Ariel - The Crowned Lion

Final Rewards: Ariel EXP: 15237 [Total]| 5676/5 *10 +2500 (Quest) +5% (Firm Anima R5) +5% (Assist System) Col: 21540 [Total]| 12600 (Loot) +630 (Guild Treasury) +5000 (Quest) +2285 (para lv. 5) +5% (Firm Anima R5) 2x Guild Token [Total] | 1 transferred from Dracul 1 Mon Tanos Key 2x T3 Perfect Consumable | 247610a | 247610b 2x T3 Perfect Shield/Armor | 247610c | 247610d Dracul EXP: 6496 [Total]| 5676/5 *3 +2500 (Quest) +5% (Firm Anima R5) +5% (Assist System) Col: 0 [T

Chaos below. Dracul’s light flashed like a strobe in the titan’s chest – relentless, irritating, diverting. Corruption writhed, torn between healing the crown and shielding its heart. Instinct’s whisper: The bindings fray. Strike now. Ariel rose. Bruised ribs protested. Blood crusted her temple. Nihilim’s Wrath felt heavier. Colder. Still silent. It doesn’t matter. The edge was hers. The Valley’s trust was hers. Millicent tracked the corruption’s panic. "It’s destabilized! The fissure... it’s vibrating! Like a plucked wire!" The Colossus raised its left foot. The crown ti

The Colossus settled. Millicent’s breath hitched. "Gait stabilized! Right foot planted... left rising in five!" Opportunity. Ariel moved. Not a dash – a flowing glide over treacherous rock. Nihilim’s Wrath slid free without a whisper. The head weak point yawned before her, fissures wide from her first strike, corruption boiling within like molten tar. Shirajishi-ryū: Stone’s Embrace. The blade didn’t slash. It pierced. A single, perfect thrust into the nexus’s deepest crack. SHK-K-KRUNCH! Obsidian screamed. Light – pure, white, and agonizing – erupted from the wou

The Colossus shook itself like a wet hound. Ariel locked her knees against the obsidian crown, Nihilim’s Wrath driven deep as an anchor. Millicent screamed as the world inverted, her grip on Ariel’s coat the only tether to reality. Basalt rained around them – fist-sized shards clattering, boulders the size of carts crashing into the void below. Instinct: Weight low. Hips fluid. Ride the tremor. The titan’s convulsions made the skyline seesaw. Dracul’s light flared far below – a beacon in the chest cavity. Steady. Alive. Millicent’s scanner shrieked as a fissure split the crown besi

Chaos ruled the Colossus's crown. The walking mountain shook itself with world-breaking fury, its skull a storm of shearing rock and screaming winds that stole breath. Each step made the obsidian platform buck like a wild thing. Ariel held fast, Nihilim’s Wrath buried deep in stone, muscles burning. Millicent clung to her back, arms locked around her waist, face pressed into Ariel’s coat. Ash scoured their skin, stinging eyes and choking lungs with sulfur and ancient dust. Then— A raw roar ripped through the chaos: "ACKNOWLEDGE ME, QUARRY!" Dracul’s voice. Focused Howl. It echoed

The crown of the Colossus was a shattered altar to Kro’s corruption. Ariel knelt on obsidian shards, the head weak point pulsing inches away—a lattice of molten fissures seething with blackened energy. Millicent braced against a stone spire, scanners whirring as she mapped the unstable pattern. "Energy flux increasing! The binding is... vibrating! Like a plucked wire!" Instinct’s whisper: Strike the resonance. Ariel’s hand hovered over Nihilim’s Wrath’s hilt. Still cold. Still patient. Shadowflame slept. Precision needs no ornament. Below, the abyss churned—Dracul and Darius mere sparks a

The path to the Colossus’s crown was a vertical hellscape of shuddering rock and Kro’s suffocating breath. Ariel climbed with primal grace, fingers finding cracks in the basalt as if guided by the mountain’s own tremors. Millicent followed, scanners humming, her breaths shallow rasps against the toxic haze. Below, Dracul and Darius shrank to specks near the chest’s infernal glow—a molten star in the titan’s core. Ash rained ceaselessly, stinging exposed skin and gathering in the folds of their clothing like gray snow. The air itself resisted them, thick with the reek of sulphur and something o

