"Just where the hell does he hide?" Markus muttered his question while busy setting up his tent. "No matter how far we chase after that bastard, he is always one step ahead!" the man complained, slamming the stretching nail into the sands of the desert.
"We chased him all the way here. He couldn't traverse all that deep into the desert," Al spoke up, already done with his tent.
As pressed for the time as they were, traveling through the foreign desert at night wasn't a good idea. No matter how strong the three of them were, the monsters roaming those grounds would still give them a run for their money.
"Don't underestimate him," Yelna spoke up, not bothered with the work around their camp at all. Given her marriage to Markus, she just happily assumed that the duty of setting the tent up would fall on his shoulders.
"We are not." Markus sighed in response, not even trying to pick up the topic. 'No matter how confident and self-assured she is, she will never stop taking him seriously, huh?' Markus thought, lowering his eyes to where his hands were.
As minor as something like that would be, smashing his finger with a handy hammer while setting up a tent was just an unnecessary annoyance.
"Still, I'm quite impressed," Al said, sitting down on his coat set above the hot sands. "Even with my people, I wouldn't dare to push so deep into a land like that," he added, lowering his head in the mute respect.
"Respect, huh?" Markus asked, shrugging at the sheer thought of his. "Out of all the things, it's the respect he deserves the most," he added, not bothering to explain.
"If you say so." Al raised his eyebrows, refusing to comment any further on that. As a man of a few words, he didn't feel the need to argue. 'After all,' he thought, 'there is a limit to how much I can respect someone I never met.'
"Guys," Yelna suddenly spoke up, breaking her usual behavior. "Something is coming."
"Huh?" Al looked at the girl with a surprise written all over his face. "A monster or what?" he asked, grasping the handle of his axe as he looked around.
"No, something greater." Yelna's body started to tremble. She locked her hands on her shoulders as if trying to guard herself against the cold.
"Yelna!" Markus shouted, forgetting about the work he was doing. He jumped up to the girl, covering her with his own coat. "What's coming?" he asked in a tense voice, clearly not going through this kind of situation for the first time.
"Guys?" Al asked as he stood up, gripping his axe tighter in his palms.
"This is her ability. While I can feel the disasters of the far future, she can sense them when they are immediate," Markus explained in one breath. He then attempted to pinpoint where Yelna's eyes were gravitating towards.
'North, huh?' His eyes moved towards the horizon, hoping to see some sign, some mark on the endless expanse of the sands.
***************
"They are coming," Layn whispered to himself, watching how the front of the monsters inched closer to the shore.
It was the first time for the archmage to set up an ambush on a rooftop. 'During the times when I was doing stuff like that, there were hardly any roofs around, huh?' Layn thought, trying to brighten his mood with some funny memories.
Layn's attempt at making light of the situation didn't change it whatsoever.
The monsters crashed into the shore.
The sight was as spectacular... as it was disappointing. Safely hidden in the shadow on the kitchen's roof, Layn observed the frantic behavior of the monsters.
At first, the sea-faring ones reached the dry land. They were the fastest because of their builds being optimized for movement in the water. But on the dry land, those slim and glib, limbless bodies of the monsters only created a wiggly barricade.
But this stalemate would only last for so long.
Once the water-fit monsters exhausted their numbers, those fit for both environments started appearing. The barricade made out of the carcasses of their unlucky precedesors only lasted for a short moment before monsters began to spill all over the plain.
"Here we go," Layn muttered before hiding deeper into the shadow. For now, there was absolutely no need for him to engage. But Layn wasn't going to patiently wait for the monsters to overrun him.
"I didn't think it would come to this so quickly," he said while unwrapping the crystal-infused rope from all over his body. Then, throwing his usual robes away for the sole purpose of this moment, he directed his thoughts to the rope.
A moment later, the crystalic structure of the magical element inside broke apart, allowing the magic particles to freely gather in just a tiny part of the rope.
Condensing its effects like that was an easy job. Moreover, doing so allowed to store more magical particles in a single piece of equipment and more easily gather the mana.
