Chapter 2 - Guts, Steel, & Mana II

  Deeper within the garrison’s underground cells, twin sabers cut through the stale air in clean, practiced arcs. A heavy grunt followed the motion, then the wet rupture of flesh as a Blight was split apart mid-lunge. Trevus Regulus, broad-shouldered, black-haired, and already bleeding—forced himself to keep moving.

  His breath came out in sharp, measured exhales as he dispatched another two that clawed at his armor, their teeth scraping uselessly against reinforced plating. Blood trickled from a cut along his forehead, running down to blur his left eye. He wiped it away with the back of his glove without breaking stride, fingers tightening again around the hilts of his sabers as he took a half-second to read the room.

  Their numbers were thinning, but it wasn’t fast enough.

  The Blight still outnumbered them pretty easily as the five remaining operators pressed into the lower chambers. Now reduced to a killing pit. Broken chains clattered underfoot, the walls slick with residue and gore, the air thick with the coppery rot of corruption.

  A strained, feral shout echoed from the far side of the room.

  “Grgh—! Graaahh!!”

  Trevus turned just in time to see Harlen Sprieggen slammed back against the stone. A blue barrier shimmered violently around him, fully enveloping his body as Blight after Blight hurled itself forward, claws and teeth grinding against the magical shell. The barrier held but barely. Its anchor point glowed faintly at Harlen’s abdomen, the center of the construct bending inward as the sheer mass of the horde forced both barrier and man closer to the wall, stone cracking under the pressure.

  Too many, Trevus thought, jaw tightening.

  He stomped hard into the ground, mana surging down his leg to reinforce muscle and bone. The stone beneath his foot fractured as he launched himself forward, sabers drawn back over his shoulders. He tore through the press of Blight with brutal efficiency, steel flashing as limbs were severed and torsos split. Other operators; Faeryn & Ford followed in his wake, as Ford exhaled a cone of fire that washed over the horde, Faeryn snapping arcs of lightning from a bladed wand that left bodies twitching on the floor.

  Then came the scream. It was sharp and human.

  Trevus twisted around just in time to see it, a man from Squad 4 who tagged along with them a man he knew as “Keye”. He raised his axe too late, as he was caught from behind. The Blight swarmed him in seconds, teeth tearing through armor, claws pinning him down as his scream cut short into choking silence. By the time Trevus took a step toward him, it was already too late. The body convulsed once, before rising up as his body jerked, twisted, and felt wrong as he had turned into a Blight.

  He shoved panic down where it belonged. As Squad Leader, he couldn’t afford it. Blight’s are pretty easy to fight but their sheer numbers makes it a deadly threat.

  A Blight lunged for his back before he kicked it away without looking, spun, and carved through another with a precise crossing strike. He moved constantly, sabers flashing in controlled patterns, always placing himself where he could cover the others’ blind spots. Something clamped onto his ankle, teeth biting deep through leather and skin. He hissed through clenched teeth and brought his heel down hard, crushing the Blight’s skull into pulp.

  Pain flared as the affliction of the Blight dared to spread. Trevus felt it immediately as a sick spreading of coldness screamed upward his leg from his bitten ankle

  Hours, he judged. Still hours. It was just enough time for him to receive a light exorcism, but first, he and his squad have to destroy the nest residing within the lower chambers of his garrison building.

  Harlen then saw his opening. Only a handful of Blight remained pressed against his barrier now thanks to the efforts of Trevus and the others. He dispelled it instantly and rolled away from the wall as the sudden release of the barrier sent the creatures slamming forward into stone. They weren’t killed but they were staggered. Trevus grabbed Harlen by the shoulder and hauled him back into formation, the others closing ranks around them.

  “Damn it…” Harlen panted, eyes darting toward the newly turned figure staggering among the Blight. “Wait, is that—Keye?” Keye of Squad 4. One of theirs was now something else.

  There was no time to mourn. The presence of a nest deeper in the cells was unmistakable now, the Blight’s numbers swelling unnaturally, fresh bodies forcing their way through the corridors with wet, dragging sounds.

  “Trevus!” Harlen shouted as he brought his arming sword down on a lunging Blight, mana flooding the blade until it glowed red-hot. He activated his Active Barrier System instinctively, a faint shimmer of a barrier intercepting a strike meant for his ribs.

  “I told you we should’ve taken Camylle with us! Or at least Nirei!”

