Chương 50: An Envoy?

The Guardian fled across the frozen slope, its arm already beginning to regenerate, behind the beast Stelle pursued, keeping the distance between them locked tight. She caught the beast at the edge of the narrow ravine. She drove her floating blade down in a steep and controlled dive. The creature did not run. It turned and answered her landing with a wide, desperate swing. Stelle met the blow head-on with the flat of her sword. The heavy impact forced her back, sending her sliding meters across the snow.

The heavy blow shuddered straight through her arms. The beast was still physically stronger. Earlier, she had only managed to temporarily stop it by stabbing its head while it was distracted. She no longer had that element of surprise. Also, using Glacial Spear repeatedly was out of the question, as the ability consumed far too much energy. Surprisingly, Glacial Genesis gives her the ability to fight at long range. This power has two levels.

The first uses her normal frost, like frost manifestation, and the second uses its true power that Lilian bestows to her, the authority from the God of Winter. Glacial Spear is under the second level. [Current Reserves: 57%] Between crafting the sword and throwing the Glacial Spear, she had already burned through a considerable portion of her reserves. At least the spear confirmed what It can do, she reminded herself. Glacial Genesis simply possessed the elemental to counter it.

That's why this battle became much easier. Her eyes landed on its corroding body. Another thing is the beast was already growing weaker, the corruption made it weaker. This fight would not last much longer. Stelle watched the creature move again, charging now with desperation before she began infusing the first level of Glacial Genesis into her blade once more. The steel glowed a pale, icy blue, smoking faintly as an absolute cold hung heavy in the air around it. She dashed forward.

The beast unhinged its jaw, a frost beam already charging within its maw. The moment it fired, Stelle sidestepped, letting the beam track harmlessly past her. Closing the remaining distance low, she slid beneath its guard and slashed a deep line across its ribs. Rather than dissolving it, the wound only sealed under a hard, glittering shell of frost preventing it from healing. The Guardian still fought with desperate fury. Raising its right arm and lashed out to claw her down.

Stelle side-flipped to dodge then dashed toward its flank, and unleashed a rapid flurry of slashes that left the limb limp. Frost clung to the open wounds. Driven by relentless instinct, the beast used its massive frame to try to crush her under its weight. It leaped into the air and it's back landing towards her. She immediately commands her sword rune then grabs its hilt to send her in the air. But she missed the sudden twist with its massive arm that flew towards her.

She held the blade to block the blow, but the force still pushed her back several meters. Standing up slowly, she feels a pang of pain from her right side. She patted the snow off her cloak, then looked at her bruised right hand. Strong… Still strong, despite everything. She reset her stance. Her right hand is already healing from the bruises. I can't afford to treat this as decided yet.

[Simulation Sequence: Active] Her eyes glowed with cold precision as she calculated its movements, then moved closer with caution this time. The Guardian slammed both fists into the earth, sending a wide radius of ice spikes tearing up through the ground. Stelle didn't flinch, her eyes saw the trajectories and saw the clear path ahead. One by one she dodged every spike with precision, flipping, spinning, jumping, and rolling away. The moment the spikes settled, she surged forward and bent her now longer body.

A clean horizontal slash carved straight through the beast's left leg. The Guardian's leg buckled, and its massive frame collapsed sideways into the snow. Below it, an ice spike shot upward and pierced its limbs, locking it down with its chest fully exposed. Stelle lowered her blade and approached the fallen titan with slow, deliberate steps. She jumped calmly above it, her eyes tracing the open target. With a powerful slash, she tore through its chest, creating an opening straight to its core.

She stared down at the massive, crystallized core, heavily warped by corruption. The eerie interplay of cyan and purple light made it look almost hypnotic, a dying star trapped in corrupted glass. The core… it's already consumed by the dark star energy. Her left hand began materializing the Glacial Spear. The surrounding air rushed inward, gathering into a heavy, condensed vortex until a solid lance of absolute ice rested firmly in her grip. This feels too easy, she thought, immediately wary.

The corruption had already stripped the beast of most of its original strength that relied almost entirely on its regeneration. Her blue eyes linger in its hollow purple eyes. The quiet suffering reflected within them made her realize that perhaps the beast, too, longed for an end to its agony.

"Then… let me end this, so all of us will be freed from this hellish mountain." She raised the spear, ready to thrust, when something caught her eye. She froze, watching the exposed core expand on its own. What's happening? [WARNING] [Core anomaly detected. High-density energy is violently swelling—] A figure closed the distance toward her at terrifying speed—Valen, reaching out to pull her clear, only to be met by cold steel. Her blade was already mid-swing, cutting straight for his face.

