CHAPTER 200: CHAPTER 200 – THE MOUNTAIN KNEELS

The light in the boss chamber on the sixtieth floor had paled a forced dusk in a room with no sky. Stone sconces along the walls still burned, but their flames wavered, throwing jagged shadows across cracked pillars. The air smelled like hot forged iron, mixed with damp dust and the tang of magical ozone the bitterness clung to the tongue. Every breath sounded loud, as if the chamber itself were relearning how to breathe.

At its center, the Ancient Titan roared.

It wasn’t pure fury; a rasp of pain frayed the edges of the sound. The roar bounced, rolled, and layered itself, like slabs of stone shifting somewhere deep underground. The floor trembled with each wave, the vibration creeping up from the soles to the shins, over the knees, and resonating in the chest.

Sylvia made herself move after a count. Her steps weren’t as quick as usual; her heels kissed the floor a shade too hard. She brushed the dust from her thigh and slid toward an intact stretch of wall, a dark corner where shadows pooled. Half-leaning, she let the cold of the stone seep into her pale skin. Everything felt heavy: the tattered dress, her hair matted with sweat and dust, even her vision that kept wanting to dim.

She slowed her breathing. Numbers still blinked at the edge of her sight: [MP: 18%], regeneration dripping in like water from a stalactite. Unification remained locked, the countdown marching on, stubborn. Her shield returned paper-thin summoned, then snuffed out. Death Spiral kept turning in silence, like tiny nails she’d driven into the giant’s body: not enough to topple, but enough to gnaw.

The Titan’s roaring dragged the minutes along like a rope hauled over stone. The yellow light beneath its bluish skin flickered irregularly. Each pulse of pain made that glow crease, like embers starving for air. The giant swayed one knee dipped to the floor then heaved upright again, stubborn to the point of absurdity.

Sylvia frowned. Confusion, cold, clear washed away the leftover panic. She hunted for a pattern: when the shoulder tightened, when the axe rose, when the breath hitched. But the pattern came in broken, like music from a cracked phonograph. She leaned in, eyes narrowed only to find things that refused her predictions.

"Why...?" she murmured, thin and hoarse, more a sigh that happened to become a word. Not a question for the Titan, just a note to keep her mind moving.

Dust fell from the ceiling, an endless gray drizzle. Each roar shattered new chips from above, layering the fractured floor. The giant’s footprints stamped shallow basins around the rune circle that had once blazed a challenge. Now those runes sat dull, as if watching with worry.

She let the back of her head rest against the wall and shut her eyes for a heartbeat. Her temples throbbed the mental load was loud. Behind her lids, fragments of the fight spilled like photographs scattered across a table: the bite, the rake, the spiral, the grip of entropy, the bone bridge; everything was there, out of order. She rolled a breath in, held it, then let it go slowly, just to prove she still had the reins.

The thunder began to ebb not gone, just calmed. A thin pause slid between roars. Sylvia opened her eyes. The Titan’s left shoulder hung lower than the right. At the neck, right where her first bite had landed, the gray skin had paled, losing its mineral sheen like wet chalk. From that point, hair-thin black veins crept outward across the chest.

Her brows rose. Her pupils narrowed to points, focus locking down. The tremor in her fingers stilled. Not because she fully understood because something had changed. Her tactical brain, almost burned out, flared again like a coal teased by a single fan-stroke.

The Titan roared again, shorter, jagged, almost... human? No, not the word. Fragile. There was a crack in that steel voice. The air itself felt small, but real.

"If this is a trap..." she let the words hang. Instinct collided with exhaustion. One part of her, the cautious one, told her to wait in the dark. The other part that refused to be prey pushed her to move while the mountain was listening.

She chose to stay put in the corner.

Let the minutes pass.

Let the giant spend the last of its thunder.

Between the rumbles, something else pulsed: Soul Resonance sent a wave not from scattered shards of zombies, but from a single massive source, low and heavy, and now... regular. Like the footfalls of ten elephants fused into one, slow yet rhythmic.

"What now..." she hissed, half irritated at the uncertainty. She glanced at her palm; dried blood lines mapped a tangled country. The metallic taste lingered on her tongue whether from the air or from the bite, she couldn’t tell.

