Morgan's gaze slowly lifted from the parchment to its bearer.
He stood before her in silence. A man in a tailored suit, hidden beneath a brown trench coat, his posture composed, almost old-fashioned. His eyes were still veiled by that unmistakable blindfold, his curtain-cut hair swaying lightly as he tilted his head toward her.
Morgan felt her throat tighten.
[-The Final Draft-]
Volume XV - Apocalypse
-LdrQll
"What?" Ivan asked casually, his voice breaking the tension, as though her stare was more uncomfortable than the beast he had just signed himself up to hunt.
"...you know that... you need a squad to hunt a beast, right?" Morgan said cautiously, her eyes narrowing. "And also... this is only the second time I've seen you in this hall. Do you even have a license in this gui—"
Her words froze as Ivan flicked a weathered license between his fingers like a parlor trick, letting it spin once before dropping it into her hand.
Morgan blinked. For a heartbeat she thought it was a fake—until her gaze lingered on the worn edges, the faded emblem, the unmistakable name stamped across it.
Her breath caught.
"...oh... oh my gosh!" she gasped, stumbling back from the desk as her eyes went wide, the parchment trembling in her hand like she had seen a ghost.
"Cut the drama, Maggie," Ivan said with a casual smile, tapping the parchment as though the moment was trivial.
"I—Ivan! Is that really you!?" she cried, hand flying to cover her mouth. The lobby's noise seemed to fade as she stared at the man she had believed was long dead.
"Answer me first," she whispered, her voice shaking, eyes darting between his face and the blindfold that covered it.
But Ivan only stood there, silent, unreadable.
"Elliot said... he said you died," Morgan stammered, her knuckles white around the license. "That you were trapped inside the lair during the last raid—"
"Surpriseee," Ivan cut in with mock cheer, raising his hands in a playful shake.
Morgan's throat tightened. "Wh... what really happened?" she asked, her voice breaking as she studied him—how different he seemed, how much more alive he felt than he ever had before.
"I don't know," Ivan said softly, his lips curling into a reassuring smile. "A deity heard my prayer, I guess."
"A... deity?" Morgan repeated, her eyes glowing with sudden curiosity. "Does that mean... you're kindled now?" she asked, almost excitedly.
Ivan chuckled under his breath.
[Morgan didn't change a single speck of her nature... she's still herself, even after all the insanities of this world.]
"I guess I am now," Ivan said lightly.
"Your eyes... why—how can you see, even when they're tightly covered?" she pressed, leaning closer.
"Innate skill," Ivan replied smoothly, "a gift when I agreed to be an incarnation." It was another lie, but he carried it with ease. "Anyway... are you going to sign my permit or what?"
Morgan blinked, suddenly remembering, and scrambled to look down at the parchment on her desk.
"This is... a Category II beast," she said seriously, stamping the permit. "You'll need a squad of four if you want to take it down. Bring me a waiver when you've got a full team, alright?"
"Sureee," Ivan answered, though he had no intention of doing so.
"Remember. Bring. A. Waiver," she repeated firmly.
"I will, I will," Ivan replied, a little too casually. The words reminded Morgan of what Luke had said earlier before leaving.
"Oh—and by the way," she added, glancing back up, "if you see a boy with gray-white hair and silver steel armor... keep an eye on him for me. I'm very sure he won't bring a waiver either."
"Got it..." Ivan said, taking the permit from her hand.
As an incarnation of a solitary deity—as he had claimed, or lied about—Ivan wasn't bound to any pantheon guild. He could walk into Eneaḍ, Aesir, or Olympus and claim a permit wherever he pleased.
Talking about privilege.
He stepped out of the guild hall with his usual calm demeanor, tucking the parchment neatly into the pocket of his coat. The air outside was alive with noise and motion: hunters huddled in circles, maps spread, weapons checked, strategies whispered. Each squad was carefully arranged, every class chosen to balance another—tanks, sorcerers, archers, trackers.
To Ivan, it all looked... quaint.
A one-man team, he thought with a quiet grin. As the All-Being, his strength bent and folded in every direction; roles and synergy meant nothing to him. To their eyes, he was a lone fool heading toward death. To him, it was simply another walk.
Although Ivan could have simply vanished from the city in a blink, he chose instead to play the part of a normal man—walking the long, long road toward the colossal gates of the city complex. Each step was deliberate, almost meditative, boots crunching over uneven cobblestones.
Hours have passed, in the outer ruins, deafening screams began to roll across the streets like waves. Thunderous crashes shook loose clouds of plaster and grit, a rising wall of dust masking the fight. Something vast moved inside the haze—its roar a mix of furnace and earthquake, a beast announcing itself to the world.
"I need some stamina!" a hunter barked, voice cracking, and a sage's chant answered immediately, threads of pale light binding to his muscles.
"Strike down its feet, make it fall!" another voice cut through, shattering the tremor of fear that ran through the group. "Nobody falls back! We can win this!"
