Chapter 9: The Blighted Mammoth
Although Clei had not set foot in Althea for over a decade, his memory of the village's layout remained sharp. The roads hadn't changed. He sprinted west, away from the deep woods and toward the open plains where Althea's farmlands stretched for miles.
As he ran, his mind churned with dark thoughts. One of the books in his spatial ring—a tome marked with a red ribbon by his father—contained extensive records of the Umbral Blight. He had read it dozens of times over the past week, and one word had burned itself into his mind: Umbral.
Shadow. Eclipse. Moon.
His left hand throbbed beneath his glove. The mark on his palm was shaped like a shattered crescent moon. Could it truly be connected to the catastrophe that had nearly destroyed the world twenty years ago?
The book described the early stages of the Blight in grim detail. Before the world understood what was happening, Aetherborn across the Human Realm had begun rioting without cause. At the time, no one knew about the Umbral Phantoms—those parasitic, semi-spiritual entities from beyond the world. All they knew was that living creatures were turning into the Hollowed: empty, soulless husks driven by a foreign will.
The signs were unmistakable once you knew what to look for. On humans, the Hollowed were marked by ashen, darkening skin, throbbing black veins that crawled up their necks, and eyes that turned completely empty, like shattered glass. On Aetherborn, the corruption manifested differently. Their mana turned dark and volatile, twisting their natural elements into something extreme and unstable. Their aggression became suicidal, their pain receptors dulled to nothing.
"Maybe it's just a coincidence," Clei told himself as he vaulted over a wooden fence.
But the cold knot in his stomach told him otherwise.
—
He crested the final hill and saw the battlefield.
The farmlands were a warzone. Crops were trampled into mud, fences were splintered, and the air was thick with the stench of blood and ozone.
As Clei drew closer to the edge of the fields, two village guards sprinted past him in a frantic rush, their faces pale with panic.
"Go get the Village Head!" one of them panted, his voice cracking. "I'll run to the church and fetch the Deacon! We need reinforcements!"
Without waiting for a response, they bolted toward the village, leaving Clei to press on toward the heart of the battlefield.
At the forefront stood Teacher Teresa.
She was magnificent and terrifying. A swirling dome of crimson heat—a C-rank Domain—radiated outward from her body in a fifteen-meter radius. Inside the Domain, the air shimmered with distortion, passively sapping the strength of any beast that entered while amplifying her fire magic to devastating levels. She was holding off five Rank 3 Iron-Quill Boars entirely on her own.
Clei's eyes narrowed beneath his mask. Wait, didn't Sister Clara say the rampaging beasts were Rank 2? Why are there Rank 3 Aetherborn here?
These were massive beasts, each the size of a large bull, their hides plated with metallic quills that gleamed like steel. Even severely wounded—Teresa had already incinerated two of them and burned through the armor of a third, leaving it a charred, stumbling husk—they refused to die. Their eyes were glassy and empty, black veins throbbing along their necks. They fought with a mindless, suicidal fury that defied nature.
They're Hollowed, Clei realized with a jolt of horror. This is exactly what the book described. These beasts are Hollowed!
On Teresa's left flank, Toshi, Verdehile, and a squad of village guards were desperately holding the line against eight Rank 2 Bristle Hogs and a few dozen Rank 1 Razor Pigs.
The village guards were brave but outmatched. Althea was a quiet farming village far from the frontlines of the Human Realm. Its guards were mostly farmers and hunters who had picked up a sword to deal with the occasional bandit or stray Rank 1 beast that wandered too close to the crops. Most couldn't even harness mana; they fought with pitchforks, axes, and sheer desperation against beasts that could shatter their bones with a single charge. Several men were already down, clutching broken limbs.
At the center of the defensive line stood the captain of the guard—a weathered man in his forties clad in reinforced leather armor. He wielded a heavy iron mace and a round wooden shield, both channeling a faint green glow. He was a D-rank Aether-Knight attuned to the Wood element, and his power was purely defensive.
He slammed his mace into the earth, and thick, iron-hard roots erupted from the soil, forming a living barricade that absorbed the Bristle Hogs' charges. When a hog's tusk grazed his shoulder, the wound sealed itself almost instantly, green mana knitting his flesh together. He was a fortress, but even fortresses could crack under enough pressure.
Beside him, Toshi was a blur of golden aura. His Holy-attuned shield bashed into a Bristle Hog's skull with a resounding CRACK, sending the beast skidding backward. But another was already charging from the side, and Toshi's aura was flickering from exhaustion.
Verdehile knelt behind the root barricade, her palms pressed to the ground. She wasn't just slowing the beasts—she was on the offensive. Jagged walls of black ice erupted from the mud, impaling Razor Pigs mid-charge, while razor-sharp ice shards flew from her fingertips like shrapnel, tearing through the hides of any Bristle Hog that got too close. Her face was pale, her mana reserves clearly running low, but her attacks were relentless.
