The sand finally settled.
Sofie broke the silence first. "Well… with that show of power," she said, brushing sand from her hair, "subtlety's off the table."
Reina's voice came flat and sharp. "We've become a target. Thanks to Kane."
Klaus didn't respond. His gaze was already scanning the distant treeline.
Kael laughed, slinging his greatsword back across his shoulder with a wide grin. "Who cares? That just means more battles coming. I've been getting bored already."
Klaus's eyes narrowed. "We need to move. Fast."
Sofie nodded. "Right. Can't stay exposed out here."
Without another word, the four darted off, speeding across the shoreline and toward the thick jungles beyond—a sprawl of black-rooted trees and dense green mist that hissed in the breeze.
Within those shadows…
Massive serpentine shapes slithered beneath the canopy—Aetherfang Basilisks.
Each of them over twenty feet long, plated in shimmering midnight scales. Their breath reeked of venom. Their fangs glistened like daggers.
Sofie whispered, "Don't engage. One scratch and we're done."
Reina led point, her movements silent, her aura dimmed to avoid detection. Kael, unusually, kept his enthusiasm in check—eyes sharp, hand on the hilt of his blade.
They moved through the jungle like ghosts.
But the ghosts were being hunted.
---
A flash.
Suddenly, two figures burst from the underbrush.
Ambush.
A spatial ripple shimmered through the air—and before Klaus could react, a boy with white markings across his arms appeared beside Reina and Sofie, placing a hand on each of them.
"Don't struggle," he whispered politely.
Then—they vanished, blinked away by teleportation.
Klaus's head whipped toward the spot—but they were already gone.
Across from him, in the trees, the enemy squad's captain stepped out, flanked by his final teammate. Cloaked in red armor and a smug expression, the captain gave a nod to the teleporter who vanished with Reina and Sofie.
"That should be taken care of," the captain said coldly.
The man gave a respectful bow before disappearing again.
But the moment he vanished—Klaus was already moving.
No hesitation. No questions.
Just speed.
He blurred toward the captain—too fast to follow—and slammed a fist directly into his chest. The captain didn't even have time to raise his guard.
BOOM.
The strike launched him clean off his feet, tearing through trees, bark, and rock like he was weightless. He disappeared into the jungle canopy in a blur of red and blood.
That left one.
The final enemy squad member stared.
Kael stepped forward, cracking his knuckles. The smile returned—twisted and eager.
"Ohh, finally," he said, drawing his greatsword in a smooth motion. "I've been itching for a fight."
He lunged, blade swinging.
Steel met steel.
The jungle echoed with the sound of chaos reborn.
---
The jungle was no more.
The ground had been cratered—scorched earth and shattered roots stretched in every direction like a battlefield abandoned by the gods. Trees were snapped, burned, or atomized entirely. The very soil hissed with heat, the sky overhead stained a bruised crimson from the raw energy Klaus had unleashed just seconds ago.
The enemy captain's body lay embedded in a mound of cracked earth, smoking slightly.
But he wasn't dead.
He moved.
Groaning, dragging himself up with one arm, coughing out blood and dirt. "Damn," he rasped. "What the hell was that?"
But before he could finish standing—Klaus was already moving his form blurred, cloaked in searing, jagged crimson and white lightning, his fist drawn back like a comet about to detonate. The air around him distorted. Trees caught fire in his wake. The force of his movement left behind a red arc of ruptured atmosphere.
But just before impact—
The captain vanished.
In the blink of an eye, he reappeared mid-air, far above the ruined jungle floor, laughing lightly as he whistled in amusement.
"Whew," he said, brushing dust off his arm. "Glad I dodged that on time. Would've turned into a memory."
He floated slightly downward now, still smirking. "Name's Cazren Volkane," he said. "Captain of the Red Howl. And I've been sent here on a little... cleanup mission."
His smile widened, eyes narrowing with predatory glee. "To hunt and eliminate a specific… problem."
He tilted his head.
"You wouldn't happen to be that problem, would you?"
