The fire crackled.
No one replied.
Then, finally, a voice broke through.
Low. Bitter.
"…Because Aurion wanted it that way."
Samuel didn't say a word. He just stared into the fire, eyes reflecting its flickering light, as if trying to divine some hidden truth in the flames.
Something about this Aurion felt off. Wrong.
Like a missing step on a staircase—nothing you'd notice until you were already falling. And yet, that wasn't even the worst part.
Why the hell had he spawned in a place where Rank Two beasts roamed like stray dogs? He was fed up.
He wasn't some chosen hero. Just a guy from Earth—well, not exactly your average guy. After all, he had just thrown a girl into a beast's maw.
But still.
With a long sigh, he lifted the crude wooden bowl to his lips, the soup inside lukewarm and barely spiced. It tasted like boiled regret.
He sipped again.
"At least that thing came yesterday and not toni—"
THOOOOOOM.
Samuel froze mid-sip, the bowl tilting precariously.
TRRRRRRRMPHHHH.
The sound was distant. But not distant enough. It echoed low and deep, like something vast was shifting beneath the earth. The soup in his bowl rippled. A single drop sloshed over the rim and hit the dirt like a punctuation mark.
Slowly, carefully, he looked up.
"…Oh no."
TRUUUMMMMPPHHHHH.
It wasn't thunder. It was footsteps.
Somewhere in the forest, trees began to fall. Not sway. Not groan.
Fall.
Like toy soldiers knocked over by a careless child.
The crashing came in intervals—slow, steady, relentless. Like a dying heartbeat. Or war drums played by the bones of the dead.
Smoke curled from the camp's torches. The fire hissed. The night itself seemed to lean away.
And then he saw it.
First, the tusks—massive, cracked things encrusted with moss and rot, curling upward like monuments to some forgotten god of decay.
Then, the bulk—a mountain of ruined meat and ancient bone, slathered in hide that looked more like cratered earth than flesh. Its legs were like pillars driven into the ground. Its breath came in heavy wheezes that carried the stench of wet tombs.
It looked like an elephant.
At least, that's what Samuel's Earth-bred brain tried to label it. But no.
That was too gentle. Too familiar. This was older. Meaner.
"Ravok," someone behind him breathed. "Rank 2…"
As if saying it aloud might shrink it.
Samuel didn't move. Didn't breathe. Just stared at the grotesque colossus flattening the woods like it had a grudge against arboreal life. His eyes dropped to his bowl.
Then back up to the creature.
"…Figures."
But fate, ever the sadist, wasn't finished.
Not even close.
Because just as Ravok let out a guttural bellow that rattled the stones and made every bowstring in the camp tremble—
SKREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!
A scream ripped the sky open like someone had torn through reality with a claw.
Samuel flinched, hand flying to his ear. It didn't help. The sound wasn't just loud. It was surgical. It carved its way inside your skull and rearranged your thoughts into "run."
The air cracked again.
SKREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!
Lightning slashed through the clouds like divine retribution. And through the tears in the heavens came the thunderbird—alive with yellow fire, wings wide as despair. Its talons stretched, glinting like guillotine blades. And its cry… wasn't just noise.
It was command.
Samuel's breath caught. His bones itched. The storm had come home.
He watched, dazed, as the great beast circled lower—flames coiling around its feathers like serpents. It was the same one from yesterday. Rank 2. Apparently, yesterday hadn't satisfied its bloodlust. Now it had brought a friend.
The camp, once sluggish and silent, erupted into chaos.
Tents toppled. Flames jumped from canvas to canvas. Disciples screamed—some in battle cries, most in panic. A few fought. Most ran. One tripped over a chicken and got trampled by a terrified black robe.
Samuel might have laughed, if he weren't already convinced he was going to die horribly in the next three minutes.
And that's when he saw him.
The white-robed bastard. The one who'd whipped him like a mule last time for "discipline."
The man stood at the center of it all, pristine even in chaos. His hands were already red. Not from beasts.
From people.
A black robe had made a break for the trees—just a boy, legs pumping, eyes full of tears.
The white robe raised his hand. Flash of gold.
SHKTHUNK.
The boy fell face-first, a golden spike lodged between his shoulder blades.
The white robe turned, voice booming.
"No one runs! Stand and fight!"
He sounded brave. Until you looked closer.
He was trembling.
Samuel noticed. Noted it. Stored it for later.
And then the golden boy arrived.
Aurion.
Golden robe. Golden eyes. Golden hair that somehow avoided dirt, blood, and ash. He stepped from his shattered pavilion like an annoyed deity roused from a nap.
The thunderbird noticed him.
It shrieked. Dove.
Aurion lifted off the ground in a streak of light, divine energy cascading from him like a sun made flesh.
They met mid-air.
BOOOOOOM.
The sky buckled.
Shockwaves lashed the camp. Fire whirled backwards. Wind screamed through the trees.
Lightning followed.
And beneath it all, Ravok stomped forward like inevitability.
White robes hurled themselves at it—swords drawn, spells blazing.
The mammoth barely noticed.
One tusk swept through them like wheat. One stomp cracked the earth. Bodies broke. Screams cut short.
And the black robes?
Most scattered.
One boy stood. Trembling, dagger raised. His pants were soaked.
Probably not with rain.
A black robe bolted past him into the trees. Smarter than all of them combined.
