The ecosystem inside the 4-Star Gate was maliciously aggressive.

Hide’s body was now covered by the dark scales and he stood anchored to the slick, freezing bedrock, his leg talons were dug into the rock.

The metallic armor was absorbing the relentless barrage of magically dense hail. Each chunk of ice struck his armor like a bullet, shattering into freezing mist.

Every few seconds, blinding forks of jagged blue lightning tore down from the churning heavens. The electrical strikes didn’t just illuminate the sky—they violently lashed the earth, leaving scorched, smoking craters across the terrain.

Looking through the torrential downpour, Hide realized to his absolute disappointment that they had manifested near the base of a colossal mountain. The jagged incline offered absolutely zero natural cover. There were no trees, no ruins, and no valleys.

The only reprieves from the devastating weather were a series of ominous caves dotting the rock face higher up the slope.

Worse still was the epicenter of the catastrophe. Dominating the horizon, a monolithic tornado raged. The typhoon was a terrifying pillar of bruised-purple and ash-grey clouds, spinning with enough rotational fury to tether the shattered sky directly to the earth.

"We can’t stay here!" Evelyn bellowed over the deafening roar of the gale.

There was no need to tell that.

Gideon had manifested a thick, semi-translucent dome of brown mana over his head to deflect the hail, but the sheer weight of the storm was already causing his barrier to fracture.

"Move toward the crags!" Rol shouted, his lean silhouette flickering in and out of the erratic shadows cast by the lightning. "Find a cave before the wind peels us off the mountain!"

Before they could even take a step forward, the gate’s indigenous population decided to welcome them.

A piercing, metallic screech cut cleanly through the thunder. Hide snapped his head upward just as three massive airborne monstrosities dove from the low-hanging storm clouds. They were grotesque nightmares with wingspans the width of transit buses, their feathers resembling jagged sheets of rusted iron. At the exact same moment, the ground beneath their boots began to violently tremble.

Hide’s glowing blue eyes, enhanced by True Sight, pierced through the sheets of freezing rain. Emerging from the rocky crevices below their position were several hulking, spherical terrestrial beasts.

’Mountain Rollers.’ Hide remembered the classification instantly from one of his past encounters. They were heavily armored beasts composed of dense, calcified earth and corded muscle. Tucking their heads and limbs inward, the beasts transformed into unstoppable, living boulders, utilizing the steep incline of the mountain to accelerate to terrifying speeds.

"Incoming from above and below!" Hide warned, his voice a calm, lethal register amidst the chaos. He didn’t bother drawing his blades. In a storm this violent, agility and raw blunt force were far more reliable.

"I’ll handle the ground!" Gideon roared, his muscles bulging as he widened his stance.

A Mountain Roller launched itself off a jagged ramp of stone, hurtling directly toward the squad like a fired cannonball.

The giant warrior stepped directly into the beast’s trajectory. Dark brown mana violently erupted around his right gauntlet, crystallizing into a massive, spiked earthen shield. With a shout, Gideon stepped forward and executed a devastating shield-bash.

The collision sounded like a bomb detonating. Both the beast and human were at a equal stand for a second, none moving.

But that lasted as Gideon’s counter-strike with other hand instantly shattered the beast’s rocky exoskeleton. The Mountain Roller’s trajectory was violently arrested, its pulverized corpse tumbling lifelessly down the slick incline.

"Keep pushing upward!" Gideon said, shaking the broken stone from his gauntlet. His hand was trembling as well from taking such an attack head on.

The squad fought tooth and nail against the elements and the ambushing horde. Rol darted seamlessly between the falling lightning strikes, his daggers finding the unprotected joints of the terrestrial beasts.

Hide utilized the frictionless surface of his dark scales to deflect the dive-bombing monsters, countering with concentrated bursts of Abyssal Flame that turned the freezing rain into clouds of boiling steam and Abyssal Frost that turned the beasts to ice which were then shattered by Sora.

Legs burning with exertion, they finally crested a precarious, jutting overhang halfway up the mountain. They were battered, soaked, and freezing.

Most of them had their armors on now that they had stored in their storage artifacts.

Panting heavily, Gideon wiped a mixture of sweat and freezing rain from his brow. He raised a massive hand to shield his eyes from the blinding, horizontal rain, forcing himself to look toward the towering typhoon.

Suddenly, Gideon’s breath hitched. His dark eyes widened into massive, trembling circles of pure disbelief.

"What the..." Gideon breathed, the words barely escaping his throat.

Directly above them, the wind howled as another iron-feathered beast plummeted toward the overhang, its talons extended to rip Gideon’s head off.

Sora didn’t even look at her target. The assassin pivoted on her heel, her body blurring into a cyclone of compressed wind. She launched herself into the air, executing a flawless, mid-air spinning crescent kick.

Her serrated daggers, cloaked in razor-sharp atmospheric pressure, cleanly decapitated the flying beast in a single, beautiful motion.

Landing gracefully on the slick stone, Sora followed Gideon’s gaze into the churning heavens.

"Is that a fucking dragon?" Sora finished his sentence, her twin daggers dropping limply to her sides.

Hide stepped up beside them, his pupils shrinking to pinpricks. Looking into the sky was nearly impossible due to the abrasive winds and pelting hail, but the sheer scale of the entity orchestrating the weather demanded their attention.

Coiled around the absolute center of the purple typhoon was a leviathan. It possessed no wings, yet it swam through the currents with the fluid, anti-gravitational grace, like a deep-sea eel.

It was a majestic, ancient Eastern dragon, easily stretching hundreds of feet in length. Impossibly vibrant, luminescent blue scales armored its serpentine body, glowing with an internal, contained lightning that dwarfed the storm itself. Long, ethereal whiskers trailed from its regal, antlered head, weaving the very fabric of the hurricane with every lazy rotation.

This magnificent, terrifying god of the sky was the sole reason the environment was so chaotic.

For a fleeting second, the majestic blue dragon paused its endless circling. Its colossal, glowing golden eyes shifted downward, piercing through miles of heavy clouds and torrential rain, locking directly onto the tiny figures standing on the mountain peak.

It opened its elongated, reptilian maw.

When the dragon roared, the mountain trembled.

But it was not just a simple roar of anger!

"Gah!" Sora shrieked, her hands flying to the sides of her head as she collapsed violently to her knees.

Beside her, Gideon dropped his shield, his massive body hitting the stone floor with a heavy thud. He curled into a fetal position, letting out a horrific, guttural sob.

Rol gritted his teeth and slammed against a rock surface, breathing heavily.

Only Hide and Evelyn were spared.

The dragon’s roar wasn’t designed to deal physical damage. It was a mind attack that infested the victims mind with an image of their death.