Worse: the vacuum at the top.
Rank 7 beasts across the Woods caught the same rumour on the wind: Lord Kerchak, the Thunder-Breathing Bear, lived, wounded, hidden. Whosoever could find and kill him might claim his Primordial Blood and ascend to Rank 8.
Near the Rhodar border, a vast, unforgiving river several kilometres wide roared southward, ending in a waterfall that sounded like the planet tearing itself open.
Behind that curtain of water lay a cavern lit by nothing but the glow of a pinkish stone the size of a child’s head.
A rasping, guttural, yet triumphant laugh rolled through the cave.
“Oh, Arbak… you could never have imagined that I’m the one who will reach Rank 9.”
The speaker stood four metres tall, more bear than man. One eye milky and scarred, ears rounded and furred, fangs crowding a hideous grin. Thick black hair covered every inch of his body; old lightning burns zigzagged across his chest and face like rivers of melted flesh.
This was Kerchak, the Thunder-Breathing Bear. Despite his deep, unhealed wounds, he was ecstatic.
At his feet rested a broken shard of the Fruit of the Mountain God, one of the fragments that had survived his rampage on Mount Karol.
“I almost died,” he rumbled, voice like grinding boulders. “But the Creator showed mercy. Rank 9. Freedom from the chains the Tree Lord bestowed upon me. And after that—who knows?”
COUGH, COUGH!
He coughed, blood flecking his lips. “Damn you, Arbak. The wounds you inflicted upon me still have not healed. I’ll need years to completely get rid of them. But they’re worth it. For it’s through them that I’ve seen the path to becoming a true Beast Lord. ”
Suddenly, the cavern trembled.
Outside, two titans waited.
Lurking beneath the sluggish, ochre waters was an Archaic Water Crocodile, a beast of nightmare scale and resilience. It measured a staggering thirty metres from its blunt snout to the wicked tip of its tail, a living fortress whose hide was not scale and flesh but plates of cold, blue-steel carapace, impervious to all but the most powerful siege weaponry. Its tail, thick as a tree trunk, concluded not in a simple taper, but in a deadly, segmented weapon tipped with jagged, metre-long spikes, each capable of impaling armoured vehicles or shattering concrete.
High above, a shadow passed, a colossal silhouette against the sickly yellow sky: an Iron-Beaked Vulture. Its presence was a herald of scavenging and death, its immense wings spanning twenty-five metres tip-to-tip, catching the thermal drafts with effortless, silent menace. The true terror, however, was its head. Its beak was not bone, but a dense, metallic alloy, naturally occurring and grotesquely functional, shaped like a shuttle. It could tear through a mountain itself or crack the carapace of other gigantic creatures with a single, downward strike, making it the undisputed aerial apex predator of the Woods and even the closer areas from Rhodar.
Both were Rank 7.
“We’ve found you, Kerchak,” the vulture screeched, voice metallic and cold. “Your blood will crown the new overlord.”
Kerchak stepped through the waterfall. Water parted before his aura as if terrified.
“You think wounds make me prey? Are you able to claim my Primordial Blood? Hahahaha. It seems you truly think me a sick kitten”.
Kerchak’s aura ascended, the atmosphere becoming violently charged. Dark clouds roiled, and lightning serpents danced in the skies. The ozone itself trembled under the sheer pressure of his Rank 8 power. However, it was unstable. This could not be hidden.
“Come, then. BREAK UPON MY MIGHT!”
The Rank 7 beasts were visibly taken aback, but their ambition was absolute. The beasts roared and screeched, their War Forms unleashed, their bodies doubled in size. This was their one chance for ascension, the eternal struggle to get closer to divinity, to AEON.
Kerchak remained half-human, half-bear. Victory meant ascension. Defeat meant oblivion.
Several kilometres away, a tall hooded figure watched the gathering storm with cold, calculating eyes. A single curved horn glinted beneath the hood.
At the exact moment Nerion’s group slipped through the Ansaran entrance, two other shadows slid into Sagat’s lair from the Rhodar side.
Ron and Malla.
Ron moved like liquid malice: long copper arms swinging, tail coiled tight, knuckles brushing stone. A Mandrill-Beastman’s gift meant his arms were nearly as strong as his legs; he could climb, swing, or kill with any limb he chose.
Malla followed, silent despite her bulk. Hooves barely clicked, horns scraping the ceiling. Her raw strength was one-and-a-half times a normal Praetorian, almost Centurion level, but spread evenly: speed, power, endurance. She hated sneaking; she wanted to charge, to crush. Yet orders were orders, and Rolando’s plan demanded silence.
They flowed through the tunnels like a quiet plague.
