It was ten years ago. He had been nine when it happened.

  Keldryn had known that today would be a good day, because his dad was coming home from patrol. He was so excited, his dad always brought back awesome stories about how he fought and won against scary monsters, as well as toys and trophies. He’d run out to the edge of the fields, as far as he could go from Farmshadow without technically leaving the village’s borders, to stare out into the tundra that sprawled forever onwards and wait for his dad to appear on the horizon.

  Someday, he would go out there, venture far into those wild expanses and join his dad in slaughtering the monsters that threatened people like his neighbours. In his daydreams, he fantasised about running all the way to the coastline at the Peak of the World, decapitating a Kaiju with every swing of his arms, his dad waiting there to congratulate Keldryn on finally surpassing him.

  Overturning his dad’s indomitable legacy had become a lifelong goal of his, if only to get him to stop bragging about the many varied monsters that had almost killed him - only for him to turn the tables and win by the skin of his teeth. Keldryn had found the tales terrifying when he was younger, but now that he was nine years old and all grown up he knew that his dad was probably just exaggerating all the mortal peril.

  And yet he knew that his father’s arrogance was earned. He was the strongest Guardsman in the region, the only one to have cleared the Third Schema Lock.

  Sure, there were only three ‘real Guardsmen’ - since the Amber Sentinels didn’t count, according to his dad - in Farmshadow, and Gerald and Arstar were only ten or fifteen levels behind his dad. But that didn’t matter. His dad was the best, the one they called when something really dangerous threatened a nearby village.

  He’d been on a long trip this time, all the way to Topwater. Something about a giant toad? Keldryn was bouncing with anticipation, eager to hear all about it. And he wouldn’t have to wait long, because his dad had crested the hill and was jogging towards him!

  Bardate Thorntail was on the lean side, but had long grown out of the gangliness that would come to plague Keldryn during puberty. His muscles were firm and well-developed, including a tail like an orange pine tree with a spiky white tip. He had no beard, but thick whiskers growing from his upper face, and sleek, well-cared for black hair from which two slim triangular ears protruded. His face split into a wide grin as he saw his son, crouching down and spreading his arms wide. “There’s my boy!”

  Keldryn threw himself into his father’s arms with a toothy grin, kicking at the air as Bardate lifted him up and looked him in the eye. “Have you been behaving?”

  “Of course!” Keldryn sounded personally offended that his father would think otherwise. “I reached Level 3!”

  “You did? That’s amazing! Well done!” Bardate beamed, shaking him back and forth. Even an iota of his massive Strength stat was enough to make his son ragdoll in his arms. “How’d you do it?”

  “I helped Mrs. Nastya get rid of the rats in her attic! I used mousetraps!” Keldryn bragged, struggling futilely to escape his father’s grasp. “She gave me a teacake to say thank you!”

  “Excellent. Sounds like you’ve been doing well for yourself. How about the house? You’ve been helping your mum clean up?”

  “Um,”

  Bardate sighed dramatically. “I’m going to come home and find the kitchen a mess again, aren’t I?”

  “Maybe?” Keldryn squeaked, blood rising to his cheeks.

  He shook his head. “Ah, so be it. If things were perfect, it wouldn’t feel like home,”

  Together, they looked back at Farmshadow, the village built at the bottom of a valley in the shadow of a mighty mountain, protected by natural earthworks augmented with walls and towers to keep out the Kaijus, and acres of farmland spreading in every direction. Keldryn knew that their house was down in that valley, with the Engraving workshop where his mum was surely working hard, as usual.

  Keldryn wasn’t a child. (Being nine years old made him basically an adult, right?) He understood that making and selling Cores was what put food on the table. He understood that he was better off than many of the other children at the village school. But he still wished his mum had more time to play with him.

  “Now, come on, let’s go find your mum and we’ll have a nice big lunch,” Bardate’s eyes sparkled. “I brought -“

  The ground shook.

  Keldryn wobbled, throwing his arms out to keep his balance, and his father steadied him. “What was that?”

  “I don’t know. But -“ Bardate’s voice died as the mountain that overlooked their village exploded.

  Something emerged.

  It was a massive, conical shell that tapered to a wicked point, coloured a deep blue and flecked with speckles of light like stars, supported on eight crab-like legs that were each the size of a house. A squat head emerged, a maw filled with fangs that looked wickedly dangerous even from this distance, and roared.

  Keldryn’s eyes widened. At his tender age, he’d only ever seen Kaijus as corpses being processed by the butcher. Never one that was alive and dangerous. But this creature was an order of magnitude more huge than he’d thought even a Kaiju could possibly get, large enough to crush the entire butcher’s yard underfoot.

  This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

  But that didn’t matter. His dad would kill it, same as he’d killed a thousand other Kaijus. He looked up at Bardate, expecting to see his usual confident smile.

  Bardate was horrified.

  “It’s the Cityvore,” he whispered almost involuntarily. “Where did it - how did it . .” He trailed off, the lines around his eyes firming into a look of resolve. “Keldryn,”

  “Yeah, dad?” Keldryn could sense his father’s worry. He didn’t like it.

  “Stay here. No matter what happens, don’t go back to the village until I or someone else comes to get you,”

  “What are you gonna do?”

  “I’m going to go get your mother. Stay right here. I’ll be back soon,” Bardate was already striding away, the digitigrade legs of Skyward Grasscutter hoisting him into the air. His purple aura pulled the green plates of armour out of thin air and into place, while his hands wrapped around the wicked black scythe that was his signature weapon. The blades on his arms were only for close-range fighting. The treasured Jade of Scythe was his preferred weapon, his most valuable possession, the blade that he lived and died by.

