A contingent of eight soldiers clad in gold and red regalia find themselves outside a mansion. Its size is relatively small compared to the others nearby, and its yard, rather shabby. Had they not looted the other empty buildings nearby, then they wouldn't have come here. Their luck, most of the noble estates had already been evacuated, and the ones they checked mainly seemed empty. It wasn't just there; ever since they made it to the wall and killed its defenders, most of the city was a ghost town. No panic, no riots, no crying; it was as though they knew that the army was coming.

The one in front casually kicked the door before entering. The lead soldier's steel-clad boot cracked on impact as pain shot through him.

"Huh. must have worn this one out on other doors." The soldier wound his other foot up and kicked even harder, managing to kick the door open a degree.

"The door wasn't even closed." One of the soldiers in the back said.

"Its made out of some hefty stuff." Another examined the print that didn't even manage to leave a dent in the door.

"Maybe it's worth something. We should tell our commander after we finish up here."

"Great. Maybe we'll even get a raise."

The soldiers enter one by one up until the sixth in line stops. "Anyone hear that?"

"Hear what?"

"Music. Pianissimo, very soft, like violins, harps, and a piano."

"No, you doing ok?"

"He's just got goosebumps!" One of the ones in front said.

"Were a group of pratinor rank spirit masters. I'm sure we can take anyone who got left behind."

"Look, my doctor said I have spirit synesthesia. I can hear the power of strong spirits…." The nervous one started.

"Quit being a coward, Tom! We're going to loot this place, head home, and be worshiped as heroes!" The one in front said they arrived in some sort of receiving room. An old, red-haired man sat in a chair facing away from the group with a giant lit cigar in his mouth. He was looking at a portrait on the wall. The picture had an older red-haired man with an eyepatch. In each of his arms was a red-haired child. The boy on his left looked frozen and expressionless, as though he didn't know what face to make. The girl on his right had a mischievous smile on her face as though she did something that they would find out about much later.

The soldiers approached. "Surender and we will make your death a quick one old man!" said the one in front.

The nervous looked around in shock. "A crescendo…"

"The hell is that!?" Said the one in front.

"Just a music thing." Said the old man. :" Kid if you leave now I'll let you live since you know you're out of your depth."

The nervous one took a step back and found a sword in his throat.

"We don't retreat." The seventh one said, anger in his eyes.

"Tsk. Why you gotta go and get blood on my polished floors!" The old man bellowed.

"What?" Said the one in front, looking at the corpse of his ally and the psychopath that just murdered him. Nobody liked seven; there was something of… His thoughts ended abruptly.

Splat.!

A giant bear-shaped arm had grown from the old man and crushed the remaining seven soldiers. In an instant, blood splattered everywhere as the old man stood up, the cigar still in his mouth a glowing arcane sigil on his chest.

"Today, I leave this world. Today Limguard falls, but today I will provide a festival worthy of the name Red Beard the Demon Bear."

The old man walked out the front door, mana slowly gathered around him, seeping into his body, causing him to grow and transform. "Take my arms, for they will be your tools for the carnage you will reap." His arms grew in size, exponentially settling around nine feet long and extra bulky. His human arm grew scarlet-red fur and obsidian claws from where his nails once were. His prosthetic arm grew in size and dimension but stayed the same in power.

"Take my body for mine, is but flesh, and yours is unyielding." The old man's chest grew in proportion to his arms fur growing over his clothes.

A few soldiers noticed the man transforming into a monster and began to charge towards him."

"Take my legs and walk this planet in my stead." The old man grew in height by quite a bit, standing around twenty feet tall, the process repeating with his legs.

"Take my eyes, for I close them off to the world." The eyepatch fell from his eye, revealing a solid black sclera with a swirling red vortex in the center.

The thirty soldiers surrounded the old man in a circle and began to send attack after attack at him. Spell hit his fur and left no mark, spears bent on impact as though its fur was far tougher than steel.

"It's a bloody monster!" One of the soldiers relieved themself in fear and began to run."

The old man wasn't having that, so he calmly took a clawed finger and flicked the head of one of the soldiers through the chest of the fleeing soldier. The head was crushed like watermelon, and blood fountained everywhere from the headless corpse.

"I am taking my head, for I am a beast pretending to be man." So the old man's head turned into that of a bear's, and the body grew another ten feet.

