The Extra is a Hero?-Chapter 334: GATES OF CRYSTAL
Chapter 332: Gates of Crystal
The tunnel leading to the Crystal Gates was no longer a passageway; it was a meat grinder.
Hundreds of Corrupted Silver Guards who were the Cultists wearing the stolen armor of the Elven elite—poured through the breach, a tide of black steel and purple mana.
They didn’t scream battle cries. They moved with the silent, fanatical coordination of a hive mind, their eyes glowing with the influence of the Rot.
Standing against them was a single boy with a shield and a girl who looked like she was carved from ice.
"Hold them back!" Maria ordered, her voice cutting through the din of battle. She didn’t look at the charging army. She was looking at the massive, glowing purple barrier sealing the Crystal Gate. "I need one minute to calculate the resonant frequency of the barrier."
"One minute?!" Chris Blackthorn shouted, slamming his tower shield into the ground. "That’s an eternity in tank time!"
A volley of arrows, tipped with explosive mana, rained down on them.
Chris hunkered down behind his shield. The Aegis Core slotted in the center hummed violently, turning a deep, angry orange.
BOOM. BOOM. CRACK.
The explosions rocked him, digging his boots into the stone floor. Smoke billowed around him, but the shield held.
"Kinetic Charge: 40%."
"I can do this," Chris gritted his teeth, sweat stinging his eyes. "I’m the wall. I’m the wall."
A wave of Cultists reached him. Spears thrust at the gaps in his armor. Swords hammered against the rim of his shield.
Chris didn’t just block; he fought back with the weight of a siege engine. He didn’t use a sword; his shield was the weapon.
"Shield Bash!"
He thrust his left arm forward. The Aegis Core released a pulse of stored kinetic energy.
CRUNCH.
The three Cultists in front of him were launched backward as if hit by a speeding truck. Their armor crumpled, and they flew into the ranks behind them, bowling over a dozen more soldiers.
"Come on!" Chris roared, the adrenaline finally overriding his fear. "Is that all you got?"
Behind him, Maria was in a trance.
The air around her was approaching absolute zero. The moisture in the tunnel froze instantly, creating a swirling vortex of diamond dust. She wasn’t casting a combat spell; she was casting a structural disassembly spell.
[Target: Void Barrier (Rank A)]
[Structure: Mana-Weave]
[Weakness: Thermal Stress]
"The barrier creates heat to sustain itself," Maria murmured, her eyes tracking the flow of mana like code. "If I invert the temperature rapidly..."
"Maria!" Chris yelled. "Big guy incoming!"
The ground shook.
One of the Obsidian Siege Golems—the one Maria hadn’t bowled over—was charging. It was missing an arm, blown off by Chris’s earlier reflection, but it was still a fifteen-foot tower of angry stone. It raised its remaining fist, aimed directly at Maria’s unprotected head.
Chris was engaged with five swordsmen. He couldn’t disengage.
"Maria, move!"
Maria didn’t move. She didn’t even look up.
"Less talking," she said, her voice cold. "More tanking."
Chris screamed in frustration. He ignored the swordsmen stabbing at his sides. He activated his boots’ [Earth Anchor] skill.
"Skill: Intercept!"
He threw himself sideways, sliding across the stone floor, and slammed his shield between Maria and the descending Golem fist.
CLANG.
The sound was deafening. The impact drove Chris’s knees into the floor, cracking the stone. His health bar dropped by 30\% in a single hit.
[System Warning: Right Arm Fracture Detected.]
"Kinetic Charge: 120% (Overload)."
The Aegis Core was screaming. It was glowing a blinding white-hot.
"Too... heavy..." Chris gasped, blood leaking from his nose.
Maria finally looked up. She saw the Golem looming over them. She saw Chris holding the weight of a mountain to protect her.
She didn’t smile. But her eyes narrowed.
"Acceptable performance," she whispered.
She reached out and touched the Golem’s stone leg.
[Skill: Flash Freeze - Molecular Halt]
She dumped her entire mana pool into the construct.
The effect was instant. The black stone of the Golem turned white. The magical heat driving its core was snuffed out. The stone became brittle, losing all structural integrity.
"Chris," Maria said. "Release."
Chris didn’t ask questions. He triggered the release mechanism on the Aegis Core.
"AEGIS BLAST!"
He shoved the shield upward.
The stored energy of a hundred arrows and a Golem strike erupted in a cone of pure force.
SHATTER.
The frozen Golem didn’t just break; it disintegrated. It turned into a cloud of icy dust that blew backward, stripping the flesh from the Cultists standing behind it.
__________________
Silence reigned in the tunnel for a heartbeat. Then, the remaining Cultists looked at the pile of dust that used to be their tank. They looked at the boy with the glowing shield and the girl wreathed in frost.
They hesitated.
"My turn," Maria said.
She turned to the massive Crystal Gate and the purple barrier protecting it.
"The barrier is thermally compromised," she stated. "The Golem’s destruction lowered the ambient temperature by forty degrees."
She pointed her staff at the gate.
"Shatter."
She fired a single, small icicle. It looked pathetic compared to the chaos before.
It hit the center of the purple barrier.
