A surge of mana erupted from the beast. Black darkness began to ooze from its skin and wounds, coalescing on the stone floor like pools of oil. From these shifting folds of shadow, hounds began to peel themselves into existence, their forms solidifying from the darkness.
Lynder's voice was laced with alarm. "Impossible. This thing's using conjuration magic. A monster wielding magic… I've only seen that a handful of times in my life. It must have cleared so many floors by conjuring Shadowhounds. That's how it emptied everything ahead of us."
The first dozen Shadowhounds snarled, turning their glowing eyes on the party. Orin, however, just grinned.
"Don't worry, we've got this!" he boomed, already rushing forward.
"Harmony," Roy said calmly, ignoring Orin's charge, "can you identify this creature's floor of origin?"
"Negative, Captain. I have only been performing acoustic mapping of the floors. I possess no monster index."
"We need to start cataloguing this. Every damn thing."
As the Trio prepared to face the Kabar'ra, a fresh wave of Shadowhounds, newly conjured, broke from the main pack and charged towards the rear of the group. However, they never reached their target. Eryndra and the Presidroids moved in perfect unison, forming a silent, lethal barrier. The entire wave of creatures was reduced to dissipating wisps of shadow before any could get within a yard of Roy. Neither he nor Lynder flinched, though Roy did notice Eryndra smirking at his slightly trembling knees.
Ahead, the battle was joined. Orin was the first to clash, but the Kabar'ra met his charge with a blast of raw power that sent him staggering back into a pillar. He braced his sword, gasping, "Yup...it's strong. Barely blocked that…"
Rava's firewall erupted, a shimmering curtain of heat that instantly vaporized any Shadowhound that tried to pass through. It was a masterful display of power, but it only covered one approach. Hounds were already circling, attacking from the flanks. Takara dove forward, her gauntlets raised to shield Andri and Rava from the pincer attack.
"Stay close, Captain," Eryndra said coolly, her arm an unseen mass as she dismantled another hound. "You won't need to lift a finger."
Andri, a flicker of panic in her eyes at the sheer number of enemies, was nonetheless a torrent of death, her spear a silver streak that skewered a dozen hounds in as many thrusts. Through the flames of Rava's wall, the Kabar'ra stalked forward, completely unfazed, its casual stride a deep insult. Rava conjured defensive spheres of force while Takara layered runic barriers, but the beast simply smashed through them, crashing into Takara's braced gauntlets. She grunted from the impact, dug her heels in, and then shoved it back with a roar.
"I'm here for support!"
The beast changed its angle, peeling more Shadowhounds from its own body to flank them. "You two handle those!" Takara yelled, holding the Kabar'ra at bay. Rava's orbs shredded entire packs of hounds while Andri's spear took down three in a single, perfect thrust. But for every ten they killed, twenty more poured in. Eryndra and the Presidroids had already butchered fifty, forcing the newly spawned hounds to redirect their attention toward the Trio.
"Want me to save you!?" Eryndra's voice, cupped by her hands, echoed in a playful, sing-song way.
"We can do this on our own!" Orin insisted, rejoining the chaotic battle.
"Excuse me? These things are horrifying!" Andri shot back, her voice tight.
"I'll take the tall one," Orin declared. "You handle the rest."
Rava muttered, "The rest? There are too many. Even with my weakest spells, I'll run dry before we kill them all."
Orin moved to face the Kabar'ra alone, a hulking beast of shadow and sinew, its eyes glowing with malevolent intent. He moved with incredible speed, deftly evading the creature's sweeping claws and parrying its snapping jaws with ease now. His massive sword was a silver streak against the monster's hide, each parry a testament to his skill. Despite that, he never committed to a strike.
"What's wrong with this child?" Lynder growled, an unfamiliar anger in his voice. "He pulls back from every single strike. Zhanna called him a phenom; was she mistaken?"
"Yeah… about that…" Roy began, a nervous laugh escaping him. "He… he won't strike unless he's absolutely certain it will land. Rava says that alone has gotten their trio kicked from half a dozen teams. In the short amount of training we had with them, we never could beat that out of him."
