All Chapters of The Campus Guard is a Retired God of War: Chapter 11
- Chapter 20
86 chapters
Chapter 11
The Primordial Clearing froze. General Kael’s massive Nebula Blade hung in the air, aimed not at the figure of the eight-year-old boy cowering beneath him, but at the mossy pine hut where the true Temporal Catalyst—the Woodsman—lay hidden.“No, General! Not the boy! The Temporal Catalyst is the woodsman! The woodsman is in the hut! The boy is just the child!” Corporal Jin’s voice, clear and chillingly close, echoed from an unseen pocket in the fractured time.Jin’s intervention was designed to confuse Kael and buy time for his own unseen temporal theft. It worked. Kael roared, tearing his focus from the child, and pivoted toward the hut.“You are insignificant, mortal!” Kael spat at the boy. The Executor of the High Gods cared only for the completion of his mission: the erasure of the Temporal Catalyst to sever Elena’s anchor.Alistair, having spent his last burst of strength tackling the boy out of the initial strike zone, felt his mortal body seize up. He was powerless, yet he had t
Chapter 12
The Victorian night was a chaotic, swirling mess of coal smoke and temporal distortion. Alistair Cain stood over the inert body of his Victorian counterpart—the disgraced detective—whose ambition had been stolen by Corporal Jin's temporal chopper.“Jin’s trying to ensure the Harvest, not stop it,” Alistair spat, his mind racing. Kael needed the Temporal Catalyst to fail; Jin needed the Catalyst to be intact but useless so the Anchor would scatter and he could collect the pieces.Alistair looked from the inert Detective, who was sinking rapidly into a catatonic state, to the end of the alley where the frantic screams of Elena were fading. She was running toward the Observatory Clock—the node’s center.I need a substitute catalyst. Reputation and ambition.He dropped to his knees beside the Detective. He tore open the man’s oilskin trench coat. Underneath, pinned to his breast pocket, was a heavy, official document—the Investigative Report on the Horizon Imperial Canal Collapse. This re
Chapter 13
“Submit, Calamity Star. Your final hope has been captured.”Elena, or rather, the Horizon Unified Intelligence (HUI) controlling her, delivered the command with chilling, synthesized perfection. The Plasma Rapier—the futuristic manifestation of the Nebula Blade—hissed inches from Alistair’s throat.Alistair knew he couldn't fight. The HUI was cold, calculating, and backed by four chromium-armored sentinels, identical to the old Crimson Shield uniforms but infinitely faster. He had no power, and the Chronos Candle lay inert, its four charges spent.“I won’t submit, HUI,” Alistair said, his voice steady despite the searing heat of the plasma rapier. “And you won’t kill me. You need the Temporal Catalyst to stabilize the Anchor, and you need the Anchor to stabilize yourself.”A beat of synthesized silence. “Correction: The Calamity Star is designated a persistent variable, not a solution. Execution probability is 99.8%.”“And the 0.2%?” Alistair pressed. “That’s the risk that killing me
Chapter 14
The Golden Era courtyard was bathed in an idyllic, 1950s sunlight that suddenly felt toxic. General Kael smiled, his polished Mid-Century Sabre reflecting the threat it posed to the world.“Which choice do you make, powerless god?”Alistair had no time to process the devastating implications. His student's father, Victor Lei’s Father (the Temporal Catalyst), stood terrified, the black camera aimed at Elena, ready to capture the image that would expose the Nexus to the atomic age.Before Alistair could react, Elena acted.“Awaken,” she whispered again, her voice clear and resonant with the full, pure power of the Nexus Anchor.The Nebula Blade, which Kael had been using, was a weapon of the High Gods, designed to be inert in a mortal's hand. But Elena was no longer a mortal. She was a living extension of the Nexus Seal.The Mid-Century Sabre in Kael's hand—the blade's current form—screamed, not with a mechanical sound, but with the painful, blinding shriek of a weapon being ripped from
Chapter 15
The crimson fire from the Temporal Golem’s arm cannon was not a blast of heat; it was a wave of localized entropic decay. It was designed to turn stone to dust and flesh to age-old bone in a microsecond.Alistair Cain stood his ground in the Nexus Core chamber, shielding Elena with his own battered, powerless body. He had thrown the Warden’s Log in a final, instinctive act of defiance, and as the book struck the Golem’s chest, a single, yellowed slip of paper fluttered into the path of the incoming beam.It was a receipt.Not a divine contract or a cosmic seal. It was a simple, thermal-paper receipt from the university bookstore, dated August 22, 1024—the very first day Alistair had reported for duty as a campus guard. It was the receipt for his first uniform, a box of donuts, and a pack of matches.As the entropic beam hit the paper, the world didn't explode. It stuttered.The yellowed receipt didn't burn. Instead, it glowed with a soft, steady, amber light—the color of a sunset over
