DATE: 09/22/501 PC

  LOCATION: The Ulvgard Kill-Box – Ground Zero

  The cost of killing the first Gorgon Sentinel was heavy. Blanc collapsed to one knee, her White-core flickering like a dying candle. The "Life-Mist" had saved the army, but it had left her hollow. Salt, too, was gasping for air, his Black-mana veins bulging painfully from the strain of holding a High-Tier creature still for so long. Pepper, roaring with a primal fury, was still locked in a brutal wrestling match with the second Sentinel, while Ashley and MC were a dance of fire and blue light against the third.

  Then, the world slowed down.

  The Medusa moved. It wasn't a dash; it was a displacement. One moment she was ten meters away; the next, her clawed hand was buried in the chest-plate of Selris’s Void Suit.

  "FATHER!" Selris II screamed, but even his General-grade reflexes were a second too slow.

  The Black mana poured from the Medusa’s fingers like oil, seeking the light of Selris’s White core. The rot was instantaneous. Selris’s scream was cut short as his energy plummeted from 50% to 30% in a heartbeat. Zel and Selris II lunged, but the Medusa raised her other hand, a sphere of void-energy forming that would have vaporized both of them point-blank.

  CRACK-BOOM.

  A bolt of pure, concentrated neutral mana slammed into the Medusa’s temple. Her head snapped to the side, the void-sphere dissipating into harmless sparks.

  "Wolf-Bite's hot! Get him out of there!" Mac’s voice crackled over the emergency channel.

  From the high ridges of the kill-box, Mac had done the impossible. He had timed a shot with his custom sniper rifle perfectly between the movements of the Elites. Seizing the opening, Zel’s red lightning flared as he delivered a horizontal kick to the Medusa’s elbow, the force of his Knight-Grade core snapping the bone. Selris II followed up with a vertical cleave that severed the arm entirely, freeing his father.

  "Back up! Regroup!" Zel commanded, catching the stumbling Selris and dragging him back toward the line.

  "I can't fire the railgun without hitting you, but I can do this much!" Mac shouted.

  On his signal, thirty MGM snipers from the Ghost Wing, hidden in strategic crevices above the canyon, opened fire. A rain of high-velocity neutral mana rounds peppered the Medusa. To a creature of her caliber, the bullets were like stinging wasps—they didn't draw blood, but the sheer kinetic force and the "stinging" nature of neutral mana kept her off-balance, pushing her back step by step.

  "Status!" Zel yelled, his eyes darting across the battlefield.

  "Blanc and Salt are out of the fight!" Ashley reported, her voice strained as she dodged a tail-swipe from the third Sentinel. "Pepper is losing his grip on the second one!"

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  "Selris is at 30%... he's in shock," Selris II hissed, his White mana burning with a cold, desperate intensity.

  Zel looked at the Medusa. Her severed arm was already re-growing, the black mana knitting the flesh back together with sickening speed. She looked up at the ridges where Mac’s snipers were hidden, her violet eyes glowing with a promise of annihilation.

  "She's adapting," Zel realized. "Mac! Move your teams! She’s going to target the ridges!"

  "Too late, Cap," Mac replied, his voice calm despite the death-knell. "She's already looking at us. All units, scatter! Hunters, if you're gonna kill her, do it now! We've given you all the time we have!"

  DATE: 09/22/501 PC

  LOCATION: The Ulvgard Kill-Box – The Gorge Floor

  The Medusa’s hiss was a sound that bypassed the ears and vibrated directly into the marrow of their bones. Infuriated by the "stinging" of the MGM snipers, she didn't move toward them; she simply unhinged her jaw. A globule of viscid, oily black mana—a "Void Bolt"—erupted from her throat, aimed directly at the ridge where Mac and the Ghost Wing were perched.

  Zel’s mind went blank. He didn't calculate. He didn't check his remaining mana. He saw the trajectory and knew that if that bolt hit, Mac and the thirty snipers would be erased from existence.

  "MAC! GET DOWN!" Zel roared.

  With a final, desperate flare of his Knight-Grade Red Core, Zel converted his momentum into a blur of crimson light. He intercepted the bolt mid-air. "LAVA AXE!" he screamed, his hands forming a massive, jagged crescent of molten red mana that dripped with white-hot slag.

  The collision was a tectonic event. The Red and Black mana tore at each other, creating a vacuum of pressure that shattered the nearby stone into dust. But the explosion was too close. As the smoke cleared, Zel was gasping, his core flickering in the "Critical Depletion" zone.

  He never saw the follow-up.

  The Medusa appeared in the smoke, her eyes wide with a cold, mocking mirth. She delivered a mana-infused kick into Zel’s midsection. The impact sounded like a sledgehammer hitting a dry log. Zel was sent hurtling across the gorge, his body slamming into the reinforced stone wall with enough force to leave a crater. He slumped to the ground, his Void Suit cracked, his eyes rolling back. He was alive, but the "Wolf King" was out of the fight.

  "ZEL!" Ashley’s scream was a raw, primal sound of agony.

  She abandoned her tactical caution. Her Blue core roared as she launched a barrage of "Cutting Winds"—blades of pressurized mana designed to sever steel. The Medusa didn't even dodge; she swiped them away with a casual flick of her remaining hand, as if brushing aside cobwebs.

  The Medusa then turned her gaze toward the grieving Selris and his son. She charged.

  Selris, his face aged a decade in minutes, looked at his eldest son. He knew the math. They couldn't both survive this. "Go," he whispered, his voice trembling but firm. "They need you there, Selris. If we fall here, the Gamma falls too."

  With a final, heroic surge, Selris channeled 25% of his remaining 30% mana into a single, massive "Aegis of the Fallen." The White dome erupted around Ashley, MC, and the survivors, acting as a final barrier against the Medusa’s incoming strike. As the shield solidified, Selris’s eyes went dark, his core flatlining into a comatose state from critical depletion.

  The two greatest leaders of the Southern Front were down.

  The Medusa slowed her pace, walking toward the white shield with a predatory grace. She looked at Ashley, who stood at the front of the remaining 35 Hunters, her Blue mana vibrating with a lethal, hopeless intensity.

  The Gorgon Sentinels hissed in the background, closing in. The army was still coming. And the two men who could have stood against the darkness were broken in the dirt.

  "MC... Pepper... Selris II..." Ashley said, her voice dropping into a cold, terrifying calm as she stared at the Goddess of Death. "Don't look back at them. Look at her. If we’re going to die, we’re taking her heart with us."