In stark and violent contrast to Nox, whose iron will remained utterly unshakeable amidst the chaos, a creeping, insidious doubt had begun to erode the minds of his companions. They watched, frozen in a cocktail of awe and absolute terror, as the raven displayed a suicidal determination and a terrifying perseverance. Time and time again, the creature returned, tireless and relentless, intent on slaughtering them all.

"Is it... is it truly possible for us to vanquish such a thing?" asked a guardian. His voice was broken, a fragile whisper that barely carried over the wind. His eyes were empty, void of any lingering emotion, staring blankly ahead as if his very soul had already deserted the battlefield, leaving behind only a hollow shell.

"Without a shadow of a doubt," Nox replied instantly.

His voice was firm, resonating with a commanding authority, but deep down, he knew it was a necessary lie. A fabrication required to keep them standing. He stood ready, his sharp gaze scanning the shifting shadows, waiting with bated breath for the beast's next move. He knew it would not be long.

And indeed, it did not wait.

Once again, the heavens above were swallowed by an encroaching darkness, a leaden shroud that descended to suffocate every last ray of remaining light. The forest, acting like a sentient and malevolent entity, seemed to stretch and expand, its dark maw vomiting forth a fresh, grotesque wave of monsters. Nox and his teammates, their nerves frayed to the breaking point, engaged yet again in a grueling battle of attrition.

Only a few pitiful hours of respite separated each of the raven's resurrections. It was just enough time to catch their breath, to force air into their burning lungs, but nowhere near enough to banish the paralyzing fear that gripped their hearts. Without these meager pauses, however, some of them would have already collapsed, dead from sheer physical and mental exhaustion.

Nox, for his part, was absolutely certain of one thing: the key to this twisted riddle lay hidden somewhere deep within the heart of the dark forest. Logic dictated that they should use these brief intermissions to push forward, to plunge deeper into the woods. Yet, a single glance at the lamentable state of his troops was enough to dissuade him from such a reckless course of action. To impose a forced march upon them now, in their current condition, would be to break them completely. Worse still, entering that unknown, hostile forest with wounded soldiers would be tantamount to marching them directly into a slaughterhouse.

The thought of leaving them there, of abandoning the group to venture into the darkness alone, had crossed his mind more than once. It whispered to him, a seductive promise of efficiency. But he could not bring himself to resolve to it. Without him, they would die. It was a certainty. And somewhere, deep in the recesses of his consciousness, his instinct screamed at him that separating was precisely the mistake the raven was waiting for them to make.

"We must stay grouped together," he told himself. "It is the only way we are getting out of this alive."

However, buried deep within him, there was a harsh truth he refused to admit to himself. He knew, with cold clarity, that the A-rank guardians had become a burden.

They were dead weight, hindering the mission. If he had been alone, or perhaps surrounded only by S-rank elites, he could have fought without restraint. He could have unleashed the full, devastating extent of his power without worrying about collateral damage or protecting the weak. But to save them all, he was forced to leash his own strength, to fight with one hand tied behind his back.

For the umpteenth time, the raven had just fallen. Nox waited for its inevitable resurrection, his expression stoic and unreadable. He had stopped counting after the twentieth time. Thanks to his supreme skill and battlefield awareness, not a single guardian had died yet.

But this frantic hyperactivity came at a steep price. They had completely lost all sense of time. Hours bled into days, or perhaps only minutes felt like eternities. And Nox realized with a rising bitterness that his strategy was a dead end. Staying on the defensive, passively waiting for the assault... it was nothing more than a slow, agonizing death.

"We do not wait for a flaw in the opponent's guard," he murmured to himself, the words barely audible. "We create one by pushing them to their limit."

That was exactly what the raven was doing to them. To reverse the momentum, they needed to become the aggressors. But Nox refused to sacrifice anyone. As a leader, the weight of their lives crushed him. He desperately sought an alternative, but the truth was inescapable.

As he struggled with this internal conflict, Johan approached him.

"Nox, that's enough. You have done enough. We will never win by just standing here, planted like trees, waiting for it to come to us."

Nox looked at him, genuinely surprised by the coldness and sharpness of his tone.

"I know, but..." he began, casting a worried, fleeting glance toward the A-rank guardians, who were trembling violently from fatigue.

"They saw you tearing yourself apart to protect them," Johan cut in sharply. "They are guardians. They knew that death was part of the contract when they signed up to come here. We all knew the risks involved."

Nox's gaze became indecipherable, a swirling pool of conflicting emotions.

"Don't say that, Johan," he murmured, his voice dull and heavy. "I cannot resolve myself to sacrifice them. I promised to get you all out of here, and I intend to keep my word."

Johan placed a heavy, grounding hand on his leader's shoulder.

"You have already done more than anyone else could have. But it is time to be rational. If this continues, we are all going to die without even having had the chance to fight at our full potential."

It was true. Not a single S-rank guardian had used their ultimate skill yet, all of them bridled by Nox's excessive caution and protective nature.

