The Monunt of the Dark’s eyes sharpened with such predatory hunger that goosebumps crawled down Martin’s spine.
She had found the source of those overwhelming emotions, and now she wanted all of them dead.
For an instant, the valley seed to shrink beneath her stare. Black rain poured over her shadowed face and ran down her cheeks like ink, while her violet eyes remained fixed on the ridge. Her extra arms twitched at her sides, restless and wrong, and the hooked appendages behind her shuddered with the sa ugly tension. The expression twisting her face no longer belonged to a simple monster choosing a target. It belonged to sothing ancient rembering how to hate.
Then she leaned forward, folding with a corpse-like stiffness, as if rage had taken hold of bones that had forgotten the shape of life. Beneath her, the lake rippled once before breaking apart under the force of her launch.
Dark water exploded outward. Jagged waves slamd into the shore and crawled up the rocks like black hands, while the Ant Queen tore through the rain with four arms spread wide, claws open, and trails of corrupted water streaming from her tangled hair, chitin plates, and hooked appendages.
Even players who had survived the guild war, the flood, and the collapse of Cascade Valley took half a step back.
Martin understood the reaction imdiately. If the Ant Queen reached the ridge, the formation would collapse. This fight offered no clean duel, no simple boss pattern, and no safe distance where players could trade damage while trusting numbers to save them. A human-shaped curse was climbing toward them, and size had nothing to do with the terror she carried.
That made it worse. The Ant Queen was not a mountain-sized calamity or a towering raid beast. She was still the sa humanoid horror that had risen from the lake, only now her aura made the entire valley feel smaller around her.
Between the Monunt and the ridge, the waterfall roared like a wall of white force. The current hamred her shoulders, head, chest, and the jagged edges of her corrupted body with enough pressure to flatten a player against the stone.
The Monunt barely slowed.
Water broke around her as if striking a cliff. Black spray scattered in every direction, and the cleaner streams seed to recoil the mont they touched her skin. Four hands reached forward at once, claws sinking into soaked earth, stone, and roots with a wet crunch, and the climb began.
The sound turned Martin’s stomach cold.
Stone cracked under her grip. Mud tore loose. Roots snapped and whipped through the rain as her claws carved into the cliff face. Each pull dragged deep scars through the soaked wall, sending chunks of soil tumbling into the darkness below. Beneath the torn earth, black veins pulsed like infected blood vessels, leaking corrupted water wherever her hands touched.
The whole cliff groaned under her ascent. Falling water shrieked against her body, spilled around her limbs, and crashed down behind her in broken sheets, yet the Ant Queen hauled herself higher with terrifying purpose. Cascade Valley itself seed like a curtain she intended to tear open.
A ranger near the edge forgot to raise his bow, while a mage’s spell circle trembled in the air before fizzling out.
One of Night Espresso’s players whispered, "Holy shit... I thought I was playing a fantasy ga, not a horror ga."
Agreeing with soone had never been easier.
Kuro A held his ground. His jaw tightened as his eyes tracked the Monunt’s claws, the breaking cliff, and the wet paths her body forced through the falling water. Fear showed in the slight tension around his mouth and in the hand curling at his side, but it never reached his voice.
He raised one arm and snapped his gaze across the ridge. "Put your traps down on her path! We’ll blow them open along with the surface she’s climbing!"
The command cut through the panic. Players with traps moved at once, so stumbling on the slick stone before regaining their footing. Along the waterfall’s edge, magic circles sank into the soaked ground one after another, each glowing with a different elental color before the rain swallowed their light. Frost circles spread thin sheets of ice across the stone. Green circles released thorny roots that curled beneath the mud. Red circles flickered with buried fire, while pale-blue circles humd with compressed wind, waiting to burst upward the mont the Ant Queen touched them.
Their traps were far more varied than Kill Clause’s.
