Kaiju No.8: Monarch of Shadows

The cavern floor became a living tsunami of death. A thousand tons of muscle, chitin, and primal rage charged forward, a wave designed to pulverize anything in its path. At its head, the three S-Class guardians were battering rams of divine destruction. One was a hulking, six-limbed behemoth covered in thick, bone-like plates. Another was a serpentine horror that slithered at an impossible speed, its maw dripping with a neurotoxic venom that sizzled on the rock. The third was a winged, moth-like creature, its wings shedding a glittering, corrosive dust.

Faced with an army that could consume a nation, the Monarchess simply laughed, a sound of pure, unadulterated joy.

[Let's dance, my King!] she roared, and her power exploded from her.

She didn't throw a fireball. She became the fire. A nova of white-hot flame erupted from her body, a spherical shockwave of incineration that vaporized the first few hundred Kaiju in the charging horde. They didn't even have time to scream before they were reduced to superheated ash.

The concussive force of the blast sent hundreds more flying, their bodies scorched and broken. She had cleared a space a quarter-mile wide with a single, casual pulse of her energy.

"Impressive," Jin-Woo noted, standing calmly in the eye of her fiery storm, completely untouched. "But messy."

[Show me your 'clean' method, then, clever Shadow!] she shot back, her eyes blazing with exhilaration.

Jin-Woo raised a single hand. "Arise."

It was not a command shouted in the heat of battle. It was a quiet, absolute statement of fact. And the shadows answered.

But they did not rise from his own shadow. They rose from the shadows of the enemy.

From the shadow of every single Kaiju in the charging horde, a perfect, dark duplicate of itself clawed its way into existence. Thousands of Shadow Kaiju, their eyes glowing with a malevolent violet light, stood up and turned on their living counterparts.

The battlefield devolved into absolute, schizophrenic chaos. The Kaiju army, once a unified force, was now fighting a civil war against itself. A wolf-like beast would lunge, only to have its throat torn out by its own perfectly mirrored shadow. An insectoid hunter would slash with its claws, only to be impaled by an identical set of shadowy blades.

It was not a battle. It was a harvest. For every Kaiju that fell, Jin-Woo's power swelled, and its shadow rose to join his legion. His army was growing exponentially with every passing second.

The Monarchess watched, her fiery grin widening with feral appreciation. [Subtle. Cruel. I love it.]

With the lesser Kaiju occupied, only three primary threats remained: the S-Class Praetorian Guards. They were intelligent enough to ignore the pandemonium and focus on the two beings at the center of it all.

The six-limbed bone titan charged the Monarchess, its fists, each the size of a truck, raised to pulverize her. The Monarchess met its charge with a searing grace. She didn't try to match its brute force. She flowed around its clumsy punches, her hands, wreathed in white-hot flame, tracing lines across its bone armor. Everywhere she touched, the armor plating glowed red, then white, then melted away like wax, exposing the vulnerable flesh beneath.

Meanwhile, the serpentine horror and the corrosive moth converged on Jin-Woo.

The serpent struck first, its massive head darting forward, its fangs aiming to inject its deadly neurotoxin. Jin-Woo didn't move. Just as the fangs were about to sink into his flesh, two figures materialized from his shadow.

Igris, with his violet greatsword, met the serpent's lunge. He didn't try to block it. He used its own momentum against it, deflecting its head downward. At the same time, Beru, chittering with manic glee, shot forward, his scythe-like claws sinking deep into the serpent's giant, lidless eye. The beast shrieked, a sound that shook the cavern, thrashing wildly.

[A big worm for the King! I will make a fine necklace from its vertebrae!] Beru psychically screeched.

Overhead, the corrosive moth beat its wings, showering the area in a glittering, deadly dust. The dust fell on Igris and Beru, and their shadow forms began to sizzle and dissolve. It was an anti-magic, anti-ethereal agent.

Jin-Woo looked up at the moth, a flicker of annoyance in his eyes. "A nuisance."

He activated his newly acquired power. The blue markings on his back flared. His flesh shifted and tore, not with pain, but with purpose. Two large, bat-like wings, forged from the same sleek, blue-black biological material as Kaiju No. 8's carapace, erupted from his shoulder blades.

With a single, powerful beat of his new wings, he launched himself into the air, a dark angel ascending. He shot past the cloud of corrosive dust and appeared directly above the moth.

The moth, sensing the new threat, fired a concentrated beam of corrosive energy from its multifaceted eyes.

Jin-Woo didn't dodge. The blue markings on his arm glowed, and his forearm morphed into a wide, thick shield of Kaiju armor. He met the beam head-on. The corrosive energy splashed against his shield, hissing and steaming, but it could not penetrate the dense, Monarch-infused biological plating.

He flew through the beam, his other hand morphing into a long, sharp, obsidian blade. He plunged the blade deep into the moth's soft, furry thorax. The creature let out a pathetic, whistling cry and its light faded, its massive body falling from the sky.

He had taken down an S-Class threat in less than ten seconds.

Down below, the Monarchess finished her own dance. She plunged her entire arm, wreathed in a vortex of plasma-hot fire, into the bone titan's chest, seizing its multiple hearts and incinerating them from within. The titan shuddered, then collapsed into a mountain of superheated bone and cooked meat.

Igris and Beru, meanwhile, had systematically dismantled the blinded, thrashing serpent, their combined might too much for the wounded beast.

Silence fell upon the cavern. All that remained was the aftermath. A field of dead Kaiju, their shadows now standing silently at attention. And the two victorious Monarchs, standing amidst the carnage.

The Monarchess turned to Jin-Woo, her chest heaving slightly, her eyes glowing with the thrill of battle. Her fiery hair was a chaotic storm, her obsidian armor was slick with melted monster gore. She looked feral, magnificent, and utterly alive.

[That,] she breathed, her voice a husky purr, [was the most exquisite fun I've had in a century.]

She glided toward him, her gaze locking onto the magnificent, dark wings that were now slowly retracting back into his body. She reached out, her fingers tracing the edge of one of the receding wings.

[You are full of the most wonderful, terrible surprises, my Shadow King,] she whispered, her voice a low, seductive promise.

She leaned in, her face just inches from his. The heat from her body was a palpable wave. The scent of victory and ozone and brimstone was intoxicating.

[The nest is broken. The army is dead. Now… for our celebration.]