Chapter 263

Chapter 263
## Chapter 263

King of Madness (2)

The Steel Fortress, situated at the extreme northern edge of the Aonia Earldom within the Tulk Kingdom.

This was the frontline bastion of the realm, constructed specifically to hold back the tide of beasts emerging from the dreaded Northern Mountains.

It functioned as a staging ground for adventurers venturing into the peaks for resource collection and hunting, as well as a scouting post that kept watch over the territory through constant patrolling.

Particularly following the madness incident, which brought about heightened beast aggression and a massive demon onslaught, reinforcements had poured in to fortify it into an absolute stronghold…

“Argh! My leg… My leg…!”

“Pant… Pant…”

“Hurry! Prioritize the heavily wounded!”

…Yet at this moment, the location was a theater of pure bedlam and horror.

Injured soldiers wallowed across the dirt, weeping in agony, while severed appendages and torn remains littered the grounds.

Rumble—

A massive stretch of the reinforced wall, designed to endure the assaults of colossal beasts, fractured miserably, the path of ruin carving deep into the settlement nestled inside the stronghold.

“Commander! Can you hear me?! Get a potion, quickly!”

“Over here! Move the Commander with care!”

Even the Commander, the officer tasked with overseeing the Steel Fortress’s defense, had not escaped the catastrophe.

He was a warrior on the brink of mastery, commanding Aonia’s First Knights, the most formidable fighting force in the Earldom.

Yet his current state, as his subordinates extracted him from the debris of the shattered barrier, was entirely unbefitting of his status.

His flesh was terribly mangled, and one of his arms had been completely torn away. After receiving hasty battlefield triage from his men, he was rapidly shifted toward the medical tents.

“Ugh… Where… where are we…?”

“Commander! You’re conscious?!”

Shortly after.

Sustained perhaps by his rigorous martial conditioning and the vitality of the medicine, he stirred slightly and rasped out a weak question.

However, the moment his eyelids parted to take in the absolute devastation around him, he shut them once more.

He required no verbal report to comprehend the sequence of disasters that had unfolded while he was blacked out.

‘The White Giant… ’

Whispers of the creature had reached his ears before.

As a military leader, he was well aware of one of the prime engines of terror and ruin across the lands, alongside the Immortal Army.

‘But the reality defied the reports. Its scale was far grander, and its visage… the bindings were absent. And… ’

Most terrifyingly—its physical might completely eclipsed the rumors.

He had harbored a faint hope that they could stall the entity’s advance by making a stand behind the magically reinforced walls…

It had been an illusion.

The soaring, dense blockades built to halt behemoths only reached up to the monster’s chest, rendering him and his elite warriors entirely helpless before its advance.

‘It wielded such devastating force despite appearing far from its peak condition. What would its unbridled power look like?’

The colossus had arrived looking heavily scarred from the outset.

Yet even in that diminished state, its strength remained absolute.

“The distress signals have already been dispatched. Rest now, Commander.”

“Ugh… Disgraceful… To suffer such a defeat… and lie here… entirely useless…”

“It was an act of god, Commander. Who could truly stand against such a terror? Perhaps only the legendary Saint…”

“…The holy grounds?”

“We have already sent word to them.”

“…Sigh, I pray the subsequent ruin is kept to a minimum…”

He recognized that a manifestation of that caliber was far beyond the jurisdiction of a single kingdom.

The intervention of the Church was mandatory.

The immediate priority was keeping casualties low until the Saint and the holy crusade arrived to reinforce them.

“Main God…”

With a final breath, the Commander slipped back into unconsciousness, his form turning entirely still.

While the Steel Fortress rotted in absolute panic,

The architect of the devastation was charting a course southward at an astonishing pace.

Aiming straight for Tarak, a settlement positioned less than a day’s travel away by horse and wagon.

—

A dark, unsettling premonition.

Her chest throbbed with a heavy weight, an impending sense of catastrophe enveloping her senses.

She shifted restlessly, entirely unable to banish the creeping dread.

“Diana? Is everything alright?”

“Ah?”

Diana, who had been biting at her fingertips without realizing it, started at the sudden inquiry and swiftly pulled herself together.

“…Yes, forgive me. Please proceed with the distribution as we discussed.”

“Understood, ma’am.”

She concluded her directives, forcing her tone to remain stable.

The workers offered their respects and went their separate ways, resuming their duties.

“Diana seems quite out of sorts today.”

“Worse still, the garrison forces have been acting bizarrely for the past hour. Did an incident occur…?”