Klaus didn't answer.
He was locked in—stone-faced, aura flickering violently with residual charge. He didn't care about names, missions.
He was already calculating his next strike.
Cazren chuckled, then gave a mock bow mid-air. "Apologies—where are my manners?"
He snapped his fingers.
The air cracked.
Hundreds of portals opened behind him—glowing rips in space like bleeding wounds in the sky. Each pulsed with a different color, a different energy, a different scream.
From the first one crawled a Dreadmaw Leech, its body covered in pulsing sacs of poison, its mouth a twisting funnel of barbed tongues.
From another, a Rift-Claw Chimera, with the head of a lion, a serpent tail, and wings of shimmering void-silk.
Then came the Skyscourge Wyrms, with transparent wings and eyes that gleamed like molten gold.
Horrors poured out—legions of beasts with twisted forms, drooling mandibles,
screeching voices that made the air vibrate.
Thousands.
They filled the sky.
The portals didn't stop.
Klaus raised his head slowly—his vision drowned in shadows.
The sky was gone.
The sunlight choked beneath the swarm.
Cazren smirked, hovering between them all like a conductor of a symphony of death.
"Well then… good luck," he said with a wink.
---
The sky was gone—devoured by
monstrosities born from fractured
dimensions, each portal birthing a new terror. The horizon was lost. The land
beneath Klaus cracked under the sheer
pressure of their numbers.
His breath came slow.
Measured.
But not out of fear.
He was thinking.
"Three choices…"
Lightning danced across his fingers. Wind howled in a spiral at his feet, lifting dust and leaves into a storm of tension around him.
"First… use the emergency energy I've stored."
He raised a hand slightly—energy pulsed just beneath his skin, glowing veins crawling up his arm like magma under glass.
"Burn it all in one go. Hit everything I can."
A pause.
"Second… combine Wind and Lightning."
His eyes flickered violet and silver.
"But no… I can't reveal myself."
"Too many watching."
He glanced at the endless stream of portals above.
"Third option…"
He clenched his fist.
The pressure around him doubled.
"Use everything. Every drop I've stockpiled. Detonate it here and now. It could flatten this entire battlefield—turn it into ash ."
The ground around him began to crack—tension building as though the earth itself sensed what was coming.
"But it won't be enough. Not with those portals. Not if they keep multiplying."
His eyes narrowed.
Then he looked upward—not at the beasts.
At Cazren Volkane.
Floating between the tears in reality, arms wide, smiling like a god among insects.
"He's the key. A summoner. The root of it all."
"So the real answer is—get to him."
Klaus exhaled, slow and sharp.
A low hum began to build around his body.
"And right now… I feel something else."
He lifted his head slightly. The winds twisted tighter, lightning began to climb up his body like armor.
"A lot of energy… pouring into me."
The air itself responded. Clouds churned overhead. The very fabric of the pocket dimension trembled.
"If it's now or never—then now it is."
He raised both arms—
Lightning snapped from the sky, connecting with his palms in twin bolts of raw voltage.
The wind exploded outward, tearing trees from the earth, hurling debris skyward. Klaus rose into the air, suspended in a cyclone of flashing energy and crackling pressure.
The monsters hissed. Roared. Thousands of glowing eyes turned toward him.
But it was too late.
The blast was already happening.
A ring of blinding white-blue light expanded in every direction.
First a pulse. Then a dome. Then a planet-cracking detonation.
The landscape cracked outward in a perfect circle beneath him. Trees disintegrated. Beasts at ground level were vaporized, blown into dust before they could even scream.
The sky lit up like a dying star.
Those who were watching from the real world, through screens and feeds, could barely process what they saw—
A singular human figure—
Floating in the center of a storm-core explosion the size of a city, while the clouds themselves parted from the shockwave.
Even Cazren Volkane's smirk faded for a second.
"…What the hell are you?" he whispered.
Klaus's eyes locked on him through the aftermath.
He was still glowing.
Still rising.
Still coming.