The air fractured, not with a sound, but with the sudden, physical weight of impossible density. The Strata Beast had arrived. It was larger than the previous one—a segmented, armored colossus, its body radiating an unstable, sickening Muddied Green Strata Aura that seemed to siphon the very light from the twilight sky. It was the physical manifestation of Infinite Entropy.
It didn't shriek; it simply slammed into the Northern Fault ridge, sending a localized tremor that caused the dust around the Marakā farmhouse to leap three feet into the air.
Aurelius stood at the nexus of the Kinetic Anchor Array, his feet planted wide. He was the eye of the storm. The final image of his father, Jin Marakā, moving to the irrigation pipe—the obvious target—flashed through his mind. Jin was the bait, relying on Aurelius's infinitesimal control to prevent the catastrophic failure of the entire defense.
The Beast saw the pipe and the small, defiant man standing near it. It saw the physical target, but more crucially, it sensed the potent, forbidden darkness of the Black Aura coiled and suppressed within the younger Marakā.
First Attack: Chaos.
The creature didn't charge. It used its core mass to initiate a massive dimensional disruption. The ground beneath it buckled, and a wave of pure, concentrated kinetic chaos—the Beast's Mountain Level attack—raced toward the farmhouse. This wasn't a physical strike; it was a localized shift in the physics of the area, designed to instantly nullify the foundation.
Aurelius didn't move. He didn't blink. He felt the wave hit the outer perimeter of the Kinetic Dampening Cable.
The array screamed. The heavy, treated steel cable shuddered violently, fighting the instantaneous transfer of immense force. Aurelius felt the shock register in the earth beneath his feet, but the energy was already being siphoned, forced to follow the geometry of the anchors.
"Now, Aurelius!" Jin's voice cut through the chaos, sharp and demanding.
Aurelius released the pressure. He didn't push the aura out; he opened the cage. The black aura flowed from his core, down his legs, and into the central anchor point beneath his feet.
The flow had to be strictly limited. It had to be a miniscule, sustained flow—the Zenith of control.
The moment the Black Aura hit the Anchor Array, the shrieking of the metal instantly ceased. The light absorbing shadow covering the ground deepened, consuming the Beast's chaotic energy. The aura wasn't fighting the chaos; it was siphoning it. The array, powered by the Stigma, became a geometric conduit, channeling the overwhelming Mountain Level force down, down, into the bedrock itself.
Aurelius fought the consumption. Every second he maintained the flow, the aura demanded payment in his life essence. He focused only on the Kinetic Truth of his stance, using the perfection of his center of gravity to resist the internal vacuum of the Stigma.
Second Attack: Physicality.
The Beast recognized the defense. It realized the chaos was being negated by a deeper chaos. It shifted tactics, lunging directly at Jin and the irrigation pipe with a massive, chitinous limb. This was raw, physical Mountain Level brute force, designed to shatter the structure and crush the bait.
Jin didn't run. He had prepared for this. He activated a series of explosive anchors along the pipe. They didn't detonate; they released specialized, magnetic field dampeners.
The Strata Beast's limb hit the pipe. The impact was enormous, but the dampeners created an instantaneous field of friction negation. The limb slid off the pipe without breaking the seam.
But the sheer kinetic residual force still ripped through the air toward Aurelius, aimed at the only other structure—the house.
Aurelius was already prepared. He used the brief moment the Beast's kinetic energy was deflected to switch the polarity of the Anchor Array. He pulled the black aura back from the siphoning pattern and channeled it into the two defense cables nearest the house.
SNAP!
He created a localized, infinitesimally controlled Zenith Negation Field. The residual kinetic shockwave hit the field and was instantly vaporized into Conceptual Absence—a perfect application of controlled absence.
The effort cost him a sudden, searing spike of pain. He gritted his teeth, sweat stinging his eyes. He had used too much power. His control had wavered.
Third Attack: Intelligence.
The Beast stopped. It had encountered defense, kinetic manipulation, and pure energy negation—all beyond the scope of local GHC resistance. It realized Aurelius was the true anchor.
It shifted its attention fully to Aurelius. It began ripping up the surrounding ground, flinging massive, earth shattering boulders toward the central nexus. These were not random—they were projectiles traveling at incredible speed, designed to overwhelm the finite Anchor Array's surface area.
Aurelius knew he couldn't negate them all. His energy reserves were critically low.
He unsnapped the coiled long wire from his forearm.
The wire was still infused with the residual chill of the Black Aura. He couldn't afford a single Zenith level kinetic strike: the drain would paralyze him.
He chose Perfect Kinetic Truth.
As the first, house sized boulder approached, Aurelius didn't strike it directly. He used his velocity and timing to whip the wire in a perfect, horizontal rotation, aiming for a single, infinitesimal fracture point on the boulder's leading edge.
CRACK.
The wire didn't shatter the rock; it altered its trajectory by the smallest degree. The massive projectile missed Aurelius by inches, instead impacting the second, larger boulder behind it. The impact geometry was flawless. The two Mountain Level projectiles canceled each other out in a cloud of dust and pulverized stone.
Aurelius caught the wire, coiled it instantly, and repeated the maneuver on the next wave of projectiles—a blur of controlled physics and Absolute Precision.
He was proving Jin's philosophy: Absolute Discipline was the only thing that could stand against infinite chaos. But he was fading. The internal hunger of the Stigma was growing desperate. He was the Unyielding Anchor, fixed only by the infinitesimal truth of his will.
Jin watched from the pipe, seeing the tremor in his son's arms. Jin knew what came next. The Beast would target the anchor itself. The chaos would meet the core of Aurelius.
The Strata Beast roared, recognizing that physical projectiles were futile. It coiled, gathering all its chaotic, green energy into its segmented mouth, preparing for the one final attack an X Level discharge of pure dimensional instability, aimed directly at Aurelius.
The text is now free of dashes and replaces "fraction" with "degree."