Chapter 67: End of the Canyon The Ultimate Boss

That was basic?

If this is basic, what does advanced even look like?

Nobody had a response ready for a statement that pretentious. Mostly because, infuriatingly, he’d earned the right to say it.

"Ninety percent’s mine, per the agreement." Kael nodded toward the scattered loot without much ceremony. "Bag it all for now. We’ll split it properly once we’re out."

Alexis stepped forward immediately and started gathering everything with brisk, practiced efficiency.

The other three exchanged a quick, startled glance.Anyone who actually knew Alexis knew exactly how out of character that was.

On a boss kill, sure she’d loot her own corpse, check her own drops personally. Ordinary trash loot, though? She never bothered.

That job always fell to Farshot or SilentDrifter without her sparing it a second thought.

And yet here she was, obeying an offhand instruction without a flicker of resistance.

Frostbloom’s eyes tracked back and forth between the two of them, something thoughtful settling behind her usual cheerfulness.

Once the last coin was collected, Kael led the group deeper into the canyon.

The pattern repeated itself the same way it had the first time Thunder Roc sweeping ahead, luring wave after wave of monsters out of the depths and funneling them into dense, farmable clusters.

Alexis and the others pitched in where they could, but next to three companions running output on a different scale entirely, their contribution barely registered.

Kael’s share of total damage hovered somewhere north of ninety percent for the whole stretch, the rest of the party reduced to little more than scenery trailing in his wake.

For most players, that arrangement would have felt like a gift a free ride through content that should have taken a full guild days to clear, experience rolling in without having to fight for a fraction of it.

Alexis had never been most players.

Pride didn’t care about efficiency. And now, bonded as she was, some part of her kept running the same unwelcome comparison on a loop measuring herself against Thunder Roc, against Wraithlord, against every other name sitting in Kael’s companion roster.

The results never came out in her favor.

Out of everything he’s bonded, I’m the weakest one.

Her jaw tightened around the thought, something stubborn and furious flaring behind her eyes.

She kept her blade moving, kept pushing to the front of every engagement, refusing to let the gap sit unchallenged.

I’ll close it. I’ll out-level every single one of them if it takes the rest of the month.

It wasn’t rational, exactly.

She knew that even as the thought formed. Competing for ranking against a Legendary companion and an apex predator with its own evolving bloodline wasn’t a fair fight by any measure that mattered.

Knowing that didn’t make the urge to try any quieter.In raw attributes, the gap wasn’t actually as wide as it felt her A-grade talent and the gear her family’s money had bought put her closer to the rest of his roster than she wanted to admit.

The real distance came down to skill tier. Every companion he’d spent weeks evolving carried a kit built specifically for maximum output. Hers was still mostly stock.

That, and the buffs. Every passive and active enhancement he threw at his companions compounded their numbers further still.

If he actually ran his full buff rotation on me, I wouldn’t be trailing nearly this far behind.

The thought surfaced and died in the same breath.

With Frostbloom and SilentDrifter both watching, asking him outright would hand the entire nature of their arrangement straight to an audience she couldn’t afford to have it in front of.

She swallowed the request, redirected the frustration into her sword arm, and kept fighting.

The other three took the arrangement considerably better.

SilentDrifter and Farshot coasted through the grind in open good humor, watching their experience bars climb at a pace neither of them had ever seen outside a carefully optimized party.

Frostbloom, true to form, split her attention between healing duty and running commentary tossing out support skills whenever Alexis needed them, otherwise content to drift near Kael and fill the silence with an easy, constant stream of chatter.

It took the edge off what should have been a long, grinding slog, turning the whole run into something almost pleasant.

Even Kael found himself answering more of her questions than he usually bothered with, the easy rhythm of her chatter wearing down a little of the guardedness he carried into most conversations by default.

Hollowgale Canyon lived up to its S-rank billing in full dense with elite monsters at every turn, the kind of instance Evertide Studios would normally have needed a full day-and-night push just to limp through.

With Kael’s companions carrying the weight of nearly every engagement, that math collapsed entirely.

What should have taken a full guild roster days took this party barely three hours, clean and nearly uninterrupted, until the canyon finally narrowed toward its far end.

And there, waiting at the terminus, stood the instance’s final guardian.

The thing was built like a nightmare stitched together from two separate monsters a massive scorpion’s body from the waist down, black carapace gleaming, twin pincers large enough to shear through stone.

From the waist up, a heavily muscled humanoid torso, dark runework crawling across every inch of exposed skin, over three meters of raw menace looming above the party.

A low, constant whirlwind of shadow coiled around its frame, pressure radiating off it thick enough to feel from a distance.

[HOLLOWGALE TYRANT] (Legendary-tier Boss)

Level: 38

Health: 100,000

Attack: 1,372 | Spell Power: 1,415

Defense: 1,392 | Magic Resistance: 1,346

Skills: Galeshadow Cone, Venomtail Strike, Rending Pincers, Wyrmwind Strike, Galeshadow Fury, Ruinous Gale

A creature forged from the canyon’s own cold, cruel winds, wielding strength to match the storm it was born from.

Its pincers can tear through anything they close around, and the gales themselves answer to its will.

Lesser adventurers would do well to turn back the moment they see it.The description alone was enough to put the rest of the party on edge.

Alexis’s grip on her sword tightened, every instinct telling her this was the kind of fight that decided whether a party walked out of an S-rank instance or became a cautionary tale for the next one.

Kael studied the readout with something closer to genuine interest than concern, already running the shape of the fight in his head before the boss had so much as moved.

Legendary tier, full skill spread, and a kit built for both melee and ranged pressure. His eyes narrowed slightly, a faint, anticipatory smile tugging at one corner of his mouth.

Let’s see exactly what you’re worth.

Behind him, the rest of the party drew their weapons and braced, every one of them keenly aware that whatever came next was about to be the real test of the night.

Not the horde they’d already cleared, but the single creature standing between them and whatever this instance had been saving for last, right up until this exact moment, at the end of a very long canyon.