Chapter 8: The Blind Titan
The silence that followed Quinn's rapid-fire display of archery was thick, broken only by the fading hum of the bowstring. The young soldier, who had been busy tinkering with the spirit stone sockets in the secondary tent, stood in the archway, his jaw slack and his eyes wide. He looked at the cluster of arrows buried deep in the support beam, then back at Quinn—a ragged, mud-stained private who, by all rights, should have been shivering in a corner.
"Wow..." the soldier breathed, stepping into the room and wiping a smear of grease from his forehead. "I never expected you to be that good with a bow. Especially at your age. You handle that military-grade draw like you've been doing it since you were in swaddles."
Quinn lowered the bow, his expression shifting from the cold, lethal focus of a hunter back to the unassuming mask of a tired survivor. He reached up and scratched the back of his head, offering a small, sheepish shrug.
"You praise me too much, brother," Quinn replied, his voice humble. "I'm not that good. It's just... the adrenaline, I suppose. A man learns to aim quickly when his life is the target."
The soldier opened his mouth to respond, likely to ask where a common evacuation recruit learned such a high-level grouping technique, but the words died in his throat.
DOOM. DOOM.
The sound wasn't a noise; it was a physical force. It vibrated through the stone floor, rattling Quinn's teeth and sending a shower of dust falling from the ceiling. Outside, the rhythmic drumming of the rain was suddenly drowned out by the sound of the earth itself being crushed.
"What the—!"
The soldier screamed as a secondary tremor hit, more violent than the first. The ground inside the camp cracked, a jagged fissure snaking across the floor of the bunker. The soldier lost his footing, tumbling backward and crashing into one of the supply tents, bringing the canvas down on top of himself in a tangle of ropes and fabric.
Quinn, however, didn't fall. He dropped into a low crouch, his hand instinctively gripping the riser of his bow. His eyes flew to the ceiling. The blue light of the [Invisibility Magic Runes] didn't just flicker this time; they let out a sharp, crystalline crack. A spiderweb of dark fractures appeared across the glowing script at the apex of the dome, signifying that the barrier's structural integrity was reaching a breaking point.
A loud, haunting echo a sound like a mountain being dragged over gravel passed through the camp. Curiosity, that ancient, dangerous instinct of the powerful, surged within Quinn. He needed to know what could cause such a disturbance in this era. He moved to the lookout slit, his movements blurred and silent.
Quinn peered through the narrow opening into the storm-wracked courtyard of the barracks. His breath hitched.
Standing in the center of the camp was a creature that defied the natural order. It stood nearly twenty feet tall, its flesh the color of bruised slate and textured like weathered stone. It had no face in the traditional sense where eyes and a nose should have been, there was only a smooth, unbroken expanse of pale, scarred skin that stretched down to a lipless, circular maw filled with rows of needle-like teeth.
It was an Eyeless Giant.
Quinn watched as the behemoth reached down with a hand the size of a dinner table and plucked a Void-Stalker—the same species that had terrorized them earlier out of the air as if it were a common housefly. With a sickening, wet crunch, the Giant squeezed. The shadow-beast exploded in a spray of black ichor, and the Giant tossed the carcass aside like trash.
"I don't even remember the first time I encountered one of these, Quinn thought, a cold shiver tracing his spine. I've spent centuries trying to forget the memories of the giants. They were the siege engines of the Demon King's vanguard."
His mind raced, analyzing the timeline. Wait. Year 681... an Eyeless Giant shouldn't be this far into human territory for another three years. Did something change? Is my reincarnation already warping the fabric of the previous timeline? If my presence is drawing these monsters earlier than before, things are changing for the absolute worst.
The soldier scrambled out from under the collapsed tent, his face pale and his hands fumbling for his fallen spirit stones. He crawled toward the lookout slit, looking up just as the Giant let out a low, vibrating hum that shook the very air in their lungs.
"What the hell is that?" the soldier hissed, his voice trembling with a primal terror. "It's not just a giant... it doesn't have any eyes! How can it move like that?"
"That monster is a high-level threat," Quinn whispered, his voice deathly serious. "It's at the [Grandmaster Stage]. We call it the Eyeless Giant. It doesn't need eyes to see you."
"Grandmaster?" The soldier's eyes went wide. "Oh no... we're dead. It's going to find us. It's going to step on this bunker like an eggshell!"
The soldier began to wail, but Quinn's hand shot out with the speed of a striking cobra, clamping firmly over the man's mouth.
"Shut. Up." Quinn's eyes were like chips of ice. "Although he is blind, his hearing is amplified five-fold. If you breathe too loud, he'll hear your heart beating against your ribs."
The Giant stopped. Its massive, featureless head tilted slowly to the side, turning toward the exact spot where Quinn and the soldier stood behind the stone wall. They were face-to-face with a mountain of death, separated only by a few feet of rock and a failing magical veil. If the invisibility runes hadn't been active, the Giant would have already detected the heat of their bodies.
The creature lingered, its lipless mouth twitching as if tasting the air. Then, after an eternity of silence, it turned its massive torso and began to lumber toward the north, its footsteps receding into the rain. It hadn't sensed them. Or, perhaps, it simply didn't find them worth the effort.
Quinn slowly released his grip on the soldier's mouth. The man collapsed into a heap, gasping for air.
"If you had continued shouting," Quinn said, his voice a low growl, "he would have turned this shelter into a coffin. Luckily, he wasn't hunting us. He was likely drawn by the slaughter at the burial mounds and is moving on to find bigger prey."
"But look..." The soldier pointed a trembling finger at the ceiling.
The impact of the Giant's footsteps and the sheer pressure of its Grandmaster-level aura had done more damage than a direct attack. The cracks in the [Invisibility Magic Runes] had widened significantly.
CRACK. CRACK. CRACK.
With a sound like breaking glass, half of the blue runes on the northern wall of the bunker went dark all at once. Pieces of the magical enchantment seemed to flake off into the air, dissolving into useless sparks. The protective dome that had hidden them was now full of gaping holes.
"It's falling apart," the soldier whispered, his hope finally shattering along with the magic.
Quinn didn't respond. He didn't need to. He looked through the lookout slit again, but he wasn't looking at the receding Giant. He was looking at the perimeter of the camp, where the blue shimmer of the veil had vanished.
Standing just outside the now-exposed section of the barracks was a creature with matted fur and a single, jagged horn protruding from its forehead. A One-Horned Shadow Wolf. It was staring directly at the bunker, its nostrils flaring as it caught the unmistakable scent of living, terrified humans.
The wolf let out a low, guttural howl, a signal to the rest of its pack.
Quinn's grip tightened on the military bow. The 72-hour window he had calculated had just been slashed to mere minutes.
"The invisibility is gone," Quinn said, reaching into his quiver and pulling out three arrows at once. "Our whereabouts have been spotted. Get your spear, soldier. The harvest is starting early."
Outside, more eyes began to glow in the dark yellow, red, and violet. The monsters that had been scavengers were now predators, and the bunker was no longer a sanctuary.