The colossal statue continued its unyielding march south through the still night, parting the lightless waters of the Dark Sea with a steady, haunting rhythm.
For the first time since they had begun their trek, the cohort had argued vehemently against Zachary taking the first watch.
It was understandable—they had watched him pull himself out of the water looking like he'd been put through a meat grinder. But that exact near-death ordeal was precisely why Zachary had insisted on staying awake.
He had things to prepare for.
In truth, Zachary was mildly surprised by his own endurance. He had been in a state of constant vigil ever since they left the marble arch.
He remembered how grueling it had been to fight off sleep back at the Ashen Barrow, and how during his solitary survival in the Dark City he could stretch his waking hours for days, but was ultimately forced to collapse.
Now? He didn't feel sluggish at all.
His Mind was operating at absolute peak efficiency, his Body felt responsive, and his Soul was steadily replenishing its reserves.
A theory began to crystallize in his mind. Balance Control was likely working behind the scenes, passively adapting his biology to endure severe, repeated strain.
It made sense—beyond enforcing harmony between his Body, Mind and Soul, his Dormant Ability was designed to preserve his equilibrium in extreme environments. Learning to regulate his sleep cycle under constant threat was a natural step of that principle.
Still, he wasn't particularly eager to test the theory by intentionally subjecting himself to harsher torture.
The rest of the night passed without further incident. As the first pale rays of morning light cut through the gloom, the cohort began to stir and prepare for the long road ahead. Zachary remained sitting cross-legged at the edge of the stone platform, his eye closed as he directed his focus inward.
His left arm was in bad shape. It had already healed wrong after his grueling clash with the Stone Saints, and the violent encounter with the starfish beast had shredded it all over again.
Fortunately, the creature's maws had mostly torn up the dermal layers, leaving the underlying muscles intact, while his dislocated shoulder was back in its socket.
Blood Weave was already hard at work within his circulatory system; given a few days of rest, his arm would be fully functional again.
'Unfortunately... I don't have a few days,' Zachary thought grimly, sinking his awareness deeper into his bloodstream.
Keeping his breathing slow and rhythmic, he traced the soul essence nesting within his muscles and bones. With a quiet command he gathered the energy, routing it through his veins and channeling it directly into his heart.
Slowly, the essence coalesced within the organ, tightening into a minute, dense star.
He had formed his Core. Flow Control was officially back online.
Consuming the soul shard from the Awakened Beast had finally pushed his internal essence reserves past the necessary threshold.
While he couldn't measure the precise count of fragments nesting in his flesh, his sharp awareness estimated he had absorbed roughly fifty soul shards by now. It was just enough to maintain a stable, functioning Core.
Flow Control, after all, relied on the continuous pressure of soul essence to preserve the shape ofhis Core, and pump power through his blood stream.
'My Soul Core is saturated to maximum capacity,' Zachary thought as he test-routed small, concentrated streams of essence through his main arteries.
Because he had cultivated his Mind and Body on par with the development of his Soul, Unity remained constantly active, boosting his potency to 120%.
He was effectively 20% stronger and more responsive than a standard Sleeper with a fully saturated Core. Layered on top of that was the [Conqueror's Soul] Attribute, which doubled the potency of his essence—making the targeted reinforcements of Flow Control more powerful.
All of which meant that, on paper, Zachary possessed more than enough firepower to handle whatever lay ahead.
'Tentatively,' he corrected himself with a shake of his head, letting the essence settle back into his heart.
Last night's dive into the dark waters had been a brutal reminder: a single micro-second of carelessness, a single bad matchup, was all it took to tip the scales toward a bloody demise.
"Need to stay sharp," he muttered under his breath, completing his internal diagnostic.
Satisfied that his internal self was stable, Zachary expanded his perceptions outward, keeping his single eye shut.
The crackle of a freshly stoked campfire was the first sensation to register, accompanied by the sharp, woody aroma of smoke and roasting meat. A faint, almost imperceptible wave of radiant heat brushed against the back of his neck.