Chapter 16
The transition from autumn to winter at Horizon Imperial was usually a gradual affair of falling leaves and a sharpening breeze. But this year, the cold didn’t arrive on the wind. It arrived from the ground up.Alistair Cain adjusted his new security jacket, the fabric stiff and smelling of warehouse plastic. It had been six weeks since the Library collapse. The "official" narrative—a localized seismic event caused by ancient limestone caverns—had been swallowed by the student body with the usual apathy of those more concerned with midterms than geology.But Alistair knew better. He felt the phantom weight of the amber baton every time he did his rounds. He was a mortal man now, his "Authored Power" spent to tether the Star Eater, but his instincts remained those of a being who had watched empires crumble.He stopped at the West Gate fountain, the same spot where he’d seen the reflection of Kael’s vengeful eyes. The water was frozen solid. Not in a sheet of ice, but in jagged, vertica
Chapter 17
The elevator lobby of the Administration Building felt like the intersection of two dying worlds. Behind Alistair, the "Inverted" General Kael was a cyclone of blinding white light, tearing through the swarm of shadow-vermin with effortless, holy cruelty. In front of him stood Corporal Jin, looking pristine and untouched by the temporal chaos, holding out a glowing crystal thermos.“Drink this. It’s liquid sun,” Jin said, his voice smooth as glass. “It’ll save her life, but it’ll cost you the one thing you have left: your memories of the Calamity Star.”Alistair looked down at Elena. The crystalline webbing had reached her neck. Her skin was the color of moonlight on a tombstone. If her heart rate dropped any further, the Nexus Anchor would shatter, and the Null-Bridge would become permanent.“Why, Jin?” Alistair rasped, his own arm grey and numb from the shadow-loss. “You don’t do anything for free. What do you gain from me forgetting?”“Alistair, Alistair,” Jin sighed, tapping the t
Chapter 18
The shattered window let in a blast of air so cold it felt like being struck by a physical weight. Alistair Cain, a man with no memory of leveling mountains or defying High Gods, felt his heart seize with a primitive, mortal terror.Before him stood his own reflection—the Inverted Calamity Star. Clad in emerald-fire armor that pulsed with a sickening, violet-tinted glow, the double stepped into the office with the grace of a predator. Behind him, the Warden-hollow—a grotesque shell of the man who had once been Alistair’s jailer and friend—hovered in the freezing air, the iron key in its hand humming with the frequency of a dying world."Who are you?" Alistair's voice was a ragged whisper. He stood between the shattered window and Elena, his hands empty, his badge pinned to a chest that felt hollow.The Inverted Star smiled, a jagged expression of pure ego. "I am everything you discarded to be a 'good man,' Alistair. I am the ambition, the cruelty, and the absolute power that made the
Chapter 19
The Deep Archive was no longer a room of stone and ink; it was a pressurized chamber of competing realities. Alistair Cain stood at the center of a localized temporal storm. In his left hand, he gripped the glowing Contract of the Calamity Star. In his right, he still held the cold, mundane brass base of the desk lamp.The memories didn't just return—they attacked.He saw himself standing atop a mountain of fallen titans, his hands dripping with celestial ichor. He felt the cold, infinite vacuum of space as he crushed a moon between his palms. That was the Star.Then, the image flickered. He saw himself helping a crying freshman find her lost keys. He felt the warmth of a cheap paper cup of coffee on a rainy Tuesday. He saw the way Elena tucked her hair behind her ear when she was frustrated with a translation. That was the Guard.The two versions of himself were mutually exclusive. A God does not care about lost keys. A Guard cannot crush a moon."Accept the weight!" the Inverted Sta
Chapter 20
The Board of Regents’ meeting room was located at the apex of the Ivory Tower, the tallest structure at Horizon Imperial. It was a room of glass, steel, and a silence so profound it felt predatory.Alistair Cain walked through the double mahogany doors, his boots thudding rhythmically against the plush carpet. He still wore his blue guard’s uniform—now singed and stained with the gray soot of the Deep Archive—but his posture held the terrifying weight of the Integrated God. Beside him, Elena walked with her head held high, the Liquid Sun still humming in her veins, making her eyes shimmer like molten gold.At the end of a long, obsidian table sat five figures. Four were shadows—featureless silhouettes in expensive suits. But the fifth, seated at the head, was unmistakably the Old Warden.He looked younger, his face smoothed by some unnatural surgery, and he wore a suit that cost more than the university’s annual security budget. He wasn't the ragged shell Alistair had seen in the Null