Nathaniel stared up at the massive being, a familiar pressure flooding his chest as his blood surged.
His maroon jumper dissolved into motes of light, leaving only the black compression shirt clinging to his frame. The indicator lights on his gauntlets burned brighter as uratsu poured through him.
He launched forward.
Resin hardened instantly from projected uratsu as he slammed into the giant's guard. His hands locked around one of its arms and he wrenched downward with everything he had.
Steam blasted from the ports in his mask.
His muscles coiled, cyan light bleeding through veins and fiber.
A flash of cyan.
A shockwave ripped outward.
The giant was torn off the ground and hurled into the air.
Jets of cyan flame erupted from Nathaniel's back and arms as he rocketed after it. He closed the distance in seconds and drove a punch into its chest. He felt the armor shift. Then crack.
They kept rising.
Four hundred meters above the ground.
The air around them warped with heat.
The creature's thrusters flared to life.
Nathaniel barely had time to register the glow before a bladed limb slammed into him, incandescent with heat. He was driven straight down.
The impact carved a crater.
His body smashed through stone columns and shattered bedrock as the giant followed, crashing toward him blades first in a cascading dive.
When it hit, the landscape buckled.
The ground rippled outward in violent waves. Sections of earth liquefied into molten slag.
Far below, Hilda and Toshinori stared in stunned silence.
Then Max appeared beside them, scorched and gasping, Nathaniel materializing with him in a blur of displaced air.
Nathaniel's mask was partially melted. One gauntlet sagged at the edges, metal warped. His clothes were burned through in several places.
Max dropped to one knee, chest heaving. His rapid movement augment had nearly emptied him.
"I moved the B-ranks," he rasped. "They're clear."
Nathaniel nodded once.
Then his eyes sharpened.
"Where are Jasper and Niel?"
Jasper didn't remember being thrown.
One second he was running. The next, the world flipped.
Something hit him hard enough to rip the breath from his lungs as he skidded across shattered stone. His pack slammed against his back, saving him from worse, but the impact still rang through his bones.
Everything was smoke.
Heat burned his throat.
His ears rang so badly he thought he'd gone deaf.
He rolled onto his side, coughing, and forced himself up on shaking arms.
Plate rose instinctively.
Thin, hardened layers pushed up from his skin in overlapping ridges, crawling over his forearms, shoulders, and ribs. It hurt. It always hurt. Like nails being driven through muscle from the inside out.
But he stayed conscious.
Barely.
The sky above was wrong.
A massive silhouette moved through boiling clouds, thrusters screaming, blades glowing like falling suns. Each clash sent pressure through the air that felt like fists slamming into his chest.
This isn't a raid.
This is an execution.
Jasper scrambled behind a fractured slab of rock as debris rained down around him. Chunks of molten earth hissed when they hit the ground, eating through stone.
His hands were shaking so badly he had to grip his dagger with both of them.
I shouldn't be here.
The thought came fast. Loud. Honest.
But right behind it came his sister's face.
Her trying not to cry.
Hospital lights.
Bills stacked on the table.
His parents lying still, looking more like corpses than people.
He bit down hard enough to taste blood.
Running wouldn't save them.
Dying wouldn't save them either.
A blast tore across the valley.
The slab shielding him cracked straight down the middle.
Jasper screamed as heat washed over his back. Plate thickened automatically, more layers tearing through his skin as the armor tried to compensate.
He collapsed, rolling across the ground, clutching his arm as pain flared white-hot.
When it faded enough for him to think again, he realized he was still alive.
Barely.
Someone groaned nearby.
Jasper turned his head.
Niel.
The paladin was on one knee, shield half-melted, green light flickering weakly around his hands.
Blood ran from a cut along his scalp.
For a second they just stared at each other.
Then Niel forced himself upright.
"Can you move?" he asked.
Jasper nodded even though he wasn't sure it was true.
"I think so."
"Good," Niel said, voice tight. "Because if we stay here, we die."
Jasper looked past him.
Past the smoke.
Past the burning ground.
He saw Nathaniel launch back into the sky, wrapped in cyan fire.
And for the first time since stepping into the biome, Jasper felt something other than fear.
A thin, fragile thing.
Hope.
Not that they would win.
Not that this would end well.