“I passed by the battlements earlier, and over there…”

The traders murmured among themselves, maintaining their ordinary schedules.

But Diana, who was currently overseeing the storage sector on the perimeter of the settlement, possessed no mental room to spare for such idle gossip.

Drawing a deep breath, she pressed a palm against her ribs.

Thump— Thump— Thump—

Her pulse raced without restraint, her chest heaving as air grew scarce.

Even though no visible crisis had manifested yet.

‘Why does my body react this way? This sensation is just like… ’

It mirrored the exact moment she had detected a scent of ‘supreme peril’ back in her ancestral home of Azantu.

An existential threat she had desperately fled from, yet also searched for on behalf of her uncle.

No, the current sensation was far more suffocating.

Unlike that past encounter, this time she felt an absolute certainty that her very survival was hanging by a thread.

‘Uncle Bolt stationed vampire guardians nearby, and this storage sector is packed with our contracted fighters. Personal security shouldn’t be an issue… ’

As her brow furrowed in an attempt to logically dissect her fear,

A sudden aroma assaulted her senses, causing her to clamp a hand over her nose.

“Ugh, what is this foulness?”

An incredibly malevolent odor, potent enough to induce vertigo, began to blanket the atmosphere.

As a merchant, she was well-acquainted with the stench of monster remains, but this defied classification.

‘…What is the origin?’

She swiveled around, attempting to trace the source.

The stench was entirely overwhelming, drowning out her specific senses, but she could broadly discern the trajectory.

Far beyond the borders of this isolated district.

Her eyes locked onto the northern horizon.

Then, an additional realization struck her.

A bead of icy perspiration rolled down her temple.

That mysterious, suffocating scent…

Was drawing closer.

With terrifying velocity.

Directly toward her position.

Wee-ooh—! Wee-ooh—!

Clang! Clang! Clang!

Simultaneously, a shrill alarm blared across the entire settlement.

Anomalous events were undeniably unfolding.

‘I must retreat. Immediately.’

As she rapidly guided her entourage back toward the heart of the settlement,

Kaboom—!

A sudden tremor shook the earth, causing her footing to fail. She would have struck the ground had her guardian not stabilized her.

“What caused that?!”

“The defensive ward on the perimeter has been triggered! We are under bombardment from outside!”

“Form a ring around Diana! Escort her back to the main branch…!”

Cries of panic filled the air.

Not merely from Hubert’s Trading Company, but from adjacent merchants as well.

Yet the assault did not cease there.

Koooong—! Kaboom—! Crack—!

A secondary shockwave tore through, immediately followed by the splintering of masonry.

Massive fragments of stone, hurled from the direction of the outer perimeter, smashed directly into the surrounding storehouses, generating a deafening din.

Rumble—

The edge of the settlement was being torn apart.

Structures disintegrated into dust.

And emerging through the veil of ruin…

“T-the outer wall has crumbled!”

“W-wait! What in heaven’s name is that?!”

“Uh, that… Could it truly be… a g-giant…?”

A colossal entity that distorted all sense of scale, even from a vast distance.

A White Giant, radiating a suffocating pressure, stood watching the populace.

A grotesque grin deformed its facial features.

“Ah…”

“Ugh…”

Traders, laborers, fighters, garrison troops… Every soul that caught its gaze became entirely paralyzed.

Like livestock cornered by an apex predator.

“Khehehe… Located you—!”

A solitary exclamation, dripping with sadistic pleasure, boomed from the colossus.

And in the subsequent breath.

Kaboom—!

A catastrophic concussive wave tore through the outer perimeter of Tarak.

—

Her cognitive faculties were splintered, her mind reduced to a chaotic blur.

Coherent thought eluded her.

What sequence of actions had she taken?

She recalled departing from her residence, arriving at the office, taking her midday meal, and subsequently navigating to the peripheral warehouse sector for an inspection.

Then, while transferring instructions… an intuition had gripped her.

‘Ah! And following that… ’

A colossal, pale titan had manifested.

The entire populace had frozen under its stare, a voice had reverberated, and consciousness had failed her.

And now she…

‘What… has befallen me…?’

As she struggled with that enigma,

A sudden fragrance reached her, causing her features to soften.

A gentle, deeply comforting scent.

It dispelled the mental fog, allowing her to part her eyelids.

“Ugh!”

A violent gale buffeted her visage, forcing her to instinctively turn away and bury her face against the chest of the figure cradling her.

“Have you returned to us?”

A deeply familiar, serene tone.

“Chairman? What transpired…?”