Valen parried on instinct, the jarring steel-on-steel collision forcing both of them back a step.

"What do you think you're doing?" Stelle's tone is serious while glaring to the sudden action of the man. Valen hadn't expected the strike either, but he shook it off in an instant.

"Move! You need to move away, now!" She looked at the Guardian's core. It was expanding as if about to explode. She immediately dashed clear, and he followed a half-step behind. BOOM!! Dark matter detonated from the beast in a widening, corrosive wave, scorching snow and stone as it tore through the ravine. Both of them were swept up in the blast radius. Sudden dark energy covered the entire area, eating away at everything and leaving a wide crater behind.

When the wave passed, only two defenses remained standing in the field. A crumbling wall of frost and a battered barrier of wind. Raised independently in the exact same instant, her ice and his gale had just barely absorbed the blast. The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon. She looked toward the center of the blast then frowned, already disliking what her eyes were showing her. The Guardian stood where it had fallen, but nothing about it remained the same.

It held itself with an eerie, deliberate stillness, its ruined frame somehow reassembled into something with genuine composure. Its hollow, purple eyes observed its arm as if examining it.

"To think you brought this thing so close to ruin," it murmured.

"I did not expect a mere weak mortal to hold the power to defeat it." The voice echoed a chorus of wrong, overlapping tones around the destruction. The feral, mindless rage of the beast is gone, replaced entirely by ancient, mocking intellect. The air turned bitterly cold. Valen on her side grit his teeth. He looked at the dark energy flowing around the beast's massive frame, flooding the ravine in a thick, suffocating tide. Stelle caught his reaction in a quick glance before refocusing on the Guardian.

Something is off… it suddenly gained the ability to talk. What is happening? Its hollow eyes locked onto them.

"Such a useless living, stepping into something that no mere human should interfere.," the voice resonated from deep within its chest, heavy as grinding iron.

"Bringing action that causes my plan to be destroyed."

"Now… talk. On what authority do you have to interfere?" Stelle didn't immediately talk, reading the air around her.

"Who are you?" The beast looked at her, with an unamused gaze. As if already knows what question she will spat out.

"Me? Is that all you can say? Well since a fool like you ask, then allow me." Placing its massive hand under its chin.

"I'm an Envoy," the entity intoned, its voice echoing like wind through hollow stone, as if the mortal's inquiry were a dust mote beneath its notice.

"A whisper from the Dark Star—assuming your fleeting mind has grasped the terror of that name." [System] [A World Under the Four Moons]"Born from the death throes of a fallen sky, the Envoy is not a mere creature, but a living fracture of the Great Darkness—a lingering piece of the Dark Star's true power left to bleed across the world after its outer form was bound in eternal chains." An Envoy of the Dark Star? How is something like that even here?

Stelle weighed the sudden, self-proclaimed title of the entity before her—a creature born from the very root of all devastation according to the book inside her archive.

"This creature that you are trying to end should be causing havoc, to reap the fragile threads of your kind… Yet you two linger, a petty thorn in a grand design. I granted its master the grace to command but it withered. Useless."

"Causing havoc? granted its master the grace to command?" Stelle asked, her voice steady as she weighed the truth.

"Are you the one that ordered Malkor?"

"Malkor." The name left its mouth like a spat insult.

"I granted that pathetic creature this beast to wage a proper war upon your kind. Instead, he perished. I assume you two slew him, seeing as the binding has dissolved." The entity paused, as if pondering a minor detail.

"Truly useless. I should have foreseen as much from a worm that clung to petty hatred rather than purpose." Stelle's eyes narrowed. So there's more to this than simple revenge. Malkor had been a Tier 4 Manipulator—capable of commanding powerful beasts, but completely lacking the sheer combat power needed to subdue and tame a creature of the Guardian's magnitude. He hadn't conquered it himself.

This entity was possibly the one who made the beast into submission, twisted its mind, and handed him the reins like a weapon.

"An envoy? How can you even enter this realm?" Valen stepped in, his tone sharp with command.

"Ah… such insolence, to demand grand truths with so feeble a mind," the corrupted beast replied, its voice cold and unamused as ambient shadows coiled around its form like striking vipers.

"This shell is merely a fragment—a fleeting shadow cast by my true power. The roots of the Dark Star run deep within the rift, allowing me to thread my will directly into your frail world."

