Chapter 75: Fake Light, The Gargantua Fight

Saile’s bare fingers tightened around the exposed, pitch-black hilt of the Calamity Fang. The thick canvas wrappings lay in a discarded heap at his boots.

The Gargantua let out a hollow, vibrating roar. The sound rattled the obsidian tiles, echoing down the unmapped depths of the labyrinth. The towering beast turned its blind, pale head toward Saile. It hungered for the bright magic blaring around him.

Saile prepared to pull the weapon from its sheath.

"Do not draw the steel," Naicul warned in the dark confines of his mind. The ancient God’s voice carried a sterile, clinical logic. "The hilt is just black iron to her mortal eyes. But the blade is forged from pure dark lightning. If you bare the weapon, the Saintess will see the truth. She will know exactly what you are."

"I know," Saile replied mentally.

He slowly released his grip on the hilt. He stepped entirely away from the sheathed Epic-grade weapon, leaving it resting on the floor. He would face the Demigod-tier guardian bare-handed.

Aira lay slumped against a cracked pillar ten feet away. Her breath hitched in short, ragged gasps. Her dislocated right shoulder hung at a sickening angle. Blood dripped from her chin, staining her silver armor. She watched the blonde commoner step forward, her golden eyes fighting through a haze of blinding pain.

Saile stared up at the Level 70 Gargantua. The beast possessed four heavily muscled arms covered in jagged, gray bedrock.

"It eats light," Saile noted, analyzing the creature’s thick physiology. "If I fire ranged magic, it will absorb the energy and grow stronger."

"Then do not feed it," Naicul instructed coldly. "Crush the dark mana. Vibrate the energy so fast that the sheer friction produces a white-hot glow. Coat your fists. Turn the illusion into a physical weapon."

Saile seized the freezing ocean of his EX-Rank core. He forced an astronomical amount of dark magic up into his throat, shoving it directly into the silver elven choker.

The artifact shrieked.

A hairline fracture spider-webbed across the delicate silver metal. A single drop of blood leaked from Saile’s neck as the choker strained to contain the impossible pressure. Saile clamped his jaw shut. He condensed the dark mana down to a microscopic, vibrating razor edge.

The resulting friction was absolute agony. His veins felt like they were pumping liquid iron.

He pushed the energy outward. A blinding, searing white halo erupted around his hands and shins. To Aira’s watching eyes, it looked exactly like S-Rank Holy Magic.

But it was a lie. It possessed no purifying warmth. It was pure, destructive kinetic friction wearing a holy mask.

The Gargantua charged.

The ground shuddered under its heavy, trunk-like legs. The beast swung its two upper arms in a brutal, sweeping pincer movement, intending to crush Saile into a bloody stain.

Saile channeled kinetic force into his calves.

[Skill Activated: Phantom Step (C-Grade)]

The air snapped. Saile vanished into a streak of blinding white light.

The Gargantua’s stone-plated fists slammed into each other, crushing empty air. Rock ground against rock, showering the dark hall in gray sparks.

Saile reappeared directly inside the beast’s guard.

He did not waste time targeting the thick bedrock armor. He aimed for the joints.

Saile planted his boots and launched a rapid flurry of devastating jabs. His fists blurred, striking the pale, exposed flesh behind the Gargantua’s lower ribs.

Crack. Crack. Crack.

Each punch landed with the sound of a snapping whip. The compressed, vibrating

mana coating Saile’s knuckles acted like a shaped explosive charge. The kinetic force drove straight through the beast’s thick hide, rupturing its internal organs.

The Gargantua shrieked. A spray of foul, gray blood erupted from its side.

The beast tried to absorb the glowing light coating Saile’s fists. The pale flesh on its torso rippled, attempting to suck the magic inward.

It failed.

"It cannot eat physics," Naicul sneered in the dark.

The friction tore the beast’s absorbing tissue to shreds. The Gargantua recoiled, staggering backward. It swung its lower left arm in a desperate, blind backhand.

Saile dropped low. The heavy stone fist rushed over his head, clipping the edge of his blonde hair. The wind from the strike alone felt like a physical blow.

He stepped forward, riding the momentum of his dodge. He drove a heavy, reinforced uppercut directly into the elbow joint of the descending arm.

The joint inverted.

The thick gray bedrock shattered into shrapnel. Bone tore through pale skin with a sickening, wet snap. The Gargantua’s lower arm hung uselessly by a thread of ruined muscle.

Aira watched from the floor, her golden eyes wide.

Pain radiated down her spine, but she could not look away. She stared at the commoner from Class F. Her SSS-Rank Eyes of Truth tracked his movements.

He was dismantling a Level 70 guardian with his bare hands.

His footwork was a masterclass in lethal efficiency. He wasted zero energy. Every step placed him precisely in the beast’s blind spots. And his "holy" magic was entirely wrong. Church magic was meant to cleanse and purify. Gabriel’s magic was a violent, vibrating buzzsaw that annihilated anything it touched.

"Who taught you to fight like that?" Aira whispered through bloody teeth.

The Gargantua went frantic. Driven mad by the ruptured organs and the shattered arm, the beast began to blindly thrash. It slammed its remaining three fists into the obsidian floor, tearing up chunks of ancient stone. It hurled the debris across the hall in a deadly, unpredictable hail of rock.