  “Don’t shout at me!”

  Trevus snapped back, already tearing a strip of cloth from his kit and knotting it tightly around his bitten ankle. Another Operator with the bladed wand stepped in front of him, Faeryn, warding off the encroaching Blight with crackling arcs of lightning as Trevus cinched the bandage tight.

  “You okay squad lead?” she added before focusing into the Blight.

  “I’m fine. We’ll get through this,”

  Trevus growled, forcing himself back to his feet despite the pain. His sabers rose again, steady. Resolute.

  “Back-up is coming.”

  He had to believe that. Because if it didn’t. They wouldn’t last much longer down here.

  This time, however, the back-up dud arrived before their line broke.

  Lotha burst into the lower chambers—the main basement of the garrison wing with relentless momentum, boots hammering across stone slick with rot. The corridor ahead of her stretched long and narrow, its sides cluttered with overturned crates of food long since spoiled, armor abandoned and half-buried beneath filth. The air was heavy, saturated with decay and Blight. Ashe and Mina followed close behind, having just cleared the stairwell, their presence quieter but no less deliberate as they entered the chamber where steel rang and bodies fell.

  At the far end of the basement, the fight was collapsing inward. Operators clung to formation beside what remained of Squad Five—now reduced to Trevus, Harlen, Faeryn, & Ford. At Lotha’s brief nod, Mina and Ashe surged forward without hesitation. She wasn’t abandoning them to the fray; she was measuring them. Watching how they moved when lives depended on it.

  Trevus caught sight of them through the chaos. For a fleeting moment, something softened in his otherwise rigid expression, a rare, tired smile before he raised his sabers again.

  Ashe acted first.

  Mana flared subtly behind his eyes as he seized control of the Blight’s perception. Though crude and animalistic, the hive-linked undead still possessed something akin to awareness, it was enough for his illusions to take root. Their movements faltered. Heads jerked in the wrong directions. Claws slashed at enemies that weren’t there. The pressure on the Operators eased by degrees, precious seconds carved out of overwhelming odds.

  Mina filled that opening with violence, alongside the others still standing.

  She drove herself into the disoriented Blight with feral efficiency, brass knuckles flashing as the enchantment flared with her intent. Each strike landed with more than bone-breaking force as the kinetic burst of projectiles detonated on impact, sending bodies flying, punching holes clean through torsos, scattering limbs across the stone. Though officially still Handlers—Class I by registry—the truth of their past two years under Trevus’s command showed plainly now. These were not novices stumbling through borrowed strength.

  “Oh good, now you’re here~”

  Faeryn called out between shots of lightning from her bladed wand, voice thick with mockery as Mina slid past her to cave in another Blight’s skull.

  Mina didn’t slow. “Is that supposed to mean something?~”

  she shot back, grin sharp as she pivoted and sent another body skidding across the floor. The two shared a brief laugh—short, breathless—before the fight swallowed it whole.

  A man in a red coat stepped into their periphery, smoke pipe clenched between his teeth, Ford. He exhaled, flames bursting forward to incinerate a cluster of approaching Blight.

  “Mina—careful. Keye’s among the infected. Try not to pummel his bald little head.”

  Mina glanced up, already spotting the familiar shape staggering wrong among the horde. “Uh-huh,” she said lightly, cracking another Blight aside.

  “I’ll try not to~”

  She hoped he’d make it.

  With Mina and Ashe reinforcing the line, the tide finally shifted. Harlen moved with renewed ferocity, his arming sword weaving clean arcs as heads fell in sequence. Lightning screamed through the air. Fire roared. Mina waded through the disoriented Blight like a living battering ram.

  Trevus pushed forward despite the blood soaking his armor and the infection burning in his leg. He sheathed one saber mid-charge and thrust his free hand out, mana surging as translucent blue strings snapped into existence. They coiled around Keye’s torso and yanked him bodily from the horde. Faeryn reacted instantly, flooding Keye’s body with controlled electricity as it was enough to stun, but not kill. His movements went slack as he collapsed, thankfully alive but still infected.

  Then Lotha entered the fray.

  Her pernach rose and fell with brutal finality, each swing pulverizing Blight into unrecognizable ruin. Where she moved, the undead simply ceased to exist. In moments, the horde dwindled to stragglers, then to none.

  At the far end of the chamber, iron bars framed the source of it all came into view within the cell.

