Chương 358: Chapter 349 - Then All Shall Die

This was it. After more than three months in this world, Alonso stood before its greatest threat — the final boss, the god of the Xok'al itself. The entity that legends said its very birth would mark the end of everything. The air around the cocoon was thick and trembling, the ground itself humming as if it wanted to flee. Each pulse from that abomination sent waves through the soil — slow at first, then faster, harder — until the rhythm became the beat of war drums. Alonso's hands tightened around his blades.

The metal felt alive, vibrating faintly under his grip. Despite the heat, his breath came cold and his gaze was sharp and focused. The cocoon's heart thundered like a dying sun, its surface shifting — flesh and crystal, veins glowing from within. He stepped forward. The moment he crossed the first barrier, resistance hit him like a wall — dense, suffocating air that burned his skin. He tried again, blades out, but a second barrier stopped him completely.

Its shimmer rippled like liquid glass, impossible to cut through. They had expected this. So he waited. But waiting didn't mean calm. The numbers spinned down quicker and quicker — 03: 14: 15 … 02: 02: 57 … 00: 58: 03. He exhaled, slow and steady, heart pounding in rhythm with the monstrous pulse ahead. Dual Overdrive came alive — his world sharpened, stretched thin. Time bled into slow motion. Every tremor in the ground, every vibration in the air, every particle of floating dust — he felt it all.

The cocoon pulsed faster now, devouring the mound of flesh beneath it, feeding itself in savage hunger. The stench of decay and raw energy twisted his gut, but he didn't flinch. Instead, light fractured around him — his domain blooming into being. A storm of refracted shards spun around him like glass stars, orbiting his form. Path of Shards. Beside him, the air rippled. The temperature dropped, and the ground trembled again — not from the cocoon this time, but from her.

Ayu's Primal Flow roared to life, her spectral tiger manifesting as the world responded to her will. Its eyes blazed amber, its stripes burned white. The creature snarled, shaking dust from the air. They didn't need words. They were ready. Whatever came out of that cocoon — that abomination made from centuries of devoured bodies — prophecy or not, doom or not, it didn't matter. They would fight. And they would win.

He watched as the heat rose and the air began to quiver, the ground trembling beneath each twitch of that grotesque cocoon. The final seconds bled away, the timer flickering to nothing—then gone. The mass cracked. No explosion. No quake. No surge of light. Just… silence. A silence so deep it pressed against the skin. Then, from the split shell, it stepped out. Alonso's grip tightened, his breath caught as his eyes adjusted. It wasn't what he had expected. It looked— human. Disturbingly so.

Two arms, each ending in slender hands with five long, razor-tipped fingers. Two legs. A lean, almost elegant frame, standing just shy of his height. At a casual glance its skin appeared smooth, but under his heightened senses, he saw what it truly was—dense clusters of microscopic black scales, each refracting faint light like shards of obsidian. They reminded him of the Dark Stars. Its eyes carried the reptilian slit of its kind, yet there was something far worse behind them—depth. Awareness.

A cold, studying intelligence that stripped away any illusion of innocence. It looked around, not like a predator, but like something waking from a dream… curious, detached, and utterly without empathy. Then, the tails. Seven of them, swaying slowly behind its back, thin and flexible, more like panther tails than weapons. No cannons. No blades. Just living darkness, trailing faint ripples through the air. There was no roar, no display of power. Only that stillness.

And somehow—that quiet, that restraint—made it far more terrifying than anything that had come before. For a moment, Alonso thought he saw confusion in its eyes as it stared down at its own claws and then at the scorched ground beneath. The air crackled, every breath heavy with static. They couldn't delay. In sync with Ayu, he cracked the ground beneath his feet and shot forward. Their movements tore through the air, a blur of light and dust colliding with the low growl of rupturing stone.

And yet— A sudden flare of sparks and heat erupted from the creature's chest. A pulse tore outward, bending the air like molten glass. The world blinked into darkness. Alonso skidded back, boots scraping stone, senses wide open. Every nerve screamed as he searched for the next strike— But nothing came. Then he saw it. The seven-tail hung in the air, unbothered, sparks crawling across its body like living armor. The faint hum of energy filled the cavern, each spark bursting and dying like stars collapsing.

Heart of Sparks. Chiara's barrage came next—Dark Stars flashing like black light, with a beam of focused light threading between them. But as they neared, they bent away, curving off harmlessly, distorted by the creature's insane EM domain. The attack failed. This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source. And yet, what froze Alonso wasn't its power—it was its expression. There was something there. Grief. Confusion. Even sadness. Emotions?

It finally redirected its gaze towards them. The air trembled. His lungs seized. Pressure flooded the cavern, suppressing every living thing to the ground. It felt like— Can't be. Behind the seven-tail, a figure began to form—spectral, half-real. Its outline rippled with heat and static, but its presence was undeniable. Primal Flow? Then— BOOM! The world detonated. Stone split. Fire and dust swallowed everything.

The ceiling of the mountain blew apart as if struck by a god's hammer, raining molten debris and shards of light. The screech drowned thought itself. Alonso's mind snapped into motion. Dual Overdrive surged as he leapt through the chaos, weaving between boulders that fell in frozen arcs around him. Each breath tasted of ash. His boots slid across collapsing stone as he vaulted upward, chasing the creature through the disintegrating mountain. And then daylight.

He burst out through the collapsing summit into a blinding white sky. The cold wind hit him, thick with ash and vaporised snow. And there—high above—hovered the seven-tail. For a moment, it simply watched. Silent. Still. Its gaze swept over the mountains of corpses—hundreds of thousands of its own kind, torn and broken. Then its chest began to heave. The air around it rippled, trembling under a pressure so immense it warped light itself. And from deep within—a sound tore free." NOOO!!!" The world screamed.

