The battlefield rumbled.
The Tyrant Tusker collapsed in a heap, its molten core cracked open like an overripe fruit, its body steaming and crumbling. Skuld and Aqua stood side-by-side, panting, bruised but victorious.
Then—
A snarl cut through the smoke.
The charred remnants of Greedborn Ratcliffe, half-dissolved and crawling, threw himself into the Tusker's remains. Dark magic surged as his tattered Heartless form merged into the core.
A tremor raced through the earth.
"Wait—he's fusing with it?!" Skuld shouted.
"No—he's being devoured," Helios corrected grimly, his grip tightening on Equilibrium.
The remains of both monsters began to pulse—violently. Bones cracked, tusks reshaped, black flame consumed what was left of Ratcliffe's form. The molten plates of the Tusker twisted upward, merging with the Greedborn's armor. Gold chains rewrapped themselves across a grotesque new frame. Muscular, armored limbs thundered into place, crowned with molten tusks like swords.
Its eyes burned with two souls. Two hearts now beating as one.
The new beast—Greed-Tyrant RatTusker—howled.
And then it charged.
The three barely moved in time. The beast's claws carved a trench through the battlefield, sending Aqua and Skuld skidding apart while Helios slid backward in a trail of light.
It moved with a speed that belied its size, each step shaking the ground. Its staff-arm reformed into a cannon-like appendage, spewing explosive shadow blasts in wild arcs.
Aqua raised an ice wall. CRASH. It shattered instantly.
Helios dashed in, Equilibrium slashing forward. The blade connected—but didn't pierce.
The beast twisted, backhanding Helios into a crater.
"Damn—that's cheating it's stronger than both forms combined!" Skuld yelled.
She leapt into the air, her claws slicing wind disks that slashed across the beast's flank. They drew blood—but the creature absorbed the damage, using it to fuel its core, which glowed brighter.
Aqua fired a chain of elemental arrows, each one detonating with a different effect—fire, frost, shock. They forced the beast to reel back.
"Keep the pressure on!" she called.
Helios reappeared in a streak of silver. "Focus on flanks and joints! Don't give it time to counter!"
They moved in sync. Aqua's ice froze one leg in place. Skuld streaked around it in a cyclone of blades, slashing up molten armor. Helios summoned the spear-form of Equilibrium again, embedding it into the monster's side before blinking to it mid-air and dragging it in a wide arc, tearing through plating.
The beast screamed, retaliating with a wave of raw darkness that swallowed the sky.
A dozen black tendrils sprouted, slamming into the ground and erupting in geysers of dark energy. The battlefield split apart. Aqua cast Barrier Rain, forming shields over herself and Skuld, but Helios had to deflect three blasts with his blade, visibly staggering.
"Almost…" Aqua muttered. "We're almost breaking through!"
Not giving up the beast blitzed forward. A massive hoof smashed into Skuld, sending her crashing through a tree. Aqua caught her mid-air with a water net, cushioning the impact, but a split second later a dark meteor from the Tusker's new cannon slammed down, narrowly missing them.
Helios flashed forward, engaging the monster in brutal melee.
Equilibrium, gleaming in its silver form, clashed with molten tusks in a barrage of sparks and ringing metal. The creature's sheer power forced Helios into a deadlock. He twisted, ducked, and spun—his spear carving lines of radiant energy through the air. A streaking dash, a flicker of light, a spiraling uppercut aimed for the Tusker's exposed underside.
He struck true.
But it wasn't enough.
The beast's chain-forged tail whipped around—WHIP-CLANK—and drove itself through Helios' side like a lance of pure agony. His eyes widened, blood spattering the air.
"Helios!" Aqua shouted, charging in.
Helios skidded backward, planting his spear for balance, one hand gripping his bleeding ribs. "This… is not a fight we can drag out," he hissed, forcing himself upright. "We've got to finish it off in one go."
Aqua nodded grimly, spinning her Tidal Scepter before it morphed into Glacial Empress's Grace. "Then we finish it. Now."
The three took formation. Magical energy surged between them like a lightning circuit.
A tri-point barrier formed—white, blue, and gold energy pulsing between them, shielding them in a dome of radiant force.
Helios spun Bríon na Lú quickly causing light spears to emerge constantly as he kept spinning the spear.
When he could no longer generate any more light spears he held them in place until the others were ready. While he waited he also charged his spear with Holy Firaga.
