Re: From Elf Mage to Overlord Slayer-Chapter 38: The Janitor’s Gambit, Part Two

Chapter 38: The Janitor’s Gambit, Part Two
The ground at my feet didn’t just darken.
It died.
The ashen dirt turned into a patch of pure, starless night.
From that void, a shadow began to rise.
It didn’t make a sound.
It just unfolded, a river of silent darkness pouring upwards, coalescing into the massive, terrifying form of the red-haired Titan.
It stood between me and the Maw, a silent, monstrous guardian.
My own personal meat shield.
Then, its single, colossal eye opened.
It glowed with a soft, defiant, and utterly familiar amethyst light.
The entire battlefield went dead silent.
Even the wind shut up.
The chittering static from the Maw actually faltered for a second.
The remaining members of the Hilt team just stared, their mouths hanging open.
Like a bunch of idiots.
The elite Slayers of the Blade teams, who had been struggling to their feet, froze in place.
I could feel their shock, their confusion, their raw, undiluted terror.
Man, it must be nice.
"By the Warden’s empty eyes..." someone whispered.
Seraphina’s face was a perfect, beautiful mask of absolute disbelief.
"What... what is that thing?" she breathed.
Gandalf just stared, his face pale.
He had seen it once before, in the ruins of his city.
But seeing it here, unleashed and under my command... it was a different kind of horror.
Good.
My shadow titan didn’t wait for an order.
It was an extension of my will, and my will was to win.
And not get my face eaten.
It glided forward, its movements silent and graceful, a nightmare made of smoke and memory.
The Maw’s reality-warping dome pulsed, a wave of distortion washing over the shadow.
But my titan was a creature of the void.
It was a glitch in its own right.
The wave hit it and just... split, flowing around its form like water around a stone.
It was resistant.
Not immune, but resistant enough.
That was the opening.
My voice was a cold, sharp crack in the silence.
"Gandalf!"
"Now!"
"Its left crystal leg cluster!"
"The one that glitches when it moves!"
"It’s a weak point in its animation cycle!"
"Hit it!"
Gandalf roared, a sound of pure, focused rage, and charged.
"BOOM!"
He didn’t try to punch the Maw’s body.
He followed my order.
For once.
His glowing fist slammed into the cluster of shifting crystal legs.
"CRACK!"
The sound was like a sheet of ice shattering.
The crystals exploded into a thousand glittering shards, and the Maw shrieked, its form lurching as it lost a key anchor point.
Nice.
"Seraphina!" I yelled, my voice never changing its flat, commanding tone.
"Forget the core!"
"Target the resonating crystals on its back!"
"They’re the amplifiers for its psychic attack!"
"Shatter them!"
She hesitated for a split second, her pride warring with the cold, undeniable logic of my command.
Then her eyes hardened.
"Blade One, kinetic volley!"
"Target designated!"
"FWOOSH! FWOOSH! FWOOSH!"
Her team unleashed a storm of pure, physical force bolts.
They weren’t pretty.
They weren’t elegant.
They were just brutal, invisible punches of raw power.
"SHATTER!"
The crystals on the Maw’s back exploded, and the maddening, chittering static in our heads died down to a dull, manageable buzz.
Its main weapon was crippled.
The Maw was now just a big, angry, wounded beast.
And it was furious.
It ignored everyone else.
It saw the true threat.
It focused all its remaining energy on the silent, amethyst-eyed shadow that was steadily, calmly, walking towards it.
My shadow.
The Maw’s central vortex began to spin faster and faster, pulling in light and matter, compressing it into a single, devastating point of unstable reality.
It was charging its ultimate attack.
Its last resort.
My gamer brain saw the animation and knew.
Its core was exposed.
Classic boss fight mechanic.
I didn’t need to shout this time.
My voice was a low, clear command that cut through the battlefield.
"Seraphina."
"Full power."
"Now."
She didn’t hesitate this time.
She raised both hands.
The air around her warped, shimmering with a golden light so intense it was hard to look at.
This wasn’t some fancy, pre-programmed spell.
This was her, pouring every ounce of her will, her pride, and her prodigious power into one, single, overwhelming blast.
Show-off.
"Disintegrate," she whispered.
A beam of pure, golden annihilation erupted from her hands.
It wasn’t a lance.
It was a sun.
It struck the Maw’s spinning core.
For a moment, there was no sound.
Just a blinding, absolute white light that bleached all the color from the world.
Then came the sound.
A deep, gut-wrenching "SQUELCH," as if reality itself was being ripped open.
It was followed by a deafening, implosive roar as the Maw’s form collapsed in on itself, consumed by the very chaos it was trying to unleash.
A shockwave of purple and gold energy blasted outwards, and then... silence.
The Blighted Wood was still.
The only sound was the ragged, panting breaths of fifty Slayers who couldn’t believe they were still alive.
In the center of the clearing, where the monster had been, lay a single, pulsating object.
The loot drop.
A chunk of black crystal, the size of a human heart, throbbing with a faint, sickly purple light.
The Resonant Heart.
The quest item.
My shadow titan, its job done, dissolved back into the darkness at my feet.
Like it was never there.
Slowly, everyone got to their feet.
They weren’t looking at the Heart.
They weren’t looking at Seraphina, the hero who had landed the killing blow.
Nope.
They were all staring at me.
Seraphina.
Gandalf.
Kaelen, from the other Hilt team, her eyes wide with a hungry, predatory light.
Great, another one.
Elara, who was looking at me like I was some kind of god.
Their faces were a mixture of awe, suspicion, and a deep, unsettling fear.
I wasn’t the clumsy scrub anymore.
I wasn’t the lucky idiot.
I wasn’t even the monster they thought they knew.
I was something else entirely.
A cold, terrifyingly competent strategist who had just played them all like pieces on a chessboard, saved their lives, and hadn’t even broken a sweat.
Oops.
I just looked at the glowing loot on the ground.
My voice was flat.
Empty.
"Someone grab the quest item," I said, turning my back on them all.
"We’re done here."