Her name was Akari, and the shimmering barrier of light she held was a lie. It was a beautiful, desperate fraud. The mana was gone, drained from her core hours ago. The barrier's flickering glow was now powered by the last dregs of her life force, siphoned from the very cells of her body. Each second it held felt like a piece of her soul was being sanded away.
"Hold the line! Arrows, now!" roared Takeshi, the grizzled swordsman whose armor was dented and stained with monstrous ichor and human blood. His voice was hoarse; he had been roaring for what felt like an eternity.
A young archer, Kenji, sobbed as he fired, his arrows finding their marks in Jackal eyes and Bruin limbs with an accuracy born of pure terror. "There's too many! We're the last ones!"
They were. The village of Hoshimura, nestled a day's travel from the forest's edge, was gone. Its palisade had been overrun not by an army, but by a tide. It had started with the smaller things—the Killer Rabbits, a swarm of them that gnawed through wood and flesh with equal ease. The local adventurers, a dozen strong, had rallied. They had fought well. They had died horribly.
Akari had watched Jiro, the veteran spearman, get pulled down by a Gloom Bruin, his final scream cut short. She had seen Yumi, the cheerful alchemist, overrun by rabbits, her potions exploding in a futile, colorful display. They had been her friends. They had shared meals, stories, and dreams of one day seeing the royal capital.
Now, they were gone. The three of them—Takeshi, Kenji, and herself—were all that remained of Hoshimura's defense, backed against the burning granary, the heat searing their backs. The acrid smoke was a funeral incense for the entire village.
Takeshi parried a Jackal's lunge, his sword arm trembling with exhaustion. "Akari! One more barrier blast! Push them back!"
She wanted to scream that she had nothing left. That the well was dry. That the light he saw was her burning her own future to give them one more minute of life. Instead, she just gritted her teeth, tears cutting clean lines through the soot on her face, and poured more of herself into the spell. The barrier brightened for a glorious, fatal second.
It was in that second that they all saw him.
A figure, emerging from the mirage of heat rising from the burning fields. A shape of deep, vibrant green, walking with an unnatural calm towards the chaos. He held a staff of pure blackness that seemed to drink the light. The air around him… shimmered. Not with heat, but with something else. Something that made the very fabric of the world seem thin.
The monsters noticed him too. The Jackals, so single-minded a moment before, skidded to a halt, their growls dying in their throats. The wounded Gloom Bruin, which had been about to charge, froze, its animal eyes widening with an intelligence they had never shown before. It was a primal, instinctual terror, deeper than any fear of sword or spell.
The green figure raised his staff.
There was no roar of magic, no incantation. There was only a silent, invisible push.
And then, the impossible. The Shadow Jackals… dissolved. They didn't die; they un-formed, turning into dust and shadow that was sucked towards the staff. The Gloom Bruin let out a pathetic, strangled sound as it deflated, its immense form collapsing into a dry, crumbling husk.
The silence that followed was more deafening than the battle.
Akari's barrier flickered and died. She collapsed to her knees, gasping, the cost of her final spell hitting her like a physical blow. She was alive, but she felt hollowed out.
She looked up at their savior. Her trained magical senses, even exhausted, recoiled. He had no mana signature. He was a void. A hole in the world where magic and life should be. The withered path he left on the grass was not fire or frost; it was simply… nothingness.
Takeshi still held his sword, his knuckles white. He wasn't looking at the saved village. He was staring at the green slime-man. This was not a hero. Heroes had gleaming armor and fierce cries. This was a force of nature. A walking earthquake that had, by chance, swallowed their enemies.
Kenji was openly weeping, trembling, his gaze fixed on the pile of dust that was once a Gloom Bruin. "What… what is he?"
None of them knew. In all the lore of the Adventurer's Guild, in all the bestiaries and ancient texts, there was no record of a "slime." There were oozes, puddings, jellies—mindless, corrosive hazards. Nothing that walked on two legs. Nothing that wielded a staff. Nothing that erased creatures from existence with a thought.
Leo looked at them. Akari met his… face? There were no features, but she felt his gaze. She saw him take in the carnage, the bodies, their terror. She saw him take a step back, then another. He wasn't triumphant. He seemed… sad. And then he turned and walked away, leaving them alone in the ruins of their home, saved by a horror they couldn't name, their gratitude poisoned by a deeper, more fundamental fear.
The monster horde was still out there. But now, they knew a new truth: the forest had spat out something worse than monsters. It had spat out a shadow, and it was walking their world.