Thor sidestepped just as a massive, tentacle-like arm came crashing down into the soil, sending tremors through the ground. A large crater was left where he had been standing just moments before.
He growled low, his gaze locking onto the beast before him—a grotesque gorilla-like creature, its back marred by a series of writhing tentacles that whipped through the air with deadly precision. The sharp ends of the tentacles gleamed as they sliced toward him, and Thor barely managed to evade in time.
Around him, similar beasts were engaging his teammates. Trisha and Williams were fighting their own battles against creatures just as fearsome. But what troubled Thor more than the beasts' numbers was the sudden, inexplicable escalation. These were Grade Three monsters. They should not have been drawn to them when the team had only released their energy up to Level Two.
"What the hell is this?" Thor thought, his brow furrowing as he swung his hammer to deflect another tentacle. The force of the strike sent the appendage flailing backward, but Thor's mind raced. "We'd have to unleash our full power to take these things down... but if we do, we risk drawing the attention of something worse. If a Grade Four gets a whiff of us, we're as good as dead."
He clenched his jaw, sizing up the situation. There was no easy way out. His eyes narrowed, focused on the beast before him as its tentacles writhed back into position for another strike. Time was running out.
A deep breath, a moment's hesitation, and Thor made a decision. He couldn't afford to let caution hold them back any longer.
With a thunderous shout, he turned to his team. "Forget the rule! Use your full power and take these things out—fast!"
Trisha and Williams exchanged a brief glance, their expressions grim, but they nodded in unison. There was no arguing with the team leader now. They unleashed their power, the air vibrating with the intensity of their energy as they began fighting without restraint.
Thor barely had time to check on their progress before another tentacle whipped toward him with terrifying speed. He wasn't fast enough this time. The tentacle struck him hard in the gut, sending him flying back. His body crashed into the ground with a sickening thud, kicking up pillars of dust as the earth trembled beneath him.
"Arrggh!" A pained cry tore from his throat as he coughed up blood. His vision blurred for a moment, the world around him spinning as he lay there, the wind knocked from his lungs. For a moment, he lay there, dazed, the pain radiating from his abdomen. But then his resolve hardened. He had been through worse. He could survive this.
Gritting his teeth, Thor pushed himself back to his feet, a murderous glint in his eyes. "Now I'm pissed," he muttered under his breath, the words barely escaping through clenched teeth.
The impact was devastating. A brilliant bolt of lightning tore down from the sky, striking the hammer and amplifying its destructive power. The gorilla-like beast stood no chance. Its head split open, and with a final, pitiful shriek, the creature's body was torn apart, shredded by the force of Thor's strike.
Chunks of flesh and bone rained down, the once-mighty monster reduced to little more than blood-soaked debris. Thor stood at the center of it, his chest heaving, the dark blood of the beast staining the ground around him.
His breath slowed, his heart still pounding from the exertion. 'Shit,' he thought, scanning the remains of the beast. 'Where's the crystal? Did I destroy it?'
But before he could dwell on it for long, something else caught his attention. He felt it before he saw it—a pulse of energy, faint at first but growing stronger with every passing second. His head snapped up, his eyes narrowing as he focused on the distant horizon.
'What... what is that energy?' His heart raced again, this time not from battle but from a rising sense of dread. 'It's the same as that Sekhmet guy from months ago. But there's two of them now.'
Thor's mind whirred as he tried to make sense of it, his instincts screaming at him that this was something far beyond the monsters they'd been fighting. Loki and Hera had warned him, but he hadn't wanted to believe it.
'Our parents told us about this,' Thor thought, his grip tightening on the hammer. 'Me and Loki—we were born special. But there are others. Others who will bring the end of the world. Not the aliens, not the humans who reach SS-rank. The gods.'
Thor began to run, streaking through the forest like a bolt of lightning, heading toward the source of the energy with all the speed he could muster.
'The first is Axel. That much I'm sure of. But the other...'
His heart pounded in his chest, fear gnawing at the edges of his mind.
'The other is something else entirely.'