TINK.
A spiderweb crack appeared. Then another. Then thousands.
The barrier, brittle from the extreme cold, couldn’t sustain its own mana tension. It collapsed like a glass window hit by a brick.
The shards of the barrier fell, exposing the Crystal Gate.
"Chris," Maria said, leaning heavily on her staff, her face pale from mana exhaustion. "Open the door."
Chris grinned, despite the blood running down his chin. He charged.
"Shield Charge!"
He slammed into the physical gates. Without the magical barrier to reinforce them, the crystal shattered under the impact of the Aegis Core.
The gates fell inward.
Sunlight—real, artificial sunlight from the Upper City—spilled into the tunnel.
We were in.
High above, clinging to the rough bark of the World Tree’s trunk, I watched the explosion below. A plume of white frost and dust erupted from the base of the city.
"Team A has breached," I said into the wind, checking my wrist-comp. "Right on schedule."
Elara Moonshade was clinging to the bark next to me, her knuckles white. We were three thousand feet up, suspended only by gravity magic and sheer nerve. The wind whipped her cloak around her.
"They did it," Elara breathed. "Valen will be moving his forces to the gate."
"Which leaves the Throne Room exposed," I said. "And the Heart-Root unguarded."
I tapped my comms.
"Leon, Selena. The door is open. How’s the plumbing?"
__________________
Team B: The Heart-Root
Deep in the service tunnels, Leon Lionheart was covered in slime.
"Disgusting," Leon muttered, wiping purple sludge from his armor. "Why does saving the world always involve sewers?"
Selena walked ahead of him, her feet barely touching the muck. She was spotless.
"This is not a sewer," Selena corrected. "It is the vascular system of the World Tree. The sludge is necrotic sap mixed with Abyssal waste."
"That doesn’t make me feel better," Leon sighed.
They reached the Heart-Root Chamber. It was a massive, circular room dominated by a single, pulsing root as thick as a house.
Attached to the root were massive black iron leeches—pumps that were throbbing rhythmically, sucking the life out of the tree.
Guarding the pumps were four Corrupted Dryads and a squad of Cultist assassins.
"Targets acquired," Selena whispered. "Objective: Sever the pumps."
Leon drew his sword. The golden light of his aura illuminated the dark room.
"Hey!" Leon shouted, stepping into the open. "Get away from the Tree!"
The Cultists turned.
"It’s the Hero!" one of them hissed. "Kill him!"
They charged.
"Selena, go for the pumps!" Leon ordered. "I’ll hold them off!"
"Inefficient," Selena noted. "If I engage the pumps, you will be overwhelmed by a ratio of 12 to 1."
"Trust me!" Leon smiled, a genuine, confident smile. "I’m the protagonist, remember?"
He didn’t wait for her answer. He charged into the group of enemies.
[Lionheart Sword Style: Form 4 - Roaring Mane]
He spun, his sword releasing a shockwave of golden fire that knocked the assassins back.
Selena watched him for a microsecond. Her eyes flashed with calculations.
"Tank aggro established," she whispered.
She vanished into the shadows.
While Leon fought like a lion in the center of the room, drawing every eye and every blade, Selena moved like a phantom.
She appeared on top of the first iron pump.
SLASH.
Her scythe severed the connection hose. Purple sludge sprayed out, followed by a blast of pure white steam.
HISSSSSS.
The World Tree groaned—a sound of relief.
One pump down. Three to go.
----------------
Back on the trunk, I looked up. The Throne Room balcony was only two hundred feet above us.
"Ready?" I asked Elara.
"No," she admitted. " But let’s go."
I grabbed her arm.
"Void Step."
We blinked through space, bypassing the sheer cliff face.
We materialized on the balcony of the Throne Room. The wind here was fierce, howling through the silver spires.
The balcony doors were open. Inside, the Throne Room was dim, lit only by the sickly purple glow of the barrier projector sitting behind the throne.
And sitting on the throne was Regent Valen.
He wasn’t panicked. He wasn’t running.
He was waiting.
He looked up as we entered, his eyes completely black. Veins of rot pulsed under his skin, turning his face into a roadmap of corruption. He didn’t look like an Elf anymore. He looked like a vessel that was nearly full.
"Welcome, Michael Willson," Valen’s voice rasped, sounding like two stones grinding together. "I was wondering when the ’Anomaly’ would arrive."
I drew my dagger.
"It’s over, Valen," I said. "The gate is breached. The pumps are being cut. Your barrier is coming down."
Valen smiled. His teeth were stained black.
"The barrier was never meant to keep you out," Valen said, standing up. His body elongated, his robes tearing as wood and thorn burst from his skin.
"It was meant to keep it in."
The air in the Throne Room grew heavy.
[Boss Encounter Initiated]
[Target: Valen, The Avatar of Rot]
[Rank: S (Ascending)]
"I am not the Regent anymore," the monster roared, growing to ten feet tall, his arm turning into a massive spear of blackened wood. "I am the Garden!"
"Elara," I whispered, gripping my dagger. "Don’t get hit. He regenerates."
"I know," Elara said, nocking an arrow.
"Let’s prune this weed."
(To be Continued)
