The kaiju's colossal tail carved through three city blocks like a scythe through wheat.
But this ended now.
In a calm, ice-cold voice that somehow carried over the battlefield, Gard muttered:
"Arcane…"
He slowly opened his eyes. Golden-orange light flooded his irises.
He raised his blade high, the corner of his mouth curling into a sharp, almost playful smile.
"Witnessing someone's Arcane for the first time always makes my heart pound faster" Maugier laughed, voice thick with bloodthirsty anticipation.
Baudin grinned like a madman, greatsword resting on one shoulder. "Yeah… this kind of stuff rarely happens, after all."
Gard slammed every drop of his mana inward.
"My law... manifests— Hypersonic Blade Maelstrom."
His body ignited.
A sonic vortex exploded outward from his core.
Cracks of blazing orange energy raced across his skin like living lightning.
His pupils became twin burning suns. The very air warped and howled as the domain erupted.
A perfect 500-meter sphere of pure orange storm swallowed the battlefield in an instant.
From the outside, it looked like a miniature sun had crashed into the city — a glowing orange dome that trapped the kaiju at its heart.
No one inside could leave.
Inside, the sky had vanished. Only endless orange radiance remained.
Fifty-thousand glowing swords materialized in a single heartbeat — each blade a hypersonic lance of condensed mana, edges singing with supersonic fury.
They spun into a colossal spherical maelstrom, orbiting the kaiju in perfect, blurring rings. The sound was deafening: a continuous thunder of blades slicing the air faster than sound itself.
Verene's eyes widened. "W-what an absurd amount of mana…!" Her voice shook with awe and raw hunger.
Zen smirked, arms crossed. "No wonder he's one of the S-Rankers."
She raised one hand, calm but firm. "Everyone, step back at least two hundred meters! Or you'll get shredded by one of those blades."
Gard leveled his sword at the thrashing kaiju.
His voice dropped to a deadly whisper that echoed through the entire domain:
"Penetrate."
The maelstrom answered.
Fifty-thousand swords became living blurs. Thousands of synchronized, guaranteed thrusts per second.
The domain's law made every strike unblockable — scales, armor, reinforced flesh, organs… nothing mattered.
The blades simply were inside the kaiju the moment the command was spoken.
The monster's roar shook the dome as its body was perforated from every angle at once.
The kaiju staggered, regeneration already kicking in — only for the next wave to tear the healing tissue apart faster than it could form.
Now the rest of the team moved.
Imra blurred forward in a spinning leap, daggers flashing. "Shatterstring!"
A razor-thin cutting wire shot from her blade, slicing straight for the kaiju's left eye like invisible marionette threads being severed.
Emmy raised her custom revolver, barrel glowing venom-green. "Venom Sovereign."
One shot. A single bullet carrying a cocktail of neurotoxins, hemotoxins, and necrosis slammed into the exposed neck of the monster.
Meganne planted her staff, grey light surging. "Decay Inversion!"
The kaiju's own regeneration flipped against it — every healed patch instantly rotted black and sloughed away.
"Luminant Spear!" Lucien roared. Ivy poured her support mana into him, and a colossal javelin of pure focused sunlight materialized above the dome, blazing like a second sun.
Regis swung his arm in a wide arc. "Howling Crescent!"
A shrieking blade of wind the size of a building slammed into the kaiju's chest, knocking it off balance.
Ives nocked a single arrow and loosed it skyward. "Prism Shard Volley!"
The arrow shattered mid-air into hundreds of glittering prism shards that rained down like lethal rain, punching into the torso from every direction.
Gul became a human missile. "Reverbshock Finale!"
His final stacked thrust created a cascading shockwave that detonated inside the monster's body.
Rainier raked the air with claw-like hands. "Void Fighting Style: Abyss Claw!"
Invisible rips tore open across the kaiju's flank from twenty meters away.
Maugier's eyes and nose began bleeding as he sacrificed the last of his reserves. "Magi Sacrifice!"
Every drop of magic poured into Baudin.
Baudin lunged, veins bulging, body glowing crimson. "Just die already, you fat lizard!"
He brought the greatsword down with both hands.
"APEX CLEAVE!!!"
A vertical waterfall of pure destructive force cascaded down. At the exact same moment, Lucien's Luminant Spear pierced the torso and Baudin's slash met it halfway.
The kaiju's head flew.
The dome shattered.
Orange light faded. The sky returned.
The massive body collapsed, crushing what remained of the street beneath it. Soldiers erupted into cheers, plasmatic rifles raised high. "WE WON!!!"
The news helicopter circled overhead, cameras zooming in on the fallen titan and the exhausted S-Rankers.
Gard stood at the center of the crater, sword still raised. Then his knees buckled.
Lucien caught him from behind, letting the swordsman's arm drape over his shoulder. "Easy there. You okay?"
Gard's vision swam. He could feel it — three full years of his life burned away in under forty seconds.
His bones ached like an old man's. Blood trickled from the corner of his mouth, and for a moment the world tilted.
"Looks like… you finally wore out, huh?" Benoit walked up, massive shield strapped to his back, grinning.
"By the way — anyone seen Mel?"
The heat from the kaiju's corpse slowly faded.
Gard closed his eyes for a second, tasting the familiar metallic burn of Arcane backlash on his tongue.
"Next time… I'll have to make it count."
The elevator doors slid open. Loki stepped out into the quiet hallway, still wearing his headphones.
A few faint crimson stains of blood on his clothes, but he didn't bother wiping them off.
The building was almost empty—most of the residents had already fled into the city or toward the southern evacuation routes after the emergency alerts.
He unlocked the door to his one-bedroom apartment; he didn't need the key to open it. With a lazy flick of his finger, the lock simply clicked open on its own.
Inside, the place was cozy and tidy: black leather couch, a large wall-mounted TV, a gaming setup in the corner, and a grand piano in the living room.
Loki took off his jacket and tossed it onto the couch.
He grabbed a bottle of pineapple juice from the refrigerator, then returned to the couch and dropped his body into the cushions.
He pulled off the TV remote, took off the headphones, and flicked the TV on.
A serious-looking female news reporter appeared, her voice steady but clearly strained.
"—We are receiving confirmed reports that the Triple-S Threat entity has been neutralized in Dieppe."
"After a fierce battle involving over two hundred A-Rankers and above from multiple guilds, the creature was successfully defeated by a combined assault led by Peak-S Rank fighter Gard Bertrand Vice captain of the Cernunnos Guild."
The TV screen shows a footage of the Kaiju body slumped on the beach beheaded and a massive light javelin punctured against its torso.
While the news continued in the background, a knock on the door was heard from outside.
"Huh? Who could it be?" Loki pondered as he continued to take a sip on the juice.