The Campus Guard is a Retired God of War

Chapter 7

The silence that followed the Warden’s death was heavier than Alistair’s suppressed gravity. General Kael, Executor of the High Gods, stood on the blood-soaked lawn outside the shattered office, his dark armor absorbing the moonlight. He carried the Nebula Blade, a weapon capable of slicing through condensed stellar dust.

Alistair lay on the floor, the pathetic serrated steel dinner knife clutched in his hand. He was completely spent, his consciousness flickering like a faulty fluorescent bulb. He was a sheep facing the celestial butcher.

“The Calamity Star,” General Kael’s voice boomed, deep and resonant, a sound designed to command a million soldiers across a galactic theater. “I should have known a millennium of penance would leave you weak. To be felled by a mere Dimensional Predator and reduced to fighting with mortal scrap. Disgusting.”

Kael did not rush. He lifted the Nebula Blade, the cosmic energy humming, and pointed it at Alistair. The blade was a declaration: this was an execution, not a duel.

“I came here to collect your soul and redeem my honor, Cain. I will not grant you the dignity of a proper death.”

Kael fired. Not a concentrated blast, but a sweeping, crescent wave of pure, condensed stellar wind—a Tier-5 attack designed to vaporize everything in its path.

Alistair couldn't move, but he could still predict. The attack was aimed at the center of the office, intending to obliterate the target and the entire administration building.

He mentally screamed, not for power, but for structural integrity. The building was ancient, built on the Nexus. Alistair, the Calamity Star, had personally overseen the subtle structural alignments of its foundations a thousand years ago.

In the moment before the blast hit, Alistair mentally triggered the pre-programmed resonance frequency of the central load-bearing stone beneath the office floor.

The stone vibrated at a sub-audible frequency, creating an instantaneous, localized acoustic dampening field.

The stellar blast struck the office, not with a destructive roar, but with a dull, suppressed thump. The energy, momentarily dispersed by the micro-vibrations, was diffused, not contained. The building did not collapse; it shuddered violently, raining dust and glass, but remained standing.

Alistair, protected only by the acoustics of his architecture, was thrown violently into the corner beside the Warden’s desk. He spat blood, but he was alive.

Kael raised an armored eyebrow. “A structural manipulation. You used the building against my blade. Clever for a mortal, but utterly futile.”

Alistair scrambled to his feet, grabbing a fistful of the dead Warden’s uniform for support. His vision locked onto the Warden's body—the true jailer, now fallen.

He noticed the Warden’s left hand was still rigidly clenched, pointing towards the central terminal on the desk—the terminal that tracked the Nexus ley lines.

The Warden didn’t just die here. He left me a message.

Alistair ignored Kael’s slow, deliberate approach and stumbled toward the desk.

“Look at you, cowering over the corpse of your jailer,” Kael mocked. “You are beneath contempt.”

Alistair reached the desk and slammed his fist down on the Nexus terminal. It was cold, inert metal.

How do I activate it? I have no energy!

He looked at the Warden’s body again. The tear in his chest, the wound that had killed the Jailer, was bleeding profusely. But the blood wasn't red; it was a shimmering, coppery bronze—Nexus Vitality. The Warden was the living anchor of the seal.

Alistair made a terrible decision. He plunged the serrated dinner knife into the Warden’s bronze-bleeding wound, plunging it deep.

He wasn't trying to injure the dead man. He was trying to create an emergency conduit.

He pulled the knife out and slammed the blade's tip into the Nexus terminal.

A blinding, bronze light surged from the Warden's body, through the knife, and into the terminal. Alistair didn't gain power; he gained information.

The Nexus terminal screamed to life, flooding Alistair’s mind with a torrent of data: the current stability of the Abyssal Seal, the trajectory of Xylos, and the ultimate, hidden weakness of Kael’s armor.

The High Gods built this Seal using their own power. Kael is the Executor. If he stands within the Seal’s primary energy field, his armor, designed to contain cosmic power, will destabilize his energy output!

