CHAPTER 162: THE ELITE CHALLENGE

The Crest carved through the wall, step by step with their beasts tearing gaps wide enough to drive them forward. But for every shambler that fell, two more clawed upward from the fissure’s edges.

Kelvin gritted his teeth and said. "We will drown if we stay in the swarm!" "Then go for the fissure!" Darius bellowed.

They broke into a sprint with their beasts clearing the path. Kelvin’s lance blazed, cutting through the dark fog. He drove it through a shambler’s chest, twisted free and then leapt over a fallen corpse.

Xerion dove with him, will folding and its jaws were snapping around a crawler that leapt for Kelvin’s back.

Lyra stumbled, with her foot dashing on a root. A shambler lunged for her throat. Salaris screeched, slamming into the creature midair and tearing its head free in a spray of black blood.

"Stay with me!" Lyra said with her voice breaking, but her legs kept moving. They were thirty paces from the fissure when the ground split again.

From its heart clawed something larger. It was not a shambler, not even a variant. This thing was forged of the fissure itself—a towering undead giant with a ribcage glowing like a furnace and claws dripping molten necrotic essence. Its eyes blazed violently while fixed directly on Kelvin.

It roared, and the trees bent with the force of its scream. Kelvin’s blood ran cold and he said. "Of course it has a protector..."

The Guardian slammed its claws down, raking the ground. A wave of violet energy exploded outward, knocking the Crest off their feet. Lyra’s bow went skittering across the ground. Darius slammed into a tree trunk hard enough to splinter the bark.

Kelvin rolled to his knees, coughing blood. Xerion circled above, flames flared desperately against the Guardian’s thickened necrotic hide, but the beast barely flinched.

"We can not fight this thing and the fissure!" Lyra cried, scrambling for her bow. Kelvin spat blood, eyes burning with determination. "We do not have a choice."

The Guardian lunged, its claw arced toward Kelvin like a sickle. Xerion dove in an instant with its body slamming against the strike. The End-Tyrant snarled, flames erupted across its scales as it forced the claw upward. Kelvin surged beneath, while driving his lance into the Guardian’s exposed ribcage.

The blade pierced glowing bone, while fire erupted inside. Immediately the Guardian shrieked but instead of falling, it grabbed Xerion in its tail, lifting the dragon-beast into the air. Bones cracked, molten ichor spilling across Xerion’s scales.

"XERION!" Kelvin screamed, with his chest tore with the cry. Darius charged, with Rhoam beside him. His hammer blazed with soulfire. He leapt, slamming it down on the Guardian’s wrist. Bone shattered as Xerion tore free with a roar, while flames exploding outward in a molten burst.

But in the chaos, the Guardian’s other claw swept low, straight toward Lyra. Her eyes was widened as she saw it. She froze. Salaris shrieked, diving to slam against the claw, but it was not enough.

"NO!" Kelvin threw himself forward, with his spear igniting, and struck the claw mid-swing. The force hurled him aside like a ragdoll. Pain tore through his ribs with his armor denting as he slammed against a boulder. His vision went white.

"Kelvin!" Lyra’s voice was raw with panic. Kelvin gasped, forcing himself upright. Not here, not like this. He saw his parents in his mind with their last stand and their fire. He heard Xerion’s hiss in his soul.

"Together...!" he whispered coarsely. Xerion roared, with his tail blazing brighter than ever. Flames spiraled around Kelvin’s body, feeding into his lance until it burned like a sun.

Lyra drew deep into her essence, her veins burned black. Salaris circled her as shadows was weaving into her arrow until it dripped like a liquid night.

Darius pressed his palm to Rhoam’s back. The panther growled with armored plates glowing. Soulfire pulsed into his hammer until it gleamed with azure brilliance.

The Crest moved as one. Kelvin leapt first as Xerion was propelling him with a blast of fire. He drove his blazing lance deep into the Guardian’s chest, right into its glowing core.

Lyra’s arrow flew a heartbeat later, striking the fissure’s crack at the Guardian’s back. Shadows writhed across its body, pinning it.

Darius roared with his hammer crashing down on its skull and bone shattered. Soulfire exploded, the Guardian screamed, the fissure behind it cracked violently.

