The Morning Quake, the Behemoth Chase
Early the next morning, before the sun could fully break through the volatile violet haze pooling along the southern horizon, a violent, rhythmic tremor shattered the silence.
THOOM.
THOOM.
THOOM.
The ground beneath the campsite buckled so aggressively that Kaelen was tossed straight off his sleeping mat.
He hit the dirt sideways, his eyes fuzzy and bleary.
Lisa bolted upright, a thin line of sleep-drool staining her left cheek.
She blinked stupidly at the sky, her hands fumbling blindly for her gauntlets.
“Wha…
Is it breakfast already?
I didn’t finish the…”
Her voice died instantly.
Her eyes finally tracked past her own hands, locking onto a massive, moving silhouette cutting through the valley fog.
Through the bleary, unfocused morning haze, it looked like a literal mountain was sprinting toward them.
Beside them, Pixel was already on her feet, her fur standing completely on end, her white-tipped tail thrashing wildly as she let out a low, warning hiss.
Through the thick layer of morning dust and fog rolling in from the valley below, a panicked figure came sprinting toward them.
“Runnnn!” a voice screamed, cracking with absolute terror.
Kae rubbed his eyes, squinting through the haze.
“Is that…
Karen?”
It was.
The timid healer was sprinting faster than her E-tier stats should have ever allowed, her light ash-blonde hair flying wildly, her face pale as a ghost.
But it wasn’t just her.
Right behind her—leading it directly toward their campsite—was a nightmare materialized.
A Behemoth-Elephant.
The creature was the absolute size of a small house, its colossal frame draped in heavy, rusted iron chains that clanked with a deafening metallic roar with every stride.
Its thick, leathery hide glowed with a volatile, pulsing red-core energy, and its eyes radiated a devious, unadulterated fury.
It was a bulldozer of flesh and dark mana, razing everything in its path.
Massive boulders that stood in its way were smashed into fine powder like cake; ancient trees were snapped like toothpicks.
With every heavy breath, it blew boiling, scorching air from its trunk, scorching the grass beneath its feet.
Kae gritted his teeth in sheer, unbridled anger, his gamer-rage hitting a boiling point.
“Not this again…
Why does she always have to get into trouble?!”
“We need to move, now!” Lisa shouted, but before anyone could take a step, the tactical layout of the battlefield collapsed.
The Behemoth-Elephant was simply too fast for its massive size.
Closing the distance from twelve o’clock with terrifying velocity, it cut off any viable escape route.
Karen, running on pure adrenaline and blind panic, suddenly caught her boot on a jagged rock.
“Ah!”
She tripped, tumbling hard onto the rough dirt, her wooden staff clattering out of her reach.
She tried to scramble back up, but the massive shadow of the beast already loomed completely over her.
“Karen!” Kae shouted, his boots kicking up dust as he and Lisa charged forward, abandoning all defensive protocol in a desperate bid to pull her from the drop zone.
But it was already too late.
They couldn’t bridge the gap in time.
The beast was right on top of them, its colossal frame blocking out the morning light.
The Behemoth raised a massive, spiked foot directly over Karen and the approaching party, ready to squash the entire group into the dirt like insects.
There was no time to dodge, no spell to cast, and no cover to take.
They were completely helpless against its raw, crushing tier-power.
Realizing the absolute finality of the situation, Karen stopped scrambling.
She looked up at Kae and Lisa, a small, beautiful smile of profound acknowledgment breaking through her terror, even as the wind from the descending foot whipped her ash blonde bangs across her face.
A single, clear tear dropped down her cheek.
Faced with certain annihilation, Karen stopped scrambling.
She closed her eyes tightly, bracing for impact as the colossal shadow completely enveloped them.
‘Just as Kaelen promised…
they never abandoned me.
They knew they couldn’t win against this tier-power, but they still charged in anyway.
Is this what true friendship is like?’
“So this is it,” Lisa whispered, her jaw clenched as she stood her ground beside Karen, her hands raised uselessly against the descending mountain of iron and flesh.
Kaelen and Pixel stood their guard looking unbothered, bracing their bodies as if they weren’t scared, refusing to look away from the threat.
But Kaelen didn’t run.
He didn’t panic. Follow the newest chapters on g.com.
As the massive, spiked foot blotted out the sky, plunging them into darkness, a confident, smug smirk spread slowly across Kaelen’s face.
His sharp eyes locked onto the underside of the giant hoof.
He hadn’t forgotten a single asset in his inventory.