  Within it, blighted flesh pulsed obscenely, an abnormal torso fused into the stone itself. From its mass jutted elongated arms like those of a mantis, its form hardened into blade-like edges. With each convulsion, it birthed more undead, tearing them free from itself like refuse.

  The reason the fight hadn’t ended.

  Lotha took it in at a glance. Everyone else of Squad Five were Class III at best.

  “Situation?” Her voice cut through the aftermath.

  Harlen turned, relief breaking through his exhaustion as he saw her.

  “Oh my god—Lotha! Finally—”

  His expression shifted the instant he really looked at her. Blood matted her blonde hair. Her face, coat, and chestplate were slick with gore, so soaked it barely looked like her own. He recoiled.

  “—Ugh! What the hell happened to you!?”

  Lotha didn’t answer…

  “Now,” Lotha said again, her voice low and cutting through the din, “the situation.”

  Trevus understood immediately and answered without hesitation, breath still heavy in his chest. “Seth is in the courtyard, alone. That big thing called—the Cuirassier—is blocking our access to the Dungeon Maw. As long as it stands, sealing is impossible.”

  Lotha’s gaze sharpened.

  “The Cuirassier? And he’s fighting that thing, alone?” she asked.

  “When we tried to observe their fight,” Trevus continued,

  “none of the other Blight interfered. It’s like they won’t. The duel is just the two of them one-on-one.”

  Lotha’s brow lifted, a flicker of genuine confusion breaking through her stoicism. Harlen chimed in before the silence could settle, draping an arm over Trevus’s shoulders until he was promptly shoved off.

  “Yeah. And the thing talked in like full sentences. It’s one of those intelligent dungeon monsters.”

  “Spoke?” Lotha repeated, her tone edged with surprise, though not in disbelief. The Dungeon entities capable of mortal speech were mostly just—commanders, sentinels, or even self-aware guardians—but their appearance was rare enough to warrant notice. That alone shifted the weight of the operation.

  Behind her, Mina and Ashe exchanged a look.

  A dungeon-born that can talk? Ashe thought, a bit unease creeping in.

  Mina, on the other hand, merely snorted under her breath. “Heh,” she muttered quietly to Ashe,

  “Hey, remember that troll from the other day?”

  Ashe barely managed to choke back a laugh, the memory flashing unbidden, just a few dungeon operations ago, an overly eloquent monster cut short mid-monologue by Mina’s fist as it was explaining a riddle.

  The moment of course, died instantly.

  Mina stiffened as she noticed Lotha’s eyes on them, she was cold, unamused, and unmistakably disapproving. Right. Not the time. Lotha exhaled through her nose and turned back to Trevus, letting the lapse pass without comment.

  “I’m surprised you’ve already hit your limit,” Lotha said, studying him properly now.

  The bruises, the cracked armor, the blood drying along his jaw and the hastily bound ankle. Trevus had been among the first to respond when Fort Haden fell. He’d fought through the initial surge, pushed into the fort itself, cleared room after room while others fell around him. Of that first wave, only a handful still stood and Trevus had lasted longer than most.

  Under normal circumstances, a Blight outbreak barely scraped Hardship I or II. But with nests spawning endlessly, turning corridors into slaughterhouses, the threat had escalated rapidly to Hardship III, maybe even edging into IV. This was no longer about containment. It was survival.

  Their exchange was cut short by Harlen’s shout as he, Faeryn & Ford fended off a fresh trickle of Blight.

  “Hey! Little help here? I get that Trevus is injured, but seriously! Lotha, end this already!”

  Trevus stepped back, motioning Mina and Ashe with him.

  “You take over,” he said simply. “We’ll fall back once this nest is cleared.”

  Lotha’s eyes flicked to the floor. “Is that Keye?”

  Trevus nodded. As Keye, stunned and unable to move whilst bound in shimmering blue strings, He lay motionless alive, infected, stunned. But salvageable.

  Without another word, Lotha surged forward. Mina followed at her flank, while Ashe anchored himself just behind, mana already threading through his perception. The remaining Blight rushed them in a ragged wave.

  Lotha struck first.

  Her pernach came down in a brutal arc, pulverizing a Blight straight into the stone floor before she backhanded another so hard it shattered against the wall. Fire bloomed beside her as one Ford exhaled a stream of flame, while Faeryn sent crackling bolts of lightning tearing through the undead ranks.