"So you are still hiding on the other side? Stop acting like you are part of that ancient calamity. You are just one of those bastards who worship that foul entity." The beast twitched its ear and flared with rage.

"What insolence spews from your lips?! You dare brand the Sovereign Darkness a foul entity?!"

"That entity is no god, but a cancer of the realms. I don't know what the worshipers of this Great Darkness have in mind, but I know all of you are just a bunch of people who cling to its power."

"You know them?" Stelle silently asked the man. Valen looked at the girl beside him. Her eyes were full of curiosity, eager to understand even in this tense moment.

"Yes, the power that lingers in this beast is slightly different from the original darkness. It holds an ancient path built to fully utilize the power of the dark star."

"You mean…"

"Don't be fooled—that entity is not a true Envoy," Valen said calmly.

"But that doesn't mean it's not strong." The beast went still, its glowing, ancient gaze looking down at them.

"Your curiosity exceeds your mortal lifespan," the corrupted guardian rumbled, the air heavy with the stench of decay.

"Consider this brief enlightenment a final mercy for the damned—a fleeting entertainment before the silence. I shall bury your broken shells beneath the cold, absolute grace of the Dark Star—" It closed the distance before finishing its sentence, moving faster than an oversized, corrupted beast should have been physically capable of. Stelle barely registered the movement. She raised her guard just in time, but the sheer force of the impact launched her into the air.

The bone in her forearm cracked—she felt the sickening snap. So fast… She twisted mid-air, slammed her feet into the frost, and reset her footing, but the beast was already winding up a second strike. Before it could launch, Valen was there behind it. His longsword cleared its sheath in one fluid draw, closing on the beast's exposed flank. His blade bit deep into its hide, but the creature twisted just enough to turn a fatal strike into a shallow gash. Its massive head snapped toward him, jaws unhinging.

Dark matter compressed violently in its palm before firing outward in a dense, violet sphere. Valen twisted, letting the sphere tear past his shoulder to detonate against the ground behind him. His eyes remained locked on the target, razor-focused. Mana flared along his blade, igniting in a volatile fusion of Gale and Aqua. He closed the distance in a single step, torqued his hips, and swung. The blade tore through the air with a deafening crack.

Steel met corrupted flesh, and the surging energy of wind and water detonated point-blank across the beast's chest, throwing the massive creature backward. The beast dragged itself to a halt, snow hissing around it. A massive, jagged cut now ran from its lower hip all the way to its shoulder.

"I am surprised," the corrupted guardian's voice resonated, though its hollow eyes held zero amusement at the sudden display of power.

"I now understand why that useless creature failed." Valen leveled his blade, his voice colder than the surrounding ice.

"I have no idea who you are talking about. Though I'm sure you don't mind if I don't hold back for you."

"Really… You think because you can wound me, you have the capacity to defeat me?" The corrupted guardian's voice boomed through the ravine.

"You mortals have already forgotten the power that once nearly unmade this wretched world." The beast smashed its fist into the ground beneath Valen's feet. A shockwave of corrupted energy erupted outward. Valen raised a wall of gale-force wind to absorb the blast, but as the smoke cleared, the beast's jaws unhinged directly in front of him. A concentrated beam of violet light tore through the air. Valen twisted to evade, but it grazed him in his side, injuring him. The beast leapt high into the air.

"Pathetic insect!" the creature roared, coming down with full force. Thump! A thick cluster of icy spikes burst from the snow beneath Valen, reaching up to impale the falling monster. The beast adjusted mid-air, catching the tip of the primary spike and vaulting off its side to avoid being skewered. Landing heavily, its hollow eyes scanned the field for the caster. The girl was no longer on the battlefield. Left. Right. Nothing. Then it felt something and snapped its gaze upward.

High above, Stelle was riding her sword, diving through the freezing sky at terrifying speed. Mid-fall, she jumped and separated from it, letting the sword slam down like a meteor. The blade passed straight through the corrupted guardian's chest, missing its core by mere inches as the beast twisted away at the last millisecond.

"You—" Before the corrupted guardian could finish, Stelle was already in its face. Rotating her body mid-air, she delivered a brutal, cartwheel axe-kick straight across its jaw, the force twisting its massive head sideways. As her feet touched the snow, the heavy frost on her legs melted away instantly, granting her the mobility to leap clear just as the beast swung a massive counter-strike through the empty air where she had been standing.

"I'm one step closer to ending it all, just for you to show up""Why are you even here?" Stelle's tone is serious.