Chapter 271: The Immovable Colossus
"WHO DARE TRESPASS UPON MY DOMAIN?!" roared a voice so deafening it shook the foundations of the earth.
The rising rocky mass was no conventional beast; it was a primordial turtle the size of an entire mountain range. The full peak Kellar and Little Green had watched rise minutes earlier was merely its primary shell. It possessed colossal proportions, matching the scale of the Leviathan, yet unlike the sea serpent, something about this creature made it appear less threatening.
It moved slowly. Every step, every shift of its massive rocky head executed frame by frame, at a comical pace.
Kellar, taking in the scene as Little Green was forced down toward the stone ground, let out a laugh.
"You call this the worst possible moment?" Kellar remarked with a smirk, weighing the Overlord Club in his hands. "I see nothing more than a giant target to dominate! I’ll bet if I riddle it time and again with my Garnis cannons, I’ll have it begging for mercy."
Little Green hit the ground heavily and lowered its head, embarrassed by its master’s reaction.
"Why are you so afraid of it?" asked Kellar, raising an eyebrow.
"Its ability is something none of us can fight in the sky..." explained the elemental bird in a remorseful tone. "It is not a matter of its speed, Master."
"Don’t talk nonsense, let’s fly out of here before we stir up a mess," commanded Kellar, making to remount.
"I cannot, Master," replied Little Green, beating its wings uselessly against the atmosphere. "Its passive skill forbids any creature from flying in its presence. The air in its domain turns as dense as lead."
Kellar came to a halt. He observed the mass of stone that had barely finished rising a couple of kilometers away, analyzing the situation. Then, he turned his head toward the white cat perched atop his shoulder.
"What do you think, Freyja?" asked the shaman her. "Can you kill it?"
Freyja offered him a look dripping with mockery, letting out a huff before answering within the shaman’s mind:
"There is nothing I cannot slice through... However, it will take me an immense amount of time. Its hide and rock shell are thick; I won’t be able to land a single fatal blow until I can carve through it layer by layer."
Realizing that the aerial route was sealed by the Dread Turtle’s suppression field, a pang of concern crossed Kellar’s face.
"If we cannot fly, then we run!" commanded the shaman.
Kellar bolted forward at top speed across the craggy terrain, propelled by his physical constitution. Yet as he glanced back to ensure his mount was following, he came to a halt: Little Green was stumbling across the stone ground. The elemental bird, whose towering forty-meter wingspan rendered it the sovereign of the skies, was comically clumsy on foot. It lacked the coordination to run on its talons, tripping over boulders and face-planting hard against the dirt time and again. Its scale, which once commanded awe, had become a hindrance.
Kellar sighed, walked back, and patted its feathers.
"Easy... just walk slowly," spoke Kellar in a soothing tone, letting out a chuckle. "We will reach our destination. Besides, that thing won’t catch us even if it tried."
A couple of kilometers away, the monstrous Karkadann appeared to be scanning the canyons for them. Yet owing to its pace, it merely rotated its massive stone head at an agonizing speed, having not taken a single actual stride to intercept them.
Observing the colossus’s sluggishness, a scheme struck Kellar’s mind. He pressed his right hand against the amulet on his chest, attempting to channel his mana to bind with the tribe’s Totem.
"Come on, come on... it can’t possibly be out of range," muttered he under his breath, focusing his resolve.
After a few seconds, he felt the resonance of the Totem locking onto his call. A sigh of relief escaped his lips. Without wasting a moment, he utilized the spiritual link to establish communication with Brak and Lennis.
On the other end of the connection, the mental imagery of the rocky titan broadcast straight from Kellar’s mind struck the commanders’ consciousness head-on.
In the village council chamber, Brak and Lennis froze in their tracks. Panic seized their features as they witnessed the scale of Karkadann—a beast seemingly capable of flattening settlements under the weight of its feet. Yet the true dread stemmed not from the visual of the monster, but from the directive Kellar issued through the telepathic link moments later.
"That is suicide, Great Shaman!" roared Brak across the link, his voice trembling with a mixture of terror and desperation never before seen in the veteran captain. "That thing is a walking catastrophe! We cannot engage such a stone deity!"
"Shaman, please reconsider!" interceded Lennis, her face pale as she clenched her fists. "Luring that colossus toward our border is madness!"
Kellar, walking at a steady pace beside Little Green, knitted his brow and thundered back with a voice that echoed through his generals’ minds like a tempest:
"Are you afraid?! Are these the men of the Overlord tribe?! We carry the blessing of the Great Bear God with us! What demon do you fear?!"
The shaman’s rebuke crashed over them like a wave of ice, smothering their panic and rekindling the tribe’s warrior pride.
Kellar’s command was absolute: they were to mobilize the heavy artillery immediately, gather every available Garnis cannon, load reinforced ordnance, and march at full speed toward the heights of the Wind Mountains. He would personally lead the sluggish turtle to that location, setting up a firetrap to crush the titan in a barrage.
Yet upon severing the spiritual link and refocusing his gaze ahead, Kellar noticed that the rock turtle wasn’t even bothering to take a stride toward them, content to rotate its massive head in the distance.
"If that slab of stone won’t walk on its own, we’ll just have to give it a reason," muttered the shaman, unslinging the rifle strapped to Little Green’s saddle.
Kellar loaded the wind bullet and dropped a knee onto the stone ground, aligning the scope toward the moving landmass. With a target the size of a mountain range, missing was impossible.
BOOM!
The shot echoed through the canyon with the force of a thunderclap. The projectile cut through the air and slammed square into the side of the beast’s head.
The colossus froze for a split second. Its eyes, the size of magma lakes, locked directly onto the shaman’s silhouette.
"HOW DARE YOU...?!!" roared a voice, so immense it split the rocky ground for miles around.
Karkadann, consumed by rage after being struck by such an insignificant creature, took its first true stride. The earth shuddered in an earthquake as its four pillar-like legs dug into the stone. To Kellar’s shock, as the turtle flew into a fury, its movement accelerated drastically; fueled by rage, each of its strides covered hundreds of meters in a fraction of a second.
Kellar froze for a brief instant as he watched the living mountain charge straight toward them with momentum.
"Holy shit!" barked Kellar, slinging the rifle back over his shoulder. "Turns out it’s not as slow as it looks! Let’s get out of here!"