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  Mina moved through the chaos like a force unchained. With Ashe distorting the Blight’s senses—pulling their focus, splitting their awareness—her brass-knuckled fists landed again and again, each impact releasing violent kinetic bursts that folded bodies inward or sent them skidding lifeless across the floor. She didn’t hesitate. She didn’t slow down.

  In moments following a minute, the chamber fell quiet.

  All that remained was the nest.

  At the end of the chamber, flesh had swollen and fused into a grotesque mass, filling the entire space of the cell. Its red eyes burned from within the pulp of its body, unblinking. Long, malformed arms scraped across the stone, blades at their ends gnawing grooves into the floor as it convulsed. Waiting for the operators to attack first…

  Among the many aberrations born of the Blight, none were more dangerous than nests. Abnormal Blights could be lethal in their own right—bodies hardened by the affliction, limbs reshaped into weapons, but nests were something far worse. They did not merely exist within the corruption; they fed upon it, drawing from ambient mana to endlessly generate new Blights, turning any space they occupied into a living wound. Left unchecked, a single nest could drown an entire structure in bodies.

  This one had chosen its position well.

  The cell at the end of the chamber had been utterly consumed, its stone swallowed by pulsating flesh that packed itself into every corner, stretching, layering, reinforcing—using confinement to its advantage. The narrow space allowed it to spawn and funnel Blights outward efficiently, a grotesque factory built of muscle and bone. But now, with most of its creations already reduced to ruins by Squad Five, its production has slowed. Its red eyes shifted, tracking movement, awareness flickering behind them.

  They settled on Lotha.

  Her armor was soaked, her coat darkened by blood and ichor, as though she had long since stopped caring how she looked and cared only for how the world felt beneath her strikes. The nest’s mind—fragmented, animal, yet still perceptive registered something it rarely did.

  Fear.

  Mina tilted her head, staring at the grotesque mass. “So…” she said lightly, breaking the tension,

  “what’re we gonna do about that?”

  Harlen wiped blood from his cheek and scoffed.

  “We’ve been clearing this building for nearly two hours. Didn’t realize too late that the nest would be tucked all the way down here.”

  “Well, it is the obvious spot,” Faeryn chimed in with a teasing lilt, twirling her bladed wand idly.

  “If I were a grotesque flesh-horror, I’d hide in the basement too.”

  Harlen shot her a glare sharp enough to cut, but before either could retort, Lotha stepped forward, silencing the exchange without a word.

  “Enough,” she said flatly. “Let’s waste no time.”

  She moved to just beyond the reach of the nest’s bladed limbs and raised her hand. Mana surged through her palm, dense and deliberate, forming a radiant golden circle in the air before her. The pressure in the room shifted instantly.

  A Heavy Exorcism

  Light erupted outward, flooding the chamber in blinding gold. Mina shielded her eyes instinctively, Ashe doing the same as the air vibrated with power. The nest screamed—not with a voice, but with its entire being as the holy energy tore through its flesh, burning, unraveling, erasing. The sound was wet, agonized, and mercifully brief.

  Within seconds, the cell was empty.

  Where writhing flesh had once filled the space, only scorched stone remained, stained with blackened ichor and smeared blood. The oppressive presence vanished as if it had never existed.

  The light faded as golden motes dissolved into the air, and Lotha lowered her hand, the last shimmer disappearing from her palm. The chamber dimmed once more, silent except for the steady breathing of those who still stood. The nest was now gone.

  “Woah… that was so cool,” Mina breathed, eyes still shining as she stared at the now-empty cell. She turned to Lotha with barely contained excitement, gesturing wildly with one hand.

  “Why can’t we just make that the standard for Blight operations? I mean, seriously! One blast, done! No mess, no panic, no—”

  Ashe, standing beside her, rubbed his chin thoughtfully, his gaze lingering on the scorched stone where the nest had been. Even he couldn’t deny the efficiency. The structure of the spell, the purity of the mana flow, the way the Blight had simply collapsed under it, there was something elegant about it.

  Lotha glanced back at Mina, one brow lifting slightly.

  “That technique,” she said evenly, “is sanctified by the Staynic Order. It isn’t just a spell you pass around. We can’t teach it to ‘just anyone.’”

  Mina grinned, entirely unfazed. She hooked an arm around Ashe’s neck and leaned into him with exaggerated confidence.