The words carried a command only one man there could give. Luke Armstrong moved first, a blur against the ash-streaked backdrop, steel flashing in his hands. At nineteen he had already carved a reputation most hunters twice his age couldn't touch. A high-ranking hunter at an age when most were still errand runners; a favorite of the gods.
His benefactor was no common patron but Mikhael—the One-Winged Angel of the Grandwall, a solitary deity who despised darkness and chose Luke as his incarnation. Under Mikhael's blessing, Luke's strikes burned like daylight and his resolve never faltered.
The wind knifed through the shattered street, tearing the last sheets of dust away. Out of the haze, the monster finally showed its shape. Its torso was plated like sun-scorched stone, but living veins of molten crimson pulsed beneath the cracks, each claw tipped with jagged crystals glimmering sickly green. Its head looked carved from basalt but its mouth gaped like a furnace, it's eyes burning like coals stacked in a rough circle.
"Your scream doesn't deafen me, you big ugly boulder head!" Luke roared back, the sound of his voice almost drowned by the monster's bellows. A spark of radiance flared along the edge of his weapon, white-gold light bleeding from the runes Mikhael had carved into his soul.
"Mages!" a voice shouted from the rear line — the squad's Captain, cloak whipping like a flag. Her hand rose, trembling only slightly, palm glowing with runes.
"—Halt!" she barked, and the chanting mages froze, the entire formation locking into place like clockwork.
"Fire!"
A thunderclap of magic answered. Spheres of violet and argent heat streaked past Luke's shoulders, spiraling together as they hit the beast's chest. The impact carved molten grooves into its stone-flesh, splitting blackened armor plates and scattering shards across the street like meteors. The thing reeled, its claws grinding into the pavement, steam rising from its wounds.
Luke didn't hesitate; he used the blast as cover, surging forward, weapon high, the glow of Mikhael's blessing running from his shoulder down to the tip of the blade.
Luke launched himself skyward, boots sparking off the fractured pavement. He met the creature's retreat with a downward arc of his blade, the strike singing with Mikhael's light. Stone-like hide parted under the blow. A geyser of dark, viscous blood erupted from the gash across its chest and spattered the ground in steaming sheets.
The monster reeled but did not break. Luke landed hard, rolling through the splash and coming up with his weapon raised, eyes fixed on his quarry. Around him the cobblestones glistened red-black; the air was a haze of iron scent and scorched dust.
For hours they had battered the thing, trading spellfire and steel for a few meager wounds. Yet the monster endured. Its most maddening trait was not its size, nor its claws, nor even its furnace breath. It was the pulsing, obscene gift of its own body—
Accelerated regeneration.
Before their eyes the great chest wound bubbled shut, stone knitting, veins sealing, fresh crystal claws sprouting where the last had been sheared away. Each injury they dealt only bought them moments before the next onslaught.
"Damn it!" one of the hunters slammed his weapon into the fractured road, chips of concrete skittering away. "Every strike, every spell—it just knits itself back together!"
Another staggered back, breath coming ragged. "We'll die from exhaustion at this rate... Captain, what do we do?" His eyes flicked to the looming giant as it steadied itself, its titanic frame already knitting wounds closed.
The captain's gaze swept the field until it locked on Luke. Even at this distance she could feel it: no hint of fatigue in the boy's aura, only hard, incandescent will. He was furious, and fury in Luke Armstrong was dangerous.
"We keep going," she decided, voice like iron. Then she raised her arm and shouted over the cacophony. "Armstrong! Frontliners! Probe for its weakness while the rear ranks keep hammering with spells! The damn dossier left out too much."
Her sneer curled as she made the final signal. "Formation Three—now!"
The Mages broke apart and re-aligned, boots pounding on fractured pavement, sigils flaring at their heels as the mages shifted into their firing lanes. Overhead the monster bellowed, a thunderclap of stone and rage, but the formation snapped into place, steel and sorcery ready to meet it head-on once again.
"Frontline—Formation B!" Luke's voice cracked across the battlefield like a whip. Instantly, the hunters shifted, boots slamming into shattered concrete, weapons angled forward. "You heard the captain! Find its weakness!"
A chorus of confirmation rose behind him. Halberds lowered, swords leveled, shields braced. At the rear, mages raised their staves, a shimmer of runes igniting in the air before bursting into a blinding flash meant to burn the beast's eyes.
The monster recoiled with a guttural snarl, stone-scaled head wrenching away. An opening.
"Strike!" Luke roared.
They surged as one, steel glancing off armored legs, blades biting into cracks between plates. A few scrambled up the creature's limbs to drive their weapons deeper, anchoring themselves like ticks on a titan. The formation held: flanking units on the left and right legs, Luke leading the center—his charge meant to drive straight through.
"Impalers—rear position!" Luke bellowed again, even as the beast thrashed, claws carving trenches in the asphalt. Some of the frontliners stumbled or were thrown aside, but none yet crushed.