Saile wove through the falling debris. His eyes tracked the trajectory of every jagged shard. He sidestepped a flying boulder, letting it crash harmlessly against the wall behind him.

"End it," Naicul ordered. "The choker is fracturing. The illusion will drop if you maintain this output."

Saile felt the hot blood trickling down his neck. The artifact was burning his skin.

He focused his attention on the beast’s pale, eyeless head.

The Gargantua lunged forward, opening its maw wide. Rows of flat, grinding teeth snapped at the air, aiming to bite Saile in half.

Saile ran directly toward the open jaws.

He waited until the beast lowered its head. At the very last fraction of a second, Saile leaped onto a falling slab of obsidian. He used the mid-air debris as a stepping stone, kicking off the rock with explosive force.

He launched himself high above the creature’s snapping teeth.

As he hung suspended over the Gargantua’s pale dome, Saile channeled every ounce of his compressed, vibrating dark mana down into his right heel. The fake white light flared brilliantly, illuminating the entire cavern.

He twisted his hips, utilizing his Diamond-Tier agility to execute a flawless, blinding aerial twist kick.

His heel crashed directly down onto the center of the beast’s skull.

BOOM!

A localized sonic boom ruptured the heavy air. A ring of displaced dust blasted outward from the point of impact.

The sheer, concentrated friction acted like a drill press. Saile’s boot cleaved straight through the thick bone of the pale dome. The skull caved inward, fracturing down the middle. Gray matter, bone shards, and thick dark blood rained down over the obsidian floor.

The Gargantua stiffened.

All four of its heavy arms dropped limply to its sides. The beast hung in the air for a single, silent moment, its brain entirely destroyed.

Then, it collapsed.

The massive Demigod-tier guardian crashed onto the floor. The impact shook the foundation of the labyrinth. A thick cloud of dust rolled across the dark tiles, washing over Aira’s boots.

Saile landed softly in a crouch.

He exhaled a long, measured breath. He instantly cut the flow of mana to the silver choker. The blinding white light faded, plunging the hall back into dim shadows.

He reached up and touched his neck. The silver metal was searing hot, but it had held together. The disguise remained intact.

Golden system screens projected quietly in the corner of his vision.

[Major Threat Eliminated: Gargantua (Level 70)]

[Significant EXP Gained.]

[Target core absorbed. Endless Devourer active.]

Saile ignored the prompts. He stood up, dusting off his cheap linen trousers. His breathing was slow and even. The combat had taxed the artifact, but his physical body felt barely warmed up.

He turned his head and looked at Aira.

The Holy Saintess was still slumped against the cracked pillar. She clutched her dislocated right shoulder. Her golden eyes stared at him, stripped of their usual unshakable arrogance. She looked at him with a mix of raw suspicion and deep, unadulterated awe.

"You killed it," Aira choked out. Her voice was weak, raspy from the dust.

Saile walked toward her. His heavy boots clicked softly against the black stone.

"I told you," Saile replied smoothly. "In the slums, you learn to adapt."

Aira laughed, but the sound quickly morphed into a painful cough.

"Do not lie to me, Gabriel," she whispered, her eyes tracking his face. "That was not street brawling. That was an execution. Your magic... it felt like standing near an open furnace."

Saile stopped a few feet away from her. He did not offer his hand. A commoner helping a Saintess up would only arouse more suspicion.

"You should tend to your shoulder," Saile advised coldly.

He turned his attention away from the bleeding girl. The death of the Gargantua

had changed the ambient mana in the hall. The heavy, oppressive magical weight that had filled the air was slowly dissipating.

The towering beast had fallen backward during its death throes, sliding across the polished floor.

Behind the spot where the guardian had stood, the shadows clung tightly to the cavern wall. But Saile’s Diamond-Tier eyes cut through the gloom.

"Look," Naicul whispered. The God’s ancient voice trembled with a strange, heavy

reverence.

Carved directly into the solid obsidian wall was a towering, double-arched doorway. It was forged from rusted black iron, heavily scarred by time and buried under a millennium of dust. Intricate, jagged runes lined the edges of the metal.

It was not a natural cavern formation. It was a vault.

"The Armory," Naicul stated. The word carried the weight of a thousand years of bitter exile. "My home."

Saile stared at the rusted iron. The magnetic pull in his chest grew almost unbearable. The second Divine Fragment rested just behind those doors. A drop of the Fallen God’s original heartblood.

He took a slow step toward the iron archway.

Aira grunted behind him. The Saintess forced herself onto her knees, using her good arm to brace against the pillar. She followed his gaze, looking toward the dark wall.

"What is that?" Aira gasped, narrowing her golden eyes. "There are no constructed vaults on the unmapped floors."

Saile did not answer. He stepped over the canvas wrappings on the floor and retrieved his scabbarded sword, strapping it back over his shoulder. He kept walking toward the rusted metal.

The endgame of his infiltration was sitting right in front of him. But Aira was still conscious. She was watching his every move. If he opened the doors of the Fallen God’s armory, her Eyes of Truth would document every single detail.

The line between the lie and the truth was about to vanish.