  “Well, Ashe here’s a genius. I’m sure he can just copy it~”

  Ashe nearly choked. “W–wait, what!? No I don’t! That’s not true! She’s lying—!” he sputtered, flailing slightly as his face flushed red.

  “Hey,” Harlen cut in, marching over and slinging an arm around both of them in a rough, crushing hold.

  “Get yourselves together. We’re not done yet.”

  He squeezed them hard, laughing as Mina yelped.

  “Man, am I glad you two are here. Honestly, I’m surprised Taph even let you step foot in a place like this.”

  “Ah—! Let go!” Mina protested, squirming as Harlen finally released them, stepping back with a smug grin and his hands planted proudly on his hips.

  The tension in the chamber eased, if only slightly but the operation wasn’t over yet.

  For a brief moment, the chamber was quiet… Quiet enough that the faint shimmer of mana was noticeable as it faded from Lotha’s fingers. She withdrew her hands from Trevus’ ankle, the soft gold light dispersing into the air like dying embers. The bite wound that had worried everyone moments earlier now looked… inert. Angry red flesh remained, but the creeping gray rot had been thoroughly burned away. The Blight would not take hold. Whatever lingering corruption had tried to nest itself in his body had been erased at its root.

  Trevus tested his weight, bracing his hands against a nearby stool as he pushed himself upright, only for Lotha’s hand to clamp down firmly on his shoulder. Her grip wasn’t harsh, but it was absolute. She looked down at him, reading his posture instantly: the way his jaw was set, the stubborn tension in his back, the familiar fire in his eyes that refused to dim even now. She had seen that look too many times before.

  “Hey,” she said flatly. “Stay down for now. I thought you said you’d take the backlines.”

  “I only planned to head back to get exorcised,” Trevus replied, his voice steady despite the fatigue weighing on him.

  “Now you’ve done it for me. I’ll continue forward.” There was no bravado in his tone—only obligation. The kind carved into him long ago, back when retreat wasn’t an option and orders were meant to be followed to the bitter end. The habits of a former Legionnaire were not so easily shed.

  “Seriously, Trev.” Harlen stepped in before Lotha could respond, planting himself squarely in front of his squad leader with an unusually earnest look.

  “Rest. I really, really wanna get outta here. Besides, we’ve been inside this cursed place way too long. Time to tag out, huh?” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder toward the others.

  Trevus followed the gesture. Faeryn leaned against the wall, bladed wand resting heavily at her side, her breaths shallow and uneven. Ford stood nearby, helmet tucked under his arm, armor chipped and smeared with blood that wasn’t all his own. They were still standing—but only just. Bruised, drained, held upright more by resolve than strength. Seeing them like that made something tighten in Trevus’ chest.

  He closed his eyes and let out a long, heavy exhale, the tension finally bleeding from his shoulders. “…Fine,” he said at last. “We’ll retreat back to the forward camp.”

  Not far from them, Mina let out a quiet sigh of relief she hadn’t realized she was holding, her shoulders slumping slightly now that the immediate danger had passed. Ashe stood beside her, watching Trevus with a thoughtful expression. Even without words, they both understood that sometimes the hardest battle wasn’t against monsters, but against the urge to keep pushing long after the body had reached its limit.

  High above them, in the open courtyard of Fort Haden, the rain fell unhindered. Save for the space immediately before the Dungeon Maw of Dungeon 21E. The entrance loomed like a wound carved into the mountain itself, pulsing faintly with corrupted mana, yet no mortal could draw near. Standing before it was a single, immovable presence, a figure that alone barred the way as effectively as any sealed gate.

  The Blight that the operators had come to fear stood tall and imposing, a towering armored revenant whose form evoked an era long dead. Half of its face had rotted away entirely, leaving a bare skull grinning beneath strips of mold-blackened flesh. From the hollow of its eye sockets burned a dreadful crimson glow, sharp with awareness. It wore an elegant dark-blue uniform traced with once-proud crimson stripes, now soaked through with filth, blood, and decay. An antique cuirass encased its torso, scarred and pitted by time, and a tall shako rested atop its head like a mockery of discipline. In its grasp was a straight saber of absurd length and weight—so long that it scraped faint lines into the stone whenever it shifted its stance. It was this blade that earned the creature its name among the defenders of Fort Haden.