And then, with one final roar from Xerion, flames burst outward from within the Guardian’s chest. The monster convulsed before collapsing into a heap of ash and broken bone.

The fissure shattered in the same breath. Violet light surged, then imploded inward with a deafening crack. A wave of necrotic energy that blasted outward, sweeping across the forest. Shamblers that shrieked as their bodies were disintegrated, collapsing like puppets with severed strings.

The Crest stood amidst the situation with their chests heaving and bodies broken but alive. Kelvin collapsed to one knee, Xerion’s massive head pressed gently against his shoulder. The beast’s scales were cracked with bleeding flame, but its eyes burned with pride.

Lyra leaned against Salaris, tears streaking her blood-stained face. "It is over..." Darius sank onto a rock, Rhoam curling protectively at his feet. He wiped his mouth, spitting blood. "One fissure down. A whole Hollow is waiting ahead." he said.

Kelvin raised his head. The forest was silent now but he could feel the Hollow’s pulse, which is deeper and a darker rhythm in the distance.

Kelvin felt it first—a ripple, like a drumbeat under his ribs. Not the forest’s natural decay, but something deliberate, pulsing with cadence. Xerion’s tail lashed in a warning, the End-Tyrant’s tail was bristling as necrotic particles gathered on the breeze.

"They are not done," Darius muttered, his knuckles was white against Rhoam’s armored hide. The panther growled low, with his plated shoulders flexing like shields that are ready to break lines.

Lyra’s raven, Salaris, screeched once and vanished into a shadow veil, returning with a warning cry. Shapes and many shapes were stirred between the crooked trees.

The ground split as if the forest itself exhaled. Dozens of Veilcursed Shamblers clawed free, their husks reeked of rot and black smoke. Their bodies carried fissure cracks, lines of pale-green glow spider webbing across their torsos with unstable vessels leaking Veil energy. And behind them, heavier foot falls echoed. Something larger pressed through the gloom.

"More? We barely broke the last wave," Kelvin hissed. "This is not a wave," Lyra whispered, her eyes narrowing. "It is a purge."

The forest erupted as the first line of Shamblers hurled themselves forward, their decayed jaws stretched wider than bone should allow.

Xerion did not wait for commands, his maw opened, releasing a vortex of black fire that swept across the nearest ten corpses, incinerating them in shrieks of smoke. But even as the ash fell, more pressed in, crawling over their fallen ones as if the ground itself spat them forward.

Rhoam charged with his bulk smashing into the tide. His armored plate cracked skulls with each swing, his claws left trails of violet light as Darius fed soulstream into his strikes. The beast was a juggernaut, but for every body it crushed, two more staggered from the fissures.

Kelvin’s chest burned with fire-rune strain as he carved flame spears into the swarm, aiming for the glowing fissure cores inside their chests. Too slow but too many. For every hit that shattered one, another managed to lunge.

Lyra’s shadows snared a cluster mid-leap, twisting them into a writhing cage. Salaris swooped overhead, his talons glows, carving streaks through rotting throats. But the raven’s wings faltered when a shriek cut through the air which was low, guttural and resonant.

The trees shook as the branches splintered. From the deeper fissure lumbered an Elite Shambler, which was twice the size of the others, its frame bloated with necrotic energy.

Veins of glowing green pulsed like molten rivers under its skin, and its eyes blazed with hollow hunger. Unlike the mindless ones, this one stalked but its steps were deliberate, head turning toward the Crest like a predator recognizing its prey.

Kelvin felt the pulse slam against his ribs. "That thing is tethered to the forest," he gasped. "It is feeding on the fissures."

Mealin’s tome quivered in his satchel, glyphs were surfacing across its surface. It was showing some warning. Elite-class undead which shows core instability, which was a high risk, an approach with coordinated restraint.

Restraint was not an option. The Elite roared, a sound that rattled the marrow in their bones. The horde surged with it, while Shamblers throwing themselves like fodder to break the Crest’s formation.

"Hold the line!" Kelvin shouted, his voice was cracking under the strain. He thrust his hand forward, channeling a full tri-rune burn.

Flames spiraled into a lance, which is thicker than his arm and ripped through three Shamblers at once, but his vision was blurred from the drain.