The sky did not split cleanly when the Platinum beasts descended—it warped, bent, and screamed under pressure too dense for the human eye to fully comprehend. Mana rolled across Ardent District like a tidal wave, thick and suffocating, pressing citizens flat against broken cobblestone streets.
Towers trembled. Windows burst inward. Somewhere in the distance, soldiers shouted commands that dissolved beneath the thunder of descending titans.
Jeather stood in the shattered plaza, coat torn, blood already drying along his jaw from earlier fights, the storage ring heavy against his finger where the stolen Root Core pulsed like a captive heart.
Astrael's Bronze aura rippled outward in restless waves of green-black light. Velkaria stood at his right, silver armor chipped but posture immaculate, blade humming with disciplined lethality.
Above them, ten Platinum signatures radiated like falling suns.
Jeather squinted upward.
"…That's excessive," he muttered.
The first beast struck the ground with catastrophic force.
A Platinum-ranked Dreadhorn Colossus—towering, armored in black crystal plates layered over muscle thicker than fortress walls. Its four spiraled horns pierced upward like jagged spires, scraping the air itself.
The impact alone fractured nearby buildings and split the plaza in a spiderweb of cracks.
Another landed seconds later—a Stormveil Chimera whose wings spanned half the district, lightning coiling endlessly around its three snarling heads.
A third crashed through the Academy's outer walls—a Gravebound Obsidian Basilisk, eyes burning molten red.
And more followed.
Ten.
Not rumor.
Not warning.
Erasure.
Jeather inhaled slowly through his nose.
"Okay," he said calmly. "New plan."
Astrael's roots burst from the broken stone, thick and thorned, anchoring outward instinctively. Velkaria stepped slightly ahead, silver eyes sharp.
"My Lord," she said evenly, "retreat remains optimal."
"Retreat later," Jeather replied. "First we survive."
The Dreadhorn Colossus charged.
It did not run—it advanced, each step shaking the earth. Astrael reacted immediately, Bronze-ranked roots coiling around its legs, tightening like constricting serpents. The Colossus dragged them forward several meters before slowing. Platinum mana crushed downward, grinding Bronze defenses into splintering debris.
Rank difference.
Brutal.
Velkaria launched upward in a silver arc, blade flashing as she struck the seam between the Colossus's neck plates. Sparks burst. The beast roared.
Jeather moved.
Mana surged into his right arm, compressing through muscle and bone in a controlled pulse. Mana Empowered Strike wasn't flashy. It was precision violence. He leapt off fractured debris, landed along Astrael's roots, and drove his fist into the cracked seam Velkaria created.
The impact detonated inward.
The Colossus staggered.
Not dead.
But destabilized.
It retaliated instantly. One massive arm swung downward, too fast for its size. Jeather barely twisted aside, the shockwave alone sending him skidding across rubble. His ribs protested violently.
"Great," he coughed. "It hits back."
Lightning split the air.
The Stormveil Chimera dove, unleashing a blast that scorched Astrael's outermost roots into ash. Velkaria intercepted mid-air, blade colliding with a fanged maw, but the Chimera's raw Platinum voltage hurled her through a half-collapsed tower.
Jeather swore under his breath.
Ten was impossible.
Three? Maybe survivable.
He scanned quickly.
The beasts were not coordinated—they were rampaging. Destroying indiscriminately. That gave him one advantage.
Chaos.
He sprinted toward a narrow corridor formed by collapsed buildings, Astrael retracting and regrowing ahead to reshape terrain. Three Platinum beasts followed—the Dreadhorn Colossus, the Chimera, and the Basilisk.
Seven remained elsewhere.
Jeather exhaled sharply.
"Three's manageable," he lied.
The Basilisk struck first, its gaze igniting stone into molten slurry. Astrael erupted from below, roots slamming into its underbelly and lifting it partially off the ground. Bronze strained violently against Platinum density.
Velkaria emerged from rubble, silent and furious, driving her blade through one blazing eye.
