Pride. It is a driving human emotion that can both uplift and corrupt.

And what better is there to feed pride than glory?

***

In the time of the Third Calamity Event, The Iron General had ‘no name’. Strictly speaking, he was nothing more than a peasant of unknown and arbitrarily insignificant past.

Yet, in war, the wealthy and poor both have no place all the same. In war, only victors and losers have their names recorded.

On the prevailing side stood The Iron General, renowned for his heavy fighting style and absolute conviction in following the guilds’ orders in battle. 

For a brief time after the fighting had stopped, he had made a name for himself to be remembered by others. Unfortunately, as all things are, glory is impermanent.

Citizens cheered his ‘name’ as he walked the streets, continuing to feed his own ego by making his role in the reconstruction period known. After helping to rebuild Synoria Outlook, he chose to settle down in that very town, dedicating his name towards guarding its citizens from further attacks.

However, his ‘purpose’ eventually faded. Tensions between human and corruption began dying down for a brief period of peace under the new Herald.

Without a legacy to continue, he clung onto the shadow of his former figure, allowing delusion of his worth to mislead his character.

Neglecting duties became the usual– for duties that felt purposeless were meaningless acts, weren’t they? 

The people’s gazes shifted from respect to sour disdain, yet all attention ultimately amounted to the same so long as the people’s eyes were on him.

***

With such a heap of fragile self worth, a breaking point had to be eventually reached.

A brief flash of sense. A momentary thought of regret, a passing whim that said, “Maybe, if I had been the kind of person they once thought me to be, it wouldn’t have to end like this.”

***

The foe before him was something he could never have imagined even in his years of combat experience.

Slaying the first titan came easily, for skill and expertise were on his side while the guards’ numbers could almost ensure victory.

What came after felt more like something out of a horror story, as the second titan, previously occupied by the neighboring group of guards, bounded over with the conviction of a diving vulture.

It ‘absorbed’ its fallen brother, integrating their bodies into one while the fallen’s core regenerated with the aid of the second.

The combined being’s intelligence, strength, regeneration, and seemingly everything else  about it had doubled.

He himself held out just fine, but the remainder of the guards were a different story, dropping one by one as the beast’s unpredictable attacks pierced their defenses.

Last man standing.

The beast launched an all out rampaging assault that could barely be fended off by the swings of his axe. It seemed that this version of the titan-type beasts could grow stronger with each kill.

Then came the moment almost every fighter has experienced at least once some point in their lives. The experience that some describe as ‘your life flashing before your eyes’.

He threw another swing that drew upon all his might.

Yet, with facing such an opponent, it was no wonder he couldn’t even realize these attacks were nothing more than a front.

He felt something sharp prick the back of his skull– A sound of something cracking, then squelching. The back of his neck grew wet.

His body wanted to convulse and writhe in agony, yet something was holding his head in place.

Then, he could see it at the edge of his vision– A long stake-like tendril that protruded from his forehead, glistening blood dripping off the tip.

For whatever reason, the agonizing pain of his body wouldn’t reach his mind. Instead, before his own consciousness faded, he only felt the sensation of hearing a single question.

“Enlighten me… do you have any regrets?”

Kaito’s POV

“What the hell is that thing?!”

The man beside me was the first to speak, shouting out in confusion.

He was also the first to take action, rushing towards the beast without even a weapon in hand. 

On the other hand, the beast itself was unperturbed by his sudden exclamation and movements, its eyes instead being solely focused on the captain dangling from the end of its arm.

I wanted to follow, yet some inexplicable feeling rooted my feet to the ground. Was it fear?

Suddenly, the beast too sprung into motion, throwing its left hand in a spear-handed jab while the captain’s body flapped around through the air like a doll being dragged along by a child.

“Oh no you don’t!”

The man’s aether flared, burning even brighter than before as he laid only two fingers on the titan’s hand for no more than a second, using it to leverage himself around the attack.

Steam began rising from the beast’s same arm as its form condensed into a sharpened blade of corrupted energy, swinging once more towards the man’s location.

This time, he ducked down before springing upwards, using the blade’s flat as a foothold to leap out of range. 

“Kaito! You gonna help me or what? I can’t fight this thing alone, not to mention unarmed at that!”

I bent down to pick up the axe I had previously used. I could barely notice it, but my hand was ever so slightly trembling.

“No. Not here. I won’t show fear. Not this time, and not ever again,” I told myself.

This beast before me was incomprehensible, something unnatural, something that shouldn’t have been– yet, in comparison to the emotions that chained me when I faced the King of Wyverns, overcoming this beast would be nothing.

I tightly clutched my hand on the handle with my other.

“Snap out of it. You’ve faced the unknown before.”

I rushed over and took my place beside him.

At the same time, the beast halted its movements, carefully inspecting every aspect of our bodies.

“Remember. Out on the battlefield, don’t let your resolution waver. Not even once.”

“Thanks.”

For a rather ordinary seeming volunteer worker, this man was far more knowledgeable and had far more expertise than I could’ve ever imagined.

“By the way. I don’t think you’ve told me yet, so what’s your name?”

“My name? Hm… it’s Phasma.”

Could it be a foreign name? During my brief time in World Zero, I hadn’t heard anyone’s name sound remotely similar to it, and after all, World Zero was extremely vast.

