After the Colossus Fell

When a colossal beast fell, death did not mean the end of everything.

The remnants of life often survived, nurtured by the corpse, existing—or rather, continuing—in another form.

Deep within the Ancient Gandor Empire, chaotic, dry winds swept dust and mist across the plains. In the murky sky, filthy clouds churned and twisted like an inverted funnel, hanging gloomily over heaven and earth. Shining energy pulses leaped between the swirling cloud masses, continuously releasing electric arcs stretching for kilometers and rumbling, low thunder. Beneath this terrifying phenomenon lay the melted and torn wasteland of the imperial capital.

The former imperial capital had long since been reduced to dust by a magical explosion. Now, only sparse, twisted wreckage testified to the former existence of Human Civilization. At the center of the vast plain, a gigantic impact crater lay silently embedded in the earth. Its crystalline inner walls sank layer upon layer toward the center, and blobs of molten matter whose original forms could no longer be discerned were "embedded" in those walls, pointing straight toward the sky like grotesque, jagged branches. The sight was desolate and terrifying.

Yet even in the depths of such utterly ruined wreckage, something was still "alive"—

At the bottom of the giant impact crater, charred earth rose upward, and crystalline molten matter had solidified into a conical structure seemingly assembled from countless prisms. From the top of that cone, a pillar of blue flame nearly a thousand meters across surged forth, illuminating the entire crater. The magical flame erupted several kilometers into the sky, echoing the vortex-like charged cloud mass overhead from afar. Around the "crystal cone" spewing magical flame, large numbers of wandering mana phantoms could be seen moving about.

This dreadful eruption had continued for seven hundred years, and showed no sign of stopping.