A shockwave blasted outward, shredding clouds and carving rings into the frozen plains below. The mountains cracked. Trees bent and snapped. The snow itself evaporated into mist. Alonso's ears burst with pain, but he ignored it, forcing his focus forward as he prepared to attack." Move—NOW!" Lukas' transmission tore through the haze, raw and sharp. From the cliffs below, the set traps detonated in sequence—multiple EMP bursts tearing through the sky.

The air flared blue-white as Camila and several others powered up the cyclotron cannon mounted on the floating serpent, its frame roaring to life, charging for a shot. But Alonso felt it. A shift in the tension. The charge of energy.

"No…" He pushed forward, every muscle screaming.

"RUN!" he shouted, voice tearing through the static as he threw himself toward the seven-tail— And then the world lit up. Sparks erupted, anchored in the seven tails and lashing outward like chains of lightning. The ground screamed. Every metal fragment buried in the soil shuddered and rose. From the corpses of tens of thousands of Xok'al, their blades tore free, spinning into the air as if called by their god. The giant serpent construct trembled, its scales of alloy cracking apart.

The cyclotron cannon shrieked as its core went white-hot and burst, scattering molten shards across the ridge. The vehicles behind them shattered like glass, and the Mecas folded inward like crumpled paper. Snipers screamed as their rifles were ripped from their hands, the barrels twisting and breaking their arms before being hurled skyward. Even Chiara's Dark Stars were torn off course, their trajectories collapsing into spirals before dispersing in the storm.

The air was filled with the sound of metal screaming—shards slicing through snow and flesh alike. The heat rolled across the plain, burning away the frost in seconds. For a heartbeat, it was as if the entire world had been swallowed by fire and steel. Alonso's blades bucked against him, metal screaming in protest. He pushed Path of Shards, severing their connection to the field through sheer will. Light fractured around him as he fought forward, every step like wading through a collapsing storm. But— Too late.

A word—one sound in the Xayen tongue—rippled through the air like a command from creation itself." DIE." The world obeyed. Every metallic structure within a mile radius screamed, twisted, and tore apart under the force of the Storm Domain. Ishaam didn't even have time to cry out—his own bullet bent backward, drilling through his skull. Camila turned her head just as a fragment of the cyclotron—a steel plate the size of a man's torso—smashed into her, crushing her skull with a wet crack that drowned out the thunder.

Maurice tried to block, shouting something Alonso couldn't hear, before hundreds of Xok'al blades carved through him—slicing, flaying, turning his silhouette into a red mist that spattered across the snow. The serpent construct, convulsed as its metallic body coiled inward, every plate folding, shrieking, until it compressed into a massive sphere of screaming metal. Then, with the force of an avalanche, it crashed down—crushing the fleeing Climbers and Mecas beneath it. Alonso screamed.

It wasn't a sound of anger—it was raw, animal pain, the kind that tore through his lungs until it became silence. The taste of ozone and blood filled his mouth. His ears rang. He tried to move, to reach anyone still alive—but there was nothing left to reach. In an instant. Except for those inside… Everyone was dead. A dozen Climbers— gone. Faces he knew, talked to, trusted—companions crushed without resistance, with nothing they or he could do to stop it. For a moment, he questioned reality. How…

how had this happened? How was this creature so powerful? How… Yet as he stared back into those eyes, he saw anger too. Steam rose from the dark frame of the seven-tail as its muscles bulged under the effect of Fury. It was clear then. The seven-tail could use all six skills of this stage—and better than any of them. Alonso's fist tightened around the hilts of his blades. He saw fear in Mei's eyes. He saw Wang in the distance, his Mech armour fractured, bleeding but alive. He saw Imani's face—and the grief in it.

He saw Ayu's fury. Lukas' disbelief. Chiara's hand trembling. And then he raised his gaze towards it. Behind the creature, the blurred spectral haze grew clearer—the outlines of countless souls and creatures twisting together into a single grotesque mass, a living monument to everything it had devoured to come into being. It spoke again. The voice was lower now, almost a whisper, but each word struck like a hammer.

"You killed my race… I will now… kill yours," it said in Xayen.

"And I will make you feel the pain of it." Alonso tensed, ready to strike—but it didn't attack. Instead, its form blurred, vanishing into the upper air, a streak of black tearing through the sky toward the southwest. It's leaving? No—wait. That direction… the Ajnal! The realisation hit him like ice water. But there was no time to chase. The silence that followed was unbearable. The battlefield around him was nothing but fractured metal, splintered stone, and the smell of charred flesh.

The absence of life pressed down heavier than the cold. He sent his waves outward, desperate, and caught the faintest flicker of a response. He sprinted. Lukas and Chiara were already there, kneeling by a shattered crater. Chiara's waves heaved a bent vehicle aside—and beneath it, the mangled body of one of them, a young man named Peter lay still, face pale, blood seeping from the corner of his lips.

His legs were crushed beyond recognition, bones jutting through torn flesh, and a piece of fractured metallic plate had cut into his stomach. Alonso saw Lukas connecting with him, trying to speed up the healing, but… his gaze fixed on the injuries, and he shook his head. He was not going to make it. And Peter knew it too. His eyes found them—then Lukas. Between a gurgle of blood spilling from his throat, he muttered,"You… doomed us all…"

"Why… we didn't… have to…" And then he vanished, leaving a single orb behind.