Demonic Po*nstar System Chapter 771: Living Mountain

The team veered south.

For a fleeting moment, the mountain range fell silent. The evacuation sirens ceased their blare. The horde of monsters had passed. The only sound was the whistling wind across the unforgiving stone.

Then, the mountain began to move.

Rivers were diverted. Valleys warped and twisted. The entire face of the mountain range shifted sideways as some colossal entity reshaped the very earth beneath it.

There was absolutely no forewarning.

One instant, the range was a familiar landmark, a collection of peaks and ridges, the very silhouette Kaiden and every member of his squad had scaled and battled upon for weeks. The next, the prominent peak they had used as their primary navigational marker throughout the entire competition detached itself from the main body of the range.

It stood upright, its sheer scale defying comprehension within Kaiden’s mind.

His brain struggled, attempting to apply conventional reference points, but failing spectacularly. Buildings, guild towers, skyscrapers – none of these familiar concepts applied. The being that rose from the mountain range was measured in kilometers. It possessed four colossal legs, which mere moments before had been the surrounding peaks. Its back was an entire ridgeline. The stony exterior, which had disguised it as a mere mountain, sloughed off in boulders the size of houses as it straightened, sending cascades of rock thundering down its flanks, obliterating the forests far below.

Along the crown of its head, six eyes slowly peeled open in a staggered, almost sequential manner, resembling lanterns being illuminated atop a grand cathedral. Each eye was as vast as a small settlement, glowing with a color that defied the natural spectrum of light. Vertical pupils cut through irises of a deep, glassy black, threaded with pulsing veins that mimicked mana, yet were not. These eyes did not blink. They opened, and in that instant, the sky above the mountain range contorted into an unnatural hue.

Its mouth followed, a jagged fissure appearing on the front of what had been a peak, splitting open in a ragged line that moved with an unsettling, unnatural gait. The edges were a gruesome amalgamation of stone and flesh, weeping a dark, mineral-rich fluid that ignited the forests below upon contact. Within its maw lay a profound blackness, a swirling vortex of immense pressure.

It let out another ear-splitting screech.

This time, Kaiden was prepared, but it made no difference. The sonic wave washed over his team, the mountain range, and the valleys beyond with a crushing force that flattened grass, shattered boulders, and drove every one of his companions to their knees. Alice’s protective halo flickered violently. Kaiden’s teeth rattled uncontrollably.

And through the monstrous maw, they emerged.

They poured forth as if the colossal creature were a portal rather than a living being. First came the Glasswing Darters, a glittering swarm so dense it obscured a quarter of the sky, their wings disproportionately large, their bodies doubled in mass, their crystalline panels intricately laced with the same dark veins that pulsed in the mountain’s crown.

Following them were the Mirecrawlers, now inexplicably in flight. Mirecrawlers were not supposed to possess the ability to fly. Behind them lumbered a Shellback Gorger of immense size, its wingspan exceeding any measurement Kaiden could estimate. Three of them appeared. Half a dozen Embermaws trailed streaks of fire from newly sprouted wings, leaving smoking trails across the unnaturally colored sky. A Cragweaver, the size of a small guildhall, unfurled eight wings, one attached to each leg, as anticipated.

He recognized these monsters, having confronted them in previous encounters. However, it was as if they had undergone a drastic upgrade, evolved, and been granted wings and augmented power.

And then came the creatures he had never dared to face.

A giant studded with spines, half again larger than a Shardhorn Colossus, with glassy growths along its back pulsing in rhythm, mirroring the rhythm of the crown above. A slender, predatory beast on six wings, its face a blur that his mind could not retain long enough to identify. Something that might have been the elder sibling of a Fissure Render, uncoiling from the mountain's maw, its fangs slick with dread, its wings dripping with an unknown ichor.

They emerged not as they were known, but fundamentally altered – empowered, winged, and warped in ways their original forms had not been. And their emergence did not cease.

The colossal mouth remained open. The stream of monsters showed no sign of stopping.

Across the mountainous terrain, every human capable of witnessing the spectacle stood transfixed in a similar manner. Veterans, Association officials, awakened fighters from every guild that had been diligently exploring the range for the past month. S-tiers. A-tiers. Rookies. Each individual wore the same vacant expression, gazing upwards, paralyzed, as their training had provided no framework for responding to the existential threat looming above them.

And within Kaiden's mind, arising from nowhere, a memory surfaced.

The voice had been exquisitely beautiful, yet terrifyingly horrific, like a goddess speaking with honey and venom upon her tongue.

The voice had grown colder. Something in the sky had contorted, and the very clouds had begun to spiral.

Humanity had endured it. That was the common sentiment expressed in the aftermath. The dungeon breaks that erupted globally, the devastating disasters of the initial forty-eight hours, were now relegated to history. America itself had repelled its breaches into remote territories such as this very region. The prevailing narrative was that the grace period had concluded, humanity had survived its trials, and the worst was definitively behind them.

Now, standing beneath a sky the color of a festering bruise, with a colossal, four-legged mountain gazing down upon him, Kaiden entertained a chilling thought.

“What if that was merely the prelude?”

That was what the voice had uttered back then before falling silent, never to be heard again.