The Colossus’s indifference vanished like shattered obsidian. Its head, a faceless cliff of volcanic rock, pivoted towards Dracul’s defiant light. A low groan vibrated through the basalt beneath their boots – not a tremor, but a sound. Stone grinding on stone. Recognition. “Follow its wake,” Ariel commanded, voice cutting through the groan. She moved like a shadow over shifting scree, exploiting the momentary stillness after each earth-shaking step. Millicent scrambled behind, scanners whirring frantically. “Too close!” she gasped, as a falling boulder the size of a house pulverized a nea

"You two seem to know each other." Her hand slipped into the pocket of her kimono, fingers brushing past folded parchment and a couple of teleport crystals before finding the wrapped treat she’d tucked in earlier. A faint grin tugged at the corner of her mouth—barely visible, but real. "Should I have come better prepared?" she added dryly. "Brought a leash, maybe?" She pulled out two sticks of hanami dango, pastel pink and green, and held them out to the others without ceremony. “Seasonal,” she said, as if that explained everything. “Don’t drop them. They’re real... as real as i

The teleport gate’s mercury sheen dissolved into choking gray. Ariel stepped forward, volcanic grit crunching beneath her boots like shattered bone. Floor 19 breathed—a desolate expanse of fractured basalt and swirling ash under a bruised twilight sky. Sulphurous vapours coiled like spectral serpents, stinging her eyes and coating her tongue with the taste of burnt copper and forgotten graves. Behind her, Millicent coughed into her oversized sleeve, while Darius instinctively positioned himself upwind, his butler’s attire already dusted gray. Ariel stilled herself, drawing on the breath c

Light died in a hissing curtain of superheated steam. The stench of burnt ozone, spoiled ichor, and seawater choked the air. Through the dissipating haze, Mōretsuna’s massive eye glowed like a baleful ember. Agony radiated from the beast in palpable waves, making Borin retch and Millicent sway. Dracul slumped against the splintered stern rail, Oath dim and heavy in his slack grip. "Finish it," he rasped, the words barely audible, blood trickling from his lip. "End this farce." The King of the Sea, broken and desperate, gave its answer. It didn’t flee. It dove. But not away. In a fina

Dracul's HP bar pulsed crimson but he was safe, as long as he didn't drown. Darius strained over the gunwale, his voice raw. "I can’t see him! The froth is too thick!" Millicent’s fingers trembled as she adjusted her glasses, scanners piercing the churning foam. "L-life signs stable! But oxygen depletion critical – estimated ninety seconds remaining!" Her usual data-driven calm frayed at the edges, replaced by urgent concern. Borin wrestled the groaning rudder, face taut with fear. "We need distance, lass! That beast’ll crack us open like a nut!" Never. The Crowned Lion’s resolve har

Steam kissed Ariel's cheeks as Borin fought the oars. The abalone rod warmed in her grip - «Amphitrite's Net» humming with oceanic memories. Millicent adjusted her glasses, oversized sleeves flapping as she pointed at scanner projections. "Um, the thermocline? It's shifting weirdly at 40 fathoms. Like it's... circling us?" Her voice held academic curiosity mixed with unease. Darius braced near the gunwale, butler-uniform sleeves rolled up. "The water feels tense. Like before Kumatetsu charged." Borin spat overboard. "King's been hungry since the Scorching. He'll strike mean." Dr

The silence of Yomi's Rest settled like grave dust, thick and suffocating. Ariel closed her fist around the newly acquired key, its moonlight-and-obsidian chill seeping through, a stark counterpoint to the fading, greasy taint of the Stygian still clinging to her boots. Death flowed cleanly again here, at least for now. The oppressive psychic weight lessened, the river's whispers receding into distant, mournful sighs lost in the floor's depths. Around her, the aftermath hung palpable: Dracul’s simmering frustration radiating like banked coals, Darius's weary relief manifesting in a loosened st

Dracul stumbled back, shield arm hanging limp, his perfect «Mirror's Edge» shattered into discordant failure. The Lich loomed, freed from paralysis, its central eye-socket blazing with Kro’s viridian poison and primal fury. A second tendril whipped towards Dracul’s exposed flank. Darius intercepted it with a grunt, Keysi forearms absorbing the blow that cracked the bone-dust beneath his feet. Millicent’s scanners screamed. "Aggression critical! Core destabilizing – final burst imminent!" No more time. Ariel’s mind emptied. Dracul’s light had faltered. Her blade lacked its void-teeth. The