The wind carried subtle whispers of movement and quiet voices, brushing against his scarred skin and mapping the surrounding environment in vivid detail. His spatial perception enveloped the entire surface of the severed neck.
Once again, Zachary felt a surge of appreciation for his heightened senses—a stark contrast to the terrifying sensory deprivation he had suffered underwater.
Through the faint vibrations pulsing through the stone beneath his legs, he mapped out the cohort's positions above the statue's shoulders.
Three figures were gathered near the fire. One was big and broad—Effie, judging by the rhythmic, heavy movement as she turned the roasting meat.
Seated close together across from her were two still figures; their proximity made them bleed together in his spatial sense, but the soft cadence of their voices identified them as Nephis and Cassie conversing in low tones.
Two other figures stood near opposite edges of the platform. Their physical weights were similar, but the acoustic feedback they generated was entirely distinct.
One produced sharp, metallic nicks—Kai inspecting and fletching his arrows. The second gave off a delicate, continuous scraping sound that Zachary recognized instantly: the tip of a charcoal pencil scratching against thick paper as Caster methodically mapped out the geography of the Forgotten Shore.
His enhanced Mind synthesized the flood of data effortlessly, though the entire scene was continuously underpinned by a massive, rhythmic bassline—the titanic Builder Statue striding relentlessly through the sea.
The sheer magnitude of its steps created a deep vibration that threatened to drown out smaller sensory details if he didn't actively filter it.
'Not that it matters—'
Zachary froze.
The gentle breeze caressing his skin suddenly shifted, turning erratic, heavy, and cold. The atmospheric information it delivered spiked sharply: a sudden surge in relative humidity, a distinct drop in barometric pressure that buzzed in his ear canals, and the faint, unmistakable scent of ozone drifting on the draft.
'It's beginning,' he thought calmly, opening his eye as he stood up in one fluid motion.
His abrupt movement after hours of motionless meditation instantly drew the eyes of the cohort. The group turned toward him with quiet, tense expressions.
Facing south alongside her, Zachary looked out at the darkening sky and spoke flatly:
"A storm."
Cassie turned her face south, her delicate factions twisting in a frown as she tried to feel what Zachary was warning about.
Before Nephis could even begin barking orders, something else entered his perception. A vibrant, distant rustle that sounded uncomfortably like static on an old TV. Hearing it, a tired sigh escaped Zachary's mouth, and with a quiet pull of his Mind, Ender's Solace took form in his right hand.
Seeing him suddenly summon a weapon, the cohort tensed immediately. The wind flowed stronger above the severed neck, making the blue cloth of Witness's Mantle dance against the currents like calm ocean waves.
"Get ready, something is coming," Zachary said, cracking his neck and stretching his left shoulder back, pulling a pained groan from his lips.
Cassie's shoulders stiffened, finally picking up on what he was hearing, and Danger Sense spiked violently from above. Before Zachary could utter another warning, Kai twisted his body sharply, loosing an arrow in the same fluid motion toward the sky.
A second later, something heavy crashed right into the middle of the cohort just as their weapons took form. They stared down at it with dark expressions. A locust.
Zachary's senses tuned outward, the buzzing of the incoming swarm growing louder and echoing inside his skull in a nauseating rhythm that disoriented him for a moment.
He saw Kai screaming to the cohort while Nephis shouted orders, though their voices were largely drowned out by the static assaulting his ears. Zachary looked down at the dead locust for another beat, a dark expression settling in his lone eye.
He couldn't remain up here on the neck with them.
His mere presence would act like a massive beacon for the swarm, driving them into a mindless frenzy instead of letting them behave like normal Nightmare Creatures. Even if he didn't care about them targeting him personally, the sheer chaos generated by dozens of flying monsters swarming his location would put the entire cohort in lethal danger.
Zachary had learned a hard lesson after being blindsided by the deep-sea creature—a lesson he had already paid for once with his foretold death at the blades of the Stone Saints.
