The air crackled with tension as the third wave descended on the battlefield. Aasal's body screamed warnings at him—every instinct honed through countless battles telling him that these creatures were different. A lot more dangerous than the last two. Even though he'd grown exponentially stronger since the first wave, the jumps in power between each assault were becoming too great to bear.
He glanced at Val beside him, noting how their strength had gradually evened out. Where once Val had been leagues ahead, now they stood as equals. Aasal's mastery of wrapping his body in mana had changed everything—the technique serving as amplification, pushing his capabilities beyond what he'd thought was originally possible.
The monsters that came into view on the battlefield looked like nightmares. Six dark, bead-like spider eyes that reflected no light. Razor-sharp teeth jutted from maws that could swallow a bear whole. Their shells, harder than any armor Aasal had ever encountered, gleamed like obsidian. Each creature towered six meters tall—nearly twenty feet—standing on two massive legs with arms as thick as tree trunks.
These weren't the mindless, bloodlusted beasts from the previous waves. These creatures studied them, calculated their movements, and planned their attacks.
"Form ranks!" General Griffith's voice boomed across the battlefield. "Hold the line!"
Hundreds of thousands of soldiers charged forward, their battle cries echoing across the plains. But the monsters were ready. A blue glow began to churn in their throats, growing brighter and more intense with each passing second. Waves of energy rippled through the air around them.
"Get down!" Aasal shouted, his danger sense screaming.
The creatures opened their maws in unison, and concentrated beams of pure mana erupted forth. The azure light carved through the charging humans like a hot knife through butter. Tens of thousands of soldiers simply ceased to exist, vaporized in an instant. The screams of the dying mixed with the pungent smell of burned flesh and metal.
The human mana cannons returned fire, their projectiles striking the monsters with thunderous impacts. But where the beams had obliterated humans entirely, the cannons only wounded the creatures, enraging them further.
He dove to the side, tackling Val just as another wave of mana beams swept across their position. A stray beam caught his shoulder, and agony beyond description flooded through him. The flesh didn't just burn—it vaporized, leaving a perfectly cauterized wound that pulsed with foreign mana.
Gritting his teeth, Aasal tried to heal the wound with his recovery technique. But the alien mana fought back, resisting his attempts at regeneration. He had to focus and destroy the will of the invading energy before he could even begin to heal. The process took precious seconds away which could mean life or death on a battlefield.
"Thanks," Val panted, pulling himself to his feet. Aasal just nodded, flexing his newly healed shoulder. "Let's go."
Together, they launched themselves at the nearest monster. It took everything they had—every technique they'd learned, every ounce of strength they'd built—just to bring down a single creature. Around them, other soldiers were faring worse— much worse.
The generals finally entered the fray, their legendary abilities on full display. Meteors rained down from above, crushing monsters beneath their weight. Lightning crackled and danced before striking the enemy lines. Tsunamis of water and walls of fire rolled across the battlefield. These elite warriors could take on multiple monsters at once, but even they struggled against the stronger variants that began to appear.
Hours passed. The battle raged with unrelenting fury. Of the hundreds of thousands who had started the fight, perhaps ten thousand remained. Bodies littered the ground like fallen leaves, and the battlefield reeked of death and destruction.
Several generals had fallen. Aasal caught glimpses of their final moments—heroes who had seemed invincible reduced to only bones. But Sergeant Griffith still lived, still fought, his gruff voice cutting through the chaos to rally the soldiers to keep fighting.
That's when it appeared.
The creature that emerged from the enemy ranks was of the same species as the others, but larger. Stronger. Ten meters tall with ten eyes that sucked everything in like blackholes. Even the other monsters gave it a wide berth, recognizing an apex predator when they saw one.
"That's one of the elite variants," Val said, his voice tight with exhaustion. "The kind the generals usually handle."
"The generals are busy," Aasal replied, raising his sword. The blade hummed with solidified mana, its blue sheen pulsing with each heartbeat. "Guess it's up to us."
