Rest and Re-Departure
The brief respite passed amid the dead silence and the hissing background drone of elemental chaos. While the group rested, Rhea Medusa appeared like a phantom and casually tossed down two small creatures—rabbit-like in shape but with fur as hard as iron, razor-sharp claws and fangs, clearly a species of minor abyssal magical beast.
"Here, extra rations. The meat's still pretty firm." She clapped her hands as if she'd merely gone to pick a couple of fruits.
After half an hour of rest, Rhea Medusa announced, "Since you've apparently rested enough, let's get moving."
And so the party set off once again, advancing deeper into this realm of elemental frenzy. They hadn't gone far before another wave of enemies blocked their path. This time it was three massive **Abyssal Treant Guards** (Wood)—constructed from jet-black crystallized wood, their root-tendrils writhing like giant pythons—and five **Abyssal Wind Hawks** (Wind) circling in the turbulent air currents, their wings slicing like razor blades and emitting piercing shrieks!
Rhea Medusa lazily leaned against a floating incandescent boulder, adopting the posture of someone settling in to watch a good show.
"Another batch of little cuties? Hope they're a bit more entertaining this time. Don't make me doze off."
Fa's star-like eyes swept the battlefield; her commands came clear and swift:
- "Lin Ya! They share your origin—Wood-element clash. Suppress the treants!"
- "Kayla! Hold the line against the wind hawks' dives!"
- "Celestia! Intercept in the air, split their formation!"
- "Arya! Arrow barrages—lock down their mobility!"
- "Zhamisi! Venom mist to corrode the treants' roots!"
- "Yuyuer! Water-mirror shields—refract the wind blades!"
- "Salsa! Shadow disruption—create chaos!"
- "TISK! Heavy hammer to sever roots!"
- "Rex! Nanite swarm to block escape routes, ice bursts for crowd control!"
The battle erupted in an instant!
Lin Ya spread both arms wide; surging emerald life-force roared forth. With a low shout—"**Root Awakening!**"—countless vines glowing with faint golden starlight burst from the element-mixed ground like living serpents, coiling toward the abyssal treants! These vines did not merely bind—they frantically drained the violent wood-element energy from within the treants, causing the jet-black, hardened trunks to visibly wither and fade to ashen gray!
Kayla roared, the phantom of her **Thunderfrost Cataclysm Beast** flashing past for an instant. Her massive thunder claws, wreathed in frost and lightning, slashed through the air toward the diving wind hawks! Bone-chilling cold and paralyzing electric arcs instantly froze and slowed the hawks' wings!
Celestia's six wings snapped open; her figure vanished amid intertwining wind and thunder. The next moment she reappeared in the very center of the hawk flock!
"**Wind-Thunder Dance • Leap & Rend!**"
Her form became a streak of light almost impossible to track. The edges of her six wings shimmered with razor wind blades and crackling lightning as she darted at high speed through the flock, slashing and tearing! Feathers exploded in all directions; electric arcs detonated!
Arya drew her bow to a full moon. Arrows of light poured down like a torrential rain!
"**Rain of Light Arrows • Lockdown!**"
Each shot was aimed with surgical precision at the wind hawks' wing joints and flight paths—not for instant kills, but to severely disrupt and slow their trajectories, creating openings for Celestia's massacre!
Zhamisi slithered nimbly with her serpentine tail, dodging the treants' sweeping giant roots. Both daggers pointed toward the ground where the treants were rooted:
"**Abyssal Venom Devour!**"
Thick ink-green venom fog erupted—not at the treants' bodies, but into the earth, frantically corroding and rotting the root networks that sustained and nourished them!
Yuyuer raised her staff high; the crystal orb swirled with azure light.
"**Water-Mirror Phantom Wall • Refraction!**"
Sheets of pure, mirror-smooth water barriers instantly rose before the party! The wind hawks' air-ripping razor blades struck the water mirrors; most of the force was cleverly refracted, deflected into empty air, or bounced back toward other beasts!
