Before the mouth of the cave, a young man stood motionless, as if he were part of the thickening gloom around him. He looked no more than his early twenties, yet his gentle features carried the enigma of unopened, ancient pages. Pale skin caught the diffuse twilight.
Silky black hair, slightly disheveled, fell to neck-length and, parted in the middle, framed a face of unexpected serenity. His eyes—large, a translucent amber—watched the cave's entrance with frank expectation.
The left half of his face hid beneath a thin white-porcelain mask; red filaments snaked across it, forming arabesques that resembled bare winter branches. At eye level, a narrow slit revealed the amber iris, which shimmered like quicksilver whenever he moved.
He wore a long anthracite-wool coat whose sleeves, a shade too long, swallowed his hands almost to the fingers. Beneath the high collar lay only the simplicity of a white linen shirt, fastened by a discreet leather cord.
He stood about one meter seventy-eight, slender, narrow-shouldered—tall enough to cast an elongated silhouette against the dusk without seeming intimidating.
At his waist, a narrow belt held a small, dark-covered book—unadorned. The volume was scarcely twelve centimeters tall yet seemed to bear disproportionate weight, as though each page held more than mere ink. Its polished black-leather spine displayed faint red stitching.
Beneath the leather one could discern a slight uneven bulge, hinting that some pages had been reinforced with thin strips of parchment to keep them from coming loose.
Footsteps echoed from the cave's depths, accompanied by a fetid breath of rotting flesh. With each reverberation, the darkness seemed to take shape, oozing like living ink toward the threshold.
The masked youth showed no repulsion; instead, his shoulders relaxed with almost childlike delight, and a faint smile threatened to escape his lips.
Then the creature emerged, silhouetted against the orange sunset. It rose nearly four meters tall, forged entirely of solidified shadow. Its oddly elongated torso resembled the cracked carapace of a gigantic scarab, opening in fissures that leaked blackened mist.
Two pairs of arms jutted from its shoulders: the upper, muscular set ended in keel-black claws with five blades; the lower, thinner pair wielded bony appendages like obsidian scythes. On its back, membranous wings beat in a slow rhythm—not to fly, but to waft its own stench like incense.
The head evoked a warped deer skull: twisted antlers snaked backward, etched with runes that burned like red-hot metal. Where eyes should be, empty sockets glowed a vitreous red, pulsing to the beat of a heart that should not exist.
The cranial fissure yawned open, revealing serrated teeth arranged in concentric rings like the blades of a living saw. Each tooth, dark gray at the base and translucent at the tip, vibrated faintly, emitting a high whine, as though the monster chewed the very air. Red veins throbbed along the gums, and deep in its throat twisted a second set of inner jaws—slender, articulated—ready to project outward like a spear-eel's tongue. When the creature inhaled, black vapors slithered between the teeth, dripping acidic droplets that seared the ground, leaving circles of scorched earth wherever they fell.
Every step sank the soil, leaving steaming footprints that corrupted the surrounding grass. From its belly hung a short chain attached to an iron ring embedded in flesh; with each movement the links grated, producing a metallic chorus like a funeral chant.
The creature halted a few meters from the youth. The stench had grown so thick the air seemed to curdle, yet the amber eyes behind the mask glittered with anticipation—as if the abomination were less a threat and more a gift.
The demon held the young man's gaze for several seconds. Unlike previous prey, this human displayed not the faintest spark of fear. The monster cast its aura to probe the youth's power, but sensed nothing; something—perhaps a blocking relic—barred any reading.
That detail excited it: if the target needed to hide his strength, he must be far mightier than the rest—and therefore all the more delectable.
Not once did it occur to the abyssal creature that the man before it might actually surpass it. That arrogance was about to prove ruinous.
The moment his gaze settled on the monster, the masked man traced a sigil in the air. It rose from the ground, soaring hundreds of meters high. A pillar of blue light erupted skyward, tearing the clouds apart and dyeing the night in liquid sapphire.
From the dimensional rift carved by the flare, four talons appeared—each thicker than the trunk of an ancient oak. They punched into reality with the crack of stone and steel, widening the fissure for the rest of the titan to emerge.
Firelight flickered across its scaly hide, casting an almost ethereal sheen that clashed with the surrounding chaos. The reptilian body moved with primordial majesty; every step made the earth groan, as though the land itself acknowledged a long-forgotten master.
Four enormous arms stretched from its torso, projecting colossal shadows over the ravaged ground. Atop the upright dragon head burned four blazing eyes—four captive stars embedded in flesh. The air around those pupils rippled, warping the world like a liquid mirror and making everything else seem less real by comparison.
When the creature finally cleared the rift, the blue flare contracted, yet the radiance of its eyes endured, flooding the clearing like beacons from another cosmos. The youth's mask mirrored those ferocious suns—and the abyssal beast before him was afraid.
Was the jump in difficulty not far too steep?