Samuel stood amid it all. Still. Unmoving.
His bowl lay shattered at his feet. The soup was gone. Spilled and steaming in the mud like an offering. He watched a tent burn.
Watched a white robe become paste beneath Ravok's foot.
Watched Aurion and the thunderbird vanish in a corona of lightning.
And for one strange, suspended moment…
The world went quiet.
Just a moment.
Then another screech. Another rumble. Another scream.
Samuel exhaled. Voice barely above a whisper.
"I'm dead."
But his fingers closed around the hilt at his side.
Then—
"WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING?!"
Lyra's voice slammed into him like a slap. She crashed into his side, tackling him behind a smoldering log just as a boulder-sized hunk of earth sailed past where he'd been standing a breath ago.
They rolled in the dirt, scorched grass and ash in their mouths, smoke stinging their eyes.
Samuel coughed, blinking through tears and flame.
"Goddamn it, woman—some warning would've been nice!"
She ignored him. Her face was flushed, her eyes wild.
"You stood there like you were trying to seduce the apocalypse!"
He spat dirt. "I was thinking."
"You were monologuing."
He sat up slightly, cringing as another thunderclap shook the trees.
"Alright, fine. What's the plan then? I've never even fought a Rank One, and now we've got that—" he gestured vaguely toward the chaos, where Ravok towered like an eldritch god dragged halfway through a meat grinder, "—and a lightning chicken on crack dive-bombing golden boy."
Lyra peeked over the log. Her lips were a thin line. "There is no plan."
"…What."
She didn't look at him. Just stared at the distant mammoth, now trampling disciples like soggy rice paper.
"That Ravok… it won't stop chasing us. Doesn't matter if we dive into a cave or a tomb. It will find us. Smell us. Tear through mountains if it has to."
Samuel blinked. "So this is… what? A do-or-die kind of situation?"
She turned to him. Eyes glassy, but steady. "Yes."
A bitter laugh escaped him. He looked left—white robes were trying to hold the line against Ravok, their spells gleaming like dying stars. One flew too close—he was swatted mid-air, his scream cut short. Another lost his arm to a tusk.
Above them, Aurion danced with the thunderbird in flashes of gold and lightning. He looked divine. Inhuman. Detached. Like a god toying with a storm.
And then Samuel looked right.
Black robes. His kind.
Running.
Some trampled each other. One threw a girl into the fire just to clear a path. Another tried to stab a senior to steal his spatial ring mid-escape.
So this was the difference, then. The line drawn in blood.
A line drawn not in ideals or oaths—but in blood. In the direction of your feet when death came calling.
And then—
Samuel moved.
He climbed onto a jagged boulder jutting from the dirt like a fang, his silhouette outlined in fire and smoke. Lyra flinched, reaching for him—but it was too late.
He was already standing tall, arms wide like a mad prophet.
Then he roared.
"STOP!"
His voice cracked the chaos like a whip.
Heads turned. Dozens of black robes froze mid-flight. Eyes locked onto the figure silhouetted against the inferno.
Samuel glared down at them all—mud-splattered, blood-streaked, his expression something between a man on the edge and a god finding it funny.
"What the hell are you doing?!" he shouted, voice raw.
"Running today just so you can die tomorrow?!"
No one answered.
Samuel took a breath. It tasted like ash and metal. He stepped forward on the rock, slipping slightly—but catching himself.
"Wake up. That thing doesn't stop. It doesn't forgive. It will chase you across. It will crush whole forest into dust just to find you. And when it does—when its tusk finds your spine and grinds your bones into dirt—you'll wish you died here. Now. With a blade in your hand and your spine unbroken!"
Someone whimpered in the crowd.
Samuel growled
"Fight and you might die. But run—and you will. So if you're going to die—then die with your goddamn teeth in something's throat!"
Murmurs rippled.
Samuel stood still on the boulder, chest rising, adrenaline sharp in his veins like cracked glass. His words were still echoing somewhere above the tents and screams. But no one seemed eager to test their courage against a walking extinction event.
His eye twitched.
"Goddammit."
Then, with the kind of reckless energy that only comes from being absolutely done with everyone's crap, Samuel reached out.
And grabbed the nearest black robe by the back of the collar.
"W-Wait, no, no, I'm—!"
Too late.
With zero ceremony, Samuel heaved him forward like he was hurling out yesterday's trash.
"What are you waiting for!?" he roared as the disciple flew through the smoky air.
The poor soul flailed mid-flight, screaming in horror,
"Bastard! But I'm a healeeeeer—!"
SPLAT.
Ravok didn't even glance down. Just stepped forward, and that was that. One more crushed smear beneath a divine calamity's foot.
Silence.
So much silence.
All eyes turned to Samuel.
Dozens of black robes stared up at him with a mix of awe, horror… and, disturbingly, expectation.
Even the wind seemed to pause, as if unsure how to continue after that.
Lyra pinched the bridge of her nose like someone suffering from chronic second-hand stupidity. She took a deep breath. Then another.
Then finally said, "He was literally still holding a roll of bandages."
Samuel blinked.
Glanced down at the empty patch of forest floor where the disciple used to be.
Then looked back at the crowd.
Samuel raised his arms like a conductor preparing an orchestra of idiots. And with the confidence only a truly desperate man could muster, he screamed at the top of his lungs:
"HE DIED A HERO!!!!"