Chapter 63: Clash of the Titans

Chapter 63: Chapter 63: Clash of the Titans

The Swamp Tyrant moved first.

​FWOOOM—CRASH!

​Seventy meters of armored flesh tore across the shallows with terrifying speed, the swamp detonating beneath its massive legs.

​Draven didn’t give an inch. Stepping straight into its path, Titan mana flooded his veins.

His frame bulked beneath his combat gear, and crimson fire ignited around his body.

ROAR.

​BOOM!

​The collision sounded like an artillery shell detonating at point-blank range.

​The resulting concussive shockwave flattened the surrounding timber, blasted hundreds of tons of bog water skyward, and split the bedrock wide open with a sharp, tectonic CRACK.

Several hunters were knocked clean off their feet from the ambient force alone.

​"That’s..." Kael choked on the scalding mist from the tree line, his eyes wide with horror.

"That’s an SS-rank brawl?!"

​Nobody answered him. Every pair of eyes was glued to the two juggernauts trading apocalyptic blows.

​The Tyrant swung its armored snout like a siege hammer. Draven crossed his mana-coated forearms to block, but the raw mass drove him backward through the muck.

SKRRRSH!

His combat boots carved forty-foot trenches into the swamp floor before he finally grounded himself.

​Dark blood dribbled from the corner of his lips.

He dragged a scarred forearm across his mouth, his bloody teeth flashing in a savage grin. "Now we’re talking."

​SKREEE-ROAAAR!

​The beast bellowed, its sonic roar vibrating bone, but Draven vanished in a crimson flash.

Reappearing mid-air, his reinforced fist drove flush into the beast’s lower jaw, snapping its gargantuan skull toward the sky.

He followed through without dropping—

BAM! BAM!

Hammering two more blows heavy enough to pulverize an ordinary S-rank.

​The Tyrant barely buckled. Its hide was shielded by a dense, calcified crust of Earth mana, hard as tempered diamond.

​Draven’s knuckles fractured the rocky mantle, but before he could drive another strike home, the beast’s spiked tail cut through the air with a whip-like

CRACK. WHAM!

​The heavy tail caught Draven mid-swing. The blow launched his two-meter frame clean through four massive swamp oaks, sending him crashing out of sight into the dense fog.

​"Commander!" one of his vanguard fighters yelled over the wind.

​The Tyrant didn’t bother tracking him down.

Instead, its slit-pupiled, golden eyes swiveled, locking cold and merciless onto Aria and the main strike force.

​Aria’s stomach dropped through the floor.

"Scatter! It’s targeting the line!"

​The monster’s jaws unhinged, a spinning, high-density sphere of water forming between its serrated fangs with a high-pitched, pressurized WHINE.

​"Move—!" Aria screamed.

​KRA-BOOM!

​A roaring hydro-beam tore through the swamp at hypersonic speed. Aria threw up a triple-layered glacial wall; Darius reinforced it with a jagged granite slab.

The hydro-lance struck.

SHATTER!.

Both barriers detonated like cheap glass, blasting Aria and Darius violently into the mud.

​"That was just pressurized water?!" Darius wheezed, rolling to his feet while coughing up grit.

​"Disperse!" Aria barked, pushing herself up through the churned silt.

​The beam gouged a fifty-foot trench through the swamp basin, atomizing ancient timber and vaporizing everything in its path with a deafening hiss of superheated steam.

​Felix stared at the smoking scar across the swamp, his jaw tight. "The lower ranks won’t survive a single stray blast."

​Aria caught his eye and nodded instantly.

"Everyone below S-rank, evacuate to the ridges! Pull back now!"

​A few A-rank hunters hesitated, gripping their weapons tightly. "Commander, we can still provide backline—"

​"GET OUT!" Aria’s voice sheared through the gale. "One graze from that beast will turn you into red mist! Stop making us babysit you while we’re trying to keep the frontline from collapsing!"

​The command brooked no argument. The A- and B-ranks turned on their heels, sprinting full-tilt toward the high perimeter ridges, leaving behind only the true S-ranks, Draven’s five elite veterans, and Felix.

​Seraphina remained planted at Felix’s flank, her blade humming with violet-blue static. Darius and Aria fell back into step beside them.

​"Stay behind my shoulder," Felix told her, emerald mana already thrumming across his knuckles.

​"I know the drill," she answered quietly, sparks leaping across her fingertips. "I’m not leaving you, though."

​Felix offered a tight, lethal smile. "Didn’t plan on asking you to."

​SPLASH—ROAR!

​The deep water behind the Tyrant churned into violent whirlpools as two gargantuan silhouettes breached the surface.

​A thirty-meter serpent with midnight-blue scales and burning crimson eyes reared back, while a colossal crocodilian reptile clad in jagged, living stone crawled onto the muddy bank.

Both radiated the unmistakable, suffocating mana of true S-ranks.