He had to take the initiative.
Another creature dived at them with blinding speed, only to be skewered mid-air by Effie's precise spear strike. From the direction it had come, a dark, living cloud of locusts was advancing with eerie, unified purpose.
Leaning down, Zachary yanked Kai's arrow out of the dead locust. He checked that the shaft wasn't broken, quickly wiped the head clean on his sleeve, and then clenched his fist around the broadhead. He pulled sharply, slicing open his palm and coating the metal in his blood.
"Legolas!" Zachary called out loudly, walking over to Kai.
The archer spun around sharply, his bow drawn and ready to fire at the first creature diving down. Catching sight of Zachary, a confused frown crossed his handsome face.
"You talking to me?"
Zachary raised an amused eyebrow as he reached the idol.
"Now, don't go quoting De Niro to me, man," he said, holding out the bloody arrow.
Kai took it on instinct, studying the crimson tip for a second before Zachary grabbed his shoulder and pointed up at the incoming cloud of flying monsters.
"Send it below them. It doesn't have to hit anything," he urged in a commanding voice.
The confusion remained written across his features, but Kai quickly obeyed, drawing his bow and aiming high into the distance. Taking a sharp breath, he loosed the arrow.
The shaft tore upward in a high arc with a sharp whistle that quickly faded into the wind, though both of them kept their eyes locked on its path as it passed beneath the dark cloud. At that exact moment, something incredible happened.
A dark tendril broke away from the living cloud, extending downward and diving aggressively after the falling arrow, separating cleanly from the main swarm as the rest of the cloud kept advancing toward the walking statue.
"What?" Kai asked, completely unable to make sense of what he had just seen.
"Everything about me is hateful to them, including my blood," Zachary explained quickly, watching the maddened locusts dive straight into the Crimson Labyrinth in pursuit of his blasphemous scent.
"Lend me three arrows," Zachary said, extending his hand with a hurried tone.
His eye kept track of the closing swarm, they didn't have much time. The buzzing was growing deafening now, and Danger Sense was vibrating in sync with the drone inside his skull.
Kai immediately handed the arrows over, grasping the tactic instantly. Zachary repeated the process, slicing open his palm once more to coat the arrowheads in his blood before passing them back to the archer.
Around the platform, the cohort was moving frantically, cutting down the vanguard of the swarm however they could. Cassie generated sharp gusts of wind with her staff, buying Zachary a precious second before the main body of the locusts slammed onto the stone.
"Shoot them away from the statue if things get ugly!" Zachary shouted as sparks began to gather around him.
His interns, Pepe Silvia and Saint, quickly materialized, dashing off in opposite directions to serve as forward anchors and cover points for the cohort.
The buzzing overhead had reached an unbearable crescendo, coming from every single direction at once. His enhanced senses momentarily scrambled trying to track every individual wingbeat, though it was ultimately futile.
"Fuck! It's Bodenplatte all over agai—"
{_^_}
Danger Sense forced him to spin instinctively, raising his sword with his right hand while supporting the flat of the blade with his left. The next instant, a locust crashed into him, pushing his shoes back a couple of steps across the stone.
Zachary planted his feet and shoved his arms forward, his single eye finally focusing on the creature in front of him.
Ender's Solace had cleaved vertically straight into its head, yet the monster was still alive, driving its body forward in a demented effort to tear him apart. The dark blade continued biting deeper into its skull, but Zachary couldn't afford to wait for it to impale itself to death.
He quickly channeled essence into the edge, only for the locust to do something that made him click his tongue.
It flared its wings.
"Well, shi—"
With a deafening buzz, the locust launched itself into the air, taking Zachary along for the ride. Wind howled in his ears as his senses scrambled to track the beast's erratic flight path. The creature kept snapping its mandibles at him, which only drove his sword deeper into its skull until its body finally gave a violent, final spasm.
[You have slain an Awakened Beast, Flesh Reaver.]