Skuld, wind rushing to her like a vortex, activated Phantom Wings. Her claws condensed into dagger-like blades, lightning dancing across their storm-forged edges. She leapt into the air, trailing streaks of blue-white energy like a shooting star.
Aqua, already mid-transformation, channeled pure elemental force into an arrow—blazing with Fire, crackling with Lightning, laced with Wind, and frozen solid at its core.
"Strike the heart!" Helios roared.
The beast reared up, molten core pulsing in defiance—but the trio was faster.
Skuld vanished in a sonic blur, bouncing off ethereal air platforms and striking the beast's armored joint. Her blades sang—each cut perfectly placed—until a creaking shriek of stressed metal and bone opened the weak point.
"Now!" Aqua shouted, hovering midair.
Helios hurled his radiant spear, a comet of silver and white flame. The countless light spears all chased after Bríon na Lú all aimed at the beast's core.
It pierced the beast's chest, embedding directly above the heart—crackling light chains forming from the impact. Soon countless light spears pelted the core endlessly stunning the beast.
Aqua fired.
The elemental arrow exploded outward in flight, becoming a shardstorm of cascading destruction, tearing through the exposed heart cavity in a fractal spiral.
The world erupted in blinding light.
The beast shrieked, its molten plates exploding outward in a bloom of lava, shadow, and broken armor. Its limbs buckled. The tri-point magic barrier surged into overdrive, containing the collapse.
The monster's core flickered.
They had it.
They were about to finish this.
Then—
A blast of dark energy exploded from above, ripping through the clouds like a god's spear.
BOOOOOOM!
It slammed directly into the fused monster's back—not an attack, but a gift.
A dark blessing.
The light they had poured into the creature flickered, wavered—and was replaced with a terrifying second wind.
The molten shell rippled, and a distorted howl echoed from within the monster's chest.
The original Tusker—its soul, its hatred—forced its way back, ripping itself out of the Greedborn's fused body with a roar that shattered what little remained of the battlefield.
Chains unraveled, gold exploded outward, and the final Greedborn form was devoured, sucked into the monster's chest.
What emerged…
A colossal Ascendant Tyrant Tusker, plated in darklight armor with tusks the size of siege towers. Its body steamed with necrotic fury, and an ethereal sigil pulsed across its chest—the mark of whoever had intervened.
"Great," Helios muttered as he breathed heavily. "Now it's personal."
The beast slammed its tusks down.
Aqua cartwheeled left, launching a Stormcaller Arrow that cracked lightning across its neck.
Skuld blurred past, using Skybound Phantom to dodge the retaliation swipe and slash the creature's exposed ribs.
Helios blinked in mid-spear-twirl, warping from side to side like a ray of refracted light. His spear struck again—then again—each time drawing glowing gashes into the beast's flanks.
But it wasn't enough.
The Ascendant Tusker's armor regenerated. This was the same as when it retreated before but not a while ago meaning that dark energy was responsible for its constant regeneration.
It roared, exhaling a wave of shadow flame that split the ground in half. Aqua was thrown, her bow disarmed. Skuld screamed as debris shattered around her, the wind knocked from her lungs.
Helios caught Aqua's arm mid-fall, spinning to brace them both.
"We have to find its weak spot again!" she coughed.
"I saw it," Skuld gasped, using wind magic to hover. "Where that dark energy hit it left some sort of dark mark. Back of the neck."
Helios nodded. "Then aim for it. One last strike."
They regrouped—one shot.
Skuld dove first, wind platforms launching her in a jagged aerial path. She vanished mid-dash, reappearing at the nape, carving at the sigil to force it open.
Aqua loosed her final Compound Blitz Arrow, this one infused with Gravity and Light. It pulled the armor open, the light burrowing into the exposed glyph.
Helios summoned every last drop of light he had into Bríon na Lú, reforming it into a massive, blinding white spear.
"This better end it—NOW!"
He threw it.
It struck.
The glyph pulsed—
And just before the heart ruptured—
A portal of swirling blackness erupted beneath the beast.
"No!" Skuld shouted.
The Tusker, screaming, was dragged downward, clawing at the air, its tusks raking trenches as it vanished into the void.
The final portal snapped shut with a hollow clang.
Only silence remained.
The trio stood motionless, battered, winded, barely standing.
"…Who opened that portal?" Aqua whispered.
No one answered.
Helios wiped blood from his chin. "That wasn't the Tusker… and it sure wasn't me."
Skuld's eyes narrowed, voice ice-cold. "Then someone out there… who wanted it alive."
Silence fell.