He knew his party’s hidden cooldowns perfectly.
He glanced sideways, locking eyes with the feline sitting on the stump.
“Pixel.
Now.”
The shadow descended with an explosive, deafening rush of wind.
The colossal weight tore into the earth, a massive cloud of dust obliterating the campsite from view in a violent crash.
One second passed.
Then two.
The scene before her was completely impossible.
The house-sized Behemoth-Elephant was frozen mid-stride, its colossal, spiked foot suspended a single inch from crushing Kaelen’s face.
Up close, the monster looked incredibly vulnerable and utterly stupid rather than the terrifying engine of destruction it had been a millisecond ago.
Its mouth was stretched wide in a roaring snarl, but the boiling air was locked solid in place, resembling a static cloud of steam.
Karen looked around, her mouth falling open in sheer, unadulterated shock.
Dust particles hung perfectly suspended in the air like floating specks of glitter.
A small bird, caught in mid-flight directly above the treeline, was frozen stiff, its wings locked wide against the gray morning sky.
Lisa and Karen’s eyes widened, their expressions dropping in unison as they gasped.
They looked down at their own hands, completely stupefied to find themselves completely intact and alive.
“What…
what happened?” Karen stammered, her voice echoing strangely in the dead air.
“Who could have possibly saved us?
Did an S-rank guild master deploy an absolute barrier?”
“Not a barrier,” Kaelen murmured, his smirk widening as his gamer-focus tracked the complete lack of system motion.
He raised a hand and casually pointed to the left.
“Did you guys actually forget that fluffy here could freeze time?”
The duo snapped their heads to follow his finger pointing right down at Pixel.
Pixel was sitting comfortably on a nearby mossy tree stump, casually licking her front paw with an insufferably smug, self-satisfied grin plastered across her feline face.
She smoothed down a stray patch of fur on her chest before slowly looking up, her amber eyes gleaming with absolute superiority.
“Twenty meters of chronos-stasis,” the cat’s dry, mocking voice echoed with crystalline authority directly inside Kaelen’s skull.
“That was a close one, master.”
Kaelen chuckled, stepping out from beneath the frozen giant foot.
He walked over to the stump and held out his palm.
Pixel didn’t hesitate—she raised a single, furry white paw and slapped it against Kaes’ hand in a perfect, synchronized high-five.
“Perfect execution, Pixel,” Kaelen said, turning back to the utterly stunned girls.
“Now…
let’s talk about our counter-attack layout while this big guy is on pause.”
Pixel’s amber eyes narrowed, flashing with a sudden hint of genuine exhaustion.
Her white-tipped tail gave a sharp, frantic twitch.
“Now, let’s stop celebrating and finish it already!” she snapped sharply, the telepathic voice ringing in Kaes’ ears with urgent friction.
“We do not have all day here.
My mana capacity is not infinite, and maintaining a twenty-meter localized time-stop is draining my internal battery by the second.
Erase the anomaly, master !”
The Rare Drop & The Ultimate Loot Box Argument
Kae didn’t argue.
He stepped forward, his expression turning cold and sharp as his focus locked entirely onto the frozen target.
He closed his eyes for a split second, shutting out the bizarre, silent world around him, and reached deep down into his internal engine.
He pulled on that absolute, liquid-nitrogen feeling of Void Energy, but instead of forcing it downward, he concentrated it all into his right hand.
Slowly, the uncalibrated energy swirled around his fingers, vibrating vigorously before solidifying into a sharp, jagged black-and-purple spearhead of pure deletion code.
He opened his eyes, took a few steps back, then he leaped, and drove his cloaked hand violently into the Behemoth-Elephant’s chest.
The spearhead pierced the hide effortlessly, bypassing the flesh entirely as it erased the space where it traveled.
Kae gripped the glowing red crystal core vibrating inside and shattered it on the spot.
[VOID STRIKE: CRITICAL HIT]
The moment the core fractured, the massive house-sized beast didn’t collapse or bleed; it simply dissolved into a cloud of fine, dark ash that drifted away into the frozen air.
But as the creature vanished from existence, a sharp, metallic thud echoed against the dirt.
Where the Behemoth had just been standing, a small, beautifully ornate wooden box lay resting in the grass.
It was wrapped in polished silver trim and glowing with a faint, pulsing blue aura.
Instantly, the twenty-meter chronos-stasis collapsed.
The bird above them snapped into motion and flew away, the dust particles settled back onto the earth, and the heavy, terrifying atmosphere evaporated.
