(IC) Chapter 327 - The Hollow Sun

As Alonso flew over the southern border of Ajnal territory, he felt the terrain shift beneath him—greener now, with smaller, denser trees, and most of all, the restless herds of dinosaurs. Herbivores with bulky, spike-lined bodies grazed on the undergrowth, while predators lingered nearby, patient and watchful for the right moment.

It had been a while since he last hunted one. On the northern border, most of the food had been shipped from the centre, cooked and served neatly by the base staff.

He focused on the coordinates in his mind, angling slightly left, when his eyes narrowed.

The mountains?

A pulse reached him—Lukas.

“That was quick!”

Alonso locked onto the signal with a smile, just as the camouflage around the floating platform shimmered and bled away into the air.

He landed with a soft thud.

Chiara, Lukas, Wang, and a few others—Camila and Mei among them—stood waiting.

He let his waves sink below the surface, sensing Ayu, Imani, and several more stationed along the mountain base.

Most of them had improved slightly—he could tell from their wave signatures alone. But Chiara… she drew his attention at once. Not because she was undetectable to his waves—that was normal—but because of her new attire.

A mantle clung to her form, shifting with a strange fluidity. It looked like liquid obsidian at first glance, yet when the light hit, he saw countless tiny elements—microscopic scales, metallic and alive—sliding and folding over one another in perpetual motion. It shimmered like black starlight, swallowing light and reflecting it at once.

He frowned. That wasn’t any alloy he knew from the Ajnal records.

“Cool,” he said at last, eyes narrowing. “Got it from the ruins?”

Chiara nodded once. “Yes. The Xayen called it Yohuac Citlalimeh.”

“Dark Stars? Interesting,” Alonso translated roughly, his eyes lingering on the shifting fragments.

“Real handy, right?” Lukas added, still staring at them with the same amazement as the first time.

Alonso focused on one of the tiny elements, only to feel his wave bounce uselessly off. Chiara noticed and flicked one loose; it drifted gently through the air before settling into his open palm.

“I’ve bound them to my signature,” she said. “They won’t respond to others. But you can test it.”

Alonso inclined his head, appreciating the gesture. He wondered if her bonding method worked on a principle similar to his nanovibration tuning for blades—but something told him this was far more complex. Best not ask. Houston was already enough.

He sent a pulse of EM waves into the shard, and his eyes widened.

“Damn… conductivity of 12.9!” Genuine astonishment coloured his voice. That was nearly twice that of his Warden-grade swords.

“12.9… oh, right, your scale,” Chiara said, briefly caught off guard. One of her minds flickered back to a discussion they’d had weeks ago, realigning instantly.

Alonso tested the fragment between his fingers, pressing until the joints strained. “Impressive. And tough too… almost elastic under stress.”

He handed it back with a small grin. “Really good stuff. I’m jealous.”

The fragment slid smoothly back into place, rejoining the countless others to reform Chiara’s mantle. Alonso turned his gaze to the mountains. He remembered these peaks well—especially as his eyes fixed on a slumbering creature curled across one of the ridges. Its form was no less fascinating now, though not nearly as daunting as that first impression. Judging by its presence alone, he estimated its strength to be on par with a four-tailed Xok’al—which, for a beast in the Wilds, made it the undisputed apex here.

“So what’s the plan?” he asked at last.

“As you can observe, beyond this point lies wyvern territory,” Lukas said, projecting a 3D map into Alonso’s mind, complete with shifting visuals. “The last ruin should be somewhere in this sector. We scouted the zone with the floating platform and identified 48 adult wyverns, and… what we estimate to be an alpha, a king of sorts.”

More visuals came—grainy, distant images of the creature. Only parts of its vast wings and coiled tail were visible, the rest swallowed by shadow in the cavern. Yet even from that glimpse, using scale references, Alonso gauged it at nearly twice the size of the others.

“Looks tough,” Alonso murmured, scanning the surrounding terrain. “We should expect something beyond Warden level strength.”

“Oh, absolutely,” Lukas replied without hesitation. “Our estimates put this one firmly in the Emperor-tier.”

“What?” Alonso’s brow furrowed. Emperor-tier? “You mean as strong as the Ajnal Empress? Grandmaster Makoh?”

“Yes,” Lukas answered with confidence. “Chiara gauged its EM field, and Ayu confirmed it—her instincts matched exactly.”