  His legs lengthened mid-stride, the Goliath growing around him until it reached its maximum size, already raising the purple-tinged scythe in anticipation of engaging the monstrosity.

  Keldryn looked back at the foe. Six smaller heads on the ends of snake-like necks had emerged from the sides of the shell, rearing up and bellowing their supremacy. One of them lashed outwards, and when it drew back there was enough blood around its mouth that he could see it even from this distance.

  For all that the impossibly huge, heavily armoured body of the Cityvore was quite slow, its half-dozen heads were phenomenally fast. They lashed out at anything that moved, gnashing maws that pulped and sucked up one villager after another. Buildings burst into sawdust under their strikes. Trees were uprooted. Livestock was crushed - not even eaten, merely reduced to bloody smears. All the while, that horrible central head sat and watched like a monstrously proud mother as the smaller, more flexible maws tormented their prey.

  Distant screams shook the air, but two other Goliaths had appeared. He recognised the angular silver lines of Spectre, and the warm cobalt colouration of Fortune’s Fool. Those belonged to Gerald and Arstar, the guard captain and a retired ranger respectively. Arstar was Keldryn’s favourite babysitter, his stories were almost as good as dad’s.

  The Cityvore bit his Goliath in half before he could even try to attack.

  A half-dozen identical orange Goliaths appeared seconds too late to save Fortune’s Fool, momentarily blocking his view of the Monster King. For a moment, Keldryn hoped that the Amber Sentinels would by some miracle best the Cityvore.

  Four of them were cut down like chaff before he could finish formulating the thought.

  The two survivors formed up with Gerald, and together they charged. The Cityvore didn’t even pay them any heed, its serpentine heads distracted with dragging more of Keldryn’s neighbours out of their hiding places and snacking on them. But then its main head inhaled, and spewed out a cone of blinding light that engulfed all three Goliaths, as well as a large chunk of Farmshadow. When the blast faded, nothing was left but ashes.

  Keldryn had a dawning suspicion that the Cityvore wasn’t taking this seriously at all. It was destroying everything he’d ever known for fun.

  Regardless of his guesses as to the Monster King’s motivations, every other defender of Cliffshadow had fallen in the time it had taken Bardate to close the distance.

  But none of them were as strong as his dad. None of them were past the Third Schema Lock like he was. He could win this. Right?

  Skyward Grasscutter vanished into the collapsing buildings, and he never again saw it shine with Bardate’s purple aura.

  When Keldryn next saw his dad, it was as a broken, mangled corpse.

  Keldryn never knew exactly what happened, but that only gave his mind room to imagine the details. Perhaps Bardate had been cut down from behind while sobbing over mum’s corpse. Perhaps he’d gone mad with grief and launched a suicidal attack, hoping to pull off a miracle. Perhaps he’d tried to protect their neighbours as they escaped and been killed for his final act of valour.

  For years after the fact, when he’d tried to sleep in the stiflingly warm underground room that his foster family had provided, his dreams were haunted by visions of those seven horrible heads ripping his parents apart in new and awful ways. Sometimes he tried to console himself with fantasies about what he would do when he was strong enough to avenge them. Sometimes he tried to picture how things could have been different, how his father could have carved open the Cityvore’s chest and ripped out its heart, could have dived down its throat and shredded it from the inside, could have smashed its shell open and ripped its brains out. But none of that mattered, none of it made any difference, because he knew what the outcome was, what it always would have been.

  Bardate simply hadn’t been strong enough. It didn’t matter that he’d been the mightiest man for miles around, because compared to the Cityvore, he was nothing. Not even worth eating. And perhaps, in its own twisted way, that was a blessing, because Keldryn wouldn’t have been able to retrieve his father’s Core Controller if the Cityvore had been a bit hungrier.

  The poor, weak, nine-year-old, Level 3 Keldryn could do nothing, not able to even voice a protest as the happy and loving home he’d relished so much was chewed up and spat out. He could only watch, too afraid to get closer, too entranced to flee, half hoping to live and half hoping to join his family in death, as the Cityvore finished making a meal out of his home.

  <=====}—o

  Keldryn started awake, and with flashes of viridian light his armour wrapped around his body. A second later, a burst of blue-orange manifested into a shaggy goat that knelt next to the couch he was sleeping on. Bluebell whined soothingly, rubbing her head on his shoulder.

  “It was just a dream,” he realised. His Companion nuzzled up to him, and he released his armour and blade, looking down at the Cores and Controller that he’d dug out of the rubble and ruins, pulled from the corpses. As well as the empty slot where the Jade of Scythe should have been.

  Bluebell whined, and Keldryn patted her head. “Aw, hey, don’t worry. I’m okay now,” he quietly promised, uncertain whether he was trying to reassure her or himself.

  Keldryn cast a glance towards the bedroom where Mikayla was sleeping, thinking about the rusty Core Controller that was haunted by what claimed to be the Black Traitor. And, more importantly, the Armour Core with no maximum size limit.

  “Actually, I might be better than I’ve been in a long while. I’ve got a plan now. We’ve got a real chance,”

  Bluebell whined, and Keldryn rubbed her hard-light ears, missing the sensation of fur and flesh but still feeling comforted by the action.

  “We just need to get that Core,”

  https://www.patreon.com/c/Fenghuang0296

  down.