"Red bear…" One of the soldiers said. "I heard he was crippled…." The awed soldier seemed to notice the leg and arm prosthetics. "I'm gonna die."

The soldier stood there in shock at the mere sight of the monster, freezing his body to the core. Accepting the fate to come as is all who face Red beard of the Scarlet seas, and crimson death. That soldier didn't feel it come like the others; his death was quick and painless. The others did not die swift clean deaths. They ran, they resisted, and they died. Fighting the inevitable, that was coming for them.

One of the commanders outside of limguard watched as a giant bear-like creature grew above the forty-foot tall city walls and continued to grow more and more.

"Ready the ballista! Towards the bear! It's an easy target!"

The commander watched as the bear scooped up a house and tossed it up and down in its hand like a ball crushing it into debris.

The soldiers pointed their ballista at the bear and waited for their command.

The bear looked knowingly in that commander's general direction and approached, slowly entering their range and even getting closer, almost daring them to give the order.

"Fir…!! Oh shit!" Splat.

A house-sized boulder crashed into the commander, instantly killing him and a few nearby soldiers. However, the old man was only mildly inconvenienced by the wooden bolts that got stuck in his fur.

The soldiers continued firing as the titanic bear approached them, the earth-shaking in response.

Five expert rank spirit masters, along with a man with no arms, approached the frontline.

One of the spirit masters sat on a cloud with a copper rod in his hands. His hair was yellow like the sun, and an odd rain smell came from his body. "One of your people cut his arm off twenty years ago. Can you get the other one?"

"No chance. The one who cut his arm off was the previous leader of the handless hydra. One of the strongest in millenia as well. Even he was swatted like a fly only managing to take the arm out and even then I'm sure he just sacrificed his arm to get that kill."

"Isn't he an expert like us? How is he so strong?" The one on the cloud complained

An older woman in robes watched the bear with contempt. Daggers circled her body at a constant rate. "He may be a true spirit master."

"True spirit master? Isn't that what we are?" The cloud sitter looked between the two.

An older man interrupted this time. "Had I known that old man would still be kicking I would not have come. The ranks don't end at expert, they just aren't really measured past that period. A true spirit master is one who has gained unity with their spirits and mastered their abilities to a frightening degree. We aren't fighting a normal spirit master, but an embodiment of destruction itself."

"Why the hell does Limguard have someone that strong while we don't?"

"The one's we have couldn't be bothered to show up, and our glorious leader seems to be an idiot."

"That's treason!" Spouted a younger expert wielding a glaive.

"I'm going to die today anyway. What a little more treason."

"You are taking this too well." The younger expert looked at the old man with suspicion.

"Inevitability is peaceful. I know the end is coming, and I know that there is nothing I can do about it. Might as well fight, right? Weaken him a bit for me, ok?" The old man pulled out a wooden staff wrapped in chains. A few bells sat at the top of, said staff, chimes echoed as it was moved around.

The others had no time to respond before the man began his incantation.

"My life and spirit are near its end so take it to seal that demon within." The chains rattled and spread out as mana began to gather around their area.

The spirit master on his cloud flew forward at a breakneck speed traveling five hundred yards in a mere second; with ease, a boom echoed behind him. Then, the young man began circling around the giant bear, becoming a blur of light. Nonstop shocks started to hit the bear over and over as the onslaught continued.

The elderly woman let a dagger fly forward at the bear's eye while it was distracted.

The armless hydra mystic flew forward and let loose a wave of energy to lock the bear in place.

The young spirit master threw his glaive and rocketed it towards the bear as it passed through layers of mana in mid-air.

The last spirit master pulled out a steel wand, and fire began to gather around him. "I call upon ifrit lord of the flames, Vanquisher of man, and ender of worlds. Consume the souls of the dead to feed your flames before calling them forth to slay my enemy with your hellfire."

The ball of fire seemed to grow until it was the size of a meteor. Then it rapidly shrunk to the size of an orange before it began floating upwards slowly. Absorbing the lifeforce of all the nearby soldiers along with the energy from the ones who had just died. The orb slowly got bigger and bigger as time went on.

Alexander watched as the enemy set up their all-out assault, starting with the seal. He knew what they were doing and decided to humor the youngins. He swung his arm at the fast lightning spirit master gauging his movement pattern with a few wild swings. Each one missed, but it showed the enemy's attack patterns and reaction speed. Best to save that knowledge for when it mattered.

