A Shield in a World of Monarchs. Solo Leveling X Bofuri

"What do you know, more rocks," Gine muttered dryly, eyeing the endless forest of jagged earth spires jutting up from the chasm below. Each one rose like a spear toward the sky, sharp and immense, forming a fractured landscape suspended in midair. From where they stood, atop one of the higher spires, it felt like they were floating above another world... a sky buried beneath stone.

"The boss is definitely here," she added with a grin, pulling a spherical device from her belt. Its surface was covered in small, glowing protrusions, pulsing faintly with light.

Kenzo stepped forward, peering over the edge. A harsh wind rushed past him, whipping his coat. "There's no more path," he said, narrowing his eyes at the towering central spire in the distance. "But something's definitely down there."

He turned to Ilya. "Can you make us a way across?"

Ilya approached the ledge, her eyes scanning the seventy-meter gap between their spire and the next. "I should be able to," she said calmly.

She exhaled, her boots beginning to frost over. Ice bloomed from beneath her feet, spreading out over empty air in a smooth, elegant arc. Within seconds, a crystalline bridge had formed, linking their spire to the next. The bridge thickened as she reinforced it, layer after layer until it was at least ten meters across and gleaming like glass under the red glow of the sky.

"I don't know how long it'll hold if it takes a hit," she warned, "but it'll carry us across safely."

Kenzo nodded. "Then let's move quickly. Our destination…" He pointed toward the largest spire in the distance. It loomed like a mountain suspended in the heavens, glowing faintly with a reddish-purple light that pulsed like a heartbeat. "That one. The one in the middle."

They moved out, the ice crunching beneath their boots as they crossed into the domain of the boss that waited within the heart of the stone sky.

The path ahead was cold and slick, every step on Ilya's bridge ringing faintly in the silence. The ice crackled quietly beneath their boots, but held strong. Gine led the way, her fingers resting near the grip of her weapon, eyes flicking from spire to spire as they crossed. Each step brought them deeper into the strange floating stone forest, an unnatural stillness blanketed everything.

They passed over four more spires using shorter bridges Ilya constructed with less effort. Time passed slowly in that eerie calm, and eventually they came to the final one, the massive central spire that pulsed with reddish-purple light. It towered like a shrine left behind by giants, the base wide enough to hold a small village.

The moment they stepped onto its surface, a low hum stirred in the air, almost like the mountain itself was breathing.

"Stay sharp," Kenzo warned, his voice low. "Something's watching us."

They walked slowly, the surface of the spire flat but cracked with age. Crystalline moss clung to the stone in patches, glowing faintly. Then they saw them.

Four massive pillars. Each one at least five stories high, rose from the corners of the platform like ancient sentinels. Perched atop each was a weathered stone statue, so detailed they looked almost alive.

An Eastern dragon coiled gracefully around its pillar, long whiskers fluttering in an invisible breeze. Its serpentine body shimmered faintly with traces of red and purple.

On the next, a phoenix spread its wings wide, head held high as though frozen mid-screech. Feathers carved from pure obsidian caught the reddish light and refracted it into embers.

Opposite the phoenix, a mighty lion crouched on all fours, carved with a snarl on its face and eyes that glinted unnaturally. Its mane was chiseled with painstaking care, each strand like flowing fire.

And last, on the fourth pillar, rested a tortoise with moss-covered shell and ancient eyes. It didn't look like it was resting, but waiting.

Gine slowed to a stop, squinting up at them. "Statues?"

Kenzo didn't answer right away. He was watching them closely, especially the eyes. "No. Monsters."

A pulse of heat rolled through the air as if something had stirred beneath the stone. Then a faint tremor.

"Looks like they're waking up," Ilya whispered, stepping back instinctively.

The light in the sky above shifted, tinting the spire's surface in deeper reds and purples. The ground beneath their feet began to hum louder, the pillars resonating like tuning forks in a massive symphony of power.

Then one of the statues moved.

The dragon's eyes flickered to life with a pale, ethereal flame, and its massive stone body shifted, slithering smoothly around its pillar like a serpent awakening from centuries of slumber.

Then without warning... the entire pillar jumped.

Every hunter stood slack-jawed as the colossal spire bent like a jointed limb and launched into the air with impossible grace. For a moment, it vanished into the crimson sky, leaving behind a twinkling point of light like a falling star.

Kenzo's eyes widened in horror. "Move!" he barked.

The order came just in time.

A deafening crack split the air as the pillar came crashing down, a streak of white light that struck with the weight of a mountain. The shockwave hurled dust and debris into the air, a concussive blast that sent smaller spires toppling and shook the surrounding platforms.

The hunters had narrowly dodged the impact, most of them.

Ilya rolled across the jagged stone, her breath catching as she looked over her shoulder. Where they had stood just seconds earlier, the titanic pillar now sat embedded into the earth, splintering rock like it was paper.

It rose again slowly, groaning with a sound like grinding bones.

That's when beside her, Gine saw it, her expression shattered.

A healer lay crushed beneath the pillar. Her body was mangled, limbs twisted at unnatural angles. Her chest had caved inward, blood pooling around her in a crimson halo.