Salsa's figure melted into shadow. She murmured softly:
"**Shadow Raptors • Eye Gouge!**"
Several pure-shadow-energy raptors took flight from the darkness, silently diving toward the hawk flock, razor beaks aimed straight for their eyes! At the same time, an invisible wave of psychic disturbance spread with the shadows, instantly throwing the once-coordinated hawk formation into utter chaos!
TISK seized the moment when one treant was thoroughly bound by Lin Ya's vines and its roots weakened by Zhamisi's venom. With a furious roar he leaped high!
"**Earthshaker • Ice-Fire Root Sever!**"
The warhammer, wreathed in blazing vines, erupted in dual ice-blue and crimson radiance. With mountain-splitting force it smashed down onto the thickest main root connecting the treant to the ground!
**BOOM!**
Ice-fire explosive energy raged; the hardened crystal-wood root snapped with a resounding crack!
Rex spread both arms wide. Countless nanites gleaming with ice-blue light swarmed out like a metallic hive!
"**Nanite Swarm • Ice-Burst Containment!**"
Instead of direct attack, the swarm rapidly expanded into a massive, frost-glowing three-dimensional net, trapping any wind hawks or wounded treants attempting to flee or regroup! Then the core of the swarm simultaneously detonated pre-loaded freezing energy! A bone-piercing chill exploded outward, severely slowing every enemy within range and encasing them in thick layers of frost!
In the chaos of battle, one wind hawk—gravely wounded by Celestia, slowed to near-immobility by the nanite ice, completely disoriented—staggered drunkenly and crashed straight toward the boulder Rhea Medusa was leaning against!
"Annoying."
Rhea Medusa didn't even glance at it properly. She merely raised a hand casually; a fleeting dark-golden gleam passed over her fingertip. A hair-thin yet incomparably sharp sword beam appeared out of nowhere and silently sliced across the hawk's neck. Its forward momentum stopped dead. Head and body separated instantly; the cut was mirror-smooth. The corpse dropped limply. The entire action was so fast it seemed like an illusion.
The battle ended swiftly. After a quick cleanup, the party pressed onward in the direction Rhea Medusa indicated. This realm of elemental frenzy seemed endless; the environment grew increasingly hostile. In the afternoon, at the outskirts of a gigantic cavern where eerie blue ice crystals, crimson lava flows, and leaping violent golden lightning bizarrely intertwined, Kayla's sharp beast eyes suddenly caught an anomalous trace—several deep claw marks scorched by frost-burn and lightning char, and a torn fragment of armor ripped away by tremendous force, its edges blackened, bearing the unmistakable roaring-claw emblem of the Imperial Legion!
A Long-Awaited Reunion
From deep within the cavern came a faint but unmistakable sound—extremely quiet, yet laden with the long-honed vigilance and beast-like instinct of constant survival: the faint scrape of dry bone against rock, or perhaps a heavy breath forcibly suppressed.
Fa and the others instantly snapped to maximum alert! The metallic clangs of weapons being drawn and the humming of energy gathering rang out simultaneously! Fa's star eyes locked onto the source like searchlights. Kayla and TISK moved like twin fortresses, taking position at the front left and right, thunder claws and warhammer primed and ready.
From behind a massive boulder covered in solidified lava patterns deep in the cavern, several figures rose slowly and with extreme caution—like cornered beasts roused from hiding. Their bodies were emaciated to the point of skin stretched over bone, every inch marked by years of starvation and brutal environment. Their clothing was in rags, barely covering them. Exposed skin was a patchwork of overlapping scars—claw rips, frostbite ulcers, burn char, and countless fine cuts from spatial rifts. Their eyes were clouded with bone-deep exhaustion and a near-tangible, profound wariness toward everything outside. Yet beneath that exhaustion and suspicion burned a fierce, unyielding ferocity—the kind only forged by years of clawing for survival on the edge of death!
Leading them was an elderly beastman whose skeletal frame still retained the broad, powerful build of his prime, now ravaged by hunger into a gaunt shadow. His tangled beard and hair were ashen gray like withered grass; a vicious diagonal claw scar slashed across his weathered, storm-etched face. But when those deeply sunken amber beast eyes, in the dim light, finally made out the figures at the cavern entrance—especially when they fell upon Kayla's unmistakable thunder claws and the all-too-familiar beastman contours—those turbid eyes suddenly blazed with an incredulous light, like dying embers roaring back into inferno!
