Chương 34: Colossus

It looked like a scene from the end times. A tide of thousands of skeletal soldiers had flooded the forest, and although the forest itself tried to stand against them, there was nothing its inhabitants could do against the relentless waves of bone and rusted metal.

"Where did this army of undead come from?!" Avelle stood there, devastated, as the unstoppable tide before her threatened to swallow every corner of her forest.

"Lady Avelle! Our sisters can't hold out any longer! They're starting to flee!"

"The dryads are deserting?! And the fauns and the black elk cavalry?!"

"Ever since they slammed into the wall of spears, we haven't seen much movement on that flank..." Avelle felt herself begin to stagger. Her entire kingdom was crumbling around her.

"The Elderbark... The Elderbark! If they don't help us, their part of the forest will be destroyed too!" At that moment, another dryad came rushing in with such momentum that she tripped over a root and fell right in front of Avelle.

"Lady... Lady Avelle... the Elderbark... They're done for!"

"Wha... What do you mean by that?! The Elderbark are primordial spirits of the forest! They are older than I am!" The dryad who had tripped got back up as best she could. Her face was pale, and she looked as though she had come face-to-face with death itself.

"It's... horrible... Horrible!"

"Ho-horrible?"

"It's a being as red as blood... It carries a long weapon with a gigantic, sharp, completely black curved blade... Nothing cut by it grows back!"

"It doesn't... grow back...? Then the regenerative abilities of forest spirits are useless?!"

"That... that isn't all..." The dryad swallowed.

"When the being spins that weapon around, it creates whirlwinds of fire! It leaves everything charred in its wake! The Elderbark couldn't do anything..." Avelle fell to her knees.

"This... this is the end..." But the light soon returned to the lime-green eyes of the lady of the flower throne.

"No... not yet... There is still one possibility..." The dryads exchanged worried looks, until finally, one of them stepped forward.

"Lady Avelle... you cannot mean..."

"We have to awaken the colossus."

"Lady Avelle?! The colossus?!" Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

"But that...! It is a spirit thousands and thousands of years old! It was born with Eryndea!"

"Once it is done with the enemy, it will turn its wrath on us!"

"We can only hope they destroy each other..."

[Servants] > [Cerys] > [Visiare of the Last Valley] >> [Ilyra] >>> [Location]"The Godscript really is useful when it wants to be. I can feel that Ilyra's presence pretty close by... Still, I didn't expect Thaelor's word alone to be enough as an 'oath under the Divine Order' for the entire race to be recognized as my servants..."!

"Nobody better get any ideas about getting too close to me! All of you are gross..." Nerez was hiding among the crowd of skeletons invading the forest, though he still had not warmed up to the idea of being surrounded by corpses, and those around him kept at least a meter away from him. At least they were all bone and rusted metal. If he ever had the option of summoning zombies or something similar, he was quite sure he would never do it. At least not anywhere he could see them.

"Speaking of servants... Selene doesn't appear here. She only appears as a member of the 'Dusk Faction'. I wonder if the difference in power determines whether someone is recognized as a servant or an ally. Under the 'Dusk Faction', only the two of us appear. Our servants don't show up... Ugh, but I do appear as the leader... Isn't there an option to leave the faction somewhere in the menu?"

Nerez kept messing around with his Godscript screen as he advanced, doing his best not to touch any of the skeletons around him.!! But then, the earth began to shake with such intensity that he could barely stay on his feet... Before him, a mountain had risen. No, it was no mere mountain. It was a gigantic creature of rock and moss. Immense trees grew on its back, and its eyes were like two dark caves.

It opened its colossal jaws, revealing thousands of enormous stalactites like fangs, and let out a roar that echoed through the entire valley.

"Mmm, this doesn't look good... unless..." Nerez stopped advancing, but ordered his skeletal soldiers to surround the creature. Many began to scale it, driving their swords and spears into it or riddling it with arrows. Of course, there was no way any of that could so much as tickle a mountain with a will of its own. The creature lifted one colossal foot, and when it brought it down, it destroyed skeletons by the hundreds.

Even those near the impact who avoided being crushed outright fell apart under the force of the tremor caused by the stomp.

"At this rate, even the hundred skeletons I always keep reserved for Mireia are going to be destroyed... And she was so happy just yesterday when I told her I'd call her Miri from now on if she finally started working at her own house instead of the temple..." Nerez looked into the distance. A column of fire had risen fairly close by.

"Cerys is probably almost done bullying those monster trees. If she gets into a fight with this creature, she'll wreak havoc on the forest... or maybe the entire valley." Nerez let out a tired sigh.

"I guess I have no choice but to try that." With superhuman agility, far greater than when he had only been a candidate for godhood, Nerez advanced to the front line.

"Lady Avelle! The colossus is actually doing it!" The dryads and the lady of the flower throne watched the scene unfold from a hill overlooking the battlefield.

"Let us hope it tires itself out in the process and goes back to sleep..." Avelle murmured thoughtfully. Although some of the dryads had regained hope, another was still pale and could not stop trembling.

"But the red being still hasn't appeared... The column of fire in the distance... it was her... she is close..." Still, Avelle's attention was drawn to something more immediate than the red being. Right after one of the colossal stomps once again shattered the ground, taking hundreds of skeletal soldiers with it, a silver-haired figure dressed entirely in black and gold had appeared at the feet of the colossus.

"Who is he?! How did he appear out of nowhere?!" The dryads looked at one another, just as bewildered as Avelle.

"We had not seen him before..." one of the dryads said.

"But I cannot stop looking at him..."

"He is like perfection given form..."

"But his aura... his aura is terrifying..." Avelle was no longer listening to the voices of her servants. All her attention was on the young man who had just touched the walking mountain.!!! Just like that, with one last, tragic roar, the mountain began to crumble.