The Guardian System: The strongest Summoner's quest to save his family

But it didn't stay to fight the Demon-Lords. Its four eyes went back to the sky, found Reidar, and the creature flew again.

<What a persistent bastard!>

This was the problem. Against the Behemoth, Reidar had fought a creature that responded to annoyance—a simple beast that could be redirected by harassment or if he offered enough 'food' to it.

The Progenitor was nothing like that. It treated his summons as obstacles between itself and the real target, and it cleared those obstacles with a speed that made Reidar's chest tighten.

Every summon he sent to intercept bought him seconds at best, and they got killed, which meant Reidar's army was slowly getting decimated.

Through the haze of adrenaline, an unwelcome image arose in Reidar's mind: Jorik's face in that familiar sneer.

He could almost hear the bastard's voice, dripping with condescension. "Look at the great Reidar now. Running like a cornered rat from a creature he can't kill. Where's all that power you were so proud of?"

Reidar gritted his teeth.

The condor banked to avoid a piece of rubble getting through to him, and Reidar forced the thought away.

<I don't have time for this.>

The demon lords could slow the progenitor for a moment with concentrated fire, but the progenitor would kill two or three of them and resume the chase.

The Death Knights lasted even less time, and as they died, their summons vanished, preventing the Death Knight from joining the battle.

"This is not going well…"

Reidar kept the condor moving, circling wide over the battlefield while the Progenitor chased. But the progenitor was still smart despite being feral, and he changed tactics.

Instead of flying straight up at the condor, the creature sprinted along the ground at a speed that made it blur, covering hundreds of meters in the time it took Reidar to complete half a turn.

Then it launched itself from the top of a collapsed building, using the extra elevation to gain height, and its clawed hand came within five meters of the condor's tail feathers.

The progenitor was quick in the air, but he was even faster on the ground. However, with each jump he made, buildings collapsed.

Reidar pulled the bird into a climb so steep that his back pressed against the condor's feathers, and the creature's hand closed on empty air, but it was close enough for Reidar to have goosebumps.

"Fuck!"

At that point, he was sweating. His hands shook, and the adrenaline made his heart beat so hard he could feel it in his teeth.

The Progenitor was level 650, ninety-three levels above him, and one mistake was all it would take. One moment, and the condor was too slow, or Reidar reacted a fraction of a second too late, and the progenitor would reach him.

Through the Overmind consciousness, Reidar directed his remaining forces. He still had demon lords, death knights, specter kings, and thousands of undead engaged with the Behemoth to the northwest.

Pulling them away would mean the Behemoth would resume its march toward Kingsgate, and that would kill hundreds of thousands of people.

He couldn't do that. He had to fight the Progenitor with what he had near his current position—a fraction of his already depleted army.

<Around three thousand summons are in this area. The rest are keeping the Behemoth busy or fighting the remaining monsters in the city.>

Three thousand against a level 650 creature that ignored everything but him. The math was terrible.

<All units in this sector, engage the Progenitor. Rotate in waves and buy me time.>

The first wave hit the Progenitor from behind as it landed from another failed jump. A hundred Dread-Bastion Juggernauts charged, their shields raised and their Soul Feedback skill active.

The Progenitor turned and drove its fist through the first Juggernaut's shield, and the reflected damage bounced back as True Damage, but against a level 650 creature, the amount was negligible.

The Juggernaut exploded into fragments. A second and third died before the first one's remains had finished falling, and so did many more in the same fraction of a second it took Reidar to blink.

That thing was too strong, and the only thing that kept Reidar safe was the fact that, despite everything, the terror condor was still faster than the progenitor in the sky since they were made for that place.

Despite this, the mutated human's hunting strategies became increasingly sophisticated.

The rest of the summons surrounded the progenitor and forced it to deal with them before it could resume the chase. It dealt with them in twelve seconds.

A hundred Juggernauts were gone before a minute ended. But a minute gained was a minute more that Reidar used to gain distance.

The second wave was already moving—Ghost-Strike Inquisitors firing from rooftops, Bone-Reaver Berserkers charging from alleys, and a group of Primal Chimera-Colossi that hit the creature from the east with enough combined mass to stagger even a level 650 monster.

The Progenitor killed a Behemoth-Ape with a backhand that caved in the creature's skull, but a Hydra-Serpent wrapped around its legs and held on for three seconds before the Progenitor tore it apart.

Three seconds. Three more seconds of distance.

<It's not enough. I'm losing summons too fast, and the Progenitor isn't slowing down enough.>

Through the Overmind Consciousness, he could see the Behemoth. The creature was still to the northwest, still harassed by the bulk of his forces, but the harassment was weakening as the summons assigned to that task took losses without reinforcement.

And the Behemoth was getting closer.

<Closer?>

Reidar realized what was going on at that moment. The Behemoth was no longer targeting Kingsgate; it was drawn to them by the Progenitor's mana, which served as a beacon.

"This fucker is ignoring thousands of humans just because of a single target?!"

But it was clear. The progenitor at level 650 radiated more raw mana than any of Reidar's summons, and the Behemoth—a creature that fed on mana—was drawn toward the Progenitor.

<The Behemoth is less than two kilometers away. If it reaches this area while I'm fighting the Progenitor…>

Reidar would be caught between a level 763 monster and a level 650 monster, with a depleted army that was already failing to contain either.

The Progenitor picked up a chunk of rubble the size of a car and threw it. The projectile crossed the distance between the ground and the condor in less than a second, and Reidar had just enough time to lean the bird into a dive before the rubble passed through the space where they had been.

Wings beating, the condor shrieked and pulled out of the dive; the piece of stone kept rising before descending back to earth half a kilometer away.

<It took a liking to throwing things now.>

Another chunk came up, and then another. The Progenitor was calculating trajectories, leading the target the way a hunter leads a bird in flight.