“I see. Well, I guess I should say it’s nice to meet you, then.”

He only chuckled in response.

Without warning, the beast lunged towards me, condensing its arm in preparation to strike. The tip of this sharpened blade was aimed directly between my eyes.

“Focus!”

Before I could realize it, Phasma had wrenched the axe from my hand and delivered an overhead swing atop the titan’s arm, slamming it down into the ground just inches before me.

The axe’s head snapped off just as quickly against its tempered body.

It immediately adapted in response, shifting the captain’s body onto a tendril that moved away to its back, freeing up its other arm. At the same time, both its heads formed craggy openings that resembled mouths and began charging individual blast attacks. 

We were both now unarmed facing imminent destruction.

I suddenly felt a hand grab the back of my collar and lift me off the ground.

“You remember how the captain wielded a greataxe, right?!”

Without another word, he flung me away from the beast in the direction of where the guards’ first battle took place.

As I tumbled through the dirt, I caught sight of Phasma holding tight to both the titan’s arms in his hands, trickling streams of blood emerging from his palms. 

“Keep your eyes on me, big guy!”

I understood his plan, yet despite its merits, this course of action placed far too much risk on his role.

My body soon stopped rolling as I frantically searched the area. 

A glint of steel through the dust caught my eye.

Off in the distance, I heard Phasma shout, “Now!”, signalling for a group of four workers to charge towards the beast, using one of the logs lying around as a battering ram. 

The titan screeched in pain as the log was driven into its chest, morphing its hands into claw-like forms to try to tear away at the wood. At the same time, it began firing the charged blasts from its mouth at the workers who were now in range.

Greataxe now in hand, I dragged it along the ground as I hurried back to the fight. The blade’s weight was far greater than anything I had properly used before.

I tapped into the shard’s reserves once more and drew out a rush of aether that flowed down my arms and through the axe’s handle. I’d simply just bear with the unnatural weight distribution.

Slash! With a heavy swing, I cut through one of the blasts, the axe soon thumping back against the ground.

At the same time, Phasma had lunged in the direction of the other blast, hastily grabbing hold of the remaining workers and yanking them out of harm’s way.

The titan was still clawing at the log wedged in its chest.

Turning back to face the titan, I locked eyes with Phasma, the two of us nodding in agreement.

As we neared the titan’s body once more, it finally crushed the log to splinters, baring its sharpening arms in aggression.

While Phasma weaved between attacks, I, encumbered with the axe, opted for a tactic of brute force, hacking and slashing away at any attacks that entered my vicinity.

Despite having never fought together before, the two of us were able to read the other’s intentions through the fluctuations of our individual aethers, combining our movements into a near dance that piled attacks onto the titan’s body. 

I slashed at the titan’s core region over and over, nicks and scratches accumulating on the surface of its cores.

After each strike, Phasma followed up with aether-enhanced punches, hammering in the damage that I had laid the groundwork for. 

The longer the battle drew, the more we grew accustomed to reading and adapting to each other’s movements. 

This was it. The titan was now quickly losing ground and being pushed backwards.

“One more push!”

Phasma channeled the entirety of his aether into one arm while I did the same for both arms and the axe’s blade. 

Boom! A simultaneous decisive swing to shatter one core and blow to shatter the other.

The titan stumbled backwards.

One second. Two. Three. Four– No, this wasn’t right. Why was its body still here?

I felt a splitting pain strike through my head as a horrendous screeching static radiated from the titan’s coreless body.

Quickly looking over to Phasma, I realized he couldn’t hear the sound that now plagued my senses. 

I glanced over my back and beheld the body of the titan we had previously defeated together, still intact despite its chest being empty.

Something else was going on.

The static noise grew more and more deafening before suddenly stopping.

I immediately realized why– the previous titan’s body had now vanished from view as fragments of corrupted energy whizzed past my face towards the one we had just defeated.

There was no way I wouldn’t recognize such a technique– without a doubt, that beast had just used core manipulation– but how was something like that possible on a beast that had lost its core– and by a beast that had lost two cores at that?!

Its limbs and tendrils collapsed limply to the ground, the captain’s body slumping down from its back.

His finger twitched.

It couldn’t be– it was just my imagination, right?

But no, for the captain’s body soon shakily rose with the tendril still driven through his skull. His eyes seemed frantic before settling on my own.

“...help… me–”

With those final words, the light faded from his eyes.

The titan’s body soon shattered, gathering together with the fragments of the previous titan to form a hardened pseudo-core that fell to the ground.

Was this a form of ‘rebirth’ or passing on a corrupted’s ‘offspring’?

Such a conjecture would’ve made sense, yet deep down, a part of me I had tried to repress had already witnessed the behavior of such a core before.

There was no time to waste.

“Phasma! Get away from that thing and evacuate as many people from this end of town as possible!”

My tone of voice conveyed all answers to his questions as he hurried off without digging further.

Yet, my actions were for naught, as neither Phasma nor any civilians of Synoria Outlook were ever the target of this core.

Instead, I could only watch helplessly as it hovered off the ground and plunged itself into the captain’s chest, the sound of bone breaking and flesh twisting before it found its place.

At last, he opened his eyes again.