The Basilisk thrashed.
Jeather seized the opening.
He leapt.
Mana compressed through his legs, ignoring the tearing sensation in overused muscles. He landed atop the Basilisk's skull and slammed a Mana Empowered Strike downward directly between its fractured eye sockets.
Crack.
The beast convulsed.
Jeather did not hesitate.
He drew a high-grade sealing card and pressed it against the exposed fracture while Astrael compressed every root simultaneously.
For a split second, nothing happened.
Then the Basilisk collapsed inward, compressed into radiant Platinum light that nearly tore the card apart before stabilizing.
Jeather fell to one knee.
"One," he gasped.
Lightning answered.
The Chimera descended like a falling storm. Velkaria rose to meet it, blades colliding in a mid-air explosion of silver and blue. The shockwave shattered nearby structures entirely.
The Dreadhorn Colossus recovered.
It charged.
Astrael anchored again, but Platinum strength shredded Bronze roots like dry vines. Jeather stepped forward anyway.
This was stupidity.
He did it anyway.
Mana Empowered Strike landed against the Colossus's knee joint. The blow cracked one armor plate but also sent agony up his arm like shattered glass. The Colossus retaliated immediately—its horn caught Jeather across the side mid-motion.
The world flipped.
He hit stone hard enough to crater it.
Air vanished from his lungs.
Sound dulled.
For a moment, everything was distant.
Astrael roared—not with sound, but with surging mana as roots erupted violently around Jeather's fallen body, shielding him from a crushing follow-up strike.
Velkaria landed beside him.
"My Lord!" she called sharply.
Jeather coughed blood.
"…I felt that one."
He tried to stand.
His leg trembled.
The Chimera unleashed another lightning cascade, and this time Astrael couldn't fully intercept. Electricity tore across Jeather's body, burning cloth and skin.
Pain returned all at once.
Sharp.
Real.
He almost laughed.
"Okay," he rasped. "This is bad."
He forced himself upright anyway.
If he died, he'd die sealing something expensive.
He staggered forward.
Velkaria engaged the Chimera again, blade carving deep but unable to finish it. Astrael wrapped the Colossus's upper body in reinforced bindings, buying seconds.
Seconds were enough.
Jeather targeted the Chimera first.
He baited a lightning discharge intentionally, then lunged through the outer fringe of the blast—skin burning, vision swimming—and drove a Mana Empowered Strike directly into the Chimera's central throat.
The internal detonation destabilized its mana core.
Velkaria's blade followed instantly.
Decapitation.
The Chimera collapsed.
Jeather sealed it with shaking hands.
Two.
But sealing a Platinum-tier beast drained far more than he anticipated.
His vision darkened at the edges.
The Dreadhorn Colossus broke free fully now, enraged and intact.
Jeather looked at it.
Then at his own trembling hands.
"…Yeah," he whispered. "No."
The Colossus charged again.
This time it connected fully.
Astrael intercepted partially, but the impact still caught Jeather's side and hurled him through debris. Something cracked in his chest.
He couldn't breathe.
Velkaria moved to defend, but the Colossus swatted her aside.
Jeather tried to stand.
His body refused.
And that's when the Mystery Egg inside his storage ring began to pulse violently.
Heat spread across his finger.
Light leaked from the ring's seam.
The Colossus raised one massive foot.
Jeather's eyes locked on it.
"…Not today."
He released the storage containment reflexively.
The Egg burst free into the air between them, cracks spreading across its surface like lightning.
The Colossus's foot descended—
And froze mid-motion.
Not stopped by Astrael.
Not by Velkaria.
By the Egg.
Light erupted outward in a shockwave that shoved the Platinum beast backward several meters. The Egg shattered fully.
From within dropped something heavy and small.
It hit Jeather's chest.
And clung.
Jeather blinked.
A… rock?
No.
