Creating A Succubus Army In A Fantasy World!

The Eclipse Guardian stepped forward, and the very floor seemed to shiver in response.

It was like the hallway itself was nervous. This towering brute of a creature stood at nearly three meters tall, wrapped in ancient armor that looked carved from obsidian and forged in the heart of a dying star.

Its helmet was smooth and black with a ring of glowing silver circling it like a miniature moon. It didn’t carry a sword. Or a spear. Or even a regular weapon.

No, this thing lifted its hand, clenched a fist, and the gravity changed.

Bam!

Instantly, Creed’s feet felt fifty times heavier.

"Oh-ho. Oh this guy’s a cheater," Creed grunted as his knees buckled slightly. "We’ve got a walking black hole with fashion sense. Love it."

Tierra cursed as she staggered sideways, her daggers slipping from her fingers.

They didn’t fall straight down. Instead, they shot into the floor like bullets and embedded themselves halfway into the stone.

Lilith’s scythe twisted unnaturally in her grip, tugging downward like it had suddenly fallen in love with the dirt.

"Gravity manipulator!" Tierra shouted, now crouched with one palm pressed to the wall for balance. "He’s messing with the pull around our weapons and us. We’re his puppets!"

Creed frowned. This was his first battle against a gravity manipulator and it was even harder than he had expected!

The Eclipse Guardian didn’t laugh or roar. It just raised its other hand and suddenly reversed gravity.

Swoosh!

The team shot into the air like popped popcorn. Creed barely twisted his body in time to avoid slamming headfirst into the ceiling, flipping in midair like a drunk gymnast.

Lilith didn’t bother. She hit the ceiling feet-first, kicked off like a professional parkour artist, and slammed her scythe straight into the Guardian’s chest.

Bang!

The impact echoed like a gong, but the Guardian didn’t budge. Instead, it waved its hand again, and now gravity shifted sideways.

"WhaaaAAAAA—" Creed’s shout elongated as he, Lilith, and Tierra were thrown like frisbees across the hallway, smashing into the wall like bugs on a windshield.

It wasn’t even like getting punched. It was like the whole world decided to slap them at once!

Creed peeled his face from the wall, groaning. The Eclipse Guardian hovered forward, gliding slightly off the floor, every step pulsing like it was controlling invisible strings.

Creed’s eyes narrowed. This wasn’t a brute, it was a tactician. It was playing with them like a kid shaking a snow globe, and it wasn’t even trying hard.

"Alright, enough of this nonsense," Creed said, rising to his feet and clenching his fists.

"Lilith, you’re gonna have to be my air support. Tierra, can you create any zones with neutral gravity?"

Tierra nodded, gritting her teeth as she weaved her fingers through the space. "I can make small bubbles, but maintaining them against its pull is going to drain me fast."

"Do it anyway. Make me a path."

Then the Guardian charged.

It didn’t run. It fell forward, accelerating like a meteor with legs, using its own mass and momentum to become a wrecking ball of doom.

Lilith barely rolled away, grunting as she summoned lightning through her scythe and launched a bolt into its back.

The electricity crackled then imploded onto itself, sucked into a dense gravitational point on the Guardian’s shoulder.

It had tiny black holes scattered across its body, devouring energy and redirecting attacks!

"Oh come on!" Lilith shouted. "That’s cheating!"

Tierra clicked her tongue. "It’s not cheating if you’re built like a small planet!"

Creed grinned, teeth flashing. "Time to level the playing field."

With a flick of his wrist, he activated the brown ring on his finger and vanished. Invisible. Weightless. Untouchable for just a few seconds.

The ring made him disappear completely from existence. It was a miraculous ability.

It was enough to sprint through the collapsing gravitational zones and slip behind the Guardian, reappearing with his obsidian spear slashing across its ankle!

CRACK!

The blade bit in—not deep enough to cripple, but enough to stagger.

The Guardian twisted around, and Creed ducked, gravity suddenly flipping to horizontal. He felt his whole body being pulled toward the wall like a vacuum had opened beside him.

Lilith flew through the air in an arc of lightning, her wings flapping desperately in a bid to remain afloat, her scythe spinning like a circular saw.

Tierra isolated her with spatial bubbles mid-flight, giving her a gravity-neutral "swing path" straight toward the Guardian’s core.

She hit like thunder.

Buzz!

The impact echoed like a gong in a cathedral, and for a moment, the Guardian’s gravitational field flickered just long enough for Creed to activate his Freedom Path.

Something deep inside his chest pulsed. Not the feral, sharp beat of his Killing Path since this was smoother, calmer and yet infinitely wild.

It whispered of wide skies, unchained winds, and a life where no rule could hold him!

Even gravity!

He lunged again, spear glimmering with intent and paths, every step fueled by the rhythm of escape.

Nothing could chain him down, not even gravity! And in that moment, something clicked inside him.

The second pulse.

He felt it. Not just in his muscles or mind, but in his soul. Like something unseen had tugged on the leash wrapped around his neck, and he’d bitten through it.

He was close. So close to his first Freedom Art as well!

He would soon comprehend two arts!

"Keep it distracted!" he yelled.

Tierra obeyed, throwing a space blade right under the Guardian’s next step, which caused it to stumble.

Lilith used the opening to jam her electrified scythe into its hip joint and released a violent surge of lightning.

This time, the gravitational field didn’t eat it. It overloaded, causing a tiny shockwave that made the Guardian stumble back.

Creed went in for the final blow.

