## CHAPTER 29: Playing Hero
"Die!" Alex's scream was lost in the roar of his own technique.
The **Nebula** strike was a masterpiece of mid-tier sorcery. The twin blades in his hands—his own rapier and the stolen steel of the Ordinary—were encased in a spiraling drill of dark blue and violet mana. The air around him screamed as he tore through the distance, his eyes locked onto the massive crimson orb of the Goliath Carapace. He could see his victory reflected in that monstrous eye; he could taste the glory that would come with being the student who slew a Sector-class beast.
But the Goliath Carapace was a predator, and it had been playing with them all along.
Just as the tip of Alex's blades were inches from the eye, the monster's second pincer—the one they thought was focused on Marcus and Julian—shot upward with the speed of a closing trap. It didn't strike Alex; it simply positioned itself as an immovable wall of obsidian chitin.
*CLANG!*
The collision was like a lightning strike. The dark blue nebula energy shattered against the armored claw, releasing a violent, concussive wave of mana that tore the violet moss from the earth. The backlash was absolute. The momentum Alex had built up was turned against him in an instant, the invisible force of the impact launching him backward through the air like a stone from a catapult.
He soared past Marcus and Julian, a blur of broken pride, before slamming into the same jagged oak tree that had claimed Silas. He hit the trunk with a sickening thud and crumpled to the ground, his eyes rolling back as unconsciousness claimed him.
Marcus and Julian froze, their hearts stopping in their chests. Their leader, their "hero," was down. The silence that followed was broken only by the rhythmic, heavy clicking of the monster's mandibles.
They turned their heads, terror-stricken, to look at Alex's lifeless form. "Alex?" Julian whispered, but there was no response.
Then, the ground beneath them began to heave.
The Goliath Carapace lurched forward, no longer moving with the caution of a hunter, but with the ruthless speed of an executioner. Before the two boys could even raise their swords, the massive pincers swept out. One caught Marcus, the other Julian. The beast didn't crush them immediately; it simply spun its entire body with a terrifying centrifugal force and released them.
The two nobles were hurled through the air, colliding with each other before striking the base of the oak tree next to Alex. They fell in a heap of tangled limbs and dented armor, the breath driven from their lungs, their bodies broken and defeated.
---
### The Shadow of Death
The clearing was as silent as a graveyard. The three noble students lay in the dirt, their mana-auras extinguished, their weapons scattered. The Goliath Carapace loomed over them, its massive weight causing the earth to groan. It crept forward, the violet moss blackening under its touch as the acidic bile dripped from its stinger.
The beast raised its tail. The emerald liquid at the tip of the stinger began to glow with a final, lethal intensity. It was aiming for the center of the three—a single strike to end all three lives.
The vibrations of the monster's approach finally reached the fog of Alex's mind. His eyelids flickered. His vision was a blurred mess of red and grey. He saw the segmented tail rising like a guillotine against the dark canopy. Panicked, he tried to reach for his sword, but his fingers only grasped at empty mud. The pride that had fueled him was gone, replaced by the cold, hollow realization of his own mortality.
The stinger lunged forward—a streak of green death.
*BOOM!*
The impact wasn't the sound of a stinger hitting flesh. It was the sound of an atomic hammer hitting a mountain.
A shockwave of pure, unadulterated kinetic energy exploded from the center of the monster's back. The force was so immense that it flattened the surrounding ferns and sent a ripple through the very air. The Goliath Carapace's body was driven several inches into the dirt, its legs buckling under a sudden, impossible weight.
The monster's mouth unhinged, revealing rows of jagged, crystalline teeth, and a fountain of glowing blue ichor erupted from its throat as its internal organs were crushed by the pressure.
*ROOOOOOAAAAAAARRRRRR!*
The scream was a tectonic shift, shaking the boys to their very marrow. Alex, Marcus, and Julian stared in wide-eyed, catatonic shock at the figure now standing on the monster's back.
It was Silas.
His hoodie still covered his face. He wasn't using magic; there was no mana-aura, no elemental glow. This was raw, terrifying physical power.
Silas reached down and grabbed the base of the monster's sting-tail with both hands. His knuckles turned white as he braced his feet against the obsidian plates of the carapace.
"Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh!"
Silas's roar was more primal than the beast's. For the first time they heard his voice and He pulled. The sound of rending chitin and snapping muscle echoed through the woods like a forest fire. With a final, violent heave, Silas literally tore the entire segmented tail out of the monster's body.
*ROOOOOOAAAAAAARRRRRR!*
The Carapace thrashed in agony, blue blood spraying the clearing like a macabre fountain. But Silas wasn't finished.
Holding the massive, dripping tail like a club, Silas leaped into the air. He twisted his body mid-flight, his silver hair—now visible as his hood fell back—catching the dying light. He spun with the grace of a hurricane, bringing the heavy, armored stinger down in a devastating overhead arc.
The stinger, still loaded with its own caustic venom, slammed into the monster's upper head region. The armored skull shattered like glass. The Goliath Carapace's legs gave out, and it collapsed into the violet moss, motionless and dead.
Silas landed on the dead beast's back, his chest heaving, the monster's own tail still gripped in his hand. He looked down at the three nobles.
Alex, Marcus, and Julian were silent. The slaughter they had just witnessed had stripped them of their pride, their voices, and their understanding of the world. They looked at the Commoner—the boy they had called "trash" and "dead weight"—and saw their saviour, even though they didn't know how to verbally express it.
Alex's mouth moved, but no sound came out. He couldn't even find the strength to say "thank you." Perhaps his pride was still too thick, or perhaps he was simply too terrified to speak to the being standing before him.
Silas looked at them, his eyes cold and distant.
"Their appreciation means so little to me," he thought.
Suddenly, Silas felt a needle-like prick of a presence. He snapped his head to the right, his gaze piercing through the dense foliage. High on a branch, he caught the faint silhouette of a woman in a black cloak. Her lips were curved in a deep, disapproving frown, her eyes locked onto his with a mixture of curiosity and irritation.
But as soon as their eyes met, she vanished, dissolving into the shadows as if she were a ghost of the forest itself.
Silas let the monster's tail fall from his hands. It hit the ground with a heavy thud.
" I'm not cut out to play hero," he thought, pulling his tattered hood back over his head.
He didn't wait for them to stand. He didn't offer a hand. He simply turned and began walking back toward the path, leaving the three Royals to rot in the shadow of the beast they couldn't kill, and the shadow of the boy they would never understand.