?Maximus and his team didn't look like soldiers; they looked like executioners. Their eyes swept the battlefield with clinical detachment, cataloging the carnage in seconds. One elf lay dead, her torso crushed against a jagged stone spire. Kaelith, the commander, was slumped against the same rock, his neck charred and his breathing shallow.

  ?Maximus’s gaze shifted to Faelan. The elven mage’s hands were raw and bleeding, his face pale from overextension. Mana exhaustion, Maximus diagnosed instantly. The two remaining guards were still standing, but their daggers trembled in their grip.

  ?"Aurora!" Maximus barked, his voice cutting through the ringing silence. "I’m opening with a shield bash. Wall the elves off from the threat. Don't let anything finish them."

  ?He didn't wait for a reply; he knew she would do what was needed. His attention snapped to the third member of their team. "Tempest, I need your speed to extract the wounded."

  ?A wide, predator’s grin spread across Tempest’s face. He adjusted his grip on the iridescent dragon-scale spear. "You know that's my best stat, Max. I’ll have them here by Aurora before your stun wears off."

  ?"Make it happen," Maximus commanded.

  ?Maximus planted his lead foot, pulling his massive tower shield back behind him. He held it aloft with an outstretched arm, the gold trim of the artifact beginning to hum with a low, divine frequency. The air around the shield grew heavy, the gravity distorting as the shield began to drink from his stamina pool.

  ?Beside him, Aurora raised her S-Rank Frost Nova Staff. The weapon was a masterpiece of cold logic—a shaft of translucent, unmelting ice as tall as she was. At its peak, a condensed sphere of pulsing permafrost hovered in the air, disconnected from the staff but tethered by a visible field of absolute zero. As she channeled her mana, the grass at her feet turned white, and a biting frost began to creep across the scorched earth.

  ?"Mach Speed Bash!" Maximus roared.

  ?The sound that followed wasn't a footstep; it was an explosion. To the elves, it looked as if Maximus had simply deleted the space between himself and the monster. He moved with such violent velocity that the air cracked in a sonic boom, the displacement of oxygen leaving a vacuum in his wake.

  ?The tower shield slammed into Agent X’s chest with the force of a falling moon. The impact sent the obsidian demon flying backward, its body skipping across the ground like a stone on water, carving a trench through the dirt.

  ?As the crash echoed, Aurora slammed the butt of her staff into the ground. "Glacial Rampart!"

  ?Two massive walls of jagged, blue-tinted ice erupted from the earth behind Maximus. They rose twenty feet high, thick enough to stop a siege engine, effectively sealing the wounded elves away from the coming storm. The temperature behind the wall plummeted, stabilizing the scorched air and providing a frozen sanctuary.

  ?Tempest saw the ice rise and blurred. He became a streak of emerald light, his movements leaving after-images that flickered like a glitch in reality. He reached Kaelith before the commander could even blink, scooping the dying elf up and returning him to safety behind Aurora.

  ?Without breaking stride, Tempest was off again. He skidded to a halt next to the staggering Faelan. "Hey, you two!" he yelled to the two uninjured guards. "I'm not carrying you—move it!"

  ?He didn't wait for their response. He swept the barely-conscious Faelan up in a bridal carry and vanished, a second sonic boom marking his retreat back to Aurora.

  ?While the rescue mission was a blur of motion, Agent X was trapped in a tumbling, uncontrolled hell. A system message flashed in the center of his vision, glowing with a mocking gold light:

  ?Status: Stunned.

  Source of stun: Incarnate Maximus.

  Duration: 10 Seconds.

  Effect: All movement and active abilities are temporarily disabled.

  ?For the first time since his evolution, Agent X felt the frustration of true helplessness. His excitement for the fight burned, but his body was a statue of inert sand, forced to wait for the timer to tick down. He watched, unable to even twitch a finger, as the Paladin bore down on him.

  ?Maximus, a veteran of thousands of raids, didn't waste a single heartbeat of that window. He knew the limits of his power. Shield Bash cooldown was three minutes. I need to make the most out of each stun.

  ?He sprinted after the tumbling demon. His S-Rank claymore erupted in a blinding radiance of holy light, the blade growing in size as he channeled his divinity. Just as the demon began to lose momentum from the initial impact, Maximus arrived.

  ?He brought the claymore down in a terrifying arc. The holy edge shrieked as it met the compressed obsidian, cleaving through the demon’s shoulder and slicing diagonally down to the waist. The resistance felt like cutting through solid granite, but the divine enchantment forced the blade through.

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  ?The two halves of the demon fell apart, tumbling into the dirt like broken pottery.

  ?The timer in Agent X’s vision finally hit zero.

  ?The message vanished, and a surge of dark, royal-purple fire erupted from the two severed halves. The sand didn't just crawl back together; it was pulled by a violent, magnetic hunger. In a flash of violet heat, the obsidian demon rebuilt itself, standing whole and unscathed. The regeneration wasn't just physical; it was a total restoration of state.

  ?Maximus tightened his grip on his shield, his breathing steady. Instant regeneration. Just like the system warned.

  ?Agent X tilted his head, the vents in his chest hissing as they vented steam. He looked at the massive ice walls blocking his view of anything beyond Maximus, then back at the gold-clad paladin standing before him.

  ?So, Agent X’s mental voice thought with a chilling, distorted resonance, you’re the one who wants to play first.

