The King's Beloved

[Music Recommendation: "The Ancient City" by Masayoshi Soken (Final Fantasy XIV OST) - available in Spotify or Youtube]

Stretching to more than a kilometer in diameter from the shrine, the miasma devoured the land surrounding Caligo\'s shrine in darkness. From afar, you could already see different kinds of monsters lurking around. The aggressive ones who saw them coming even flew towards them to attack.

The team quickly subdued the aggressive monsters and flew towards the shrine before anything else followed them. Ducis opened its door, and as soon as he did, monsters came out one after another. Elliot called three of his Guardians—Terra, Saburra, and Ventus to help wipe out the monsters.

Like the last shrine, the monsters were endless, so the team went straight to the innermost place where Caligo\'s dark purple crystal obelisk stood. A huge mist of concentrated miasma was at the center once more, and out of it came another humongous monster—a Dark Basilisk with the long, scaled body of a snake, and sharp fangs covered in poison that revealed itself when it hissed at them.

"It\'s a Basilisk—just like Caligo," Rania said as she observed the monster\'s body. "The only difference is the scales since it\'s darker, and the eyes that don\'t glow like Guardians."

"Do you see that black smoke you mentioned anywhere?" Elliot asked.

"Yes, it\'s there—circling around him. But this time, it\'s not linking unto anyone."

"It seems like what Selena said is true. And since Caligo is not here, there\'s no one to try and take over."

"Great job, Selena," Clavis turned to his wife and smiled at her, obviously proud of her remarkable wit.

Selena blushed, feeling shy of the compliment.

"I didn\'t do much. It\'s just—well, maybe because I used to play lots of role-playing games, and those kinds of things happen there so…," she muttered to herself.

"Thank you, Selena," Rania and Elliot thanked her.

"Aww… Geez. You\'re making me blush more."

"Ha-ha-ha-ha," they chuckled.

"Alright, let\'s fight this monster."

And so, the team started to fight the Dark Basilisk that absorbed 20 years\' amount of spiritual energy from the shrine\'s crystal obelisk. Compared to the Dark Grypus at Fauna\'s shrine, this enemy was more powerful and very cunning with its attack. It would use a dark mist to blackout their vision that even if they used magical trace, it wouldn\'t work on the mist, making it hard for them to attack since they couldn\'t see anything. It would also randomly spew out poison, which turned anything it touched into acid. What\'s more, its scales were too thick that they needed highly concentrated magic attacks just to scratch it a bit.

Due to this, the team split into three—one team concentrated on casting wind magic to clear out the whole area every time it cast out the dark mist or protect the team from the venom attacks; the second team acted as a decoy and attacked the Dark Basilisk, gaining its attention and buying time; while the third team concentrated their spiritual energy in creating highly concentrated attacks that could penetrate the monster\'s scales.

Selena and Illuminaire belonged to the first team, Luna, Ducis, and Rania to the second, and Elliot and Clavis to the third since they\'re the most skilled in magic. The battle went on for hours once more since the Dark Basilisk was too good at evading as well. Elliot and Clavis focused on damaging its lower area until finally, they managed to cut off a third of its body. What they didn\'t foresee was how it could regenerate quickly!

"What the—after all those hours of trying to chop it off, it just regenerates that fast?" Selena complained after witnessing the tragedy before her eyes.

"Urgh… this strategy is useless," Clavis seconded. "Maybe we need to do it like how you did at the last shrine, your majesty."

"Alright, I\'ll try. You all go ahead and distract it."

Everyone agreed and did as planned. But then, the Dark Basilisk was more sensitive to energies than the others. It was just half an hour in, and it already detected Elliot even if he hid his body and aura. Noticing him, the Dark Basilisk launched a different attack and threw large dark spears at his direction right after it created a dark mist and spewed out venoms. Selena and Illuminaire didn\'t have the time to protect Elliot, so instead, he had to move out of his position, thus canceling the initial amount of energy he focused on.

"Tsk. This won\'t work like this," Elliot thought. "What else can we do?"

Then, he decided to call the other Guardians from his sword, and they all came to join the fight. Hours passed by, and even they had troubles wounding the enemy.

"Haah… Haaah… Haah…" everyone started to get exhausted from trying to fight the Dark Basilisk.

They tried to wound it and cut its body, but it only regenerated. They tried to do it all at once, but still, it regenerated. Elliot\'s "Disintegrate" skill would have been great, but then, the monster would feel it and attack him. If anyone tried to defend him from the attack, it would only create another attack that was hard to block. On and on, their fight continued with no signs of ending.

"Should we fall back for now, and rethink a strategy?" Rania asked Elliot.

"But what strategy could we still use?" Luna added. "Elliot can\'t use too much spiritual energy, or he might destroy Ducis\' absolute barrier and further destroy this already dying world. And in order to use \'Disintegrate,\' he needs to slowly focus his energy to create a highly concentrated one, but then the enemy would see him every single time."

Elliot pondered for a moment. Then, as if a brilliant idea crossed his mind, he answered them, "We need a surprise attack. One it can\'t see, detect, or even run from."

"How?"

"… Caligo."

Rania immediately understood what he meant. And so, she prepared the bubble-like barrier made of holy energy and even filled the whole area with it to ensure that the Dark Basilisk wouldn\'t try to do anything to Caligo once he arrived.

On the other hand, Elliot communicated with Caligo in his mind, much to his delight. Another hour of the exhausting battle took place between the team and the Dark Basilisk until…

Caligo teleported behind the Dark Basilisk, carrying a massive energy ball made of his highly concentrated, dark purple spiritual energy on his hands. The team created chains that fixed the enemy in its place while Caligo threw the energy ball to him and shouted.

"Obliterate!"

"HIIIISSSSSSSSS!"

The energy ball successfully landed on the Dark Basilisk\'s body, penetrating its thick scales and turning its flesh into ashes, unable to regenerate.

Seeing it finally defeated, the team shouted and jumped in joy. Then, they all fell to the ground, exhausted from the whole fight.

"We finally did it."