The giant stopped pounding the floor. The roars dwindled to occasional bursts, broken by rough, heaving breaths like an old machine forced to run. He lowered his head, one hand braced on the axe, shoulders rising and falling. The golden glow beneath the skin all but died, replaced by a sooty gray film creeping like thin mist from under the flesh. The breath hissing out of his wide nostrils and cracked lips carried cold; the vapor hung dark in the air.

Sylvia glanced left and right an absurd reflex, as if there might be someone else to trade thoughts with. Dust drifted, pillars lay in ruin, bone anchors were scattered like toys a child had abandoned. No one. Just two creatures with no music left to play.

"Don’t be stupid," she reminded herself softly. "Stay in the shadows. Stay cold."

Then the roar cut out.

Silence fell all at once, thick as a blanket. You could hear dust grains tick as they landed tick... tick... tick... a small rhythm that only made the room feel larger. Sylvia peeled her hand from the wall and straightened, even as her shoulders still dragged with weight.

The Ancient Titan stood upright not proud, but strange, careful enough to make instinct prick. He no longer raised his axe. The blade that had shone white-gold had dulled, like a sun behind fog. Fine cracks crazed the metal’s surface, laced with black less burned than smothered.

The giant’s eyes, once blazing red, sank to a darker red, and then to the dull red she’d seen in the pupils of high-tier zombies. Embers turned cold. His shoulders fell not with weariness, but as if setting down a burden that no longer mattered.

Sylvia held her breath the old habit of stilling everything to catch a moment. She quieted every other sound so the smallest shift would register.

The Titan turned toward her.

He moved slowly, deliberately. He truly looked at Sylvia. No anger, no confusion. Recognition... and something that made her spine tighten on reflex.

He lowered the axe haft. Thud without menace. And then, like a mountain bowing to the sea, he bent knees the size of rafters, lowered his head, and bowed.

Not a bow of defeat. Not a bow of fear.

A bow of respect.

"What is happening..." Her lips trembled a fraction, half in disbelief Sylvia was honestly baffled.

The giant lifted his face just enough to keep his mouth from scraping the floor. When he spoke, the sound wasn’t shattering stone but a hollow, low tremor the echo of an undercroft. That void-like timbre was one Sylvia knew from her undead.

"Greetings, my queen."

Two words slid out softly, crawled through the air, bounced off the walls, and returned as whispers. In a hush stretched too long, a sentence that simply felt like a forgotten miracle.

Several seconds passed with no one moving.

Sylvia stayed still. Her expression was flat, but her red eyes widened a notch. Under her skin, something that had been taut since the first exchange finally slackened. Not because she was safe the Tower was never kind but because scattered pieces of logic clicked into place one by one. The first bite. The second rake. The third spiral. Entropy cools the fuse of heat. And Toxic Affinity doubled down wrapping zombie poison that crept with patience, turning a stone god over to the night.

She looked at her palm, the cut lines catching a gray reflection from the stone sconces. When she raised her gaze, the giant was exactly where he had been: bowed. Waiting. Obedient.

"So..." Her voice caught; she smoothed it out. The corner of her mouth quirked tired, but warm, softening a face that was usually statue-cold.

And in that beat, Sylvia let the most human joke slip threadbare but honest, like someone hauled back from a cliff’s edge and finding her legs still attached.

"Guess I really do have a protagonist’s halo, huh." while watching the Titan kneel before her

Sylvia let out a short chuckle, then straightened her shoulders. The air was still stifling, but the strange pressure hanging over the room slowly ebbed, replaced by a hush that was almost reverent.

"Good... stay that way." She leaned forward slightly. "Put down your axe."

The massive blade settled onto the floor with a muffled thud. The Titan now an undead didn’t dare meet her gaze, waiting for orders like the very first soldier newly sworn in.

Sylvia drew in a deep breath at last, it felt like air, not ash. "Raise your head. Slowly."

The giant obeyed, his dull crimson eyes reflecting her figure like a shadow in a dark lake.

"From now on, you’re coming with me," she said, her tone soft yet firm. "There are many other skies we need to destroy."