But there was one fatal flaw in using the magic particle-infused equipment. As long as one had any magic sense, such an item would shine as bright as the moon on the night sky.
'Let's hope I won't need to use it after all,' Layn thought, watching how the monsters continued to creep even closer. And before long, the first few of them climbed up the freshly created slope only to trip and fall down from the reinforced roof of the dormitory.
"That's one less thing to worry about," Layn muttered softly, grasping his rope a bit tighter.
*************
"We need to hurry up!" Yelna shouted, speeding forward. Even though her build didn't grant her the stamina necessary for marathons, she didn't appear to pay it any mind.
"It's okay, just stop for a moment!" Markus shouted after the girl, desperately trying to catch up to her. 'If something huge enough to trip her senses is going on, she can't appear at the disaster zone exhausted!' Markus leaped forward, finally grabbing hold of the girl's arm. "Let me carry you there," he said, instantly throwing the girl around his waist before pulling her on top of his back.
"Thanks," Yelna replied in a soft voice, turning her face away while tightening her hold over the man's chest.
"Where are we even going?" Al asked in a loud voice while trying to keep up with Markus's pace. While his stamina was way greater than Yelna's, it still couldn't be compared to Markus's capabilities.
Not when it came to running a long distance.
"I don't know!" Markus shouted back, already on edge. For Yelna's senses to react, the event had to be on a truly disastrous scale.
'Just what the hell are you up to again, brother?' Markus thought, biting on his lips.
************
'What the fuck is this?!' Layn stared with his eyes wide open at an enormous shadow in the distance. 'I was so focused on all those small fries that I failed to notice it earlier...' Layn thought, putting the blame on himself.
If the average monster of the horde was roughly twice to thrice as massive as huge animals like cows or bears, the thing that Layn saw... Was on an entirely different scale.
'I can't even tell how big it actually is,' Layn realized. Unsure how far this massive monstrosity was, he couldn't even guess just how massive in reality it was.
The shadow of the true monster reached as high as the sky itself. Raising higher than even the biggest building that Layn's ever saw in the modern civilization. Not even the royal castle where Layn spent his days in the past could compare to that monstrosity.
'It's like a... wolf? Humanized wolf?' he thought, watching how its fangs cut through the air. Each of those fangs appeared to be the size of two adult humans standing on each other, giving testimony to just how massive this entire furry monster was.
'Could it be,' shaken by the situation, Layn could only dare to guess, 'the legendary titanus forma?'
*********
"Ugh!" Yelna suddenly cried out. Even though she simply stuck to Markus's back, somehow, she still ended up injured.
"What happened?!" Hearing the desperate outcry of his wife, Markus instantly stopped in his track before checking on the girl.
But Yelna didn't say a word. Her pupils were dilated as much as they physically could, depriving Yelna of the sane look. Right now, she appeared like some mad witch only capable of uttering some broken words through spasms and twitches.
"It's here," a massive spasm shook Yelna's body before a mouthful of foam-turned saliva spewed out from her lips.
*******
Layn could only watch powerlessly as a massive monster of a turtle-like shape made its way towards him. There was no intent at harming Layn, given how the monster most likely didn't even notice the archmage yet.
Sadly, there was no escaping the inevitable. The body of this monster was simply too massive. If it was allowed to tread forward, once it would climb the slope and step on the dormitory's roof, it was bound to crash down!
"So the time has come," Layn thought, tightening his grasp over the condensed part of his rope.
A slight silver of mana moved from Layn's aura to the rope he held in his hand. This single strand of mana attacked just a single magical particle. The energy from the deconstruction of the particle exploded, instantly unwinding a few more particles.
In a flash, the chain reaction turned the stable material of the rope into a burning inferno of raging magic.
Layn's body started to deteriorate under the onslaught of the magic overflowing his body. And once this external magic reached a sufficient point, the small number of magic particles inside Layn's body ignited as well.
The gianormous monster in the distance turned its wolf-like head towards Layn.
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