The Campus Guard is a Retired God of War

Chapter 4

The Grand Master of the Crimson Sect, Corporal Jin, was smiling as the sky tore apart.

Alistair didn't look up immediately. His focus, intensified by the surge of Calamity Star power, remained laser-locked on the jade tablet in Jin’s hand. The gravitational field Alistair commanded had pinned every robed acolyte to the concrete floor—hundreds of crushed, screaming cultists—but Jin, protected by the energy emanating from the tablet, only felt the profound, dizzying pressure of a world turned against him.

“I asked you a question, Jin,” Alistair’s voice was no longer a human sound, but a low-frequency vibration that rattled the dock pilings. “How do I stop the ritual?”

“Ritual?” Jin laughed, wetly. He was fighting the gravity, his muscles straining, yet triumph shone in his eyes. “It’s not a ritual, Alistair. It’s a transaction. You broke the High Gods’ penance by loving a mortal, and now they collect the interest! Look!”

Alistair finally turned his attention skyward, and the raw, cold horror hit him.

The tear in the atmosphere above the pier was no longer a simple black slit. It was a gaping dimensional wound, and something vast was pouring through it. It wasn’t an Abyssal Demon; it was far worse.

The creature was roughly humanoid, its body formed of obsidian shards and pulsating violet light, but its sheer scale was terrifying. It was easily sixty feet tall, with four massive arms ending in razor-sharp, hooked claws. Its face was a void, but from within that void, thousands of tiny, flickering stars could be seen burning out.

“That is the Dimensional Predator—Xylos,” Alistair breathed, the name a thousand-year-old curse. “The Star Eater.”

Xylos was an ancient enemy of the Nine Heavens, a Tier-5 entity that survived by consuming the residual energy of dying cosmic bodies. Alistair had personally sealed it in a dimensional rift eons ago. Now, it was free, drawn by the catastrophic gravitational energy spike Alistair had just created.

“A beautiful sight, isn’t it?” Jin gloated, still struggling against the crushing weight. “Xylos feeds on raw cosmic energy. Your Nexus—the sealed Abyssal Gate beneath the university—is about to become its lunch! And your wife, Alistair, is just the appetizer! The contract says the sacrifice must be close to the breach, and right now, she is the closest anchor point!”

Alistair had two conflicting, impossible priorities: stop Xylos from consuming the city's protective Nexus, and save Elena’s soul from the contract penalty.

I must take out the source of the breach, the jade tablet, first.

Alistair dismissed the general gravitational field on the acolytes—the city would collapse if he maintained that power. The hundreds of cultists instantly surged upward, gasping for air, clutching broken ribs.

Jin, relieved of the pressure, immediately seized the opportunity. He pointed the jade tablet at Alistair and chanted a short, guttural word.

A wave of pure, concentrated black energy, infused with the Nexus breach power, slammed into Alistair's chest.

It didn't hurt. It felt like being hit by a gentle breeze.

Jin looked stunned. “Impossible! That was enough power to liquefy steel!”

“That was a light breeze, Jin. And you’ve wasted my time,” Alistair said, taking a step forward.

He unleashed his own attack, not with force, but with the Ring of the Falling Star. He charged the ring with a destructive amount of kinetic energy and focused it into a tight, black beam. The beam didn't hit Jin; it hit the jade tablet directly.

The tablet, suddenly bombarded by the focused energy of a miniature supernova, screamed a high-pitched, crystalline sound before shattering into a thousand pieces. The crushing weight on Jin instantly lifted, and the pillar of black energy tearing the sky vanished.

The atmosphere returned to a false, sudden calm. The chanting stopped. The ritual was broken.

“My tablet!” Jin shrieked, staring at the dust motes falling from his hand. “You fool! You broke the only thing channeling the energy! Now Xylos will just consume the Nexus directly!”

Jin was right. The moment the channeling artifact was gone, Xylos, the Star Eater, reacted. The massive creature looked down from the sky tear, its void-face turning, its non-existent eyes locking onto the strongest remaining energy signature—the massive, hidden coil of divine power beneath Horizon Imperial University.