"K… Kayla?!"
A hoarse, dry sound, like sandpaper rubbing against rock, trembled violently and was squeezed with unspeakable horror and ecstasy from the old orc's cracked lips. The sound was faint, yet it struck like a thunderclap in the silent cave.
Kayla was struck as if by an invisible bolt of lightning, her entire body instantly frozen in place! The massive phantom of the Beast Soul Giant vanished without a trace, like bubbles. She stared intently, unblinkingly, at that aged, haggard face, etched into her very bones, those amber eyes that were identical to her own, now brimming with shock and ecstasy… Ten years! Ten whole years of worry, longing, despair, and searching, all erupted in this moment!
"F… Father?!"
A heart-wrenching roar, filled with endless longing, worry, pain, and the ecstatic joy of reunion, pierced through Kayla's taut throat! Like a cub finally finding its kin, she rushed forward with all her might, disregarding everything else! The enormous lightning claws didn't even have time to retract; they instinctively and clumsily opened their arms, as if trying to tightly embrace the figure before them, to merge it into their own bones and blood!
The elderly beastman—once the legendary general of the Roaring Claw Empire, **Roaring Claw · Kael**—shuddered violently. His skeletal yet still terrifyingly powerful arms flung open! He staggered forward several frantic steps. In the next instant, father and daughter collided like magnets separated for far too long—crashing together in a fierce, bone-crushing embrace! Kayla's tremendous momentum rocked Kael's emaciated frame backward, but he anchored himself with the last remnants of iron will. His callused, scar-covered hands—now like withered branches—trembled violently as they pounded again and again against his daughter's broad, solid back. From deep in his throat came a sound long suppressed for ten years, built from countless brushes with death—a low, wounded-wolf whimper mixed with scalding, muddy tears that poured from sunken sockets, carving two filthy tracks through the grime on his face. The iron-willed old beastman general, whose emotions had long been ground to stone by a decade of hellish survival, finally shattered completely in the presence of the flesh-and-blood kin he thought forever lost.
The other five survivors slowly emerged from behind the rocks. Two gaunt but still eagle-eyed beastman lieutenants; one missing an arm, body barely wrapped in filthy, tattered mage robes—**Batak**; another missing his right foot, hobbling on a crude wooden crutch—**Groms**; an elderly human whose eyes carried wisdom and deep weariness; a silent, mountain-like dwarf with a tangled beard like wild grass, leaning on a rough "stone pick" crudely bound from an unknown beast's leg bone and crystal shards; And there was an elven woman with a missing ear, carrying a simple bone bow, her face covered in small scars yet unable to conceal her heroic spirit. Looking at this heart-wrenching scene before them, their weary eyes revealed a complex mix of emotions: deep envy, and a glimmer of... hope.
The embrace lasted a very, very long time before the violent emotions slowly ebbed like a retreating tide. Kayla carefully helped her frail father sit down, her voice still trembling with emotion:
"Father! How are you? Are your injuries severe? These years… how did you… how did you all survive? The others… I saw Nates and the others outside…"
Her gaze involuntarily drifted to the armband bound to her bracer.
Kael coughed violently several times. He accepted the magically purified water Arya silently offered, drinking greedily in small sips, soothing his throat that felt scorched by fire. Only after a moment did he speak again, voice rasping like a broken bellows, every word steeped in fathomless exhaustion and bone-deep vicissitudes:
"Surviving…"
He gave a bitter smile—uglier than weeping.
"…by hunting those damned monsters outside… drinking their stinking blood, eating their tough, astringent, sometimes poisonous flesh… gathering barely edible bitter moss from crystal crevices, and the strange-tasting energy fluid condensed in some energy clusters…"
He drew a labored breath. His gaze fell on the armband at Kayla's wrist; deep grief flooded his eyes.
"Nates and the others… they stayed behind to cover our retreat… fought a huge swarm of beasts… and never came back… There was one more lieutenant…"
He stopped. A powerful fear surfaced on his face, as though the nightmare scene were replaying before him.