With a roar, he leapt, spear in hand, body flickering in and out of visibility as he used the ring in short bursts to dodge sudden gravity pulls.

He reappeared above the Guardian’s shoulder and slammed the spear into one of its glowing eyes.

The explosion was immediate.

The Guardian crumbled with a seismic groan, crashing onto the ground and sending waves of displaced gravity outward.

Lilith barely avoided being squished by its elbow, and Tierra used a last-second spatial portal to teleport herself a few feet away from falling debris.

Creed stood panting, spear smoking in his hand.

Then, slowly, he looked at his chest, feeling both the pulse of his Killing Path and the lighter thrum of Freedom within him.

"I’m gonna master both," he whispered. "No... I have to."

Lilith limped over. "Please tell me we don’t have to fight a Momentum Guardian next."

Tierra snorted. "At least we’ve still got our looks."

Creed chuckled, then turned toward the gate that just opened up behind the Guardian’s corpse. "Come on," he said. "That was just round one."

Although the battle had been tougher than expected, it had also been quite fun. It had also given them experience on how to defeat a similar opponent in the future.

The key was to find an anchor strong enough to resist the gravity effects someway.

.....

30 Minutes later...

The air smelled like burnt metal and roasted mushrooms, oddly enough, and the walls were stained with pulsing brown energy that slowly faded back into the black stone.

Creed, Lilith, and Tierra sat sprawled out on the cold obsidian floor, backs against one another, panting like dogs that had just outrun a stampede of hungry rhinos.

Creed dropped his spear with a clink, his hair sticking to his forehead.

He tilted his head back and let out a hoarse laugh, the kind that came when you weren’t sure if you were celebrating or just going insane. "Alright," he wheezed.

"Whoever designed that thing needs therapy. Deep therapy."

Lilith lay on her back with her scythe across her stomach, staring up at the shadowy ceiling like it held the secrets of the universe.

"That thing was cheating."

Tierra was curled up cross-legged, she looked half-dead, like someone had slapped a sleep spell on her and then forced her to run a marathon through mud.

Her face seemed to say, ’I want a refund. I didn’t sign up for a beast that fights by... deleting parts of reality.’

Because that’s exactly what the second Eclipse Beast had done.

It hadn’t roared or charged like a normal monster. Oh no, that would’ve been merciful.

This one had appeared with silence and had begun folding the space around them like it was crumpling paper.

It had existed like a glitch in reality, phasing in and out of view, and everywhere it passed, the world ceased to work properly.

Floors vanished. Gravity reversed. Time stuttered like a scratched record. And it didn’t even attack in the traditional sense.

It would just walk through you, and your own senses would betray you; your eyes lying, your ears whispering fake sounds, your limbs moving in directions your brain didn’t authorize.

It was like fighting a mirage made of mirrors and regret.

The only way they’d even managed to land a hit was through an absurd strategy that could’ve only come from desperate teamwork.

The second throne fragment had appeared then, hovering above the beast’s steaming corpse like a golden prize emerging from a nightmare.

But now, with the adrenaline fading and the ache in their bones catching up, Creed finally felt the weight of everything settle onto his shoulders like a ten-ton blanket.

He looked down at the fragment—simple, palm-sized, and warm with power. And yet it felt like a mountain. Two down. One more to go. Then the throne. Then...

Then what?

This floor... this entire trial... it wasn’t something normal people could pass.

Hell, even he was barely scraping through, and he had the cheat of bonded summons, three Paths, and a combat power that was simply obscene for his stage.

If someone without his edge had tried this trial?

Dead. First Eclipse Beast.

And just as that somber thought crossed his mind, the chamber buzzed through the badge on his chest.

DING.

[SYSTEM ANNOUNCEMENT: Nicholas Grey has activated his throne. Throne Manifestation Complete. Countdown to Trial Completion: 10 minutes.]

The room plunged into silence.

Creed’s heart dropped into his stomach, bounced off his liver, and landed somewhere around his spleen. He blinked slowly, turning his head to look at the girls.

Lilith was already halfway to her feet. "He what?"

Tierra’s eyes widened. "Ten minutes?! That smug ice-prick was already that far ahead?!"

Creed surged upright, his body screaming in protest. "We have two fragments. He must’ve found the third while we were dealing with... whatever the hell that thing was. And now he’s beat us to the throne."

He didn’t say it, but the implication hung in the air like a blade at their necks; if he finishes the countdown, he wins the trial first.

They had ten minutes to find him.

Ten minutes to stop him.

Ten minutes to steal that victory back!

Without even a word, all three bolted from the chamber, moving with new energy, new desperation.

They weren’t walking anymore; they were hunting. Creed’s mind ran through maps, patterns, directions they hadn’t explored.

They had to find Nicholas. They had to interrupt the throne ritual. Or it was over.

But as they stepped into the main hallway...

CLANG.

Hundreds of footsteps.

Creed froze as the corridor ahead filled with soldiers in black and red armor. Their visors glowed crimson.

Their armor looked imperial, forged from black steel etched with frost patterns. Spears. Swords. Shields. Bows. An army.

And at the front stood a knight a head taller than the rest, his helmet carved to resemble a dragon’s skull.

He raised his blade, pointed it straight at Creed, and the hallway echoed with one loud declaration: ƒгeeweɓn૦vel.com

"By order of the Arena Lord, none shall pass."

Creed’s lips curled into a grin. "Oh, so we’re playing tower defense now? Cute."