Martin watched each one vanish into the cliff and mud while his mind asured distances, angles, and timing. The Monunt was terrifying, but the climb created a path. A path ford a line, and a line could beco an opening, even if that opening lasted only a single breath.
When Kuro A turned to him, rain stread down the side of his face, but he left it there. Cold precision had replaced the first flash of fear in his eyes. Around them, the battlefield was collapsing into horror, yet Kuro A had already found the chanic hidden inside it.
"Brother EMP," Kuro A said. "You noticed the loophole already, didn’t you?"
Martin tightened his grip around the Crystal Spear. The weapon felt heavier than before, as if the Monunt’s approach had woken sothing inside it. Pale light moved beneath its surface in short, uneven pulses as his gaze shifted from the spear to the Ant Queen, then to the quest ssage still burning at the back of his mind.
"The word ’pierce’ in the quest description," Martin said.
Kuro A nodded once, and his shoulders eased by a fraction, as though the shared answer confird the only route he had seen. "Yes. We do not need to kill her through damage alone. We need to pierce her."
Below them, the Monunt tore another wound through the falling current. A dark wave crashed against the ridge, hard enough to make several players brace, but Kuro A kept his attention on Martin.
"With that speed and strength, we need every advantage we can get before that becos possible." His eyes shifted briefly toward Ao Tenshin. "But we have you and Ao Tenshin."
Martin nodded again, slower this ti. Suspicion had already led him to the sa answer, but the Monunt’s speed and strength had nearly buried that detail beneath raw survival instinct. Kuro A’s question pulled it back into focus. Winning a damage race was impossible. One clean opening was all they needed.
That was not comfort, exactly. It was a narrow bridge over a pit, but a narrow bridge was still better than no bridge at all.
Martin rolled his shoulders once and forced his breathing steady. Beneath him, Ao Tenshin’s shell trembled faintly as the Monunt climbed closer. Angel was brave, but danger still reached her. Her claws pressed into the wet stone, and the little horns on her head flickered with soft blue light.
When Martin lowered one hand to her shell, she looked up.
Her adorable round eyes reflected the black waterfall and the monster dragging herself toward the ridge. Ao Tenshin was already the size of a small house beneath Martin’s boots, far larger than the humanoid Ant Queen, yet the darkness surrounding Cascade Valley made her look young, frightened, and painfully aware of the thing climbing toward her.
Then her cheeks puffed.
Fear remained in her eyes, but stubbornness rose over it. Her claws dug deeper into the stone, her shell steadied beneath Martin’s boots, and the blue light around her tiny horns stopped flickering. It stayed weak, yet clear, like a small fla refusing to go out in the rain. She lowered her body in preparation and released a low rumble that vibrated up through Martin’s legs.
Martin’s lips curved despite the pressure crushing down on them.
That was his Angel. Larger than the humanoid Ant Queen, adorable enough to make players forget she was dangerous, and brave enough to stare down the Monunt’s madness without backing away.
Martin crouched slightly, bringing his voice closer to her. "You want to drop on her, Angel?"
For a breath, Ao Tenshin’s eyes stayed wide. Then focus narrowed them, sharpening the round softness into sothing fierce.
She nodded.
This was not the playful nod she used when asking for praise, food, or attention. This one carried weight. Martin was asking her to move toward the thing everyone else wanted to survive. The black water hated her existence, and even if Ao Tenshin could not grasp every detail, she knew Martin had placed the path in her claws.
So she accepted it.
Martin smiled, unable to help himself. He loved how bold she was.
"Let’s do it."
The words settled between them as Ao Tenshin lowered herself another inch, ready to spring.
The Crystal Spear brightened in Martin’s hand, its pale light reflecting across the rain and the wet edge of the ridge.
Below them, the Monunt climbed higher, tearing through water, stone, and earth with the sa mindless hunger burning in her violet eyes.
Kuro A raised his hand again, waiting for the traps to arm, and Night Espresso held its breath.
Martin straightened on Ao Tenshin’s shell, nodded once, and stared ahead.
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