Xylos let out a silent, vacuuming roar. The tear in the sky began to shrink, but the monster’s four claws gripped the edges of the portal, pulling its gigantic form through the dimensional gap.

The entire city has five minutes before that thing reaches the university, Alistair calculated, cursing his own dramatic tendencies. No time for Void Step; the recoil will leave me defenseless.

Alistair looked at Jin, who was now scrambling away from the platform, his temporary power gone.

“The contract, Jin. Where is the contract that binds Elena’s soul?” Alistair demanded.

Jin, his face a mask of terror and malice, pointed a trembling finger not toward the docks, but back toward the campus. “It’s in the Headmaster’s office safe! He has the original—he had to! The Headmaster is the Warden of the Nexus! He planned this!”

The revelation hit Alistair with more force than any cosmic blast. The Janitor, the one who gave him the job, the one who oversaw his penance, the one he feared—he was the orchestrator.

“Why?” Alistair growled.

Jin chuckled, a bitter, broken sound. “Because you ruined everything, Calamity Star! The war was supposed to last another thousand years! The High Gods were getting rich on the tribute! You ended it in a week! This is their revenge! They forced the Warden to make the contract! Break your penance, save your love, but forfeit her soul to the High Gods’ vaults! I was just paid to deliver the Nexus breach!”

Alistair ignored Jin's pathetic explanation. His true enemy was the Warden, and the true threat was Xylos.

Alistair focused on the ground. He needed a bridge, a momentary weapon powerful enough to slow a Tier-5 cosmic entity without collapsing the weak mortal structure of the dockyard.

He pulled the Void Anchor chip from his pocket and threw it high into the air, above the warehouse.

“Bind,” Alistair commanded, channeling the full, unadulterated power of the Calamity Star—the gravitational force of a dying sun—into the Ring of the Falling Star.

The Ring, designed to contain kinetic energy, screamed as it absorbed the vast, raw power. Alistair pointed his finger skyward.

The energy discharged, not as a blast, but as a hyper-dense, gravity-driven filament that connected the Ring on his finger to the Void Anchor chip floating fifty feet above the warehouse.

The effect was instantaneous. The filament, visible only as a shimmering, black line, created a temporary, localized warp field.

Xylos, still halfway through the dimensional rift, slammed into this invisible field. The massive creature roared as its movement was instantly halted. It was trapped, momentarily caged by a single, powerful thread of concentrated gravity.

“Go to hell, Jin,” Alistair spat, his eyes locked on the captured monster.

Alistair turned and focused his entire attention on the massive steel column supporting the main pier of the warehouse.

“Collapse.”

The structural column buckled and folded in on itself, causing the entire warehouse roof to cave in, trapping Corporal Jin and the remaining cultists in a cascade of twisted metal and concrete dust.

Alistair didn't wait to see if Jin survived. He couldn't.

He had bought barely sixty seconds before Xylos tore through the gravity filament. He was now out of artifacts and had used far too much power, straining his mortal body to the point of collapse.

He had one goal: the contract. The Headmaster's office.

Alistair ran toward the city, running faster than any mortal could comprehend. His catering uniform was ripped, his body shaking with suppressed power, but he wasn't running toward a fight with Xylos; he was running to confront the Warden.

As he ran across the docks, he checked his old university security radio—the one that had just given him his termination notice. He heard static, then a panicked voice.

“...Central Command to all units! Massive unidentified atmospheric event over the docks! We have reports of a sixty-foot tall shadow monster moving rapidly towards the university! Evacuate Sector Gamma immediately! I repeat, evacuate—”

Alistair pushed himself harder, the Ring of the Falling Star faintly glowing as it tried to stabilize his volatile energy. He knew Xylos was coming, tearing up the cityscape behind him.

He was a retired God of War running in a ruined waiter’s uniform, carrying only the promise of destruction. He had to reach the Warden and retrieve that contract before Xylos reached the Nexus.