The agility and precision of Orin far surpassed the lumbering beast, its raw power unable to compensate. However, the Kabar'ra was not without its allies. A swirling pack of its grotesque hounds, their eyes like burning embers and their teeth like shards of frozen ink, swarmed around the periphery of the main battle. They were not so easily avoided, their smaller forms darting in and out of Orin's reach, their glancing bites leaving shallow, yet numerous, cuts on his arms and legs. Each wound, though minor, chipped away at his composure, a slow and insidious drain on his formidable strength.
A pack of hounds burst from cover, charging towards Orin. Takara, with a series of runically enforced punches, blasted them away from his back. "I'll help when you need it."
"I respect your offer, but I politely decline to accept it," Orin grunted, deflecting a claw.
Takara smirked. "I admire your guts, but I politely declined to respect them."
"Suit yourself," Orin shot back. "Just give me a shot."
Abruptly, the Kabar'ra abandoned Orin, launching a clear feint toward Andri. The bait was obvious, but Orin's protective instinct was faster than his reason. He lunged to cover her, his block wide and desperate. The beast exploited the opening instantly and slammed its full weight into the flat of Orin's overextended blade. The leverage was perfect. A deafening crack echoed through the chamber as the greatsword was torn from Orin's hands, cartwheeling into the high ceiling and biting deep into the stone.
Disarmed, Orin stared at the dozens of Shadowhounds now between him and his blade, a stark gauntlet of snapping jaws and glowing eyes. Without hesitation, he scooped a discarded adventurer's sword from the blood-slicked floor. It was a flimsy thing, pitted and unremarkable, not even a pale imitation of his own magnificent weapon. Yet, in Orin's grasp, it became an extension of his will, his violence.
His entire fighting style changed in an instant. The sporadic movement and brute force he was known for vanished, replaced by a breathtaking display of dexterity, agility and precision. He went from a cautious battering ram of a warrior, to a high-speed buzzsaw. His movements, once deliberate and powerful, became fluid and lightning-fast. Each thrust, each parry, each desperate lunge was precise, lethal, and remorseless. He weaved through the pack of Shadowhounds, as if he was a dancer of death, the lesser blade a gleaming streak of light against the encroaching darkness. He dodged snapping maws and parried clawed swipes, his focus absolute.
"Now that looks like the talent Zhanna was referring to!" Lynder yelled. "My word, he is marvelous!"
Eryndra watched from the back line, a thoughtful look on her face. "He's actually much stronger without that absurdly heavy sword. Why bother with it?"
Orin, hearing her even over the sound of battle, quipped mid-slash, "It makes me tall, that's all!"
He cut down dozens of hounds, clearing a path, then leaped, his hand closing around the hilt of his greatsword. He wrenched it free from the ceiling, but the moment he did, the hounds swarmed him, their shadowy forms pinning his limbs to the wall behind him.
"It was an obvious trap! Ditch the sword, you moron!" Eryndra shouted.
"Never!" Orin roared, struggling slightly against the weight.
The Kabar'ra lunged, sinking its fangs deep into his neck. Takara surged forward, but a tide of hundreds more hounds erupted from the beast's body, blocking her path.
"They drain their victims blood before they kill," Lynder said grimly. "He's lost. Captain, we must end this."
A Presidroid stepped forward. "Captain," FDR said, his voice calm. "Permission to finish this."
Roy nodded once.
FDR raised a hand, moving his fingers at high speed. A massive, complex seal spread across the entire floor, its concentric rings of light snapping into place with audible clicks, gaps forming around his allies. "Oppression for the oppressors. Gravity magic."
The weight of a fallen sky slammed down. Every Shadowhound dissolved into paste. The Kabar'ra itself, a creature of nightmare and shadow, was flattened, its form crushed into a grotesque smear of annihilated flesh and dark energy.
Lynder seized a breath and the air around him shivered. A translucent ward flared into being, a thin veil of shadow bulging from his outstretched palm and sliding like glass around his shoulders. His fingers trembled as if they remembered the weight of something terrible.
After feeling the force of the mana rattle in the air, Roy turned to face Lynder. "What is that for? Do you see something!? Eryndra, keep watch!" Roy said, immediately putting up his light barrier just in case.
