Two Angels could be seen flying through the air at about a hundred meters above the ground, which was the normal height for Angel Traders moving between cities, their speed enough to ruffle their hair and keep their eyes fixed straight ahead through the resistance of the air moving against them.

They carried nothing visibly on their bodies, the goods they were transporting stored inside the two rings on their index fingers, a Relic known as the Ring of Echo, which could hold up to ten medium-sized Relics or valuable monster materials in each one, a limited but practical storage method for traders making weekly runs between cities, the route they were on connected Lumivale to Solara and branched off toward several other cities along the way including Loxors and Altaria.

These two were not merchants, they were Guild Traders from Lumivale’s Branch Guild, their job being to move Relics and materials from cleared Ruins to the Central Continent market every week and bring back revenue, a system that kept the branch running and funded the operations of the receptionists, the assessment chambers, the floating ruin description screens, and everything else the branch maintained.

One of them spoke up as they passed over the start of the massive forest route below, "Gidion, think we can get some extra gold out of this trade? We got five more than usual last time, at least let me have some fun once in a while."

Gidion flew at the same speed to his right and turned his head toward him, "Yussac, I don’t know about you but I saved those shared gold coins and when I added it to my salary I had ninety gold in total!"

Yussac’s eyes went wide as he looked at the slightly bulky Angel beside him, his expression shifting immediately, "You! You told me with a smile that you would spend it without thinking! And now you say you saved it?!"

Gidion laughed, "Hahah! I never said I would spend it this week, you should have listened more carefully."

Yussac could only bite his lip and twitch his eyes as they kept flying, though neither of them was in any real financial difficulty, both being C-rank Angels drawing a salary of twenty gold per month, enough to live on without much stress, just not enough for much beyond that.

Gidion kept laughing as the forest stretched out wide beneath them.

That’s when his eyes snapped to the left.

A flicker of light had come from somewhere below, and when he turned toward it he saw the double doors of a Ruin built into the base of a small mountain, the doors shattering outward from the inside, not opening, shattering, the stone frame cracking apart as something came through from within.

Yussac followed Gidion’s line of sight and the moment he did, his face went still and his eyes widened with a horror that locked his expression in place.

The monster that stepped out from the destroyed doorway had deep red skin and stood at approximately eight feet two inches, its muscles so dense and prominent they caught the light even from a hundred meters above.

It’s shoulders broad in a way that made the proportions of its body look wrong for anything natural, and it stood on two legs with two arms at its sides, humanoid in structure but with a face that didn’t belong on anything that moved and breathed, hollow stretched eyes with no pupils, only red irises sitting inside them, two horns extending from its forehead, and an expression that looked less like an animal and more like something that understood exactly what it was doing.

Both of them had seen enough in their years of Guild work to read Spirit density on sight, and what was coming off this thing was not A-rank, it was not even peak A-rank, the density around it read as S-rank at minimum, mixed with something else that neither of them could identify, an additional pressure sitting underneath the Spirit that felt wrong in a way they didn’t have the knowledge to explain.

The monster’s head turned slowly upward and its hollow red eyes found them.

It held them in its gaze for several seconds without moving, completely still, just looking, and that stillness was worse than if it had moved immediately because it made clear that the monster was making a choice about what to do next rather than acting on instinct.

Then it vanished.

Gidion and Yussac’s Instincts flared at the same time and they both started to move, but before either of them could generate any real distance something appeared directly behind Gidion, the air around that space displacing with the arrival of something massive.

"AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"

Gidion’s scream tore through the open sky as pain so severe that it blanked his mind, the pain had hit him from behind, the monster’s hands closed around his wings and begun pulling them apart slowly, deliberately, not in one sudden motion but piece by piece, and what made it worse than the tearing itself was what Yussac could see mixing into the wound as it opened, something non-sensable to him and wrong spreading from where the monster’s hands made contact with the flesh and bone of Gidion’s wings, moving inward through the wound like it was following the blood.

Yussac floated a meter away, his hands and legs trembling visibly, watching his friend’s face go slack as the life drained from it, and then memories came all at once, years of weekly runs on this same route, the argument over one gold coin that had just ended in laughter thirty seconds ago, and something inside him that had no room left for anything reasonable broke apart entirely.

"YOU BASTARD!!!! I WILL KILL YOU!!!! RELEASE MY FRIEND AT ONCE!!!"

He lunged forward with tears already falling, veins pushing out along his jaw and forehead, one hand pulling a Relic from his Ring without consciously deciding to, a small ball shaped relic that fit perfectly in his palm, a Mythic Grade Relic, those which were only found in Cataclysm-rank Ruins or the rarest of Abyss-Rank ones, and his fist came down at the monster’s broad chest with everything he had behind it - All his spirit, all his physical strength he could master right at this moment.

The monster didn’t react to him, its attention was still on Gidion, still working at the wings with that deliberate slowness that made it clear this wasn’t hunger or aggression, it was something closer to curiosity and...fun about what it was doing.

Yussac’s punch landed and did nothing to the bare chest beneath it, not a scratch, not a reaction, the monster’s skin might as well have been stone for all the impact produced, but the Relic in his palm activated on contact and floated upward from his hand, rising above both of them as it began pulling atmospheric Spirit into itself at a rate that caused the air around it to visibly distort.

The monster’s head snapped upward at that, its hollow red eyes locking onto the floating Relic as its danger instinct finally registered something worth paying attention to, and in that single moment of diverted attention Yussac pulled a second Relic from his Ring with his left hand and threw it directly at the monster’s face, it burst on impact and smoke poured across the monster’s eyes and nose and mouth, covering its head entirely.

Yussac used that opening and moved toward Gidion, pulling his friend’s body close and wrapping his arms around him, Gidion’s head falling back, his eyes closed, blood still moving from his nose and mouth and ears from whatever had been injected through those wounds, his breathing already gone.

Yussac held him and looked up at the Mythic Relic shaking violently above them as it reached the limit of what it had absorbed, then looked back at Gidion one more time.

"I...I didn’t think we would only live for this much...may we meet in the afterlife again, friend."

He released the hold, turned his face upward toward the Relic, and didn’t move.

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!