Mercenary guards never saw them coming. Ron’s hands flashed: crack, crack, crack. Ron's speed was so great that none of the mercenaries could react, their bodies falling with necks snapped or windpipes crushed under the Mandrill's silent blows.
He ghosted through a side door, missing the single sentry pressed flat against the wall.
The man’s fingers found the alarm horn.
Before the guard could inhale, a massive, hairy, hooved hand appeared from the darkness behind Ron and smashed the guard's head against the wall with a sickening .
Malla’s palm met stone with a wet crunch.
Ron glanced back, shrugged. “My bad.”
Malla simply grunted, already moving to scan the next intersection.
They kept moving. No alarms. No witnesses.
Just two more beasts inside the Tigers’ den.
The tunnels narrowed, the air growing thick with the reek of unwashed bodies and old blood. Luminous pearls cast sickly blue light that made every shadow look hungry.
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Nerion’s group moved in a tight knot, hearts hammering louder than their footsteps. They had passed three intersections already, Elisha’s hands flashing out whenever a lone sentry rounded a corner. No alarms. No cries. Just soft thuds and dead bodies dragged into alcoves.
His legendary patience was stretched thin; the need to move faster, to secure their victory, was a constant thrum beneath his skin, and on several occasions, he was tempted to dart ahead alone. But he kept his pace tethered to the others, a protector preventing mishaps.
After what felt like an hour compressed into mere minutes, they reached the pre-arranged waypoint: a rough-hewn room just before the main cell block, as marked on Roxy’s hastily sketched map. Three mercenaries lounged around a battered table, cards slapping wood, coarse laughter echoing.
The air of bored complacency hung heavy, a fatal mistake the group intended to exploit.
Elisha’s eyes met Nerion’s. A single nod. Both vanished.
Elisha, true Praetorian power, reappeared above the table like a thunderbolt given flesh. His heel smashed the first man’s temple; the second took a spinning kick that caved his ribcage with a wet crunch. Cards exploded into the air like startled birds.
The third mercenary was already rising, hand snatching the sword propped beside him. His mouth opened for the scream that would end everything…
Nerion materialised behind him, a heartbeat slower, but no less lethal. Small fists drove the man’s face into the table. Wood splintered. Teeth scattered across scattered coins.
Silence.
The brothers, standing over their silenced foes, exchanged a breathless, triumphant glance, a moment of shared, youthful exhilaration. Silvestre, Lucca, and Ailan poured into the antechamber, their mission’s second phase feeling deceptively simple. Everything had gone according to plan, and they anticipated a swift rendezvous with Roxy and the final strike into the cells.
“So far, so good,” Ailan whispered.
Nerion grinned, wiping blood from his knuckles. “See? Easy.”
Elisha stayed by the doorway, every sense stretched. The others moved toward the cell corridor.
Yet, fate, in its cruellest form of dramatic irony, decided to interfere.
The far door in the antechamber creaked open.
Elisha exploded forward again, a blur of lethal intent.
The man who stepped through was short, bandy-legged, with a face like a starved rat: tiny black eyes, twitching whiskers, yellow teeth bared in a perpetual sneer. Ocelot, Sagat’s right-hand man.
He had come for the woman.
Ever since Sagat dragged her in, half the lair had gone stupid with lust. Men died trying to touch her; the rest learned fast that the rose had thorns sharp enough to gut a Grandmaster. Ocelot had watched, silent, burning. He had opposed the Rhodarian deal in every council meeting, arguing the woman should stay as war prize. Sagat overruled him. Today, the deal would close, and she would vanish forever.
So Ocelot had stayed behind “to guard the lair.”
The Truth: to steal one last look, maybe one last chance, before she was gone.
He opened the cell-block door a finger’s breadth, old habit, and paused.
Then the far door creaked open.
Death was already coming. Elisha’s strike split the air where his head had been.
Ocelot did not panic. With astonishing speed, only a fraction slower than Elisha’s Flash, he retreated until his back was braced against the solid cave wall, from which he instantly launched himself back towards his attacker.
Two bodies collided in the centre of the room like opposing storms.
CLASH!
The impact rang through the cave like a temple bell struck by a giant. Dust rained from the ceiling. The hanging lantern swung wildly, shadows writhing.
Ocelot was forced back a few meters, but he was visibly unharmed.
Elisha flew ten metres, shoulder slamming a pillar before he killed his momentum. Pain flared white-hot. The shock was immediate and paralysing: the person he had attacked was, by a significant margin, stronger than him.
Ocelot’s tiny eyes burned with cold fury. No scream. No wasted words.
He simply placed one palm flat against the nearest wall.
Qi surged — thick, venomous, Praetorian-grade reaching higher.
The entire lair shuddered. A deep, rolling tremor that travelled three hundred meters in every direction, rattling teeth and loosening stones from the ceiling. Sagat’s invasion code.
