The blows kept coming, relentless, unyielding, without a moment's pause.
Blades, spears, and flashes of skill light wove together into a storm of steel and fury.
The torrent of attacks poured down like a waterfall in full descent.
Each strike targeted the same old cracks on the Golem Sentinel's stone armor, wounds carved deep by time itself. And now, those very fractures had become its fatal weakness.
The massive creature of solid rock stood still. No reaction. No sign of counterattack.
It was like a statue, its soul long since hollowed out.
From deep within its block-shaped helmet, a faint red glow flickered where eyes should have been… now dimming.
The darkness in its eye sockets no longer swirled thick, it had turned pale and smoky, as if life, or some imitation of it, was slowly draining away.
"Keep attacking," Diavel's voice rang out. It wasn't loud, but it carried unmistakable force.
Not the kind of command born from brute instinct, but from the honed intuition of a veteran. He had seen something.
Perhaps a subtle tremor in the monster's halted movement, or a shift in the fading color of its health bar.
Everyone understood at once.
Their eyes turned toward the massive health bar hovering in the air. The crimson streak that had once pulsed with danger was now a frail pink mist, unraveling like wisps of smoke.
The Golem Sentinel was about to fall.
Something nameless was building in the air, a silence before the thunder.
Someone's breath grew heavy. A hand gripped the hilt of a sword tighter. The final moment was drawing near.
But then...
A strange premonition jolted through Ren's chest. Like a drumbeat out of rhythm in the midst of a battle symphony, not loud, not sudden, but so dissonant that the entire world seemed to freeze in the span of a single breath.
He couldn't tell if it came from a sound, a movement, or a fleeting glimpse, because everything appeared to be unfolding exactly as it should, the strikes, the unmoving monster, his allies pressing in from every side.
But the feeling, was like a hairline crack on glass. At first invisible, then slowly spreading, then splitting wide open.
A heartbeat out of sync, barely...but its echo stirred something deep in his survival instinct.
Ren froze, hand still gripping the sword as if caught between two crashing waves, one being reason urging him to strike, and the other, a bone-deep chill screaming that something was terribly wrong.
Something was off.
Very off.
The wind that had been ever-present with each movement, was gone, like the air itself had been sucked away and time buried beneath it.
The clashing of metal, the shouting, the roars of combat, every vivid sound of the fight, seemed to vanish into a vacuum, leaving only the thud of his heart pounding in his ears.
The whole world felt suspended on a single fragile thread, stretched taut like a bowstring about to snap.
And that sensation… was like a silent alarm screaming through every cell in his body, begging him to move, to retreat, to do something before it was too late.
Ren wanted to shout, but his voice was strangled by the thick pressure blanketing the battlefield, like he was speaking from behind a sealed door.
The Golem Sentinel still stood motionless. But it wasn't the stillness of defeat.
It was a deliberate kind of stillness.
Something had changed in its stance… something was awakening deep inside that mass of stone.
It wasn't exhaustion. It wasn't a dying machine winding down.
It was… a mad, silent anticipation. So suffocating that the air itself seemed to hold its breath, waiting for the moment everyone let their guard down.
A false silence, like a lake before the storm.
As if it were gathering every drop of strength for a final, annihilating strike.
And then, it moved.
Barely. A motion so minute that even the sharpest eyes could have missed it...but Ren saw it.
No warning. No glowing skill effects. Just that eerie silence.
The arm that seemed limp suddenly twisted at an unnatural angle, dragging a stone blade in a sweeping arc from beneath the ground, slashing upward in a wide curve aimed at the most unexpected direction: behind its left shoulder, a blind spot no one thought had the reach for an attack.
A sharp gust tore through the silence like a blade, as if even the air itself panicked at what was coming.
"GET BACK!!!"
Ren screamed. His voice thundered across the stone chamber, hoarse and shaking, driven by the overwhelming clarity of an instinct no one else could hear.
Some froze for a moment, their bodies reacting to the shout, not understanding the reason.
Nautilus immediately canceled the skill he had just been about to unleash, his face turning pale. Without a second thought, he reached out and grabbed Yuna, pulling her backward in a rush.
