Class: [Locked - Requires Age 10]
[Physical Attributes]
Strength: 8.5
Agility: 10.2
Vitality: 9.7
[Mental Attributes]
Intelligence: 20
Mana: 0/24 [Channels Dormant, Out of Mana]
[Skills]
Swordsmanship Lvl 3
Aetheric Perception Lvl 2
Basic Mana Circulation Lvl 2
[NEW] [Unallocated Attribute Points: 3] (Quest Reward)