  ?He settled into a low, predatory stance, the black sand at his feet beginning to swirl in a dark, expectant tide. Agent X rushed one hand forward toward Maximus. The black sand obeyed the command, surging forward like a tidal wave of ground glass, each grain vibrating with enough frequency to shred steel.

  ?Maximus didn't flinch. He slammed his tower shield into the ground, and a dome of translucent gold light erupted around him. The sand hissed against the barrier, throwing off sparks like a thousand grinding saws.

  ?"Could use some backup," Maximus communicated back to Aurora via their mindlink. "How's it going on your end?"

  ?Aurora’s pleased voice echoed within his mind. "Just finished stabilizing the elves' conditions. Might you happen to be in your dome?"

  ?"Yes," Maximus quickly replied. "While it still holds. The pressure is increasing—he's controlling the sand's friction."

  ?Aurora smiled before telling Maximus to remain in the dome.

  ?Aurora looked to the sky and raised her staff. The thin layer of frost grew rapidly, turning the ground into a landscape of jagged crystals. Visible pale blue energy was drawn into the frost nova on the end of her staff, the temperature around her reaching subzero. All the energy began condensing into a ball in the air shortly above her, a miniature sun of pure cold.

  ?"Creeping Frost."

  ?The words fell out of her mouth softly like snow. The attack, however, did not share that same grace as it launched off like a rocket. It shot off in an arc over her ice walls. Agent X, seeing the incoming glacier, quickly retreated back from the incoming ice, his instincts screaming of a threat that didn't just hurt, but disabled. He watched as it crashed into the ground.

  ?Then, a unique property known only to high-level Cryomancers took hold. Ice began to spread out from the point of origin with terrifying speed. This was creeping ice; it spread for miles, freezing the obsidian sand and making it basically useless to Agent X. The liquid-like mobility of his primary weapon was being locked into solid, brittle statues.

  ?Maximus, noticing the demon focusing on the ice, didn't miss the opening. He quickly reshaped his dome, turning it inside out like a large golden bowl floating above him. He swung his tower shield, blasting the barrier directly at the obsidian monster. Agent X, seeing this makeshift trap being launched at him, moved to counter. He quickly raised as much sand as he could in a split second, forming and shaping it into a bladed point aimed at the incoming barrier.

  ?The barrier crashed into the obsidian spike. Agent X's feet dug into the ground before sliding back several yards, leaving a torn-up trail in the earth. Finally, the demon found footing in the terrain and forced the obsidian spike up into the air. The barrier, caught on the end, was launched high into the sky with it. Maximus, seeing his idea of trapping the demon inside the holy barrier had failed, let the energy dissipate into sparks.

  ?While the tank was holding back the demon, Tempest finally got the last of Kaelith’s bleeding to stop. He used a high-grade potion, the liquid glowing with a soft green hue as it knitted the Commander's scorched flesh back together. The leader of the royal elven guard tried to warn Tempest of just what this abomination was capable of.

  ?"Hero. Hero. You must listen to me."

  ?Tempest, feeling like he'd already heard this conversation a thousand times, cut him off. "Let me guess. You've never seen anything like this beast and we should run while we still can?"

  ?Kaelith clenched his jaw and simply nodded, his eyes wide with a terror that hadn't faded despite the rescue.

  ?Tempest shook his head in disappointment. "Sorry. But we can't just leave, and I can't tell you how many times I've heard someone say a creature is like no other. But guess what? My team is always victorious. We specialize in the impossible."

  ?Tempest stood up quickly, taking on a serious pose. Kaelith's face grew pale, realizing the hero wasn't going to heed his warning.

  ?"If you don't believe me, at least do me one favor," Kaelith wheezed. "That creature was able to move our entire kingdom an entire district with one attack. Do not take it lightly. It isn't fighting you with its full strength yet."

  ?Tempest's jaw tightened at the news. A district? That wasn't an attack; that was a geographical shift. His head whipped around to look toward the ice walls. "Aurora. Did you hear what he just said?"

  ?Aurora, not breaking her line of sight on her ice walls, replied through the link. Her voice had lost its playful edge. "I'm afraid I did. Maximus, we’re changing tactics. This isn't a raid boss. It’s a world-tier threat. It has enough kinetic potential to level a city-state."

  ?Maximus grunted as he parried a strike from the demon. "I noticed. The impact force is scaling up every second. It's like it's testing me."

  ?"Tempest—get in there," Aurora commanded. "We need to break its core before it gets to where we can't handle it. With it's core broke it should die on the spot. I’ll provide the suppression."

  ?Tempest didn't need to be told twice. He crouched low, wind beginning to swirl violently around his spear, the air pressure dropping so sharply it made the elves' ears pop. Tempest put one finger up to his mouth as if to silence someone. An emerald energy can be seen seeping out of his body and surging upward.

  ?With a sonic boom that shook the ice walls and shattered the nearby frost crystals, Tempest launched himself over the rampart miles away. The energy around him starts to form a green-tinted wind dragon coiling around his spear as he dove toward the obsidian demon. Then as if gravity didn't apply to Tempest he stops mid air and thrusts his S Rank Emerald Wind Dragon spear out toward the demon. The dragon that was coiling around the spear grew in size, with the maw open as it cuts through the wind towards it target.