Far away, near the Rhodar exit, a mercenary looked up, grinned like a jackal, and pulled a rune-etched cylinder the length of his forearm. He poured Qi into it until the markings blazed crimson.
He hurled it skyward.
The cylinder punched through a ventilation shaft, arced above the canopy, and detonated.
A blood-red flare blossomed against the dawn sky — a second sun, angry and accusing, painting the treetops the colour of fresh slaughter.
In the aisle right before the cell block, the children froze.
The floor was still trembling.
Lucca whimpered. “That… that wasn’t us.”
Silvestre’s chubby fists clenched. “We’re made.”
Ailan stared at the corridor that led to the cells, face pale. “Eliana…”
And somewhere deeper, Ron and Malla paused mid-kill, copper and horned heads tilting towards each other.
The trap had sprung.
Some time earlier, Sagat had ridden out with only two trusted men to a clearing twenty kilometres north-west of his lair. Close enough to return in under a minute if needed, far enough that no one would stumble on the meeting by accident.
He was in a rare good mood.
If the deal closed cleanly, the Ferocious Tigers would vanish into Rhodar under the protection of a Great Tribe, pockets heavy with resources that could finally push him over the invisible wall that had stalled him just shy of Monarch for years. The last breakthrough had come from Rhodarian resources eight years ago; the next would come the same way.
He knew Rolando still nursed a grudge for the Frontier disaster, for the day Lirian De Mikaeli had shattered an entire Rhodarian host in open battle.
, Sagat mused, failing to see the dark irony in his own calculation: the benefit he was offering was too perfect for his own continued survival, a Rank 9 resource.
Truth being told, Sagat had fulfilled every promise required of him: maps, patrol schedules, weak points in the walls. If Rolando had not overextended, attacking two cities at once for glory, Lirian would never have caught him in the open.
Blame the ambitious, not the spy. After all, who could contend against the overwhelming, singular power of Lirian himself, who became a Legend in that same fight, and even before then, was already known as the God of War.
The clearing appeared. Rolando waited with his three human escorts, beastmen nowhere in sight. Both leaders smiled the same false smile.
“Sagat, old Tiger,” Rolando called, voice honey over poison. “I hope the merchandise is ready. Everything is arranged on our side. Close this cleanly, and you’ll ride into the Prairie as honoured guests.”
Sagat’s grin showed too many teeth. “Everything will go well. I have the materials you requested, and the woman will be delivered once we cross the border.”
In reality, Sagat still wasn't sure what power lay in the strange 'stones' he had recovered from the craters, and he was not one to place all his eggs in one basket. He had brought only a third of the resources; the rest remained hidden in his lair.
He slipped a spatial ring from his finger and tossed it underhand.
Rolando caught it. The moment his Qi touched the contents, his pupils dilated with naked greed. The amount of pinkish shards was more than enough to fool a lesser man, but Rolando knew Sagat too well to believe it was everything.
The greed was a tell. Rolando had already suspected Sagat of holding back, which was the precise reason he had dispatched Ron and Malla toward the lair earlier. His strategy now was simple: stall. Rolando settled in, offering Sagat a false litany of future benefits, preparing to retain him in conversation for at least an hour, more than enough time for his Beastmen agents to finish their work.
But all these carefully laid plans, Rolando’s dreams of plunder and Sagat’s vision of safe harbour, dissolved in an instant.
A titanic roar rolled across the sky from the direction of Mount Karol.
Both men looked up.
High above the treetops, a blood-red sun blossomed, furious and unmistakable. This was the effect of a Pyrotechnic Fire—Sagat’s own modified flare.
Twenty kilometres away, his lair was screaming invasion.
Sagat’s face went corpse-pale. In the space between one heartbeat and the next, betrayal crystallised under his eyes.
Rolando had betrayed him, true, but fate was far more capricious than either man realised. For it was not due to Rolando’s men that the signal had been lit.
Two small orbs materialised in his palms—mana bombs, black-market relics bought with Rhodarian gold years ago.
He flung them without a word.
Rolando’s eyes widened. “You bastards triggered it already—”
Too late.
BOOOOOM!
Dual detonations ripped the clearing apart. Trees became splinters, earth fountained skyward. One of Rolando’s men was caught full in the blast—armour shredded, body tumbling like a broken doll, alive but screaming.
Rolando and the survivors threw themselves behind cover, cursing.
Sagat never looked back, leaving his own men behind.
Legate-level Qi erupted. The air cracked like a whip as he shattered the sound barrier, a sonic boom flattening grass in a perfect circle.
Twenty kilometres.
He would be home in seconds.
Behind him, Rolando rose from the smoking crater, face twisted with rage and something close to admiration.
Chaos was only just beginning.