The spear-bearers sprinted to the creature's far side, spreading out like shadows. One knelt, calculating the angle, eyes fixed on the point where the monster would fall. "Position acquired!" he shouted, voice slicing through the roar of the battle.
The beast bellowed, a sound so deep it seemed to shake the marrow of their bones. It was vast and powerful, a mountain of sinew and stone—but even mountains could be eroded, and even a cockroach could be swarmed by ants. Unity would be their only weapon.
"Do anything—anything that stops its regeneration!" the captain shouted from behind Luke, voice raw from command.
The monster reared back and slammed its jagged arms into the street. Asphalt and stone shattered, a crater yawning open beneath its limbs. The impact hurled the hunters clinging to its body and swept the frontliners aside in a storm of debris.
A choking haze billowed out, thick as chimney soot, swallowing the battlefield in seconds. Screams and coughs echoed inside the swirling gray.
"Mages! Clear the area!" the captain barked again, her order slicing through the chaos.
Four of the ten mages immediately dropped the Light of Apollo, fingers blurring through sigils as they shaped a new incantation. A breath later, a cyclone of enchanted wind burst outward from their staves, scouring the haze away. Dust fled in streaming ribbons, revealing the monster once more—its wounds knitting, its eyes burning like coals.
Luke flourished his weapon, radiance crackling along its edge as if it had been forged from a star. Behind him, two hunters whispered their blessings, their swords humming with divine resonance.
"As it drops, and the impalers pin it—strike without stopping," Luke ordered, voice sharp as a blade.
"Affirmative," they answered in unison.
The beast let out another thunderous roar, the kind that warped the air and sent tremors up the hunters' spines. Luke braced himself and surged forward, the two blessed hunters flanking him. They tore through the rippling shockwaves of the roar like arrows through cloth, each step vibrating with pent-up power.
Then came the impact. Luke's blade found its mark—an explosion of force against the monster's armored chest. Flesh and stone cracked, a crater forming where the blow landed. The beast staggered, its immense frame tilting forward even as its wounds began to bubble and knit.
Beneath it, the impalers acted. They rammed their halberds into the earth as one, voices rising in a ritualized cry. The ground convulsed, sigils lighting underfoot, and from the cracked soil erupted colossal spears of enchanted metal.
They burst upward like the fangs of some buried god, skewering the beast's rocky haunches as it crashed down, pinning it in place.
"Now!" Luke Armstrong roared.
The two hunters surged with him, slamming down on the beast's chest like falling hammers. The creature howled, a tremor running through its colossal frame as spears of consecrated steel drove up from the earth—through its neck, its spine, its torso—pinning it to the ruined street.
The hunters hacked relentlessly, carving through stone-fused flesh with divine fury. Luke, balanced on the monster's heaving hide, planted a boot against its granite-hard scales. The impact left a crater of shattered rock and ichor—a fresh wound to add to the lattice of injuries.
He vaulted skyward in the same motion, sunlight flashing off his weapon's edge. For a heartbeat he hung above the battlefield like an omen, then fell—faster, heavier, like a meteor cast down from the heavens. Air ripped past him in a shrieking arc, the sound cutting off as he struck.
The blow landed with a thunderous detonation, a crack of power that rolled across the ruins, burying the monster deeper beneath a rain of rubble and divine spears.
The beast's chest split open under the onslaught, a canyon of shredded muscle and stone-fused sinew. For an instant it seemed finished—then its flesh writhed like living serpents, tissue slithering and knitting toward itself. There was no core. Nothing to strike. The monster carried no heart, no weak point at its center. Still it regenerated.
"I can't stand this... I can't stand this!" Luke roared, hacking at every strand of living tissue, his blade a blur as he carved at anything that moved.
"We can't keep this up!" a mage cried, voice cracking as she glanced at the captain from the rear lines. "We'll be exhausted before it even slows!"
Another mage spoke, dread sharpening her words. "Captain, the Spears of Ares will only hold for two minutes. When they fade, we'll be right back where we started."
The captain's jaw tightened. "...We don't have a choice. In those two minutes Armstrong has to find its weakness. Until then—keep firing."
She spun to the rest of the formation. "Switch to Spell B—commence!"
At the captain's command, the mages cut off their current incantations mid-syllable and shifted into full offense, Staves blazing with sigils as new spells coalesced in the air.
Meanwhile on the front line, steel and sweat filled the narrow space beneath the beast's looming shadow. "We're kindled by Olympus—strike together! Don't lean on the boy to do it all!" one veteran bellowed, slamming his axe into the creature's rock-hard scales hard enough to chip sparks from the edge.
When the beast had toppled onto its back moments ago, the hunters had surged forward like a breaking wave, determined to gouge as much damage into it as possible before it could rise again. Now their blades, halberds and axes rose and fell in a blur, pounding at the armored hide as the mages' offensive spells rained down from behind, the whole formation moving as one living machine of war.
However, nothing unfolded the way they had hoped.