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'What the hell is this?' thought Hector as more boxes kept appearing, shunting off chunks of the city in the distance. He hadn't necessarily expected Garovel to have an answer for him, but after a few lingering moments of silence, the reaper did.

'...The Crystal Titan,' said Garovel.

Hector was both surprised and somehow not. That briefest flash of an aura that he'd sensed. While he hadn't recognized it as belonging to Sermung, it did have that kind of overwhelming punch to it. Greater than anything he'd ever sensed before.

But where was it now? Hector couldn't tell. But apparently, Garovel could? 'You can sense him?'

'Not anymore. But for a split second, he was definitely there. About a hundred meters north of us. I'm sure of it.'

So close. Hector hadn't sensed anything that specific, but it had all happened so fast. Honestly, he was kind of impressed with Garovel. 'How are you so certain? There was so much going on.' Unconsciously, he started hovering toward the spot that the reaper had specified, though he didn't actually expect to find the strongest servant in the whole world just chilling there.

'This is the heart of Vanguardian territory. I've been hoping to recognize his soul signature from the moment we first arrived.'

'Huh. Wow, that's, uh... impressive. In a stalker-y sort of way.'

'Oh, don't start.'

'You only met him the one time, didn't you?'

'That's all we reapers need.'

'...You're not gonna, like, freak out if we do actually meet him, are you?'

'I might.'

Hector couldn't help snickering under his breath. It didn't take long to close the rest of the distance, and sure enough, no one was here. 'This the spot?'

'Roughly, yeah.'

'So, what? He just blipped in and out of existence or something?'

'Or something, most likely.'

'Hmm. You wouldn't happen to know how he did that, would you?'

'If I did, I would've taught it to you months ago. Anyway, what about your weird new senses? What are they telling you?'

'Uh...' He looked up and down at the mountainous black box that was only a few meters away now. 'It's kinda hard to sense anything with these behemoths all over the place now. They're like black holes when it comes to auras. Just sucking in everything around them.'

'Oof. Don't like hearing that. Doesn't make me feel safe at all.'

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Hector could scarcely comprehend what he was witnessing. The visual noise in front of him was just as confusing as the overwhelming aura information, and the Scarf certainly wasn't much help, either. Just trying to parse through everything required the entirety of his focus.

Civilians? He couldn't sense anyone, but maybe they were just getting lost in all the madness.

Then the groundswells began to take a more noticeable form. The massive chunks of earth sharpened themselves into smoldering spires.

And from them, even more mayhem emerged.

His aura senses picked it up first.

A swarm. Hundreds of little auras. Maybe even thousands. And they were so alien in their structure that he could scarcely be sure that they really were souls and not something else entirely.

They spilled from the rock formations like fire ants out of a hill, scuttling down the side and out onto the open street. Or up the sides of buildings. Or flying through the air.

Those definitely were not insects, though. It took a second to register, but that was a sea of tentacles and splashing blue-green ooze.

And the auras. Confusing though they still were, one thing, at least, was clear. They were the source of hostility that he'd sensed.

A pure, distilled intent. Destroy and devour. Reduce and absorb.

Overwhelm and conquer.

Instinctively, he wanted to dive headfirst in there and start getting in the way. Causing problems for whatever these freaks were. But he wasn't alone out here. He had a group of people to think about. Abandoning them wouldn't be smart, especially when he knew next to nothing about these weird tentacle monsters.

Before he could decide to head back down to the ground, however, yet another disruption arrived. And it was only telegraphed by the briefest flash of a new aura.

Hector didn't even get the chance to wrap his mind around it before he saw colossal structure there, encasing almost everything in front of him within a giant black box.

It was sudden and so massive that its appearance left a shock wave in its wake, nearly throwing him off his hovering platform.

And just like that, the swarm of invading monsters seemed to have already been contained.

He rose up even higher into the sky, only to see more gargantuan boxes filling the city, even covering entire clusters of skyscrapers.

Next page on the 22nd

Thanks for reading, guys.