Just that maybe… they wouldn't be erased without meaning.
Jasper tightened his grip on his dagger.
"Tell me where to go," he said.
And he stood.
Jasper stared at his arm.
Melted flesh. Blackened edges. The pain hit a second later.
He saw Niel already moving, green light flaring from his hands as Jasper fumbled for the jade light vial Nathaniel had given him. His fingers were slick with blood as he crushed it.
Warmth flooded through him.
The melted flesh pulled back, burned tissue sloughing away as new skin grew in its place. The sensation made his stomach twist, but he did not look away.
He was whole again.
Niel swore under his breath and kicked his ruined shield aside. Then he grabbed Jasper by the back of his gear and hauled him up like he weighed nothing.
"Hold on."
Niel broke into a sprint.
Green healing energy wrapped around his body, not just patching wounds but reinforcing muscle and bone. His frame bulked slightly under the glow as he pushed past normal limits.
A beam of energy tore across the valley.
Niel twisted hard, barely avoiding it as scorched air blasted past them.
Jasper clung to him, heart hammering, and forced Plate to rise.
Layer after layer of hardened segments crawled over his body. Thin black plates spread across his jaw and cheeks, forming a crude neck and chin brace.
Niel needed to reach the main assault group.
He knew it.
Jasper knew it.
Niel was the strongest healer out here.
He could not leave the kid behind.
His glasses were cracked, one lens hanging crooked.
Still, Niel smiled.
A tired, stubborn smile.
Green light streamed behind them as he ran, faster than Jasper thought a human should be able to move.
Straight toward the warzone.
Nathaniel reentered the fight in a streak of cyan fire.
The ground ruptured where he launched, pulverized stone erupting outward as Toshinori followed close behind, his heavy armor shifting and locking into a lighter configuration mid-run.
Toshinori's eyes blazed turquoise.
Power rolled off him in visible waves.
Hilda stood further back on elevated terrain, staff planted, coat snapping violently in the heat. Her hands glowed as she recast her buffs in rapid succession.
Strength.
Stamina.
Reaction speed.
Kinetic tolerance.
The magic rippled outward in layered pulses, slamming into Nathaniel and Toshinori like invisible surges.
Nathaniel felt his body tighten.
Focus sharpened.
Limits nudged upward.
Max positioned himself beside Hilda, revolvers drawn, tracking falling debris and incoming fragments.
He fired constantly.
Uratsu rounds shattered incoming stone, detonated unstable chunks midair, and cut down smaller biome spawn that tried to slip through the chaos.
Above them, the giant turned.
Thrusters roared.
Four bladed arms spread wide.
Nathaniel hit first.
He slammed into the creature's chest again, resin forming over his forearms as he drove in with a compressed impact.
Toshinori followed half a second later.
His axe came down like a falling building.
The collision produced a shockwave that flattened everything within fifty meters.
Cracks spiderwebbed across the monster's torso.
It reeled.
Nathaniel did not stop.
Jets ignited.
He climbed the creature's body, striking joints, hammering gaps, ripping at damaged plating while Toshinori kept pressure on its core.
Nathaniel felt it immediately.
They were not putting on enough pressure.
His eyes flicked down to his gauntlets and the neck brace as warning indicators pulsed across their surfaces. Cracks. Heat stress. Structural fatigue. After a moment's hesitation, he recalled them, the damaged equipment dissolving back into his inventory.
His vision flickered gold.
For a heartbeat, he considered it. Arete's reserve. That golden power he had tapped against Magnum.
No.
He shut the thought down.
He would need it if things went truly wrong. This fight was dangerous, but it was not desperation yet. They were not going to die here.
Karthanon was a challenge.
Not an execution.
Toshinori was holding the line, axe flashing as he forced the giant's attention. Nathaniel took a breath, grounded himself, and committed to his base arsenal.
"Toshinori, stay back," he called out.
Then he launched.
He shot forward, kinetic force building through his frame as he manifested the kinetic maw blades, their edges humming with compressed energy. A grin pulled at his face as he drove them into motion.
He saw Niel arrive at the same time, Jasper still in his grip.
Nathaniel slammed into one of the open wounds along Karthanon's back, the impact sending ripples through its armored hide. Resin and kinetic force tore into damaged plating as he wrenched himself free and repositioned.