They were tired. But they were also the only ones close enough to intercept the creature before it reached the remaining soldiers.
The battle was brutal. The monster's first strike sent Val flying, his body carving a trench through the blood-soaked earth. Aasal stood alone, facing down a creature that outweighed him by several tons.
"Val!" He tossed a healing potion to his friend. "Can you get back up?"
Val caught the potion and drank it in one gulp, but Aasal could see the truth in his friend's eyes. This wasn't just about injuries anymore. They were beyond their limits, running on fumes and determination alone.
"I can't," Val said quietly. "Not this time. You're stronger than me now anyway."
It was true. Aasal's rapid adaptation, his ability to learn and grow in the heat of battle, had pushed him beyond what Val could achieve. His arrows now flew like beams of blue light, his sword sang with concentrated mana, and his movements had become fluid, almost supernatural.
He stabbed the monster in its stomach, the blade penetrating deep. But the creature's muscles clenched, trapping the sword. A massive fist crashed into Aasal's chest, and he felt ribs crack and splinter. The pain was immediate and intense, but without foreign mana to complicate things further, he could heal quickly.
They became blurs on the battlefield, moving faster than most eyes could follow. Even other combatants stopped to watch this impossible duel between a human teenager and a creature of legend.
The monster's fury reached new heights. Its volcanic shell began to glow red-hot, the temperature rising until the ground beneath its feet turned to molten slag. Aasal's sword melted on contact. His gauntlets shattered. His arrows penetrated only inches before being consumed by the intense heat.
Aasal reached for his spear, concentrating mana at its tip until it pulsed with brilliant blue energy. He hurled it like a javelin, and it punched through one of the creature's eyes, erupting from the back of its skull in a spray of blood and brain matter.
For a moment, he thought it was over. But the brain wriggled, began to heal, and the monster's movements became more erratic, more dangerous. Brain damage had made it mindless, but no less deadly.
With no weapons left, Aasal reached deep into his understanding of mana manipulation. He tried to create a sword from pure energy, but the intricate details proved beyond him for now. He realized he could just make it simpler.
A blade of pure mana sprang from his hand, crackling with power. It looked almost like the energy sword from Halo, humming with barely contained force. When it struck the monster's shell, the creature's own mana tried to disrupt it, but Aasal's technique had been refined beyond its understanding.
He leaped high, bringing the energy blade down in a final, devastating line. The creature split from head to toe, its insides spilling across the battlefield in a steaming heap.
Aasal collapsed, his chest heaving as exhaustion finally claimed him. Pride swelled in his chest—he had done it. He had faced the impossible and won.
Val reached him first, pulling him to his feet with tears in his eyes. "You did good, kid. You did real good."
Around them, the surviving soldiers cheered. The third wave was over. Humanity had survived another trial. He had completed the 3rd floor. The systems' messages echoed in Aasal's mind, but he ignored them for right now. He wanted to walk with Val back to the castle, to savor this moment of victory.
That's when he felt it.
A presence in the air—something that made his skin crawl and his danger sense scream warnings. The other soldiers continued their celebrations, oblivious to the wrongness that seemed to press against reality itself.
"What's wrong?" Val asked, noticing Aasal's sudden tension.
Aasal didn't answer immediately. His eyes scanned the horizon until they locked onto something in the distance. The moment their gazes met, agony exploded through his skull. It felt like his brain was trying to tear itself apart, like every nerve ending had been set ablaze. Blood poured from his eyes, his veins bulged and bursted, and his legendary pain tolerance crumbled under the assault.
The world began to change. Clouds spiraled overhead, forming unnatural patterns. Lightning flickered without thunder. An oppressive weight settled over everything, making it hard to breathe, hard to think.
The system's words echoed in his memory from when he'd first been brought from earth to the tower. Among all the information it had given him, one phrase now stood out with chilling clarity: "With a world destined for destruction."