Lisa, Karen, Kae, and Pixel all crowded around the small container, staring down at it with wide, glowing eyes.
“Is that…
a rare drop?” Lisa whispered, her jaw dropping as she stared at the glowing blue aura.
”
“A premium loot box,” Kae murmured, a mischievous, excited smirk spreading across his face.
“Alright, let’s see what kind of high-fidelity assets we just unlocked.”
“Wait!
Don’t touch it so carelessly!” Pixel’s telepathic voice interrupted, full of malicious anticipation as she strutted over to the edge of the box.
“Let us analyze the risks objectively.
Based on the chaotic structural variance of this realm, I highly deduce that this is a trap.
Inside lies a giant, elite zombie monster designed to burst out and eat your brains, master.”
“Are you completely delusional?!” Kae snapped, his eye twitching as he glared down at the cat.
“Why would a massive, brain-eating zombie be neatly packed inside a tiny, ornate loot box?
That makes zero structural sense!”
“It’s called a surprise corporate downsizing, Kae,” Pixel shot back, her amber eyes squinting at him.
“And since I am the one who froze time and secured this asset, I claim the executive privilege of opening it first!”
“Oh, no you don’t!” Kae yelled, stepping over the box to block her.
“I’m the one who risked my hand and executed the deletion code.
I’m opening it!”
“Unhand the prize, you corporate tyrant!
My mana died for this!” Pixel screeched mentally, hopping onto her hind legs and swatting at his boots as the two of them began aggressively wrangling over the small wooden container.
Karen watched the boy and the black cat scrambling across the dirt, pushing and pulling at each other with completely shattered dignity.
Her face flustered into a bright, nervous pink as she waved her hands around in a panic.
“Boys!
Boys, please, you need to calm down!” Karen pleaded, her voice cracking as she tried to step between them.
“There’s absolutely no cause for a fight!
Come on now, we’re a team!”
Lisa stood a few paces back, watching the entire chaotic display with a flat, exhausted expression.
She raised her metal-gauntleted hand and aggressively slapped it against her own forehead.
“Idiots,” she muttered in pure anger.
Suddenly, Pixel froze mid-swat.
She dropped back down onto all four paws, her back arching slightly as she snapped her head toward Karen.
Her amber eyes narrowed into a fierce, dangerous squint.
“Boys?” Pixel’s indignant telepathic voice roared, echoing with sharp friction and vibrating with sheer irritation inside their minds.
“Who exactly are you calling a boy, you blind, four-eyed healer?
I am a lady!”
Lisa and Karen both stiffened, their bodies locking up as they gripped their heads in unison.
Their eyes widened to the size of saucers, completely dumbfounded as the crisp, haughty voice echoed with crystalline authority directly inside their skulls.
“Wh-What?!” Karen stammered, looking around in pure shock before her eyes locked onto the black feline.
“I…
I didn’t know you could talk!”
“So you thought I was mute as well?!” Pixel snapped mentally, her telepathic tone dripping with absolute fury.
“How insulting can you get?
I am an elite Strategic Consultant, not some common backyard stray!”
Karen froze dead in her tracks, her hands flying to her mouth as her face turned an even brighter shade of crimson.
She shrank back slightly under the cat’s intense, glowing glare, waving her hands in a frantic, apologetic circle.
“Oh!
My bad, I’m really sorry!” Karen stammered out, her voice squeaking in absolute panic.
“I didn’t mean to insult you, Pixel!
It just slipped out because you and Kaelen were bickering like…
like brothers!”
Lisa stood a step back, her gauntleted hand still resting on her temple as she stared at the cat in pure disbelief.
“Unbelievable…
The furball isn’t just a familiar.
She’s got a full telepathic link.”
The awkward silence stretched over the clearing until Lisa finally cleared her throat, pushing past Pixel and Kaelen to flip open the silver latch of the rare drop box.
The lid popped open with a soft, pressurized hiss, releasing a faint cloud of cold blue mana that quickly dissolved into the morning air.
The entire party leaned over the container, their previous argument completely forgotten as they analyzed the contents.
Nestled inside the velvet lining lay three distinct items: three small, glittering diamond crystals that caught the morning light; a sleek, leather-and-silver collar intricately etched with glowing runes; and a magnificent, folded garment.
Kae cleared his throat, pushing his disorientation aside to lock his executive focus onto the loot.
“Aegis, run a complete subsurface profiling audit on these items.
Let’s see what we’re working with.”