"In any other circumstance, I'd love to have you. Truly. You lack nothing by my standard, and your heart's in the right place."
"Then—"
"But it'd be selfish of me to take you from where you belong. You're a junior-grade lieutenant in the Yoru branch, and one of the top contenders to become your Captain's future protégé."
"I don't care about that. I'd gladly give it all up if it means I can help you. They'll go on underestimating you and the Nebula branch if it's only made up of an inexperienced crew. I owe you my life, I'll do whatever it takes to repay that debt."
"Sauer—"
"I'm serious."
"I know you are. That's what makes it troubling. I can't accept it. Those people need you more than I do. They trust you in ways I can't replace."
"That's—"
"I do appreciate it. I'm grateful you'd go that far for me. But instead, I'll ask one favor: believe in me, even just a little. I'll show you something worth your faith."
That was their final exchange before Sauer watched Cosmo and his branch vanish through the flaring portal.
He exhaled heavily, standing atop a fractured pillar, watching the thousands of evacuees guided by city officials and his own officers.
"That's one heck of a sigh, Commander." Someone landed beside him on the broken stone.
With dove-colored hair cut short to match her stature, Kenya was the type to speak her mind whenever it pleased her. "What's got you so wound up?"
"Kenya, status," he replied flatly, refusing to entertain her inquiries.
"How rude! You can't just ignore my concern." She folded her arms. "I'm worried about you. Is this about that guy you keep—"
"Hm…"
The low grunt was enough to straighten her posture, professionalism snapping back into place.
"It really is a behemoth-class threat. This city once housed a wonder of the world, a cluster of colossal crystalline vessels." Her voice carried a faint uncertainty, as though the details had reached her secondhand. "Apparently, it was untouched until a global energy conglomerate tried to illegally extract a sample. They'd detected a strange phenomenon within the veins: the conversion of surrounding bio-energy into stored, usable energy."
Below them, Sauer watched the steady flood of evacuees. At a glance, they resembled ordinary humans. Yet each bore gems, either jutting from their foreheads or woven into strands of their hair. The crystals were translucent, glowing faintly with drifting particles of light.
"This was all confessed once we caught their infiltrator," she explained further. "No one anticipated the veins themselves were the shell of an enormous shadowbeast. Speaking of which..."
The earth convulsed in a deafening quake, throwing the crowd into panic.
The tunnel to the city's safe zone splintered and began to give way.
"Commander, how did you know it would head this way? You specifically told us to hold here, and directed the recruits to focus evacuation efforts in this passage."
"Large shadow beasts usually remain dormant to conserve their strength. Considering how much energy it takes to keep itself from collapsing under its own weight, one that's suddenly awoken like this would instinctively move toward the largest concentration of life it could sense. If we'd arrived earlier, I would've advised those in charge against clustering civilians so densely in one place."
A massive slab of debris tore free from the ceiling of the underground passage, plummeting toward the civilians below.
Kenya snapped her wrist forward, throwing a punch into the empty air.
"Ram."
A hole burst appeared at the boulder's side, expanding rapidly as if tunneling through the passage itself. In an instant, the rock was ripped from its fall and hurled sideways, slamming into the wall where it locked in place.
Gasps spread through the crowd, their faces pale with shock at how narrowly disaster had been avoided.
"Unfortunately," Kenya said, her voice calm but edged, "this boundary has almost no awareness of Veil or Eminents. It's unlikely they'll listen to you."
"Still, no matter the resistance, saving lives from shadow beasts is our duty."
Sauer vaulted from the pillar, landing with purpose before striding in the opposite direction.
"I'll deal with it. Stay here and guard their safety."
"The civilians or the recruits?"
"Yes."
Her lips curved into a cheeky grin before she followed suit, leaping down.
"Roger."
…
Lumevale was a capital built into jagged cliffside, plateaus, and carved valleys. With crystals woven into its very architecture, culture, and identity of the city.
But as he stood atop the now abandoned Crystal Nexus Tower that was built within the innermost district surrounding the now uprooted spires, all he could see was the once bright city in disarray.
