“Roar!”
The next instant, under the eyes of Zach and the other two, a gaping maw burst out from beneath the yellow sand and lunged straight at them.
“Xer’Sai!”
The moment that bloody mouth appeared, Taliyah cried out in shock.
Now, Taliyah finally believed what Kai’Sa had said before.
This place that had once been sacred ground might truly have been taken over by the Xer’Sai.
And its ruin was very likely because of them.
The cliffs around Xolan could not stop a people that traveled underground.
“Stone Burst!”
Just as the Xer’Sai reached the three of them, Taliyah shouted sharply.
Her arms moved in a blur.
The eyes that had always carried joy were now filled with killing intent.
Countless jagged spikes of stone erupted from underground, pierced directly into the Xer’Sai’s belly, and exploded.
“Boom!”
Under Taliyah’s attack, the Xer’Sai barely had a chance to react before it slammed heavily onto the ground.
Taliyah panted hard, biting her lower lip in silence.
Even their final hope had been destroyed by these Void creatures.
Even this girl, who had always been strong, now had faint tears gathering in her eyes.
At that moment, a heavy sense of powerlessness suddenly rose in Taliyah’s heart.
She did not know how her people were supposed to face the life ahead of them, nor where she herself should go from here.
Rumble.
But the danger beneath the ground would not calm down because one of their kind had died.
On the contrary, all around Zach and the other two, the sound of dense waves of sand shifting began to rise.
The three of them pressed close together, their eyes fixed on the dozen or so pale purple dorsal fins parting the ground around them.
More than a dozen Xer’Sai had appeared at once.
Kai’Sa clutched Zach’s arm tightly.
“Don’t leave my side!”
Zach held her hand in return, and Ascended power slowly emerged in his palm, forming a crimson-gold barrier around her and Taliyah.
In the next instant, more than a dozen Xer’Sai burst out of the ground at the same time and charged straight toward them.
Purple bolts from the pods on Kai’Sa’s back poured out like a storm, while Kai’Sa herself turned into a streak of violet light and rushed toward the Xer’Sai at the front.
Zach watched Kai’Sa’s side of the fight while also keeping an eye on Taliyah as she charged toward the Xer’Sai.
For some reason, Zach truly felt like he was babysitting right now.
Not only that, just as Zach was about to join the battle himself, a strange unease suddenly rose in his heart.
Because of his Ascended power, all of Zach’s senses had been greatly enhanced.
With that thought in mind, Zach chose not to act.
He had to keep track of the entire battlefield at all times to make sure he could protect Kai’Sa and Taliyah at the very first moment.
With Zach’s Ascended power reinforcing them, the Xer’Sai’s attacks could not touch Kai’Sa or Taliyah at all, while every strike from Kai’Sa and Taliyah landed solidly on their bodies.
The battle continued, and more and more Xer’Sai lay scattered across the ground.
However, for some reason, these Xer’Sai seemed endless.
Even though more than a dozen of their corpses had already piled up on the ground, more still kept surging up from beneath the earth.
After a long battle, Taliyah’s magic was clearly running low, and her fighting became strained.
After using Seismic Shove once again to knock a Xer’Sai back, Taliyah bent over, panting hard as she braced both hands on her knees.
Noticing Taliyah’s condition, Kai’Sa came to her side.
“Head back to the entrance and leave Xolan!
The underground here was completely taken over by the Xer’Sai long ago!”
Taliyah nodded.
And so, the three of them fought while retreating, falling back in the direction they had come from.
But just as they were nearly at the dried-up riverbed, Zach suddenly grabbed Taliyah and Kai’Sa by the arms.
Seeing this, Kai’Sa and Taliyah both looked at Zach in confusion, only to find that his gaze was fixed firmly on the riverbed ahead.
“Boom!”
The next instant, a violent roar suddenly came from the riverbed in front of them.
The entire riverbed collapsed in an instant, turning completely into a bottomless purple abyss.
Both Kai’Sa and Taliyah felt a wave of fear after realizing what had just happened.
If Zach had not stopped them, they would have been swallowed completely by that abyss.
But that was not what made the two of them despair the most.
Because on the ground behind them, countless Xer’Sai dorsal fins had already appeared.
“Roar!”
Suddenly, the deafening roar of a massive beast erupted across the sky, echoing between the cliffs of Xolan.
Immediately after, a pair of enormous claws, several meters long, climbed onto the edge of that purple pit.
Just one of those claws alone was already the size of an ordinary Xer’Sai’s entire body.
The moment that massive claw appeared, Kai’Sa’s body suddenly trembled.
Her eyes were now filled with intense wariness, and her right hand gripped Zach’s arm tightly.
She stared ahead and said in a shaken voice, “The queen of the Xer’Sai!”
The instant Kai’Sa’s words fell, a vast, dark shadow rushed out of the pit.
The queen of the Xer’Sai, Rek’Sai.
Her claws, several meters long, dug into the ground as her hideous maw let out a deafening roar at Zach and the others.
“Roar!” This story is hosted at g.com.
Rek’Sai stood before them, more than ten meters tall.
Standing in front of Zach and the other two, she almost blocked out all the light ahead.
The moment Rek’Sai appeared, her enormous claw came swatting toward the three of them.
In that split second, Kai’Sa’s first reaction was to stand in front of Zach.
Behind them, countless Xer’Sai had already cut off their retreat.
They had nowhere left to run.
So if she wanted to protect Zach, she had to help him block Rek’Sai’s attack.
Rek’Sai’s enormous claw carried an unimaginable force, reaching the three of them almost instantly.
Kai’Sa also gathered all of her strength into her hands, while countless bolts of light from the pods on her back flew toward Rek’Sai’s claws.
“Boom!”
In an instant, the enormous force caused the earth to cave in.
Kai’Sa, Taliyah, and the countless Xer’Sai behind them were all sent flying by a violent wave of air.
After rolling dozens of meters across the sand, Kai’Sa quickly stood up.
First, she looked at her own hands in utter confusion.
Then, as if realizing something, she began searching frantically for Zach.
But in the next instant, Kai’Sa froze in place, her gaze toward the front going completely blank.
Ahead of her, where the three of them had just been standing, the earth had completely caved in.
Rek’Sai’s massive claw was pressing down with all its might, yet it could not advance even an inch.
The reason her claw could not move forward was nothing else.
It was being forcibly held up by a power.
And the source of that power was Zach, with his arm raised.
At this moment, Zach’s right arm was lifted toward the sky, and he had actually blocked Rek’Sai’s massive claw head-on.
Was this really the kind of strength a healer was supposed to have?
At that moment, the dazed Kai’Sa suddenly saw Zach turn his head toward her.
At the same time, she saw the stern look on Zach’s face.
“Did you already forget what I told you in the cabin?
Why are you throwing yourself against a Void creature far beyond your ability again just to save someone else?”
Felix, a transmigrator from Earth, wakes up in Zaun before and during the events of Arcane.
He becomes connected to Silco’s side, gains a Skin Master System, and uses League skin-based weapons, tech, armor, and abilities to change the fate of Zaun.
Instead of letting Arcane’s tragedies play out exactly the same way, Felix tries to protect the people around him, especially Powder/Jinx, and push Zaun toward open rebellion against Piltover.
The story starts with the Piltover-Zaun conflict, then expands into the wider Runeterra setting: Noxus’s invasion of Ionia, Demacia’s internal conflict, the Freljord, Shurima, the Void, and eventually the Ruination/Shadow Isles plotline.