He let the words hang for a beat before his grin widened. “Well… we called you here for a reason, K’in Ajnaal.”

Alonso shook his head. “By the way—these tier things, is that something you just made up?” For some reason, he was genuinely curious.

“Yeah,” Lukas admitted, almost proud. “Figured it made things easier. Good for organizing troops, and measuring strength. Simple hierarchy: Soldier, Captain, General, Emperor.”

Alonso tilted his head, waiting.

“Soldier-tier’s the bottom,” Lukas continued. “That covers most. The two and three tails. What the Ajnal call Stone Jaguars and Lords of Sparks. Honestly? Cannon fodder at this point.”

He raised a finger. “Next, Captain-tier. Four tails. For the Ajnal, that’s Sun Bearers. Units you can actually use in a battle—enough of them together, and they can shift the tide… a little.”

A second finger. “Then comes General-tier. Says it all. For the Xok’al, that’s Wardens. Every unit at this level is an asset.”

Finally, he lifted a third finger. “And the top tier—Emperor. Limited to maybe three, well, four right now. The two Emperors, Makoh… and now this alpha wyvern. Probably the six tails too, once they show up.”

Alonso gave a small nod. “Nice. I like it.”

“Speaking in numbers,” Lukas pressed on, “we’ve got five General-level units—three of them peak. Fourteen Captain-tier, two peak, the rest between mid and high. And, well, me—best support you’ll find.” He blinked, then added, “That’s just us Climbers. On top of that, you’ve got over a hundred Sun Bearers under your banner. And Chiara commands more than eighty Great Priests. So… let’s round it at two hundred Captain-tier units.”

“Not bad,” Alonso said, impressed.

“Lukas?” Chiara raised a brow.

Both men coughed awkwardly.

Yeah, maybe they’d gotten carried away.

“So,” Lukas clapped his hands once, “plan is this—”

The massive creature lay in slumber. Each breath seemed to pull the very warmth from the air, the temperature dropping with every slow inhale. Frost feathered along the rocks near the cavern mouth, forming and melting with the rhythm of its chest.

Lukas stared at it from the floating platform. The link with Chiara thrummed at its peak, filling his mind with her focus. Behind him, constructs shifted and reformed, assembling into the newest version of the cyclotron cannon—sleeker, heavier, reinforced with channels that hummed like a living heart. At the core of it all stood Chiara, framed in her mantle of Dark Stars. She had woven them directly into the cannon’s lattice, anchoring key stress points, hardening the cycle against collapse.

Lukas nodded once. Her eyes slid closed.

Then Chiara fell inward.

Her three minds separated into streams of thought: one devoted to structural harmonics, balancing the energy flows across Dark Star conduits; another to field acceleration, shaping the bullet’s magnetic channel with surgical precision; and the last locked on prediction, running probability maps, force curves, failure thresholds—millions in parallel.

She reached out with her EM waves, embedding the bullet into the chamber, and began the acceleration.

Faster. Faster. With every iteration the projectile screamed louder in her perception, velocity folding over velocity, the pressure spiking. Equations cascaded, heat warnings flashed in her internal arrays, but she didn’t falter.

Not enough. She pressed harder, driving Sun Pulse through the channels until the whole platform vibrated like a struck gong.

The strain became unbearable. Elements glowed white-hot, integrity fracturing on the edge of collapse. In the span of a nanosecond, one of her minds calculated the exact disalignment vector—another overlaid the release sequence—and the last triggered the shift.

Sun Pulse detonated outward.

The bullet screamed free.

It tore through the air, shattering sound and space alike, a streak of dawn condensed into matter. Across the frozen range it carved a burning scar, faster than sight, faster than thought—

BAM!!!

Impact.

The mountain’s crown burst apart. Rock and ice shattered. The wyvern’s slumber broke in an instant—its chest caved inward, blood streaming out, scales glittering like fractured diamond, one wing torn through with a ragged hole.

For a heartbeat, silence.

Then—

WHOOSH!

The beast surged upward through the dust. Its broken wing faltered, yet it did not fall. Its body should have collapsed, but its monstrous EM field carried it higher, a storm lifting flesh that should not rise.

It roared, and the sound shook the world. Resonance hammered through the mountains, rattling bones, breaking stone.

In answer, the range erupted. Wyverns across the valleys awoke as one, their cries weaving into a deafening cacophony—a storm of roars that drowned the sky itself.

