CHAPTER 50: UNDER THE BEHEMOTH’S SHADOW

[Ethan’s POV]

...

ROARRRRRRR!!!

The roar split the city in half.

The street buckled, warehouses shuddered, and steel screamed in protest as the ground heaved like an ocean.

And then it rose.

DING!

~----~

[WARNING! You have encountered a D Rank Monster: Rift-Tyrant Behemoth!]

~----~

The Rift-Tyrant Behemoth tore itself from the industrial blocks like a god dragged up from the deepest depths of hell.

It stepped, and the ground wailed.

KABOOM!

Four legs the size of tower cranes hammered into the asphalt, each step splintering roads into fault lines.

Its body was plated with molten glass ridges, shards glowing like magma veins, its furnace-skull head belching smoke and embers with every guttural snarl.

When it opened its mouth, it wasn’t a maw. What was inside there was a collapsing forge, a void rimmed with teeth of obsidian. Heat shimmered from its flanks, and steam hissed from cracks in its hide.

A D-Rank monster, a Behemoth.

Its eyes, molten red, wild, irritated, and hungry locked on the specks that had dared disturb its slumber.

Then, it charged.

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

The world shook as if the city itself was about to fold under the sheer weight of its fury.

I should’ve been terrified, my legs should’ve buckled, my mind should’ve fractured under the sight.

Instead, I smirked.

This was it. My madness had worked.

No formation, no doctrine, no cohort could stand their ground under the Behemoth’s shadow. Pike and his wolves would scatter, tails tucked, giving us the opening we needed to bolt across the Bridge of Cinders and to safety.

Except... they didn’t.

"Hold!"

Pike’s voice cut through the quake like steel against stone.

He didn’t flinch, he didn’t run. With a gaze that told a story of cold fury and defiant stubbornness, he stood at the bridge’s base, his gray eyes reflecting molten death, and raised a hand in calm command.

"Kill them first," he said. "Then we run".

’What?!’ I thought I misheard.

His men hesitated, rifles trembling. They weren’t cowards, not after everything they’d done to survive, but facing a D-Rank was something else. Their training frayed at the edges, discipline cracking under the Behemoth’s roar.

No matter how arrogant they were, they knew that in front of this Behemoth, they were no more than ants.

The question was, Major Pike vs the Behemoth, which was scarier?

One stammered. "Major, that thing..."

Pike turned. Smoothly. Coldly.

And he drove his knife up under the man’s chin.

The soldier twitched once, blood spilling down his chest, and crumpled at Pike’s boots. Pike wrenched the blade free, face impassive, his gaze sweeping across the rest of them like a gun barrel.

"Anyone else?" His voice boomed like thunder.

Silence.

No one moved, no one dared. They obeyed.

Then the Major pointed his knife at us, the blade slick with his own man’s blood. "Their blood first, then we live". He repeated.

Madness gleamed in his eyes, but so did resolve.

The Behemoth thundered closer, each step cracking pavement. Its molten ridges glowed brighter, heat rolling off it in suffocating waves.

But before it reached us, Pike’s cohort surged forward, rifles blazing.

Then, chaos ensued again as bullets screamed and resonance grenades shattered against stone, fire bursting across the broken road.

"Cover!" Holt barked, already snapping his rifle to his shoulder. His shot cracked, an enemy on the rooftop pitching backward.

Kara vaulted into the storm, her spear spinning as she deflected a burst of resonance light that would’ve gutted Jonas. "Move, dammit!" she shouted.

Jonas, alive only because of Travis’s Awakening, didn’t cower in the face of death. ’Death’s overrated, I’ve survived it before,’ he thought as he bared his teeth and slammed into Pike’s forward line, his regenerated muscles straining, bones groaning under reinforced strikes.

He fought like a man who had already died once and refused to do it again.

Reid lifted his rifle, his perception slowing time just enough for two clean shots, one on an enemy’s shoulder, then on another’s knee. But each trigger pull left him shaking harder, his fever bleeding strength.

Mira’s wind roared, catching fire bursts midair, shoving grenades off course, carving chaos into Pike’s perfect formation.

And me...

I hit Shadowstep again, vanishing into silence, reappearing inside their kill box. The Gauntlet flared, my fist shattering ribs as I hurled a man against a car so hard it crumpled.

I used Phantom Mirage again as it doubled me, drawing fire into empty air.

"Keep pushing!" I shouted. "The bridge, we make it to the bridge!"

Then Pike himself moved.

He carved through his own men’s firing lines like a blade of doctrine as Predator’s Instinct gleamed in his eyes. He saw me before I struck, his body turning, his knife catching my gauntlet’s spikes and locking them an inch from his throat.

"You’re clever," he hissed. "But clever breaks against will!"

He shoved me back with impossible force, pivoted, and kicked Reid’s rifle aside before the shot could fire.

"Jonas!" I barked.

Jonas barreled in, roaring as his fist crashed into Pike’s ribs. Pike absorbed it, grunting, then rammed his elbow into Jonas’s temple, dropping him to his knees.

The man was a machine.

His cohort rallied behind him, moving like extensions of his fury. And all the while, the ground quaked harder.

The Rift-Tyrant Behemoth closed the distance.

Its furnace-skull head slammed into the nearest warehouse, shattering concrete like clay. Molten shards spewed from its mouth, raining down like artillery fire, and the shockwave hurled Pike’s men and ours alike off their feet.

Heat seared my lungs. My ears rang.

I staggered upright in time to see the Behemoth’s eyes fix on us, its roar rattling the marrow in my bones.

Even Pike faltered.

For the first time since I’d seen him, his mask cracked. His resolve wavered under pure, primal terror.

His Predator’s Instinct screamed the truth. There was no doctrine, no command, no discipline strong enough to face what bore down on us.

And in that instant, humanity, desperate, real and raw broke through his iron.

"RUN!" Pike bellowed.

The command shattered the battlefield. His cohort scattered, discipline obliterated in a flood of instinct.

We ran too, the looming shadow of the Behemoth swallowing the city whole.

The bridge shook as the Rift-Tyrant roared again, molten shards spraying, its furnace-maw opening wide.

The hunt had ended.

Now it was survival under a god’s shadow.