The indifferent voice of the Spell echoed in his mind, though Zachary barely registered it—because the locust's wings gave one last twitch and stopped supporting their weight.
A second later, he was plummeting, and the ground rushed upward to greet him.
Wind roared past his face, throwing his center of gravity into complete chaos at the unfamiliar sensation of free fall. Only Danger Sense kept him alive, forcing him to act on pure instinct as he hauled Ender's Solace in front of him—blocking a rising Reaver's lunge with the flat of the blade.
The impact knocked the air straight out of his lungs, but he quickly tapped his Core and sent a trickle of essence surging into his arms.
A second warning spiked, this time from his left flank.
Zachary immediately swung his sword between himself and the threat, catching another diving locust that sent him pinwheeling through the air in a wild, uncontrolled spin.
'Sh... shit.' Zachary could barely form a coherent thought, his enhanced senses failing to distinguish up from down amid the dizzying rotation of his body in open air.
High above the statue, the swarm had finally locked onto the Blasphemer, redirecting their dives straight toward him to fulfill their instinctual mandate.
Danger Sense, Cinder Eyes, and Balance Control were all pushed into overdrive by the unprecedented aerial chaos. Zachary stayed suspended in the sky, unable to actually fall because locusts kept slamming into him, knocking him around in violent, unpredictable trajectories. His sense of danger carried the heaviest load—moving his limbs on pure reflex so he could deflect strikes even when he had zero spatial orientation.
Then, abruptly, something clicked inside his Mind. It felt as if a gear had suddenly meshed into place, turning a grinding, overwhelmed mechanism completely smooth.
The sensory disconnect of his fall instantly resolved into clear data. Processing the spatial feedback effortlessly, his Body moved on autopilot. Zachary tucked and twisted his limbs, shifting his center of mass to kill his wild spin mid-air—just a split second before another locust rocketed straight at him.
Zachary contorted his torso clear of the monster's path, shooting his left arm out to hook onto the edge of its black chitin and letting the creature haul him forward with its momentum.
The Reaver thrashed in a mad frenzy beneath him. The Blasphemer it desperately wanted to slaughter was riding right on its back, completely out of reach. Zachary gripped the ridge of its shell, pulling his body tight against the chitin as the creature barrel-rolled erratically through the sky.
Wind battered his face, forcing him to squint against the gale. Leaning his weight hard to one side, he forced the flying beast into a wide, banking turn. In the same breath, he swung Ender's Solace, severing its left wing cleanly and sending the locust spiraling earthward, unable to stay aloft.
Zachary, however, was no longer on its back—he had already kicked off just in time to catch a ride on another wild locust passing nearby.
Gripping the exoskeleton tightly, Zachary took a quick look around. He was flying a couple of meters to the left of the statue's neck, where the cohort was far too busy dealing with their own share of locusts to pay him any attention.
Above and around him, dozens of Reavers were diving down, ready to continue the assault.
"Why can't I ever just have a normal fight..." Zachary lamented, driving Ender's Solace straight through the Reaver's skull and killing it instantly.
Without pulling his sword free, Zachary gripped the hilt with both hands and pushed it forward like a flight stick, forcing the locust's limp body into a steep, free-falling dive.
The swarm around him immediately dove after him.
'Who would have thought I'd end up dogfighting on the back of a giant ass locust...' Zachary mused internally as they plummeted down the flank of the giant statue, flashing past the severed neck and the broad stone shoulder.
The stone whistled right past his head as Zachary wrenched his sword to the right to bank the corpse—only to accidentally rip its head clean off the body instead.
'Well, at least I tried...' he thought with a laugh, kicking off the tumbling carcass of the Reaver.
He twisted his body mid-air just in time to catch onto another locust's shell, the abrupt shift in weight pulling the beast's flight path sharply horizontal. The monster thrashed violently beneath him, yet Zachary's constant micro-adjustments kept them flying with as much stability as anyone could expect in a hurricane.
