Two days of travel. Two days of nothing but terror and restraint.

The landscape had changed since they'd left Creamont behind. Where before they'd run into monsters of reasonable levels, reasonable for their current power, challenges they could face and learn from, now the wilderness was filled with things that dwarfed anything they'd seen up to that point.

The monsters outside of Creamont were simply dreadful. There were no other words for them. Creatures that moved like living disasters, with levels ranging from 330 to 390, each one a walking apocalypse that could end them with a careless swipe.

They came from the various portals the church opened, of that Reidar was sure, but luckily, nothing came close to Creamont.

More than once, Reidar had slowed their flight, wondering if killing them was possible. Jake could see the question forming in his mind each time, and so did Lena.

But each time she would speak, brooking no argument. "No. Keep flying."

It wasn't just about the levels, though those alone should have been enough to terrify anyone with sense. No, it was something else that told her to avoid those creatures, even the ones they might have been able to face with Reidar's summons.

Something her trait, Predator's Echo, whispered to her in the language of instinct and half-formed understanding. A gut feeling that went beyond numbers, beyond analysis, something that Reidar learned to trust a long time ago.

The sensation of them clawed at the edge of her mind. It was invasive, vague, alien thoughts mixing with a hunger so raw it made her stomach turn.

She could feel their territorial fury simmering, waiting for the slightest excuse to snap. Her trait took that sensory overload and distilled it into a single warning that froze her in place: if she took one more step toward them, she would die, and so would Reidar.

"Reidar," she said on the first day, when he'd started to descend toward a beast that prowled below. "Don't. You won't survive the first exchange."

He'd looked at her, reading the certainty in her eyes, and pulled back without another word. He trusted her.

So they kept flying. Kept their distance from the monsters and watched them marking their territories, learning their patterns, but never engaging.

Two days of that. For two days, they felt small and vulnerable in a world that had grown impossibly large and deadly, and then, on the horizon, they saw something moving.

Reidar was the first to notice it. He stopped short, his hand raised in a silent gesture that froze the group. Lena and Jake turned toward him, following his gaze fixed on the distance.

It was enormous. Not as large as the world-carver behemoth, but still quite large, enough that it could be seen from the canopy of impossibly tall trees that were now across the world.

There was no other way to describe it. The creature loomed against the listless sky like a living mountain. Six massive legs sank into the ground with every step. The head, if that misshapen mass could be called that, swayed slowly from side to side, as if sniffing the air.

—[<<Hexapod Dreadmaw—Level 320>>]—

All three could see it. It was impossible not to since the beast was huge.

"It's level 320," Reidar said.

Lena glanced at him, then went to the beast as if she was evaluating it. "I know."

"So we're leaving, right?" Jake asked.

Reidar shook his head, his eyes still fixed on the beast. "No."

"What?" Jake turned toward him, incredulous. "Did you see the level? That thing will—"

"Crush us," Reidar said. "Probably. But we need to understand how to fight monsters at this level. We have avoided them for too long, but if we keep going like this, we will never be strong enough to fight Silas."

He turned to Lena. "Can we do this?"

Lena waited for Predator's Echo to kick in. She expected the usual recoil: the nausea or the spike of adrenaline that warned her when a monster was too strong. She waited for that gut-deep feeling that screamed that she would die if she faced the monster.

But nothing came. No warning. No sensation at all.

That was a good sign. The creature was massive, and her combat analysis told her it was dangerous, but the silence in her head was the only confirmation she needed. It wasn't a suicide mission.

"Among all the other monsters we've seen," she said, looking at Reidar. "This is the only one that doesn't trigger my trait's warnings. The one that says we're dead if we engage."

Reidar didn't hesitate. The moment the decision was made, his mind went into overdrive. "Then we hunt it."

Nothing below tier 30 would kill that thing easily or without overwhelming losses. The lower-tier creatures were cannon fodder at best, meant to stall, to distract, to buy seconds of survival against monsters that could end them with a careless swipe, unless they were titans, in which case the tier difference was less pronounced. But with the mana reserves he had now, those lower-level creatures could be summoned in the hundred thousands, and that was why they worked so well.

So that's exactly what he did.

The air didn't just shimmer; it convulsed as reality tore open. First came the Feral Packs, a murder of giant mana ravens that blotted out the light like a sudden, screeching eclipse.

He funneled the skill to Lena and Jake through his trait, and they poured their own mana into the skill, widening the river of monsters in the sky until it became a deluge of feathers and flesh.

Then, the spectral Mages flickered like dying candles on top of them, the Rift-Sprites did the same, and so did the Skeletal Warriors.

The legion swelled until one hundred and sixty thousand monsters stood ready. They would not kill the monster, but Reidar's other summons would, and he was currently summoning them.

In the meantime, the massive swarm began its descent from the sky with a single-minded purpose: to throw itself against the towering beast below.

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