"Normally, you people from Kyralia, you are supposed to be barbarians, aren't you?" Johan threw out with a half-smile that didn't quite reach his eyes. "Right now, you look more like a gallant knight in shining armor than a bloodthirsty warrior fond of combat."

Nox raised a skeptical eyebrow, clearly disconcerted by the remark.

Johan then turned towards the other S-ranks, his voice booming and authoritative:

"Everyone, fight at full power! Unleash your most devastating skills whenever you see fit. I will try to protect the A-ranks and cover your backs. My abilities are more suited to this defensive role anyway."

"Thank you," Nox breathed out, a wave of relief washing over him.

"Huh?" gasped Jack, a guardian from Erian, staring at Johan with utter incredulity.

He knew the character well. Johan was a genius, certainly, but he was infamous for his absolute egocentrism. He was the type of guy who only thought about his own skin. Hearing him volunteer to protect the weak was unthinkable, almost alien.

"Nox has had a hell of an influence on him," Jack thought, stunned. "The Johan I know has never been this... charitable."

...

Seeing Nox so determined to finally switch to the offensive, a renewed sense of hope—fragile, flickering, but undeniably real—rippled through the ranks of the guardians.

"We are going to beat him," Nox repeated, his voice clear, powerful, and resonating with newfound conviction. "Together, we are going to crush him. Let the healer mages stay in support at the rear. Johan, you are our shield. As for the others... to the front with me! We are going to carve a bloody path straight to the heart of this cursed forest!"

Moving as one man, a single unified force, they began their march toward the darkness.

far off in the distance, the humanoid raven, already resurrected, watched them. It smiled, its beak parting to reveal a cruel, mocking rictus.

"You are all so predictable," it croaked, its voice low and raspy, vibrating through the air like a discordant cello. "Do you truly think you can defeat me? I am the master of this domain. I am going to annihilate you."

It raised a hand. The forest trembled in response. The trees twisted and groaned, their branches morphing into sharp claws ready to shred flesh, while a massive swarm of wyverns and giant crows tore themselves from the shadows to blot out the sky.

"The combat continues!" the raven howled, fixing Nox with a look of pure hatred. "And this time, it is the end. Before you die, you will understand what it means to face a true master!"

Scarcely had the hostilities commenced when Nox and his squad charged headfirst, diving recklessly into the tide of monsters.

But suddenly, in the mere blink of an eye, everything stopped.

The swarm of monsters, the raven, the debris suspended in the air... everything froze. The entire scene seemed captured in amber. Time itself had ceased to flow.

Then, a voice resonated. It was a voice charged with a murderous intention so dense, so heavy, that it became palpable, vibrating through the very bones of the guardians.

"Boring... So boring."

Upon hearing these words, the raven, though physically incapable of moving, seemed to decompose from sheer terror.

"Forgive me... My Lord... I was preparing to finish the work..." the creature stammered, panic shattering its voice.

But an invisible force seized its head. It began to turn on itself, slowly, inexorably. The raven tried to resist, straining every muscle, but it was in vain. A sinister crack, dry and loud like dead wood snapping, rang out through the silence. Its body went stiff, but it did not fall. It remained there, a corpse suspended in the void, defying gravity.

"You have done enough, crow," the voice cut in with a diabolical intonation.

...

The shockwave of this murderous aura hit Nox's teammates with full force. The guardians of ranks lower than A, their eyes rolling back into their heads, collapsed instantly. Their minds had been shattered by the simple pressure of this overwhelming presence.

The others remained standing by a miracle, their legs trembling uncontrollably, cold sweat streaming down their backs. Faced with such a demonstration of raw power, a terrible certainty invaded them: the humanoid raven had been nothing more than an appetizer.

Suddenly, the invisible grip released. The survivors, finally freed, sucked in the air greedily, looking around them, confused and terrified.

On the horizon, a silhouette appeared.

It was riding a strange creature and advanced with a deliberate slowness, a pace that felt almost royal. The silhouette was tall, thin, and its body, absolute pitch black, seemed to absorb the surrounding light, creating a gaping hole in the landscape. From a distance, it was impossible to give an exact description.

"Who is that?" murmured Johan, incapable of tearing his gaze away from the new arrival.

Nox clenched his fists until his palms bled, the pain grounding him. But in his eyes, there was a certain glint. It was the light of those who were ready to accept a challenge, no matter the odds.

"I don't know," he replied in a raspy voice. "But I think that is the one who was holding the raven's leash."

The silhouette stopped near the corpse of the raven, which was still suspended in the air.

Up close, they could now see it properly. Its body resembled a slender humanoid silhouette, covered in black, fibrous muscles. Where its head should have been, there were only three bony mandibles, opened wide like a carnivorous flower, capable of absorbing liters of blood in mere seconds.

Its limbs were long, articulated in an inhuman fashion, capable of dislocating and reassembling to reach impossible angles. Its skin looked almost indestructible, similar to reinforced organic leather.

After approaching the body of the raven, its mandibles opened wide. Then, it began to devour the humanoid raven slowly, savoring it like high-class food, paying absolutely no interest to Nox and his teammates, who watched the spectacle with bewildered expressions.

...

Here we are at the end of this chapter.

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