The Builder Statue continued its steady march south, completely indifferent to the aerial chaos raging around its shoulders, while Zachary kept leaping from locust to locust—ripping their wings off as he departed and sending them plummeting toward the crimson coral.
His eardrums howled under the pressure of the rushing wind, and his lone eye watered against the freezing currents that kept warning him of the oncoming storm.
Leaping off another falling mount and drifting briefly through open air, Zachary grabbed the antennae of his new ride like handlebars, angling the savage creature upward and to the right toward the front of the severed neck.
Danger Sense suddenly spiked, snapping his head to the left. A dense cluster of locusts was streaking toward the platform on a direct collision course with his trajectory.
Zachary's curse was swallowed by the wind as he yanked on the antennae to veer clear—only for a sharp shout to ring out from the statue above:
"First!"
A dark streak whistled straight past the incoming locusts, causing the entire cluster to bank violently and dive after it with sudden, maddening purpose.
Zachary glanced toward the platform to see Kai give him a quick nod before immediately returning to firing regular arrows into the swarm. The archer had burned one of the blood-coated arrows to clear his lane.
"Yes! That's what I'm talking about, Iceman!" Zachary shouted excitedly, banking his locust hard sideways.
His biological fighter jet buzzed furiously as they plunged downward, hot in pursuit by several stray locusts from the swarm. The wind roared, whipping the edges of his mantle as he shot right underneath the colossus's right shoulder.
The Reaver buzzed erratically, making his dive awkward and chaotic, yet Zachary held his balance, steering the locust into a kamikaze dive straight toward the statue's massive swinging arm.
He leaped off a split second before the locust shattered against the stone, rolling smoothly along the inner forearm and springing back to his feet in one fluid motion.
His shoes tapped lightly across the stone as he sprinted along the limb before launching himself off the edge once more—snagging a ride onto the back of yet another passing locust.
The Reaver thrashed wildly beneath him, bucking so hard that Zachary lost control of its flight for a critical second. The monster rolled sharply in mid-air, flipping them completely upside down before plummeting downward in a dizzying spiral right alongside the colossus's swinging stone arm.
In that inverted plunge, Zachary's lone eye locked onto the crimson labyrinth far below—and an icy chill raced down his spine.
Down where the statue's titanic feet left craters in the coral, a writhing, living tide of darkness was painting the ground black, slowly swarming over the colossus's feet and ankles.
Another massive tribe of Nightmare Creatures was climbing up to join the slaughter.
"I have to hurry," Zachary whispered against the roaring wind, wrenching his grip back onto the locust.
He yanked the beast's antennae hard and threw his weight sharply to the right, forcing the Reaver to bank cleanly in front of the statue's massive stone chest. A sharp metallic whistle split the air from his right hip as he fired the steel cable of Rising Attachment, burying the anchor deep into the weathered stone.
Tethered to a sudden pivot point, the Reaver's trajectory whipped violently inward. Zachary seized the taut line near his hip, hauling back and twisting his body with the locust pinned beneath his shoes—slamming the screeching monster directly into the statue's chest like a bug splattering across a windshield.
Zachary exhaled a heavy, ragged breath, letting the cable bear his full weight against the vertical cliff of stone as he glanced down. The dark tide of climbing horrors had already reached the colossus's ankles.
Guided by the spatial feedback of Cinder Eyes, Zachary kicked off the stone wall backward, snagging onto the black chitin of an ascending Reaver as it shot past.
Clenching his fingers tight into the ridges of its shell, he leaned his weight all the way back, forcing the beast into a steep, vertical climb straight up the statue's chest.
He could feel the thrashing insect vibrate furiously as its chitinous belly scraped against the rough stone beneath them, sparks of friction flying into the wind as they rocketed upward with blinding velocity—shooting straight back toward the level of the severed neck.
"Second!"
Kai's shout cut through the gale as he loosed the second blood-coated arrow toward the statue's back, peeling away a thick cluster of locusts from the front air space Zachary was currently tearing through.