  —The Cuirassier—

  It stood utterly still, a silent sentinel of rot and memory, until something before it changed.

  With a thunderous crash, rubble shifted at the edge of the courtyard as a figure rose from the shattered remains of a garrison wall. Seth Valcos stepped into view, brushing dust and stone from his pauldrons as if he had merely stumbled rather than been hurled through solid masonry. He scratched at his stubbled chin in mild annoyance and flicked a strand of long blond hair from his eyes. Rain drizzled down upon him, yet the droplets hissed and vanished before they could touch his skin, consumed by the heat rolling off his body.

  His silver armor glowed a dull, angry red, metal pushed to its limits without warping, and the massive greatsword in his hand radiated the same searing heat. Waves of distortion rippled through the air around him, steam coiling upward from where his boots met the soaked stone. Each step he took left the faint scent of scorched rain behind.

  The Cuirassier shifted, just slightly enough to betray surprise.

  Seth exhaled slowly, eyes fixed on the undead commander as a faint, sharp smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.

  How quaint, he thought. Out of all the Legionnaires and Centurions I’ve faced… this one stands on par with a Castrum Legate. His grip tightened around the hilt of his greatsword, heat flaring in response to his intent.

  If this is only a Dungeon Commander… then I can’t help but wonder what kind of monster the Dungeon Master must be.

  Above and below, within halls and chambers choked by Blight and blood, the operation at Fort Haden pressed on. Its outcome now hinging on the clash about to unfold beneath the open sky.

  The courtyard rang with the sound of steel meeting steel—one blade gleaming white-hot, the other bathed in filth and age, yet no less deadly. Seth’s greatsword crashed against the Cuirassier’s heavy saber, heat and rot colliding in a shower of sparks and embers that hissed violently against the rain-slick stone.

  “W?h?y? ?d?o? ?y?o?u? ?p?e?r?s?i?s?t???”

  The Blight’s voice scraped through the air, layered and distorted, as if several throats were speaking at once. Its words were punctuated by motion, an immediate disengage, followed by a sharp lunge executed with fencing forms that had not been practiced in centuries. The techniques were archaic, pulled from a long-bygone battlefield doctrine, yet every movement was stripped of excess, refined into something brutally efficient.

  Seth met it head-on. Despite the burns etched across his armor and the dull ache threading through his muscles, his control never faltered. He rotated the massive greatsword in his hands as if it weighed nothing, the broad blade tracing precise arcs as he parried, redirected, and countered. Each clash sent a pulse of heat rippling outward, warping the air and forcing the rain to retreat in steaming halos around them. Two hours, nearly two hours he had been locked in combat with this thing and still it stood.

  The Cuirassier’s uniform had long since blackened and peeled away, its exposed flesh charred and cracked, not from flame but from proximity alone. Seth’s magic did not burn in tongues of fire but instead it bled heat into the world itself, saturating the space around him until stone, steel, and bone alike were pushed toward their limits. Yet the undead commander endured. Seth could feel it through each parry, each moment of contact.

  The creature is somehow adjusting and compensating.

  So you’ve noticed, Seth thought grimly.

  The Blight was countering him not with strength, but with intellect. Somewhere within its decayed form, magic stirred. It was subtle and insidious. Seth sensed the shift as the oppressive heat he radiated was partially negated, bled away by a deliberate manipulation of mana that dragged the Blight’s internal temperature downward. It was crude in concept, but effective, allowing the Cuirassier to stave off the slow death Seth had been forcing upon it.

  A flash of irritation crossed Seth’s face as he knocked aside another precise thrust. Tch. Even a Blight like you adapt.

  Still, frustration did not slow him. He advanced relentlessly, greatsword sweeping low before snapping upward in a violent arc. The Cuirassier retreated a single step, boots grinding against stone, its movements still maddeningly elegant. There were no wasted gestures, no reckless swings, only predictable patterns executed with flawless timing. Seth could read the style easily, but exploiting it was another matter entirely. Predictable did not mean weak.

  Steel rang again, and again, as neither yielded ground. Rain continued to fall around them, steam coiling skyward in thick plumes, while the Dungeon Maw loomed silently behind the undead knight.

  “Seriously… what?? That’s the big thing?”

  Mina muttered, pressing her face closer to the cracked edge of the shattered window. From their vantage point, the courtyard felt unreal, like a stage set far below them. Rain and steam blurred the view, but even through the haze, the towering figure of the armored Blight was impossible to miss. It stood before the Dungeon Maw like a gatekeeper carved from rot and iron.