That was when he noticed it.
Karthanon's flesh around the impact point was swelling. Bulging. Wrong.
Nathaniel's eyes narrowed as realization hit.
Niel.
Each strike. Each pulse of healing energy forced into the creature was going too far. Cells multiplying uncontrollably.
Tumors.
"Fucking hell," Nathaniel muttered.
It was cancer.
Weaponized regeneration.
Small hits, barely noticeable on their own, but stacking. Spreading. Eating the giant from the inside.
Jasper was dropped clear as Niel disengaged, already moving back toward the main group.
Nathaniel smiled thinly.
If that was what they were doing now, then Karthanon was already dying.
It just did not know it yet.
In all the chaos, Jasper felt like dead weight.
He stood near Max and Hilda, watching the others move like forces of nature while he stayed rooted in place. His hands went to what remained of his pack. Torn, scorched, barely holding together.
He pulled out several stamina elixirs and handed them over.
Max took one with a tired nod. Hilda murmured a quick thanks without looking away, already redirecting her buffs toward Toshinori.
Jasper's heart was pounding.
Max collapsed a moment later.
Uratsu exhaustion.
Moving that much, firing nonstop, pushing his augment to its limit. Jasper caught him before he hit the ground, helping Hilda lower him as she kept feeding power into Toshinori.
Then Karthanon roared.
The sound was wrong. Broken. Enraged.
Its body began to fail.
It drew deeper on the core within itself, dragging energy upward in violent surges. Heat rolled across its surface as armor plates split and peeled away. Light bled through the cracks.
Then it detonated outward.
Blades. Spires. Shards of glowing armor ripped free and launched in every direction like shrapnel. Yellow light washed across the battlefield as the explosion rippled outward.
Nathaniel pushed forward anyway.
Uratsu surged through him as he forced his body toward a familiar threshold, the edge he reached when he used Arete's power. His eyes flashed gold for a heartbeat, then dimmed as cyan darkened and a streak of orange burned through his vision.
He drove straight into Karthanon's glowing mass.
Resin formed and burned away in layers as he punched through armor and limb alike. The kinetic maw blades screamed as they tore into dense, radiant plating.
Something ruptured inside the giant.
Nathaniel roared as he passed through it like a bullet, bursting out the other side as hellcharge heat bled off his body in waves.
He turned.
The squad was scattered and damaged.
Only Niel and Toshinori were close.
His senses flared.
Meters away, Jasper stood frozen.
Orange light poured from him in thick streams as he stared down at his hands, at his body beneath torn clothes and light armor. Shards of superheated debris were lodged across him, cooling rapidly as they pressed against hardened Plate.
It had held.
More than held.
The plates had thickened, widened, overlapping into reinforced layers. His forearms had expanded into broad half shields, crossed instinctively in front of him. A faint orange barrier shimmered over the interlocking armor.
He felt powerful.
Not just protected.
Strong.
Alive.
Hilda looked up at him, eyes wide, Max unconscious in her arms.
As the light faded, Jasper lowered his arms and smiled.
Not nervous.
Not forced.
For the first time in a long time, it was real.
The squad sighed in relief as Nathaniel moved toward Jasper while Niel and Toshinori got to their feet. Beside Karthanon's cooling corpse, the space around it began to ripple and a portal formed.
Two figures stepped through.
A cloaked woman stood beside a man. Her face was striking. One of her eyes was human, the other wrong. A diamond-shaped implant sat in the center of her forehead, sleek and reflective like the back of a phone camera.
Next to her, a man with purple hair clad in tactical gear emerged. Most of his body was sealed beneath layered plating. He pulled off one glove and shouted across the battlefield.
"Oi, Alderman. Rude to take out my men," he called with a grin. "I'd like to say I'm here to collect blood. You have cost me resources, time, and money."
Nathaniel's eyes spun instantly and locked onto the man the moment his awareness flared.
Purple chitin erupted from the man's exposed hand and plunged into Karthanon's corpse.
Nathaniel's breath caught. He had forgotten the core. He had not destroyed it.
The giant's body convulsed, cracks of violet light spiderwebbing through the embedded mass as the purple-haired man laughed.
"I know how you fight, Alderman," he said, his eyes gleaming. "Try this."