Bridges that once bound the mountains now dangled in tatters. Entire districts leaned drunkenly against one another, walls cracked to reveal their steel skeletons, while rail lines broke off into tunnels that had collapsed into darkness.
At the city's heart, the monumental cluster of crystals lay ruptured, its colossal spires uprooted and carried across on the back of a monstrous bulk. The gouges it left behind carved trenches deep enough to swallow entire buildings. Tower-sized shards littered the ruins, some faintly aglow, others split and hollow.
The shadowbeast towered at the front, its back bristling with shards as though armored in spines. Each of its colossal limbs ended in clawed digits that sank deep into the ground with every ponderous motion. Its head was hunched low and sharp-edged, predator-shaped, its ridged snout lined with jagged stone and its eyes glowing like smoldering coals.
As the behemoth barreled toward the innermost district, aiming to ram straight through the Nexus Tower, a sudden spark rang out, steel striking flesh. Its eyelid snapped shut under the sting.
"Purposeful or not, try not to blink! Let's make this quick!" Sauer shouted, standing atop the tower with a sword drawn, daring its gaze.
The monster bellowed, its roar rattling the very air. Sauer held firm against the shuddering force meant to paralyze him, then launched himself aside before the beast could slam both him and the tower into rubble.
'It might not have been the best call to gamble with the tower, but at least I know it can move quickly when pressed.'
Finding footing against a nearby structure, Sauer planted his legs on its side.
'Barter: stretch for burst.'
He kicked off, a violent explosion of force propelling him past the beast's charging stride, fast enough to slip beyond its crushing weight.
The burst carried him to its hind legs. Sauer swung, his gladius gleaming.
'Barter: density for length.'
In the blink of an eye, the weapon stretched, impossibly long half the width of the beast's limb.
Sauer's Authority, Own Market, allowed him to barter with himself: trading away tangible or intangible traits of his body, and the extensions of it. His blade, forged dense yet resilient even at reduced molecular content, was the perfect vessel for such exchanges.
Using his first burst as leverage, Sauer's extended blade slashed across the beast's hind leg, cutting through the hide with a screech of steel against unnatural flesh.
The behemoth roared, twisting to retaliate. Its foot crashed down, pulverizing the ground where Sauer should have been. But he was already moving, vaulting with the same barter of speed, slipping past its sightline to carve into the wounded leg again.
Strike followed strike, relentless. The giant's bulk worked against it; every attempt to pivot came too late.
Soon the gladius had shredded its hind leg beyond use, the dense flesh giving way until the wound vented a billowing stream of black dust.
It began to collapse the instant Sauer ceased his movements, its remaining legs too feeble to bear its colossal frame.
Yet unexpectedly, the monster angled its fall toward him, attempting to bury him beneath its sheer mass.
"Barter: length for density, dash for lunge, sharpness for point!"
Sauer sprang backward, narrowly avoiding its bulk, and without hesitation launched forward—driving straight for its head.
Exploiting the beast's own descent, he thrust his blade with precision into its eye.
The impact convulsed the ground, shattering it with fresh earthquakes as the titan's wail of agony thundered through the ruined city.
"You're quite clever… for something technically lifeless," Sauer admitted a grim admiration at the semblance of cunning in such a creature.
"I'm barely the size of an insect to you, yet you chose to acknowledge me as a threat. You've even kept your eyes locked on me."
The monster's continued roar shattered the last fragments of glass and crystal, ripping fissures across the already ravaged streets.
"As for why a shadowbeast like you would possess such acute pain receptors… I can't begin to fathom."
But though it turned its massive head toward him, the roar did not cease.
Then, impossibly, the sound coalesced. The roar itself hardened into pure force, siphoned through the crystals on its back.
By the time Sauer discerned the danger, it had been discharged into a concentrated lance of energy in his direction. The spines on its back flared like molten pillars, channeling the resonance into a single, blinding torrent.
The beam erupted forward, burning brighter than lightning. It tore through everything with surgical precision, vaporizing structures, cracking mountainsides, and igniting the very air into a storm of plasma.
The torrent didn't cease until it had scoured the residential ridges above, leaving behind only a canyon of blackened stone and glowing fractures that bled with residual energy.