The reassuring voice mitigated her panic, allowing her to speak softly.

She cautiously separated her lids to observe her surroundings—.

“Ah?”

…and sucked in a sharp breath, her eyes widening in disbelief.

Goooo—

The terrain and forestry beneath them moved past in a dizzying smear.

They were airborne.

To be precise, Hubert was supporting her weight, cutting through the heavens at an astonishing velocity.

While she stared blankly at the receding wilderness,

Hubert cast a downward glance at her form and let out a silent sigh of relief.

‘A narrow escape. The entity made landfall much swifter than anticipated.’

He had initiated his rescue flight the instant he detected the colossus vanishing from the perimeter sector, yet he had nearly run out of time.

Her presence at the remote inspection site had compounded the danger.

His ability to extract her from the jaws of peril rested entirely upon a singular piece of equipment.

The experimental suit that Howard had been fabricating.

‘Multipurpose Combat Power Suit Mk.1 (Prototype)’

The project remained largely unfinished, representing little more than an assembly of provisional components, yet…

“Um… Chairman, that suit…?”

Diana, taking note of his strange gear, inquired softly, her voice laced with bewilderment.

Its configuration diverged entirely from standard protective gear.

A polished, aerodynamic framework forged from an unfamiliar alloy, with intricate pathways carved into the plating.

A vibrant luminescence throbbed within the center of his chest, pulsing through the pathways like lifeblood, traveling down to his heels and gathering at his shoulders, where it erupted into a violent propulsion of fire.

“An experimental artifact I am currently prototyping. It lacks completion, but it granted us the necessary speed.”

Hubert, operating the rig via “Avatar Cloud”, had rapidly pulled Diana from the path of destruction and retreated.

‘Though I pushed the parameters past their limit. It is reduced to scrap now… Still, the functional field data justifies the expenditure.’

Weighing the sheer value of the base elements, utilizing it as a one-time asset was a heavy loss… but it had provided the solitary window required to slip past the colossus’s focus, if only momentarily.

“Ah! What of the titan?! Where is it now?!”

Diana, her awareness fully returning, questioned with rising panic.

Clarity was returning to her gaze, her faculties snapping back into alignment.

“The colossus…”

Following Hubert’s flight with Diana, the creature had instantly abandoned the settlement to hunt them down.

Utilizing the premium catalyst core he had secured from the Karma Shop, he had managed to open a temporary gap… but the reprieve was brief.

The titan closed the distance within mere breaths—.

“Fortune favored us. An ally moved to cut off its advance.”

…And then its hunt had been disrupted.

‘My priority must be keeping Diana at a significant distance from this zone. Until the situation concludes.’

Deducing from the colossus’s behavior, her existence held far greater significance than he had initially estimated.

For that reason, Hubert maintained his aerial sprint despite the opportunity to pause.

Concurrently,

The individual responsible for engineering that brief window was experiencing an incredibly frantic engagement.

—

Kaboom—!

A secondary detonation rumbled from across the landscape.

“Kuh—! Unacceptable?! By what means are you present here? Your position was designated in the southern territories!”

The titan bellowed in pure exasperation.

One of the pests who had fractured its designs was once again blocking its path.

“Khahaha! This specimen is truly magnificent! I wouldn’t miss this encounter for the world!”

Yet Harley, completely dismissing the titan’s wrath, bellowed with laughter and lunged directly toward the foe.

The explanation for his presence was elementary.

He possessed “In the Hero’s Footsteps”, an innate talent that granted him instantaneous transit to any territory he had previously stepped foot upon!

The ability had formerly carried a restrictive cooldown and a narrow boundary, but courtesy of Heinrich’s legendary exploits, his operational range now spanned the entirety of the continent.

‘My arrival was slightly delayed, however. I was required to clarify the developments to Misty.’

Nevertheless, the tactical landscape was advantageous.

Regardless of the fatigue the titan had carried over from its earlier clash with Hans and the empowering traits of the boundary zone, its current pressure was profoundly reduced compared to their meeting in the deep void.

‘It fails to even identify my person instantly. Its internal energy must suffer outside of that native realm.’

Naturally, his role was limited to containment. Achieving a solo victory was outside his capabilities.

Should the duel prolong indefinitely, his defeat was guaranteed.

“Khahaha—! Let us clash!”

“Your life ends first, wild beast!”

Yet no trace of anxiety crossed his mind.

In that exact instant.

A Blood Gate expanded within the hidden sanctuary of the vampires in Tarak.

Simultaneously, a brilliant radiance broke through the threshold of the holy temple.