'What kind of monster is this?!'
In spite of the calm and collected look that Arty shared with the world, the state of his inner thoughts couldn't be any more different from what his face suggested.
A blob of... something rose up for ten and then some more meters into the sky, towering just above the shortest of the trees. It consisted of something that had no right to exist. It consisted of darkness... that shone with its own, peculiar kind of light.
'It has no real shape... it's just a blob... So where do I seek it's weak point?'
The tentacles of the bright, shadowy monster tensed up before bloating up, turning the small holes in the targets it pierced through into lethal ones. And then, after bringing its targets up a few meters in the air...
The humans struggled to free themselves from the tentacles piercing through them. Some tried hacking away at the darkness... Only to find out that their weapons could freely pass through the darkness with hardly any resistance.
But out of nearly fifty men who rose up to the sky, carried by the tentacles made up with this hypocritical, bright darkness... Only a few of them were lucky enough to carry weapons wide enough to cut through the entirety of the dark tentacle, with the face of their weapons blocking it from instantly regenerating.
A total of eight people fell to the ground. But only five of them managed to rise again, their wounds from the tentacle and from the fall somehow not reaching the point where they would lose all means of staying mobile.
'They are slow, too slow!' Arty's mind went into a frenzy.
He could handle those dastardly nobles throwing their weight around. Just like they disregarded whatever commoners spoke, soldiers like Arty grew dull to whatever those shitty nobles would say.
But the sight of his men, fellow soldiers, falling prey to some kind of monster that had no right to exist?
"Fuck it!" Arty squeezed a silent curse from his tightened lips... and jumped forth.
As he ran ahead, the tip of his spear started to shine as he concentrated more and more of his mana within the blade. He then threw his left leg forth while stretching his arm out to the back.
Arty's entire body stretched out... before snapping in a single instant as he twisted at his hips and threw his spear with all his might.
Swoosh!
Cutting through the air, the spear flew no slower than an arrow or a bolt. It reached the very middle of the monstrous blob in a mere instant. The golden shine of the spear's blade exploded, casting away all the darkness and leaving nothing but its bright counterpart.
A huge hole, nearly half the total length of Arty's spear, appeared within the massive body of the shadowy monster. But the spear flew through the hole... Only for the hole to instantly start closing down on itself, with fresh tentacles of darkness rushing to reconstruct what the explosion of Arty's mana caused.
'Shit, not here!'
Unable to find a single weak point of the monster, Arty had no other choice but to rely on nothing else but his shitty luck.
'This thing has to have some sort of co... Wait...' The look on Arty's face steeled up as his eyes widened under the weight of his realization. 'It slowed down!'
"Why are you so fucking reckless?!" Sylfan screamed his annoyance out as he landed by Arty's side, a fresh spear in his hand.
They were soldiers. They were dealing with death on a daily basis. But this wasn't a normal war. Their opponents weren't normal enemies.
And faced with the abyssal monster that commanded both darkness and light at the same time... They took Arty's orders seriously, rushing away from the scene with all the speed their legs could produce.
The clattering of the dropped equipment filled Arty's ears, right as the massive tentacle crushed the spear he threw, extinguishing the mana contained within its blade before it could explode. And then, as if not bothered by the attack at all, it continued to reach ahead, closer and closer to Arty...
"I WON'T LET YOU!"
Refusing to abandon his subordinate, teacher, and friend, Sylfan screamed out before invoking all the mana he could summon and infusing it all around his fist.
And then, caring not for his chances of survival, he stood in the path of the massive tentacle... and struck forth.
For but a second, the counter worked. The tentacle shook as the mana of Sylfan's strike coursed ahead, making use of the fact that the monster's form was hardly tangible, with no flesh to offer any real resistance to Sylfan's mana.
For but a second, the tentacle stopped, mere inches away from grabbing both Sylfan and Arty. It even started to grow to the sides, just to make sure they couldn't dodge the attack.
But even after the power of Sylfan's attack exhausted, evaporated when faced with the overwhelming amount of mana the shadowy monster commanded...
The monster didn't pick up the pace, remaining as frozen as it was when it received the strike.
"What?" Sylfan, as surprised as the forest dwellers who stopped their chase after their men to observe the encounter, raised his head and looked at the face of the tentacle.
But it didn't move. It simply stood in place, as if his attack managed to either paralyze or outright kill whatever controlled this monster.
And then, as if following the hopes in the hearts of the two soldiers, the monster...
The monster started to fall apart, shedding huge chunks of darkness only for it to fall down and dissolve into the air as the mana that constructed it returned to its natural flow within the fabric of the world itself.
"Did I..." Unable to believe that such a dreadful monster would lose to such a simple, unrefined attack, Sylfan couldn't even voice his question out.
"HAAAAAA...."
A powerful voice shook the air, causing everyone on the scene to twitch. And as the last of the bright darkness vanished, leaving nothing but vividly white and bright core at the very bottom of where this monster stood before...
A human figure walked out of the bright, white spot and stretched out its hands to the side.
Then, the white ball of brightness also collapsed, finally revealing itself to be nothing more but a storm of perfectly white and just slightly shiny hair of the most beautiful female Arty or Sylfan ever had the privilege of laying their eyes on.
"I'm finally back!" the first of the human-like beings that walked out from the monster cried out with great enthusiasm that was nothing but disrespect to all the corpses scattered on the field.
And then, the human lowered its eyes and looked straight at the two petrified soldiers who were too shocked to move a single muscle.
"I guess you have no idea what happened," the human spoke in a surprisingly kind and relaxed voice. "Nevertheless, thanks," it continued to spit out words that couldn't be more out of place. "If it wasn't for your help, it would take me much longer to find my way out of this damned hole!"