The creature clinging to him was roughly the size of a large backpack, shaped vaguely humanoid, carved from smooth gray stone with glowing seams tracing across its limbs. Its head tilted upward, two bright molten-gold eyes blinking curiously.
It made a tiny grinding sound.
Then hugged him tighter.
The Dreadhorn Colossus roared again.
The baby stone creature turned its head lazily toward the beast.
Its body glowed briefly—
And shifted.
The gray stone darkened instantly into cracked magma, lava veins pulsing across its surface. Heat radiated outward in a sudden burst.
It raised one tiny stone fist.
And punched the air.
A cone of molten force blasted outward, striking the Colossus square in the chest and actually staggering it backward.
Jeather stared.
"…You're kidding."
The baby shifted back to neutral stone form immediately and resumed clinging to his chest like a koala.
It made a satisfied little rumble.
The Colossus roared in fury.
Jeather looked at Astrael.
Then Velkaria.
Then the still seven distant Platinum signatures converging.
His ribs screamed.
His mana reserves were near depletion.
He exhaled slowly.
"Retreat," he said firmly.
Velkaria nodded immediately.
Astrael did not argue.
They disengaged.
The baby golem shifted briefly into an ice-blue form as lightning from a distant Platinum strike arced toward them—absorbing part of the impact before returning to gray stone and climbing onto Jeather's shoulder.
It patted his head once.
Jeather winced.
"Don't encourage me."
They retreated through fractured streets, Astrael regrowing roots to obscure pursuit paths. The Dreadhorn Colossus attempted to follow but was slowed by spreading lava cracks left from the golem's earlier strike.
As they reached the forest edge beyond Ardent's outer walls, Jeather risked one glance backward.
The Academy spire collapsed fully.
Half the structure folded inward in a deafening roar of stone and dust.
Jeather's jaw tightened.
"…That's unfortunate."
Then he turned away.
The forest swallowed them quickly.
Deeper.
Farther.
Until the sounds of Platinum destruction faded into distant thunder.
Only when they reached a concealed grove surrounded by Astrael's thickest roots did Jeather finally collapse fully onto his back.
The baby golem rolled onto his stomach and stared down at him with glowing eyes.
Jeather stared back.
"…You hatched at the worst possible time."
The golem tilted its head.
Then shifted into a moss-covered stone variant, cool and faintly glowing green, and gently pressed both tiny stone hands against Jeather's cracked ribs.
Warm, steady energy seeped inward.
Jeather blinked.
"…Oh."
He lay still.
"Okay. I forgive you."
Velkaria stood guard at the grove's entrance while Astrael's roots reinforced the perimeter.
Jeather fumbled for healing potions inside his storage ring and uncorked one with shaking fingers.
He drank.
Coughed.
Drank another.
The golem clung stubbornly to his chest, occasionally shifting between stone variants as if testing itself—lava flicker, ice shimmer, moss pulse—each transformation brief but stable.
Jeather sighed deeply.
"I leave the city for one hour," he muttered, "and it collapses."
The golem made a tiny grinding chuckle.
He blinked at it.
"Don't laugh. I almost died."
It patted his cheek.
Too hard.
"Hey."
It switched to ice form again briefly, cooling the burn marks along his collarbone.
Jeather relaxed despite himself.
"…You're staying," he said finally. "But you don't get to explode dramatically every time."
The golem stared blankly.
Then hugged him again.
Somewhere beyond the forest, Ardent burned.
Somewhere beneath its ruins, deeper forces stirred.
But for now—
Jeather lay in the shade of Astrael's roots, Velkaria standing vigilant, and a baby multi-form golem perched proudly on his chest like it had just conquered the world.
He closed his eyes briefly.
"…Next time," he murmured, "we collect when it's safer."
The golem shifted into lava form briefly in protest.
Jeather groaned.
"…Fine. We'll collect carefully."
The forest breeze rustled leaves overhead.
For the first time since the Platinum beasts descended—
He was alive.
Barely.
And Ardent District… was no longer the same.