Soon after, a dagger flew towards his eye with precision, aiming for what would typically be a blindspot. The bear tried to move out of the way. When he noticed that his body was being squeezed in place.

Alexander braced himself, and when the dagger was close enough, he knocked it out of the sky with a headbutt.

Alexander noticed the glaive rapidly gaining momentum and the bee buzzing around his body. This was the time to act. He used his strength to rapidly overwhelm the grasping arms before he swatted the lightning spirit master through the piercing glaive weakening the impact and slaying the owner's ally.

The young spirit master looked at the falling corpse in shock for a moment before he tried to call it back. He only received pain as the bear snapped his spirit in half like a twig. He fell forward, coughing blood before the two experts were absorbed into the evergrowing orb of now purple flames.

"You guys just kill each other, huh!" Alexander laughed as the titanic bear nimbly dodged a flurry of flying daggers.

The elderly women let the daggers dissipate into mana before summoning a bow made from a silver light. Then, she pulled back and charged another shot as the armless mystic tried to restrain him again.

Alexander took this opportunity to begin making his way forward, shrugging off the flurry of invisible arms. Crushing soldiers and abandoned homes with his strides. The earth shook under his power, and fissures became known.

The elderly woman fired her arrow at the monster piercing the sky with a whistle. A black line trailed where the attack passed. Alexander sweated it out of the sky like a bug.

"How the hell is that fair!" The elderly woman yelled.

"It isn't, what does one need to eat to get that strong." The deranged pyromancer continued to absorb fire for his attack before it became unstable. He fired it towards the sky, and purple and black rain pelted Limguard from above.

"Genocide rain!" The rain of fire became heavier and heavier, turning the entire city purple and engulfing the entirety of Alexander. The smell of burnt flesh and brimstone was overwhelming to the soldiers lucky enough to have been far away from the blast, and a few minutes of silence passed.

"Did I get him? I think I killed him! Nobody should be able to survive an attack like that."

The elderly woman fired another silver arrow into the flames, but it seemed to dissipate when it hit the fire. "I can't tell. My arrow can't pass through."

The elderly man continued chanting his spell, repeating it over and over, his body beginning to crack like pottery. Mana flowed out of said cracks powering the magic circle under him.

After another minute of waiting, the pyromancer decided that it was time to finish the spell.

"Hellfire Conflagration!" The purple fire exploded outwards, creating an almost empty pit where the city used to be.

In the middle stood a colossal bear that seemed to have even grown in size and strength. Yet, no sign of damage seemed to have been done to the bear.

"You must have forgotten your basics, demon bear, immune to fire from creatures of a lower mana quality. Plus you turned all that fire into an area based attack on a grand scale. Had it been focused on just me, then it might have stung a little." The bear scolded the pyromancer.

"Well. Limguard is thoroughly destroyed. I'm getting out of here!" his body began to turn into smoke when a spectral arm latched onto him.

"You know what we do to deserters right?" The armless hydra told the fleeing pyromancer.

Alexander grew tired of his prey killing each other, so he flicked in the general direction of the hydra. The power created a shockwave that turned them into a pulp near instantly. "Go and tell your boss I'm waiting!"

"Are we but flies to him?" The elderly woman sighed as those who could talk were either dead or gone.

Alexander took a moment to sit down and close his eyes as though he was concentrating on something.

The old man finished his chant. "You're going to have to restrain him." The first new words he has said in ages.

The elderly women let the bow disappear, "Oh divine light, I call upon thee to restrain this baleful entity!" chains of white light constricted around Alexander. The bear did not bother budging, nor did he consider resisting.

A circle of chains appeared below, and magic flowed into the bear before it shattered. The old man began to turn into dust." So, you're already dying, huh. This whole effort was a waste."

The old spirit master was no more as all that remained was an empty cloak and rod.

Alexander broke out of the chains of light with brute strength, which resulted in the elderly women's spirit is broken. "This whole battle was a waste."

Alexander took a deep breath before letting out a breath of pure spiritual energy. Slaying the remaining soldiers. "They can have the capital, though nothing is left of it now."

The great red bear collapsed. "Take my core for that is all I am." The body faded into pure mana leaving behind a black and red spirit core that was swept off the battlefield by a blue tentacle.