"Earlier… when we explored an ice-crystal zone… we encountered… we encountered **those things**…"
"Those things?" Fa's sharp mind caught the terror in Kael's tone; her star eyes narrowed slightly.
"Yes!" Kael nodded forcefully. His bony hand clenched unconsciously, knuckles white; lingering horror remained in his gaze.
"Gold, Wood, Water, Fire, Earth, Thunder, Ice, Wind… and even stranger ones—shadow-like psychic entities, monsters dripping lethal venom, even beings radiating pure holy light or absolute darkness that devours all illumination! In every violent elemental domain, there seems to be one or two **'Kings'** that rule that territory! Their power…"
Kael's voice trembled uncontrollably.
"…surpasses every general in our Empire outside! No—dozens, hundreds of times stronger! We saw with our own eyes… a three-headed '**Lava Overlord**' casually breathe once… a torrent of crimson flame swept across an entire lake of psychic energy… and it evaporated dry in an instant! A '**Thunderwing**' giant bird passed overhead; with one flap of its wings… space tore like cloth, opening momentary black rifts! Before them… we were nothing more than ants. We could only hide like rats… barely clinging to life…"
He gasped violently, as though the memory itself drained him.
"And the star fragment I brought in…"
He looked at Kayla, eyes filled with endless bitterness and self-reproach.
"…during an attempt to evade the hunt of an '**Glacial Lord**'… we were ambushed by a pack of abyssal ice wolves… in the chaos… it was lost… very likely…"
He closed his eyes in despair.
"…somewhere near the lair of one of the abyssal overlords…"
At that moment, Rhea Medusa, who had been watching from the side, stepped forward and studied Kael and the others with interest.
"Heh. Managing to survive in this hellhole by hunting abyssal beasts? Not bad—some guts, some luck."
Her gaze swept over the survivors' countless scars; her tone was impossible to read as praise or mockery. Then she looked at Kael, lips curving in amusement.
"As for those abyssal overlords… each one's power is roughly equivalent to… hm, about ten percent of me at full strength. They really have formed some primitive social hierarchy—brutally fighting and killing among themselves to select a 'King' for each element: Gold King, Wood King, Water King, Fire King, Earth King, Thunder King, Ice King, Wind King, Mind King, Poison King, Dark King, and Light King. Twelve little brats, each claiming their own mountain."
"**Ten percent?!**"
Kael's eyes flew wide; his gaunt face was etched with incredulous horror.
"Your strength is unfathomable, yet you say they're only equal to one-tenth of you?! Those abyssal overlords—any single one could destroy a major city! The Fire King we encountered could spew flames that instantly melted gold and stone, turning earth into lakes of magma! One strike from the Thunder King summoned ten thousand bolts, leveling mountains! The Ice King's mere aura could freeze air into diamond-hard crystal! If their tribes ever united… it would be… an unimaginable catastrophe!"
The old general's voice shook slightly with fear.
Rhea Medusa burst into clear, mocking laughter that carried endless derision.
"Hahaha! Invincible? World-destroying? To you mundane mortals, perhaps. But to me…"
She waved a hand dismissively, as though shooing away flies.
"…they're nothing but toys the size of sandbags. Well then—since we've found the people," she withdrew her smile, gaze turning toward the violent elemental convergence deeper in the cavern, "next, let's go retrieve that 'star fragment you're looking for.'"
Though everyone nodded in agreement, a monstrous wave surged in Fa's heart!
"Equal to one-tenth of her power… then these abyssal overlords…"
She didn't voice the rest, but the gravity flashing in her star eyes said everything.
Rhea Medusa seemed to read her thoughts. That heart-palpitating, challenge-filled smile reappeared on her face.
"That's what makes it exciting, isn't it? Come on, little ones! Let's go take back what belongs to us—from those 'sandbags'!"
Her voice carried incontestable resolve. She turned first, her figure vanishing into the bizarre, danger-filled elemental frenzy outside the cavern.
The party followed close behind. The air was thick with the weight of an impending great battle and a faint awe toward the unknown abyssal overlords. Somewhere deep in that core of raging energy, the light of the star fragment awaited them to seize it back.