Near a road the City of Silver had opened through the Forsaken Land of the Gods, leading to the Giant King's Court.
Silver-white lightning streaked across the pitch-black sky from time to time, illuminating the barren, deathly still ground, riddled with gullies.
An exploration team carrying hide lanterns and assorted weapons was battling a hideous monster. They had broad shoulders, long arms, and powerful builds, all displaying clear giant ancestry. Yet under the attacks of a four-meter-tall monster whose arms extended like tentacles, they were steadily driven back, barely holding on.
More deadly still was the deep black mist drifting over the surface of this monster, which the City of Silver called a "Fallen Shadow." Bizarrely shaped runes kept emerging from within it, making anyone who merely looked at them dizzy and filling their ears with murmurs.
This meant the Fallen Shadow already possessed a measure of divinity. It could display divine patterns containing mystical knowledge on its body, inflicting steadily accumulating madness on any low- or mid-sequence Beyonder and impairing their ability to fight.
Had the team not included two Sequence 5 Guardians with extensive experience dealing with monsters that had one foot in the realm of demigods, the exploration team would have collapsed long ago.
Even so, every member of the team was wounded, their spirituality and sanity on the verge of collapse. Rigg, the Guardian bearing the brunt of the attacks, could even feel the shadow cast at his feet by the lantern swaying constantly, as though it was about to detach from him, become another monster, and join the assault on the team.
This was the power of corruption!
Rigg took a deep breath, dropped the black iron club in his hand, and reached into an inner pocket of his clothes, taking out a small charm.