Overlord Tamer: All My Pet Monsters Have God Potential

Chapter 211: Harrowing Quest (1)

"I’m not ordering anyone in," he said. "This one’s a choice."

"You’re going," Azelis said, not a question.

"Yeah."

"Then so are we," Jibril said, already checking her Razewater reserves. "Idiot. Like we’d let you walk into something like that alone."

Yuna simply nodded, jaw set, Emberlune’s tails flattening low against her legs in quiet apprehension that didn’t stop her from stepping forward anyway.

Nyxareth watched the four of them for a long moment, something almost like surprise flickering across their starlit features.

"Very well," they finally said, and the dark, sealed section of the map unfolded fully, a narrow path bleeding into existence directly beneath their feet. "The Sundered Vault. Go quickly, and do not stop moving. I will be watching, though I can offer nothing more than that from here."

*

The moment they stepped through, the temperature dropped hard enough that John’s breath fogged in front of him, and every one of his pets went rigid at once, hackles raised, wings tucked defensively.

The vault stretched out before them as a vast, cracked cathedral of black glass, floor and walls and ceiling all reflecting distorted, fractured versions of themselves back at every angle, so that it felt like a hundred copies of the group stood scattered throughout the chamber, all moving half a second out of sync.

And at the center of it all, something vast uncoiled from the shadows.

Vaelkyrn didn’t have a fixed shape. It shifted as it moved, sometimes serpentine, sometimes vaguely humanoid, sometimes nothing recognizable at all, a churning mass of absence given just enough form to be seen, its presence pressing down on the chamber like a physical weight.

John’s danger instincts screamed the moment it turned toward them, the same overwhelming warning he’d felt once before from a mere Calamity-rank presence glimpsed from a distance. This time, there was nowhere to run.

"Move!" he shouted, and the group scattered on instinct as Vaelkyrn’s form lashed out, a limb of condensed shadow crashing through the space they’d been standing a half second earlier, shattering the black glass floor beneath the impact.

Terravax took the first real hit meant for Jibril, throwing himself into the strike’s path, and even his thick hide and anchored roots weren’t enough this time, the impact sending him skidding backward across the chamber in a spray of cracked shell fragments.

"Terravax!" Azelis’s voice cracked with alarm.

"He’s alive," John called, feeling the turtle’s presence flicker but hold. "Keep moving, don’t stop!"

Vaelkyrn’s form surged toward the fallen turtle, and for a horrifying instant it looked like it might finish him off entirely, until Volkia intercepted at full speed, wings folding into a battering charge that redirected the strike just enough.

"Selenroot, get him clear!" Azelis shouted, and the healing guardian moved with surprising speed, root tendrils wrapping around Terravax’s massive frame and dragging him back toward the chamber’s edge.

Jibril pressed forward the moment the opening presented itself, Razewater and Gravitalon woven together into a spinning blade of compressed water and crushing weight, carving a line across Vaelkyrn’s shifting mass.

The strike connected, but Vaelkyrn simply reformed around the wound as if it had never happened.

"It’s not taking damage the normal way," Jibril gasped, retreating a step. "It’s just absorbing everything!"

"Then hit it harder and faster than it can absorb," John snapped, already moving, Feralsteel claws extended as he closed the distance himself.

His first strike tore a real gash across what might have been Vaelkyrn’s flank, and for a fraction of a second, the wound didn’t reform immediately, something flickering underneath the shadow like exposed nerve.

"There," John said, more to himself than anyone else. "Eldritch attribute actually does something to it. Keep that in mind."

Vaelkyrn’s attention snapped fully onto him, and its form surged forward with terrifying speed, limbs multiplying as it came, three, then five, then seven simultaneous strikes converging on his position all at once.

He barely got a Chronolight-woven barrier up in time, the impact still driving him backward hard enough to crack the black glass beneath his boots, pain lancing up both arms from the force alone.

"John!" Yuna’s voice cut through the chaos as she and Emberlune closed the gap, Wraithbound Convergence splitting her presence to strike two of Vaelkyrn’s limbs simultaneously, buying him half a second to recover.

"Thanks," he gasped, rolling back to his feet.

The fight only grew more chaotic from there, Vaelkyrn’s form seeming to learn from every strike landed against it, adjusting, adapting, growing more difficult to land a clean hit on with every passing minute.

Levi’s void-mist threads managed to bind one of its limbs fully, only for two more to sprout from the same point a moment later. Rexion’s flame scorched a section of its mass black, only for the shadow to simply flow around the damage and continue forward unhindered.

"It’s stalling us," Azelis said, breathing hard as she wove another layer of Shadow Ink to disrupt its outline. "Nyxareth said it feeds on hesitation. I don’t think it’s actually trying to kill us yet. I think it’s trying to make us afraid first."

"Then let’s not give it the satisfaction," John said grimly, though even he could feel the cold, creeping weight of dread pressing harder against his chest with every passing second.

The turning point came without warning.

Vaelkyrn’s form suddenly split entirely, no longer one entity but three smaller copies, each moving independently, each radiating the same crushing pressure as the original had alone.

"That’s not fair," Jibril said weakly, staggering back a step as one of the copies bore down on her.

She barely got her guard up in time, the impact driving her to one knee, her health plummeting past the threshold she’d been guarding all trip.

"Absolute Spirit Blessing!" she gasped, and a burst of pure white light enveloped her entirely, the copy’s follow-up strike passing through her without leaving so much as a mark, her Soul Energy surging back to full in the same instant.

She surged upright, blade reforming in her hand, and drove it clean through the stunned copy’s core before it could recover from the failed kill.

The copy shattered into dissolving shadow, leaving only two.