​Felix let out a low, exhausted sigh. "Of course. An SS-rank wouldn’t walk without guard dogs."

​"Put them down fast!" Aria commanded.

​Draven’s squad split instantly: three fighters converged on the sea serpent, while two broke toward the stone crocodile.

Aria’s squad moved in unison to reinforce: Darius and Aria locked down the serpent, while Felix and Seraphina anchored the center to hold the line.

​The serpent lashed out, its massive tail sweeping through the water to fling two vanguards into the shallows.

CRACKLE!

Aria instantly flash-froze the water around its belly, locking the thrashing coils in a glacier, while Darius drove jagged earthen spikes upward through its soft underside.

SHRRK.

​On the opposing flank, Draven’s elite cadre pulverized the stone crocodile with compressed gale-blades and searing fire, systematically stripping its rocky armor.

CRUNCH!

BOOOM!

​Within two minutes of coordinated, lethal violence, both guardian beasts lay lifeless in the blood-tinted mud.

​As the corpses settled, one of Draven’s scouts moved with ruthless field instinct.

SHLICK.

Driving twin enchanted daggers deep into the beasts’ breastplates, he wrenched free two fist-sized, pulsing S-rank mana cores: one radiant cobalt, the other deep ochre.

Leaving treasures of that grade behind was unthinkable, even in the teeth of an SS-rank engagement.

​"Cores secured!" the scout shouted, shoving the glowing stones into his spatial pouch.

​Aria pivoted toward the fog, tracking the concussive impacts shaking the ground. "Rally on the Commander! Move!"

---

​The True Battle

​Draven was already back on his feet, standing alone before the Tyrant. His heavy plate was shredded to ribbons and his left shoulder was drenched in gore, but the beast hadn’t walked away clean either, its rocky hide was spiderwebbed with fractures.

​Draven glanced back as the team closed in, his breath coming in ragged, steaming huffs. "Took your sweet time."

​"Had to put down its pets," Aria answered, skidding to a halt at his side.

​"Fair enough." Draven rolled his dislocated shoulder with a sickening POP, setting the joint without blinking. "Fall in behind me. I’m the only bastard here with the hide to take a direct blow from this thing and keep breathing."

​He dug his iron-shod boots into the sludge.

"New formation! Pin the bastard down!"

​The Tyrant charged. Draven met it head-on.

​BOOM!

​The clearing trembled as armored fists and razor claws collided again. Draven ducked beneath a sweeping tail strike, drove a savage elbow into the beast’s snout.

CRACK,

And then locked both arms around its lower jaw, holding the thrashing maw open with pure Titan strength.

​"Lock it down!" Aria screamed, channeling a freezing gale that locked the beast’s forelegs in deep rime.

​"Earth Prison!" Darius slammed both palms into the mire.

RUMBLE-THUD!

Massive granite pillars erupted from the swamp bed, clamping the beast’s hind claws into bedrock.

​The Tyrant roared, thrashing wildly as the stone cracked beneath its strain, but that split-second hesitation was all they needed.

​Aria launched three massive ice lances into its exposed chest. Two shattered against the dense scale armor, but the third drove deep into a pre-existing fissure.

​Seraphina capitalized instantly.

KZZZT—BOOM!

A lance of high-pressure water, supercharged with blinding yellow lightning, drilled into the exact same fracture, blowing the cracked scales apart in a shower of pulverized bone and green hide.

​Draven spotted the exposed meat. "Good eye!"

​Deep, cobalt-blue fire flared along his right arm.

FWOOOM.

It wasn’t wild flame anymore; it was compressed into a blinding, molten needle focused at his knuckles.

​ZIP.

​Draven drove his fist directly into the open wound.

​BOOOM!

​The blue fire detonated deep within the beast’s chest. The Tyrant unleashed a shrill, deafening screech of agony, thick black blood erupting from its chest as the force drove seventy tons of reptilian bulk back three full strides.

​"Got you, you overgrown lizard," Draven spat.

​The beast’s golden eyes turned completely crimson with feral fury. Inhaling with a sound like a collapsing vacuum, it drew the entirety of the basin’s water toward its flanks, raising a towering, sixty-foot tidal wave behind its spine.

​"Brace for impact!" Aria screamed.

​Darius thrust up three massive stone ramparts with a desperate rush.

CRASH

Aria layered them in thick permafrost, while Draven threw his arms forward, Titan mana hardening his stance into living bedrock.

Behind them, Felix grabbed Seraphina’s arm, hauling her into his chest as she enveloped them both in a swirling, pressurized water barrier.

​CRRR-AAAASH!

​The tidal wave slammed into the line with the weight of a falling mountain, obliterating all the barriers in a fraction of a second.

Ancient oaks were ripped out by their roots, the swamp bed was scoured clean to the bedrock, and several S-rank hunters were hurled through the raging foam like ragdolls.