"No… This… this is—" Lynder said, his voice small and sharp. He looked at FDR, eyes raw with an old, private alarm. "Gravity magic. Part of the Forgotten Tongues line. Those who are capable of using Forgotten Tongues or its counterpart Forgotten Scripts passively affect the world around them in a catastrophic way. It is forbidden for a reason!"
"Oh, that's it?" Roy said, clearly relieved, "FDR isn't dangerous, don't worry."
"I should take your word for it, Captain, but the risk is too high." Lynder's voice grew more measured. "Though, runic seals can't create gravitational effects, not even the Forgotten Scripts can. So, perhaps this isn't truly Gravity Magic or Forgotten Tongues…"
"It is Forgotten Tongues," FDR answered with a calm that did not try to be comforting. He crouched, palms flat to the stone, feeling the pulse of the runic linework. "But you are reading only half the picture. Note the paths I traced, that runic lattice is a containment frame I just thought up. I used the runes as a guide, not the source. I trapped the gravitational effect inside the runes and directed its vector away from anything I did not intend to crush."
Lynder's breath left him in a sound like cloth tearing. "I… Passive harms of the Forgotten lines aside for a moment…do you truly expect me to believe that you improvised a containment field for one of the most dangerous spells known, right now, with no rehearsal? No practice? Nothing but choice?!"
"Not simply choice, guildmaster. It was calculation and simulation. I simulated it in my head thousands of times a moment ago until the concept fit. Then I drew the lines and projected them down." FDR replied, straightening his posture, an almost imperceptible twitch in his metallic fingers. "As for the passive harms of the Forgotten lines, they aren't a problem."
As he remained eyeing FDR skeptically, Lynder's ward shivered, starting to dissipate. "How are you so sure of this?"
FDR laughed, a sharp, metallic sound at first, then flattening, something colder seeping into it. "Master Evarran said we Presidroids are neither dead nor… alive. The harmful effect doesn't exist for the Presidroids who can use either of the two lines as it only exists as a manifestation of the living or dead spirit."
For a long beat, Lynder watched the air ripple over the lattice, then turned back to FDR. His shoulders fell and let the ward fizzle away, fingers unspooling from the gesture as if tired of pretending to hold the world evil at bay. "I will confirm this with Evarran," he said. His voice had the brittle steadiness of a man who had not slept. "Right now, I feel nothing of the purported effects. If you are lying, or merely ignorant, I will know. Until then, I will accept what my senses tell me."
FDR stepped back a pace. "Your acceptance will not be tested."
As the magic faded, the dungeon seemed to exhale. Down the central shaft, monsters began to respawn on the floors below.
"So long as one tries to break free, the floors it ravages won't reset," Roy observed. "Only when it's killed do the dungeon's rules reassert."
Takara rushed to Orin's side. He was drained, shaking, and pale, but he still managed a weak, smirking thumbs-up. "I'm f-fine. Still tall. We can keep going."
"You're an idiot. Womb Tomb," Andri said from a distance, dropping him into her healing egg underground despite his protests.
In the background, the floor's actual boss, a newly respawned and confused-looking brute of a Pygmy Goblin, finally got its courage up and threw a rock at the group. Rava didn't even look at it, casually vaporizing it with a defensive orb shot from a simple flick of his wrist.
"We can keep going once he's out," Andri insisted. "We're fine."
"A-and we won't fail again, I promise," Rava added.
Andri folded her arms and watched the shell underground brighten around Orin. "We have been deeper than this with Lantern Quay, around floor seventy, and never saw anything like that. That thing came from much farther down. We can handle a few more floors without stopping."
Roy shook his head, his gaze sweeping over the exhausted Trio. "You weren't fine against those hounds. You also bled mana and got dragged once. If the minions of a monster below seventy is too much for you, you ain't beating the bosses of floor fifty, maybe even forty."
She nodded in a mixture of disappointment and respect. "True…but—"
"Once the dweeb is all healed up, we start at floor thirty," Roy interjected, his voice softening with genuine concern as he gently placed a hand on her shoulder. "Then we keep skipping five floors at a time until it feels like work again. Don't worry, I'm not giving up on you guys just because you had some trouble."
Andri looked up at him, her eyes wide with gratitude and surprise at his words. Eryndra, however, was less impressed. She playfully poked his sides, teasing, "So admirable, Captain! I'm touched!"