The explosion did not come with a sound. It came with a silence.
The tons of mutant flesh piled upon Kaelen did not blast outward. They imploded inward, toward the center where Kaelen was, and then... ceased to exist.
The vile stench filling the cavern was replaced by the smell of ozone and burnt metal. In the middle of the black water, a sphere defying gravity formed. This sphere did not swallow light; it erased existence.
Rico took shelter behind the rocks. He squeezed his eyes shut, but even behind his eyelids, he could see that terrifying blackness.
The sphere expanded, trembled, and then shattered like glass.
In the center stood Kaelen.
But this was not the "Giant" Rico knew.
Kaelen's feet were not touching the ground; he hovered a few inches in the air, suspended on black, smoky energy. His armor was shattered. The black veins on his body were no longer beneath his skin; they had burst through, transforming into shadowy tendrils swirling around him.
And his face...
Kaelen's human face had turned into an expressionless mask. His left eye was closed. His right eye—that Void Eye—was wide open. There was no white. No iris. Only a bottomless, swirling well where madness could be seen if one looked inside.
Grief did not look like a sword in his hand, but like an extension of his arm. The metal was no longer purple, but an absolute black. The runes upon it wept blood.
"WHAT IS THIS?"
The Sewer King's voice trembled for the first time. That colossal mountain of flesh recoiled in instinctive fear. Hundreds of faces upon him began to scream in unison.
Kaelen slowly turned his head toward the King. It was not the movement of a human neck; it was mechanical and smooth, like a machine turning its turret.
He did not open his mouth. But his voice echoed in everyone's mind. A muffled, multi-layered, echoing voice.
"...Silence..."
Kaelen raised Grief.
The Sewer King panicked. "KILL HIM! UNLEASH THEM ALL UPON HIM!"
Hundreds of mutants lunged toward Kaelen. Claws, teeth, acidic vomit...
Kaelen did not move. He simply drew a horizontal line in the air with his sword.
It was a simple motion.
But its effect was apocalyptic.
A wave of black energy emanating from the tip of the sword expanded and spread through the cavern. The wave did not cut the mutants when it touched them; it erased them.
Where it touched flesh, flesh turned to dust. Where it touched bone, bone evaporated.
In seconds, that massive army turned into a heap of gray ash and spilled into the water.
The Sewer King bellowed. Not from pain, but from terror.
"YOU... YOU ARE NOT A MUTANT! WHAT ARE YOU?"
Kaelen glided through the air toward the King. The water fled from beneath him, afraid to touch him.
"...I am the End..."
Driven by the instinct to survive, the King made his final move. He opened the massive rift in his chest and sprayed all the acidic, poisonous bile inside like a high-pressure cannon onto Kaelen. This acid would melt even steel in seconds.
Kaelen raised his hand.
The acid froze in the air, a meter away from Kaelen.
Black veins shot from Kaelen's palm and caught the acid in mid-air. Energy transformed matter. The yellow acid turned into black crystal and fell into the water with a clatter.
The King froze. "NO..."
Kaelen was now right under the King's nose—if he had one.
His right eye saw the single, weak "heart" inside that pile of flesh. The mutated, terrified core hidden there.
Kaelen pulled Grief back.
The sword resonated with the Void inside its master. The blade elongated, forming a massive barrel of pure shadow.
"...Sleep..."
Kaelen delivered the strike.
A vertical slash.
The sword entered from the top of the Sewer King. Flesh, metal, bone, pipes... Nothing offered resistance. The sword cut through that massive mass like butter and embedded itself in the rock on the floor.
There was a moment of silence.
Then, the hundreds of eyes on the King's torso extinguished simultaneously.
That colossal mountain of flesh split down the middle and fell sideways into the water. No blood flowed. Because the wounds were cauterized by a black fire, cut pitch-black.
The Sewer King was dead.
Kaelen continued to hover over the massive corpse.
His right eye was still open. And it was still hungry.
He slowly turned his head.
Toward Rico, hiding behind the rocks.
Rico held his breath. The way Kaelen looked at him was not the look of a friend. It was the look of a predator at a moving heat source.
The humanity inside Kaelen was about to drown at the bottom of that dark ocean. Even Elara's voice was distant.
"...More..." whispered that dark voice in Kaelen's mind. "...Consume everything that lives..."
Kaelen began to glide toward Rico. Grief trembled in his hand.
"Giant..." groaned Rico. His voice was like the buzzing of a fly. "It's me... Rico..."
Kaelen raised the sword.
But just then, the old scar on his neck—where Verrick had injected the first needle—throbbed. And that invisible bond in his chest, Elara's bond, pulled sharply.
"KAELEN! STOP!"
Elara's voice was not pleading this time. It slapped his mind.
"HE IS NOT THE ENEMY! HE IS RICO! WAKE UP!"
Kaelen stopped in mid-air. His right eye twitched. It flickered between black and gray.
The sword hung suspended in the air.
"Rico..."
Kaelen's own voice—that human, raspy voice—returned.
And then the string snapped.
The black veins in Kaelen's body suddenly retreated under his skin. His hovering body succumbed to gravity.
SPLASH.
Kaelen crashed into the cold water over the King's corpse.
The cavern fell into silence. Only the lapping of water and Rico's rapid breathing could be heard.
Rico waited for minutes. Then, gathering his courage, he descended into the water.
Kaelen lay face down in the water. Grief was still in his hand, but its color had returned to normal, that pale steel color.
Rico struggled to turn Kaelen over.
The Giant's eyes were closed. He was breathing, but it was very weak. His face looked gaunt and gray, as if he had aged ten years.
"You did it..." said Rico, laughing and crying at the same time. "You killed that thing, Giant. You are a monster... The most beautiful monster."
Rico dragged Kaelen onto a dry rock.
Kaelen was unconscious, but he saw only one thing in his dream.
The Silver Tower.
But he was no longer looking at that tower from below. He was at the top of the tower, looking down at the burning city. And beside him was a silver-haired girl holding his hand.