Kenzo stood frozen, eyes trembling as he stared at the ruin of his comrade. His jaw clenched hard enough to crack teeth. A violent golden aura began to spill from his form, shimmering like fire. Fury radiated from him in waves.

But then...

Wheeze...

A sound. So faint it was almost lost in the wind.

Kenzo's sharp senses caught it, a breath.

Barely audible, but undeniably there. She was still alive.

His body vanished in a blur.

But the dragon had noticed too.

With eerie precision, the pillar dropped again, faster than before, like the swing of a divine hammer.

Boom!

Kenzo reappeared just in time, kneeling with the bloodied healer cradled in his arms. Dust and fragments exploded behind him, but he didn't flinch.

Beside him, Elise was already in motion. A healing vial appeared in her hand, its contents glowing a soft, verdant green. With practiced speed, she popped the cork and poured the liquid down the woman's throat.

"Come on," Elise muttered through clenched teeth, her eyes locked on the healer's broken frame. "Stay with me."

Above them, the dragon statue narrowed its stony gaze, the pale fire in its eyes flaring brighter.

The dragon's pillar reared back again, stone muscles rippling along its length like the tightening coil of a whip.

Kenzo didn't wait. "Scatter!" he shouted, voice cutting through the rising wind.

The hunters moved, breaking in every direction across the wide, cracked expanse of the central spire just as the dragon struck again, its pillar elongating mid-swing, stretching like molten clay turned deadly. The force of it punched into the earth with cataclysmic weight, cratering the platform where Elise had just been.

The impact sent a wave of broken stone outward like shrapnel. Ilya raised a wall of ice just in time to shield herself, the edges of the explosion singing her cheek.

"It's shaping the whole damn pillar," she gasped, eyes darting upward.

The lion moved next.

Its body melded with its own pillar in a blur of stone and heat, merging seamlessly into a column of feral momentum. The entire structure compacted, shrinking and twisting into a jagged, spear-like shape, then launched.

It tore through the air like a missile, trailing fragments of burning rock. Gine ducked under the first pass, rolled, and drew her pistols, unloading a flurry of glowing rounds at the hurtling projectile.

The bullets hit, some cracked as the surface, but the pillar simply curved midair like a living beast, rebounding and sweeping across the battlefield again, lower this time.

"What the hell!?" she growled, sprinting. "The pillar is the monster!"

The phoenix let out a shriek, and its wings stretched, until the entire pillar it perched on twisted beneath it. Obsidian bled into stone, and the column flared outward like the blooming of a flower, expanding rapidly in all directions.

Spikes.

Hundreds of black stone spikes erupted from the sides, razor-thin and spinning like saws. They detached mid-air, spiraling in all directions, carving arcs of red-hot death across the battlefield.

"Down!" Kenzo roared, plunging his arms into the ground. His golden aura flared bright, and a slab of rock was ripped from the ground, shielding the hunters nearest him from the deadly storm.

Still, one feather clipped a rogue, slicing his arm open to the bone.

"Ilya!" Kenzo shouted.

"I see it!"

Ice burst from her hands again, this time in jagged towers, rising like thorns to intercept the feather swarm. Stone screamed as metal met frost, shattering in midair. The counter worked, but it was temporary. The pillars weren't slowing down.

Elise had gritted teeth as she wrapped the healer's arm in a glowing band of energy. "The last one is moving."

Above them, the tortoise finally moved.

Its eyes blinked once, slow and old, and then the entire pillar groaned as it began to sink into the spire.

"What the hell...?" Gine began.

Then the ground beneath them lurched violently.

Chunks of the spire itself started to rise, sections of the platform bending, reshaping like soft clay. Massive ridges of earth unfurled upward, forming walls, canyons, crushing arms of jagged stone. The tortoise was merging its body into the battlefield itself.

"This whole damn place is alive," Elise said, voice tight with realization.

And then the dragon struck again.

Its pillar, now coiled in midair, darted down like a snake made of solid stone. But just before hitting, it split, forming dozens of stone tendrils mid-swing, each one slicing through the air like a horde of snakes.

Kenzo met it with a roar of his own, slamming his palm into the earth. Gold light exploded upward in a burst of kinetic force, parrying the tendrils, but not all of them.

One caught his shoulder.

He spun with the blow but landed hard, his knees cracking against the stone. As he looked up, the dragon pillar dived toward him, its flat base slammed into his chest, driving him through the wall behind.

"Ilya," Gine snapped, breath ragged, "freeze them. Slow them down!"

Ilya threw a hand skyward. Frost gathered in the air, forming dozens of tendrils that arced toward the pillars. They struck true, latching onto their surfaces, slowing their momentum for but a moment.

Gine dove through the chaos, rolled, and raised one arm. Her rifle hummed, then fired.

Thwoom!

A shockwave of pressure burst from her sniper rifle, as a bullet pierced through the air at hyper speed, aimed at the lion's spear-form as it twisted through the air again. The blast knocked it slightly off course, just enough for it to miss a group of tanks.

Kenzo pushed himself out of the wall. "Regroup!" he barked.

The hunters regrouped, forming a loose triangle in the eye of the chaos.

Above them, the four pillars wheeled and reshaped and circled, like living gods of stone and fury. The sky pulsed darker, the heartbeat of the dungeon now fully awake.