  “I thought it’d be… bigger? Or uglier? Or, y’know—more distorted by now.”

  Ashe didn’t answer right away. His eyes were faintly aglow, mana threaded through his vision as he studied the exchange below. Every clash of blades sent ripples through the air he could feel, not just see.

  “It’s not brute force,” he said quietly at last. “That thing’s… regulating itself. It’s actively countering Seth’s heat output.” He hesitated, then added, “That’s not normal dungeon behavior, is it?”

  Lotha’s expression darkened as she observed in silence, arms folded across her blood-streaked coat. “I see it now,” she murmured. I thought he would’ve already melted the Blight in the first half hour.

  Her gaze sharpened as the Cuirassier slid back from another exchange, steam rolling off its armor in controlled bursts. It’s using magic to suppress its own temperature in a finely tuned manner. For something born of the Blight, that level of adaptation was unsettling. This wasn’t just a dungeon borne guardian, it was one capable of thinking.

  Behind them, Harlen leaned against the wall with his arms crossed, rainwater dripping from his hair onto the floor.

  “So that’s Seth’s dance partner, huh,” he said dryly. “Figures. Guy can’t ever get a normal opponent.”

  Trevus stood nearby, silent and still, his eyes fixed on the courtyard. Even injured, he watched with a commander’s focus, measuring the rhythm of the duel, the spacing, the timing, committing it all to memory.

  Heavy footsteps echoed through the corridor as Ford re-entered the room, nearly stumbling as he braced himself against the wall. He bent forward slightly, hands on his knees, breathing hard from exertion. Mud and blood clung to his greaves, and his armor looked worse for wear.

  “All… all nests across Fort Haden are cleared,” he reported between breaths. “Other squads are pulling back, including Keye, Thank Stayne. We’re awaiting further instructions from Esperanza and De Joyye.”

  That drew everyone’s attention inward again. The immediate crisis inside the fort was over—but outside, the true linchpin of the operation was still unfolding in the courtyard below. Mina glanced back through the window at Seth and the Cuirassier, then swallowed.

  “So… until that thing drops,” she said softly, “Dungeon 21E stays open for now.”

  No one disagreed with the statement.

  “Now I see why Seth is fighting that thing alone,” Mina said quietly, her voice carrying a mix of awe and disbelief as she continued watching the duel unfold below. Steam rolled across the courtyard in thick waves, and even from here she could feel the heat pressing against her skin.

  “It’s his magic, isn’t it?”

  “You’re right,” Lotha answered with a slow nod, Ashe mirroring the gesture a heartbeat later. Lotha said.

  “Seth’s Heat Magic creates a hostile zone around him. Lesser Blights can’t even approach without being burned down to ash. The only reason that Cuirassier is still standing is because it can actively counter his output.”

  Her gaze narrowed. “Unfortunately, that same heat makes it impossible for us to assist him up close. Anyone without extreme heat resistance would likely be cooked alive before landing a single strike.”

  Harlen let out a short laugh, folding his arms as he leaned against the wall.

  “Yeah, no kidding. I can neveeerr work with that guy,” he said with exaggerated emphasis. “Even his mana signature’s got a hotter temper than he does. Stand next to him for five seconds and you’re already sweating like you ran a marathon.”

  Despite the attempt at humor, the tension lingered. Trevus stepped forward, breaking the lull as his eyes followed the arc of Seth’s greatsword through the rain.

  “Close-quarters support is off the table,” he said firmly. “But that doesn’t mean we’re useless.” He turned, fixing Ford with a steady, unmistakably commanding look—the kind that left little room for argument.

  “We can still assist from range. Magic, artillery, suppression—anything that won’t interfere with Seth’s field. Ford, you know what to do.”

  Ford groaned the instant their eyes met, already anticipating the order. “Guh… seriously?” He took another long pull from his smoke pipe, exhaling a plume of gray that mixed with the steam drifting in from the courtyard.

  “Fine. I’ll pass it along.” With that, he turned and headed back out, his red coat snapping sharply in the wind as he disappeared down the corridor.

  Mina watched him go, then glanced back at the window. Below, Seth and the Cuirassier collided once more in a violent clash of heat and steel. She clenched her fists unconsciously…