The wind howled a wild, defiant anthem that made Zachary's heart surge into his throat. The freezing current bit sharply into the scarred skin of his face as he swung Ender's Solace, cleaving the Reaver's head clean off and letting the twitching carcass drop away while he rode the sheer momentum of the launch skyward.
The sudden vertigo of the blinding ascent made his stomach lurch, gifting Zachary an intoxicating surge of pure, unadulterated freedom he had never known existed—an ethereal weightlessness that shattered the simple, relentless hold the earth had always kept on him.
For a fleeting heartbeat, he felt like a child again, riding the highest drop at an amusement park with his parents. The howling wind abruptly quieted as his upward trajectory finally met the gentle, inevitable tug of gravity, suspending him completely motionless at the absolute apex of the arc.
For one instant, nothing held him.
His body rotated lazily in the open air, inverting his entire perspective of the world. His shoes touched the pale sky, while above him—below him—the endless crimson horizon of the Forgotten Shore stretched out to infinity, the sole ceiling he was permitted to walk across.
For one instant, Zachary stood above the heavens.
Then the apex broke, and the world rushed upward to greet him. His head felt dizzyingly light, yet it didn't dull his focus by a fraction; his single crimson eye drank in everything spread beneath him with crystal clarity.
The colossal white statue striding relentlessly past him toward the south—a silent, towering monument to an illustrious civilization that had ultimately failed to push back the dark.
The endless crimson coral sprawling beneath its footsteps, the living scar and silent cry of a lonesome, forgotten sun that still painted this dead shore in vibrant red.
And scattered across the labyrinth, the vague, miniature ruins of titanic vessels and ancient cities that once stood as proof that humanity had risen above creation itself.
The crushing weight of forgotten history, the dizzying rush of his fall—everything collided inside Zachary's chest at once.
It felt sublime.
It was that ancient, instinctive awe humans experienced when confronted with the sheer, incomprehensible vastness of nature and creation—the overwhelming mix of terror and reverence felt when a singular, fragile existence stared into something infinitely greater than itself.
The exact moment where human imagination hit its absolute boundary.
A pale, genuine smile curved Zachary's lips as he plummeted freely through the sky, a cluster of frenzied locusts peeling off to dive straight down after him.
Kant had written about this in his Critique of the Power of Judgment.
He had argued that human imagination operated by gathering sensory perceptions into a comprehensible whole—yet when confronted with something truly limitless, the imagination broke down, unable to complete the task.
Imagination couldn't grasp the sheer magnitude of creation, and yet human reason could still conceive of infinity and totality.
And suspended inside that paradoxical tension, Zachary felt like a child once more.
Wasn't this what he had spoken of with Caster the other night?
Even inside a Realm twisted by madness and corruption, a child could still uncover raw beauty. A child could wonder, wander, and find joy in any circumstance—completely unshackled from the rigid limits of an inherited worldview.
Zachary could never have dreamed of experiencing something like this back in the Other World, in his old home. Yet didn't every human carry that quiet, burning yearning for adventure buried deep in their bones?
He had brushed shoulders with death far more times than he was proud to admit, yet for that very reason, he felt with blistering intensity just how fiercely he wanted to live.
"Who would've believed that a cursed, dead world could be so beautiful..." Zachary whispered into the rushing air as he fell upward into the sky.
His lone eye locked briefly onto Nephis, fighting desperately atop the severed neck—before the platform vanished from view, eclipsed by the towering, passing back of the giant statue.
Behind him, a dozen frenzied locusts screamed downward through the wind, drawn relentlessly by the blasphemous scent of his blood.
The wind whistled past his ears, a hymn he welcomed with a faint smile. Right as he dropped past the shoulder blade of the statue, another sharp whistle sounded from his left hip. The steel cable of Rising Attachment shot through the air, biting deep into the white stone.