Few humans in the cave had managed, at best, to summon Gold-rank creatures.
Yet that boy… had called forth an Immortal.
Something was terribly wrong.
"If you are so powerful," the demon roared, baffled, "why did you let the other humans die? You not only allowed me to cross into this plane, you fed me sacrifices until my strength returned to its peak. Was it merely to humiliate me? You don't even know me; it cannot be personal… can it?"
The masked man regarded the demon with perfect calm before replying:
"You are like a fatted pig. I have fattened you enough; now it is time for the slaughter."
Only then did the creature understand: the man wanted its crystal. Everything had been orchestrated so it would reach the ideal state—only to be harvested by the masked hunter.
A searing rage filled its chest.
"I will not be butchered like cattle!" it bellowed, spewing a cloud of putrid gas toward the youth in a lethal, fetid jet.
The man remained unruffled, answering with a subtle gesture of his right hand.
The summoned monster took the signal as an order to attack; in the blink of an eye it opened its jaws and unleashed a sphere of titanic energy. Space twisted as the projectile tore through the air, draining the dying light, devouring color and heat into a whirling core that gleamed like molten sapphire wrapped in storm clouds.
When it struck the mountain's flank, there was no single blast; the sphere sank into the rock, compressing it as though the entire peak were wet clay. A corona of cobalt fire blossomed, tracing glowing glyphs across the cliff face before the granite liquefied.
For a heartbeat the mountain glowed from within—blue lava veins rending the stone body—then its spine snapped with a cataclysmic crack.
The summit rose weightless, shattering into aerial slabs that caught the sunset as they rained down like burning mirrors. Forests on the lower slopes ignited in living ribbons; trees burst from within as the shockwave outraced the flames. Every boulder, every grain of sand within half a kilometer was drawn into the collapsing vortex, streaking across the sky like mournful comets.
Then, with a sound deeper than any thunder—a seaborne thud that rattled lungs and souls—the sphere imploded. The void it left behind surged outward like a dome of incandescent air, flattening the remaining ridgelines and hurling molten fragments of the mountain so high they glittered against the first stars before falling back as black rain.
Where the peak had once stood, only a crucible of glassy slag remained, glowing so hot it made the horizon ripple. At the center of that incandescent crater, the masked youth and his reptilian colossus cast long, unbroken shadows—utterly unharmed, as though the devastation were no more than a dramatic curtain fall.
Had the demon been a single rank weaker, even its crystal would have been annihilated by that colossal strike.
The man descended the crater's vitrified slope, heat shimmering around him. There, among incandescent shards, lay the prize: the transcendent crystal.
It was an irregular polyhedron the size of a clenched fist, its faces multiplying like shattered mirrors. Inside, whirlpools of purple and turquoise light swirled slowly, reminiscent of miniature galaxies.
Amber-colored veins crossed the core, pulsing in a steady rhythm—each beat echoing like a second heart in anyone who drew near.
Across the surface, microscopic runes flowed beneath the living glass, appearing and vanishing like letters written on water. When the masked man lifted it, the crystal weighed more than its size suggested, as if it possessed its own gravity.
He rolled the artifact between gloved fingers; the inner light followed the motion, casting neon strokes across the anthracite coat.
For an instant, the amber eyes behind the mask reflected the cosmic dance within, and the youth smiled, satisfied.
Simon was radiant—who wouldn't be? He saw his plans aligning in glorious sequence.
In Sunis, he had stolen the egg of an Immortal creature and from it extracted the crystal that let his summon ascend to the same rank.
Later he learned the city had been razed by the mother searching for her offspring. He felt no remorse.
He needed power; only at the world's summit could he fully control his own life. If a greater force crossed his path, it would end like the victims of that city.
So he urgently sought any means to keep the reins of his destiny.
And now came the crowning jewel: thanks to the fools of the Demon-God Cult, he had obtained yet another transcendent crystal.
He had already planned to eliminate every witness, but the demon itself had spared him the effort, exterminating them all.
By wiping away the traces, he ensured no event could be linked to him.
At the air dock, someone had probably watched his little spectacle and alerted the city's Guardians.
Not that he couldn't face them; the problem was that doing so would summon ever-stronger opponents. The last thing he wanted was to draw the attention of a Grandmaster—or worse, an Emperor. That would ruin all his efforts.
Gliding through the early-evening haze, Simon discerned the dark mosaic of treetops beneath his feet when a figure burst from the woods. It was a wiry young man, hurrying toward the forest's edge, stumbling over exposed roots.
"Interesting…" Simon murmured, hovering a few meters above. "Someone survived the cultists."
He couldn't be a true expert; if he were, the transcendent crystal wouldn't have changed hands so easily. Moreover, anyone with real power wouldn't flee with such desperate urgency.
Simon also had to gauge how much the boy knew; if he knew too much, loose ends couldn't be left.
Intrigued, he headed toward Marcelo.