Alistair ripped the knife free, discarding the desperate conduit. He now had the plan. He had to draw Kael into the Library, into the heart of the Seal.

“General Kael,” Alistair gasped, wiping the bronze blood from his lips. He looked the massive Executor in the eye, the utter contempt in his voice momentarily eclipsing his pain. “You were always a coward. You always preferred a field execution to a fair fight. You only came here because I was powerless. Now, come and face the consequences of your High Gods’ pathetic prison.”

Kael hesitated, the ancient insult momentarily distracting him. “You dare call me a coward, mortal?”

Alistair sprinted, not away from Kael, but straight toward the double doors leading into the Library wing, crashing through the wood and running directly towards the gaping hole Xylos had ripped in the Library floor.

Kael roared, a sound of absolute fury, and charged after him, the Nebula Blade raised.

Alistair plunged into the Library, weaving past shelves of collapsed books and rubble. He could feel Kael’s massive form tearing through the door behind him.

He reached the edge of the pit—the massive, star-shaped hole Xylos had torn through the floor to try and consume the Seal. The hole led down thirty feet into the stone bedrock where the Nexus power coil hummed.

Alistair stopped at the edge. He didn’t have the energy to fight, only to dodge.

Kael burst into the room, his eyes blazing, and brought the Nebula Blade down in a sweeping, decapitating arc.

Alistair dropped flat to the floor. The blade hit the stone where his head had been, shearing through the ground. The force of the blow was so immense that the already fractured floor gave way, and a massive chunk of the Library floor—including the main reading table—collapsed into the pit.

Kael cursed, stepping back quickly to avoid falling.

“You run like the craven you are!” Kael roared.

“I run toward the problem,” Alistair corrected, scrambling up. “And you’ve just created a bigger one for us both.”

A shadow fell over the Library. Xylos, the Star Eater, having finished its brief rampage through the city, had returned to its objective. The monster was hovering over the building, looking directly down at the gaping pit Kael had just created.

Xylos saw the exposed Nexus coil at the bottom of the pit and shrieked with hunger.

The Star Eater slammed its massive, multi-clawed hand directly through the already broken ceiling, aiming for the hole in the floor.

Kael was trapped between the enraged, incoming Star Eater and the pit leading to the Nexus.

“This is not my fight!” Kael yelled, abandoning his execution order. He raised the Nebula Blade, not at Alistair, but at the incoming monster claw.

“It is now,” Alistair gasped, channeling the last, desperate mental thread of his being.

He focused his intent on the one thing Kael still possessed: the Nebula Blade. He couldn't touch Kael, but the blade was radiating an immense amount of cosmic energy—the perfect bait for Xylos.

Alistair didn't try to wrest the weapon away. He only adjusted its gravitational signature by a fraction of a degree, making the blade appear microscopically denser to the Star Eater’s perception.

Xylos adjusted its trajectory instantly, its claw slamming down, not to attack Kael, but to seize the more attractive energy source: the Nebula Blade.

Kael, caught in the sudden focus shift, was blindsided. The claw struck his armored shoulder, sending him spinning backward in a massive, uncontrolled spiral, smashing through a bookshelf and slamming into the far wall. The Nebula Blade clattered across the floor, away from the General.

Xylos shrieked in triumph, its claw digging into the debris, searching for the weapon.

Alistair, seizing the final moment of chaos, sprinted to the exposed edge of the Nexus pit. He was out of energy, but he had a plan to finish both of them.

He ripped a large piece of cabling from the broken Library wiring—a massive, copper cable designed to power the building’s lighting.

He looked down into the deep, dark pit where the Nexus coil pulsed faintly. He looked at the massive copper wire in his hand, and he looked at the approaching Star Eater, whose immense claw was tearing up the floor only yards away.

Alistair knew that if he could overload the Nexus coil, he could trigger a brief, massive expulsion of energy—a localized Reverse Flash—powerful enough to destroy both the monster and the Executor. It would kill him too, but it was the only way.