Lukas didn’t flinch as the shockwave blasted through, rocking the floating platform.

He had hoped the shot would have been enough… but he was prepared for it to fail.

His gaze narrowed, steady and unshaken. His voice cut through the link as he issued his commands.

The wyvern’s eyes locked onto the floating platform. Its gaze cut straight through the EM camouflage, waves ripping past every veil. Then its wings flared wide, spanning nearly 70 meters across the sky.

The spikes along its back quivered, vibrating like crystalline chimes before tearing free—hundreds of them—magnetised into the air, a frozen blizzard of blades suspended around its colossal frame.

Its wings drew back, the air shaking as it prepared to unleash them toward the floating platform, when—

A cloaked figure appeared in front of it.

Alonso.

His blades sang as he cut through the gale, Path of Shards bending the trails around him, as he danced mid-air without anchor. He blurred left, then right, streaks of magnetic force catching his weight and slingshotting him forward.

The wyvern’s claws came first—vast, diamond-hard, each swipe cracking the air like thunder.

Alonso twisted between them, coat ripping as one strike shaved a sleeve clean off. A second claw raked across his path; he redirected, carving a sudden arc of force to vault over it, only for the blizzard of shards to descend towards him.

Hundreds of crystalline spikes launched with supersonic shrieks. Alonso grit his teeth, blades flashing as he carved arcs through the blizzard—deflecting some, dragging others into spirals that collided mid-flight.

Sparks and fragments burst around him, a storm of light and shrapnel. Only a fraction were deflected directly, most shattered against each other by his manipulation.

The wyvern did not like it.

It lowered its maw… and inhaled.

The world stopped breathing.

Heat was swallowed into its lungs, the air whitening with frost. Alonso felt his coat harden, his limbs seize, his skin crack as ice split along his arms.

Pain flared as skin tore when he forced himself to move—yet his eyes narrowed, cold and calculating.

Is that all you got?

Path of Shards flared, breaking the stillness. Magnetic vectors tore apart the frost’s grip, dragging his bloodied body sideways in jagged zig-zags. He dove under a claw, spun past a tail strike, and slashed—not at scales—but at the softer joints: the fold of a wing, the gap near the forelimb, the thin flesh at the jaw’s hinge. Sparks flew, cracks faint, damage minimal—but his strikes forced movement, forced attention.

Every blow redirected force. Every dodge drew the monster’s eyes.

He knew. This alpha wyvern was a terrible matchup for him. He lacked the raw power to inflict real damage on such a massive, defense-based creature, plus its scales rendered his swords useless. But… he wasn’t the striker here.

He was the distraction.

Blood glistened from frozen cuts and torn skin, lungs burning with cold, as Alonso twisted mid-air.

His swords flared with trails of light, waves rippling in his wake, locking the giant’s attacks in his tide.

Nearly a quarter of a second crawled by—an eternity in the clash of blades and roars—as he held the beast’s full attention. Until, at last, it realised.

The wyvern’s head snapped toward the distant platform where the cyclotron cannon charged once more.

Alonso cursed as a wing slammed toward him. He had no choice but to trail back, giving it space, as the beast tore every shard from the air and hurled them at the platform.

Lukas was already at Chiara’s side. As the barrage closed in, her Dark Stars converged, flowing into a curved surface tailored to absorb the impact.

The shards struck heavy. One after another ricocheted against the magnetised shield she held firm with a single mind, while her other two minds drove the bullet forward, stabilising the cyclotron.

Layers cracked. Stress rippled across the defense. Yet she caught every fracture as it bloomed, shifting alignments, redistributing force, recalibrating resonance—micromanaging reality at the fracture scale.

Then she felt the wyvern’s field pushing against her own, pressing in, probing for weakness, trying to break her focus.

Chiara drew a long breath.

Her eyes opened.

And for the first time in true battle—she used it.

The air warped. Light itself bent away. The sun no longer touched the dome that sealed around her and the platform.

Every foreign EM wave—cut. High frequencies, pulse currents, even light itself—erased.

The world around Chiara… turned black.

Silence dropped, heavy and absolute, swallowing even the wyvern’s roar as its pulse collapsed into nothing.

The core skill of the Azcoyatl.

The Hollow Sun. The Black Horizon. The lightless domain:

Eclipse.