And then, Clei saw her.
A few meters behind the front line, a young woman with sun-kissed blonde hair pulled back into a tight braid was drawing her bow with practiced precision. The wind itself seemed to bend around her arrows, guiding them with unnatural accuracy into the eyes and throats of the Razor Pigs. She was an E-rank Wind Mage, using her element to enhance her archery.
Clei's breath caught in his throat.
He knew that face. Even after ten years, he knew her. The village head's daughter who used to lead the orphaned children through the church courtyard on wild adventures, always the first to suggest sneaking out to explore the forest edges. She had been naturally curious, fearless, and fiercely protective of the other kids—especially him. Now, that brave, adventurous little girl had grown into a striking young woman with sharp, focused features and an emerald-eyed gaze that still held that same spark of defiance.
Her face had matured, the softness of childhood replaced by the quiet grace of someone who had grown accustomed to bearing responsibility and being looked up to as the village head's daughter, but the determined set of her jaw was unmistakably the same.
However, now was not the time. There was a battle that needed to be fought.
A Rank 2 Bristle Hog broke through the root barricade, its tusks lowered, charging straight toward the archer's exposed flank. She was mid-draw, completely unaware.
Clei moved before he could think.
He crossed the distance in three explosive strides and snapped his fingers.
Firewall.
A three-meter pillar of white-hot flame erupted between the archer and the charging beast. The Bristle Hog slammed into the wall of heat, shrieking as its bristles ignited. Without pausing, Clei thrust his palm forward.
Fireblast.
A compressed sphere of fire tore through the hog's skull, dropping it instantly.
The archer spun around, her emerald eyes wide with shock. For a brief, fleeting second, her gaze locked onto Clei's amber eyes above his mask. A flicker of confusion crossed her face—a sense of deep, inexplicable familiarity—but the battle swallowed the moment whole. She nocked another arrow and turned back to the fight.
"Clei!" Toshi shouted, relief flooding his voice. "You came!"
Verdehile's icy composure cracked into a small, grateful smile.
Behind them, Teresa unleashed a devastating torrent of flame that finally incinerated a fourth Iron-Quill Boar. But the effort cost her. Her crimson Domain flickered and shrank, her mana reserves dipping dangerously low.
Two of the five beasts remained. One was a charred, half-melted husk, yet it still charged with terrifying persistence. The other, less wounded, seized the moment Teresa's Domain weakened. It lunged through the collapsing edge of her barrier, heading straight for the exhausted guards.
Teresa's eyes widened in alarm—
"I've got it!" Clei shouted.
He intercepted the beast with a concentrated Fireblast to its chest, the impact sending it crashing into the mud. Before it could rise, he drove his father's sword through its skull, channeling a burst of flame through the blade. The beast finally went still.
Teresa let out a shaky breath and redirected her focus, her Domain stabilizing just enough to corner the final Iron-Quill Boar. "Finish them off!" she ordered, pointing at the remaining Bristle Hogs and Razor Pigs. "Don't let a single one escape!"
The next ten minutes were brutal, grinding work. Clei moved like a phantom through the battlefield, his D-rank fire magic cutting through the frenzied beasts with ruthless efficiency. Toshi held the line with his shield, Verdehile trapped the stragglers in jagged ice, and the blonde archer's wind-guided arrows picked off the fleeing Razor Pigs with deadly precision. The remaining guards, battered but determined, worked together to suppress the last of the Bristle Hogs, their axes and spears finding purchase where mana had failed.
When the last beast fell, silence descended over the ruined farmland.
The guards collapsed where they stood. Several were missing limbs or bleeding heavily from deep gashes. Toshi dropped to one knee, his golden aura extinguished. Verdehile sat in the mud, trembling from mana exhaustion. Teresa leaned on her staff, her elegant robes untouched but her face pale from the sheer drain of maintaining her Domain for so long.
Clei stood amidst the carnage, his chest heaving. His eyes drifted to the blonde archer, who was wiping sweat from her brow.
Is it really you?
His heart hammered against his ribs, but it wasn't excitement that gripped him. It was fear. A cold, suffocating fear. Ten years of buried memories clawed at his throat. He wanted to run. He wanted to turn around and sprint back into the forest, back to the quiet sanctuary where no one knew his name or his curse.
His feet shifted, ready to bolt—
The ground shook.
A deep, thunderous roar echoed from the tree line, so powerful it rattled the teeth in their skulls. Every head turned east.
Emerging from the forest was a colossal silhouette. The Ironclad Mammoth. The same Rank 4 Alpha they had fled from a week ago.
But something was terribly wrong.
Dark, writhing veins of black mana pulsed across its metallic hide. Its eyes, once sharp and intelligent, were now empty voids of shattered glass. Black froth dripped from its tusks, and the air around it reeked of rot and corruption.
It was Hollowed.
And it was charging straight toward them.