Titan King: Ascension of the Giant

A high-pitched thrumming vibrated through the air, the sound of wings beating fast enough to shred reality itself. The noise grew louder, closer.

Crack!

A winged Gnasher Reaver materialized directly in front of Orion. Its massive upper mandibles, lined with serrated teeth, snapped shut like a pair of shears, cleaving the Deathly Soul-Reaper's torso in two.

This was an arch lord at its peak, the strongest of the four Reavers, and one of the two most powerful beings in their race besides Matriarch Jynara herself.

Despite being bisected, Orion felt no panic. The Soul-Reaper's form was most resistant to this kind of physical trauma; its body would simply knit itself back together.

But he never let an attack go unanswered.

With a whisper of displaced air, the blood-red scythe in the Soul-Reaper's hands swung toward its attacker.

It never connected. A sharp clang of metal on chitin rang out as a second, even more robust Gnasher Reaver intercepted the blow, locking the scythe in its powerful jaws. At the same time, the first Reaver opened its mandibles again, aiming to decapitate the Soul-Reaper.

Just as Orion was about to play one of his trump cards, an enraged roar erupted from beneath him. A wave of ice and deathly silence rolled out from the skeletal dragon.

A cracking sound echoed through the air, but this time it came from the Gnasher Reaver's feet. Frost, black and absolute, was creeping up its legs, encasing it in a tomb of ice. The Reaver thrashed, its four arms hacking at the ice with bladed weapons, but it couldn't shatter the frost faster than it was spreading.

A cold smirk appeared on Orion's face. He released his grip on the trapped scythe. In a blur of motion, his hands shot out and clamped around the neck of the freezing Gnasher. The move not only nullified the immediate threat but turned the tables completely.

As the ice consumed the Reaver, the Soul-Reaper's grip tightened with terrifying force. In the space of a single heartbeat, Orion ripped the Gnasher's head from its shoulders with a wet tear of flesh and chitin.

The battle came to a sudden, violent stop.

But as a flicker of triumph registered in Orion's mind, he caught a glimpse of the second Gnasher Reaver—the one holding his scythe—turning to flee.

So that was their plan. The realization came a fraction of a second too late.

BOOM!

A double explosion rocked the heavens. The headless Gnasher Reaver had self-destructed.

An arch lord at its peak, detonating with the force of a miniature nuke.

The resulting wave of incandescent energy washed over the battlefield below. The Gnasher beasts, sand scorpions, and undead locked in their death struggle were instantly vaporized, turned to ash and dust.

For a moment, the entire war ground to a halt.

Deep within the Death Spiral Zone, in the heart of the Nest.

"Are they all dead?" Matriarch Jynara's voice was devoid of emotion. The death of her Reavers was not a tragedy; it was their duty, their destiny.

"Great-Tusk's self-destruction had meaning," one of her royal guards declared with solemn respect for the Reaver's sacrifice and courage.

"Great-Tusk failed."

The guard fell silent as the Matriarch's tone turned impossibly grave.

Back at the epicenter of the blast, high in the sky.

The form of the Deathly Soul-Reaper solidified out of the roiling energy, almost completely unharmed.

The skeletal dragon below it, however, had not been so fortunate. Seventy percent of its body was simply gone. With a final, agonized cry, it dissolved into light and reformed as a cracked and battered bone signet on Orion's finger.

There was no time for grief. Orion swung his scythe, his eyes locking onto the Gnasher Reaver escaping in the distance. He teleported. A colossal phantom of his scythe sliced through the void.

A brief, frantic series of impacts rang out, then silence.

When Orion reappeared, he was holding a severed head.

The fight was over. The last two Gnasher Reavers of the Gnasher Race had been slain. But this time, it had cost him his skeletal dragon, which was now too damaged to be summoned.

In truth, an explosion of that magnitude could never have seriously harmed the Soul-Reaper. The tendrils of Death-Soul that had been vaporized in the blast would simply reform, weaving themselves back into existence. The only things that could truly damage it were attacks imbued with conceptual power, forces that could permanently corrode or erase the Death-Soul itself.

"Is that all of them?"

Orion extended his senses, probing the area for any other Gnasher arch lords. He found nothing. The moment his perception touched the borders of the Death Spiral Zone, it was nullified by some unknown power emanating from deep within the Nest.

"Or," Orion murmured, his gaze fixed on the hazy depths, "is the real opponent just not ready to make their move?"

In the heart of the Nest, before the mysterious statue.

Matriarch Jynara and her four guards stood in stunned silence. The sight of the Deathly Soul-Reaper emerging from the blast unscathed had shattered their understanding of the enemy.

"Is its body… harder than ours?" one of the guards asked, his voice trembling with a fear he couldn't conceal. "Our carapaces are fused with black gold!"

"No," the Matriarch said, shaking her head. "Its body is not durable. Great-Tusk's mandibles wounded it, cutting it in two." This was a fact, a key piece of intelligence they had sacrificed two arch lords to obtain.

"The reason it is unharmed is that the tendrils making up its form possess the ability to regenerate instantly. This trait is… terrifying. It means the enemy is effectively immune to most forms of physical attack."

As Matriarch Jynara spoke, her brow was deeply furrowed. An enemy like this wasn't just difficult. It was dangerous on a whole other level.

"Matriarch, what are our orders?"

After a long pause, Jynara's composure returned. "We wait."

This Godforsaken Land was the domain of their ancestors. The decision to stay or to leave was not hers to make.

The lull in the war was brief. The fodder on the front lines had been annihilated, clearing a path for the endless swarms of smaller scorpions and the tireless undead armies behind them. The Gnasher Reaver's final act had also blasted away the surrounding ridges, turning a single invasion path into three.

The coalition forces seized the opportunity, pushing their advantage.

But just as quickly, new waves of Gnasher beasts clawed their way from the earth and the canyon walls, halting the advance once more. The front line devolved back into a meat grinder.

The fearlessness of the skeletal warriors, the howls of the undead, the charge of the sand scorpions, and the absolute refusal of the Gnasher beasts to retreat—all these wills clashed and were extinguished in the crucible of death.

Silverwood Realm, the Forest of Nature.

As Tangere's forces continued to clear out the demonic monsters around The Stillness, the chances of survival for the Wood Elf refugees still hiding in the northern forests grew with each passing day. The plan to clear the forest had recently been updated, with a new division of labor.