His free fall halted abruptly with a heavy snap of the line, the kinetic tension distributing across his belt and leg straps. The momentum of his plunge kept him moving, swinging him outward like a pendulum whistling around its fulcrum.
Wind crashed against him, whipping the blue mantle wildly behind his shoulders. Suddenly, Danger Sense surged—directly ahead along his upward arc, the diving locusts finally caught up to him.
Zachary didn't hesitate, leveling Ender's Solace straight ahead and channeling essence through its edge. The Reavers slammed directly into his sword, cleanly bisected by the sheer momentum and sharpness of the blade.
His pendulum swing didn't lose a fraction of its velocity, and the cable at his hip immediately began reeling him upward, completing the arc.
The line chimed sharply as it retracted into his hip, launching him upward for a brief heartbeat. Riding the acceleration, Zachary ran a few rapid steps up the vertical wall of the statue's back before driving his sword deep into the stone to anchor himself in place.
"Fuuu..." Zachary exhaled heavily, bracing his boots against the stone while supporting his weight on the hilt.
The section of the statue he had landed on was surprisingly flat, and he quickly realized it was the broad expanse of the smooth tunic carved into the colossus's back.
Taking another deep breath, Zachary glanced downward once more. The dark tide of climbing horrors had now reached the giant's waist, and Cinder Eyes finally made out the creatures scrambling toward him.
They resembled massive apes covered in matted, dirty fur, boasting thick, muscular arms built to haul their heavy frames. Each possessed a maw packed with jagged teeth and two curved tusks jutting from their lower jaws.
"Hehe, monke," Zachary chuckled with a tired grin just before a sharp voice called down from above:
"Zach!"
Glancing upward toward the voice, Zachary spotted Nephis leaning over the edge of the severed neck, her grey eyes instantly locking onto his single crimson one while locusts continued swirling overhead.
She tossed the severed head of a Reaver over the ledge, forcing Zachary to raise a hand to shield his face from the spray of putrid blood.
"Yes, darling?" Zachary answered calmly as the steel cables snapped out from his hips, anchoring firmly into the stone behind him.
Nephis's brows furrowed strangely at the casual address, yet before she could reply, her gaze shifted past him, locking onto the statue's waist and the horde swarming up its back.
Seeing what had caught her attention, Zachary let out a tired sigh and pulled Ender's Solace free from the stone, allowing gravity to pull his body outward.
The cables drew taut behind his back, suspending him upright and letting him stand completely perpendicular against the colossus's vertical back.
"I'll handle this side—focus on the front," Zachary said flatly, letting the wind carry his voice upward.
Nephis lingered at the edge for another heartbeat, her grey eyes resting on his broad back and the regal blue mantle rippling across it, the black lightning motif dancing violently in the gale.
Without another word, she vanished back onto the platform, though Zachary could clearly hear her hurried footsteps sprinting toward the front of the statue.
Zachary centered his focus on the Core pulsing inside his heart and the alignment of his Body. Maintaining a rigid, upright stance horizontally against gravity demanded intense core tension across his abdomen and lower back.
Cinder Eyes sharpened another degree. The primates continued climbing at a savage, relentless pace driven by a desperate hunger for slaughter.
Yet it wasn't their ferocious speed that made Zachary's lip curl in disgust, nor the thick, slimy saliva dripping from their tusks.
It was the blooming crimson flowers sprouting directly from their flesh, and the faint gusts of spores bursting from their petals with every movement.
They were only seconds away from scaling the upper back—seconds away from entering his blasphemous radius.
Zachary tightened his grip on Ender's Solace as dark sparks swarmed over his frame, coalescing into an elegant suit of black stone armor.
Simultaneously, the Witness Mantle shifted its form, the sleeves loosening slightly while cinching tightly around his waist with a ceremonial belt, its deep regal blue contrasting starkly against the dark battle armor beneath it.
A weary sigh escaped his lips as he channeled essence into the edge of Ender's Solace.
"Why can't I ever just have a normal fight..." Zachary lamented.