Yuna stumbled slightly from the sudden motion, still unable to comprehend what was happening. Her eyes blinked rapidly as she was yanked backward, but her instincts had already kicked in, saving them both.
Elsewhere, Diavel furrowed his brow slightly, his gaze flicking quickly from the Golem to Ren, the one who had disrupted the rhythm of the battle. He clenched his teeth and raised his shield, but did not slow his pace.
He trusted his own judgment more than a baseless scream.
The skill had been activated. The timing was perfect. To hesitate, even for a second, was to risk losing the opportunity to end it.
Close behind him were Lind and Shivata, their eyes locked on the target ahead. To them, this was not a time to waver over a mere shout, not when the finishing blow was within reach.
As for the other three players, the ones from the third party, they had even less reason to stop. To them, Ren was just a faint name, an unremarkable player known only for being overly sensitive.
"He panicked."
"False warning."
"He's just scared of shadows."
All those thoughts were condensed into the cold, dismissive glances they threw his way, as fleeting as a cutting breeze. They didn't heed Ren's warning. Not because they didn't hear it, but because… they didn't want to hear it.
To them, this was the golden moment, when the boss was at its weakest, when the reward for the final blow hovered just within reach.
If they hesitated for even a heartbeat… that reward would go to someone else.
If they listened to Ren… all they'd be left with were empty hands.
And something deeper, left unsaid...yet Ren could feel it clearly: greed.
The eyes of those three weren't fueled by hatred, nor by the grief of fallen comrades. They were locked on the loot, the item that would drop only for the one who landed the final strike.
And then there was one more…
Chest.
He was circling the Golem with an unusual eagerness. Gone was the cautious, measured pace from earlier. His grip on his weapon tightened. Every step he took was calculated, as if racing ahead of the other three.
His eyes kept flicking toward them...tense, wary.Not of the monster… but of someone stealing his chance.
A frantic, obsessive look.
Ren saw it all.
And in that moment, something inside his chest plummeted into a frozen pit.
All of them, those charging ahead, no longer saw the monster.All they saw was the reward.
And the Golem, still motionless like a statue, was no longer prey. It was a trap, a silent stone snare, waiting.
Then...
The sound of air being torn apart rang out like a death knell.
A single blade.
No..., a crushing wave, sweeping across the battlefield from a nightmarishly unnatural angle.
Its force made the ground tremble.
Blood...bright red pixelated fragments, sprayed into the air like shattered rain.
Four bodies were hurled away like ragdolls, weightless, lifeless.
Chest, charging in with his full offensive skill, didn't have time to switch to a defensive stance. One blow, his body was cleaved in two, shattered from shoulder to waist.
The girl wielding a Tachi had just landed a precise strike on the Golem's knee. Before she could retreat, a blade swept diagonally from an impossible angle, severing the arm holding her sword, then slicing deep across her side.
The lancer, still seething with rage from a fallen comrade, could only widen his eyes before the strike hit...then vanished in chilling silence.
The silver-armored swordsman, who had just launched a critical blow alongside Diavel, was caught in the same sweeping arc. His gleaming armor crumpled like foil. He didn't even have time to scream.
No words. No sound.
Only light. Only fragments, shattering like crystal, then vanishing into the air.
No dramatic death effects. No system message. No last words.
Just… gone. As if they'd never existed.
The others, struck by the fringes of the attack, were blown back, colliding hard, groaning. Chunks of red pixelated fragments sprayed through the suffocating space like drifting ruby dust. Their HP bars plunged straight into the danger zone.
Every attack froze mid-motion. Every gaze...
Turned in unison toward a single direction.
And in their eyes, there was no more anger. Only pure, absolute horror.
Ren still stood there, hand clenched tightly around his sword's hilt, shoulders trembling slightly.
That scene like a cold blade, quiet yet merciless, carved deep into some hollow place inside his chest.
He had warned them.
He had screamed.
But they hadn't listened.
Not because they couldn't hear.
But because they didn't want to.
Because of anger. Because of greed. Because they believed this was the moment for glory, the time to claim the prize.
From the start of the battle, he had seen it in their eyes.
Something glittering...yet rotten.
Not camaraderie. Not duty. But a toxic blend of hatred, delusion, and the lust to possess.