That had been about Earth. But now he wondered—would Earth become like this? Was this world also destined for destruction?
Other soldiers began to notice the wrongness. Those who looked in the direction of the presence—their heads simply exploded, painting the ground with gore.
"Don't look!" Aasal grabbed Val and pulled him back just as he was turning to see what was wrong. "Whatever you do, don't look that way!"
The red alert blared again. Everyone retreated behind the castle walls, the massive gates slamming shut with finality. The walls were legendary—they could withstand the full force of all three waves for hours before even showing cracks.
But the sound that came next made the walls seem like paper. Each footstep caused earthquakes, shaking the very foundations of the earth. And when the presence drew close enough, Aasal could see why.
"Close your eyes," he whispered to Val. "If you look directly at it, you'll die."
The creature towered above the walls, its head disappearing into the clouds. With casual indifference, it flicked its hand, and the entire front wall crumbled like sand. Centuries of craftsmanship, magic, and reinforcement—gone in an instant.
But what lay beyond the destroyed wall made Aasal's blood run cold. Monsters. Not thousands, not even millions, but hundreds of millions of them. They swarmed across the landscape like a living carpet of death, climbing over each other in their eagerness to reach the humans. The sheer mass of bodies stretched beyond the horizon, a writhing ocean of claws, teeth, and malevolent hunger.
When it spoke, the very air trembled. The words were incomprehensible—some ancient language that predated human understanding—but the sound itself was agony. Aasal's ears felt like they were bleeding, his eardrums threatening to burst from the words that no mortal was meant to hear.
"Kid, listen to me." Val's voice was steady despite the fear in his eyes. He removed a necklace from around his neck—a simple chain with a small pendant. "My sister made it for me, back before... before everything went wrong. I want you to carry it."
Tears blurred Aasal's vision. In his heart, he'd come to think of Val as the older brother he'd never had. Someone who had protected him, taught him, stood by him through impossible odds. And now he was about to lose him.
Val's hands shook as he placed the necklace in Aasal's palm. He was terrified—terrified of dying. He couldn't save his family before, and now he couldn't save Aasal either. The weight of all his failures pressed down on him.
"I'm sorry," Val said, his voice breaking. "I'm sorry I couldn't protect you. I couldn't protect anyone."
Aasal was crying now, still just a teenager despite all his power and skill. The weight of impending loss threatened to crush him, but he could see Val was trying to stay strong even in his terror.
The words caught in Aasal's throat, his emotions consuming him and preventing him from speaking. The guilt of being able to leave while Val had to stay ate him alive. He wanted to tell Val that he was wrong—that he had protected him, had saved his life countless times on the battlefield right up until this final moment. But grief and guilt had stolen his voice, and he couldn't respond, couldn't offer Val the comfort of knowing that he had succeeded where he thought he had failed.
The creature lowered its massive head, revealing a single eye in the center of its face. A cyclops of impossible proportions, its gaze swept across the survivors below. When that eye locked onto Aasal, curiosity flickered across its ancient features.
It spoke again, the incomprehensible words causing reality itself to shudder. When Aasal didn't respond the creature's curiosity deepened. It leaned closer, that massive eye studying him with an intensity that made his skin crawl. It was looking through him, past his flesh and bone, searching for something much deeper.
Then it found what it was looking for.
The creature's expression shifted to absolute shock, then to a rage that seemed to encompass the very foundations of existence. The air itself caught fire with its fury.
Then it raised its fist and brought it down.
The impact was beyond description. The earth cracked and split, the shockwave racing outward to destroy everything for miles. The castle, the walls, the very ground—all of it was obliterated in an instant.
The destruction swept over them both. "Goodbye, Aasal," Val whispered, and then he was gone, consumed instantly as his form dissolved into nothingness beneath the apocalyptic wave.
In that same moment, Aasal was gone, reality folding in on itself as he was pulled away from humanity's final moment.