Orin's finger, clad in the sleek black gauntlet of his summoned armor, jabbed excitedly toward the desperate group backed into the corner.
"That's Ansel, the leader!" Orin chirped, bouncing on his heels as if introducing old friends at a dinner party rather than pointing out people fighting for their lives. He shifted his aim toward the woman in the back, whose staff was flickering with waning light. "The mage is Azenya! The big guy shaking in the front is Makon, and the shield guy jumping around is Tomas!"
Roy squinted through the dust, trying to match the names to the frantic, bloody struggle unfolding fifty yards away.
In the corner of the antechamber, the situation had devolved from a battle into a slaughter. The knight Orin had identified as Ansel swung his blade with the heavy, sluggish rhythm of exhaustion, deflecting a Chimera's snapping jaw only to be battered backward by a dragon-headed tail flanker. Beside him, Tomas, the shield bearer, was barely keeping his feet, his large tower shield dented and gouged deep enough to show the metal beneath the paint.
Desperation sharpened the air around the mage, Azenya. She dropped to one knee, her face paling to the color of ash as she gripped her staff with both hands, channeling every scrap of her remaining mana into a singular, concentrated point. A scream tore from her throat, raw and agonizing, as she forced the energy outward, wrapping Ansel in a wreath of violent, crimson light.
"Do it!" she shrieked, collapsing forward as the spell left her.
Surging with the borrowed power, Ansel roared, abandoning all defense. He gripped his sword with both hands, the crimson light bleeding from his armor into the steel, and unleashed a horizontal slash that tore a crescent of pure force through the horde.
"Whoa!" Orin clapped his hands, delighted. "That's the Super Boosted Kinda Tall Slash!"
Roy stared at the carnage, watching dozens of Chimeras fall apart in sprays of gore. "I am one hundred percent sure he did not name it that."
The crimson light faded as quickly as it had appeared, leaving Ansel to crumple to his knees, his sword clattering to the stone. The immediate circle was clear, a ring of dead monsters buying them a heartbeat of silence, and in that pause, Orin began clapping. The members of Lantern Quay looked up, finally spotting the group standing in the ruined doorway.
Their relief lasted less than a second.
A heavy, wet crunching sound echoed from the darkness of the boss room, growing louder with the rhythmic thud of massive paws. The pile of monster corpses shifted, sliding aside to make way for the new master of the floor.
It was another Chimera, but twisted and armored in dark, shifting metal that seemed to grow from its own hide. It strolled casually into the light, jaws working lazily around the crushed skull of a Demon Drake, the true floor boss of floor 175 it had evidently killed and was now consuming as a snack.
Tomas, the shield knight, scrambled to his feet, shouting a war cry that sounded more like a plea as he threw himself between his fallen leader and the approaching titan. He planted his feet, shield raised high, mana flaring in a solid wall of defense.
The metal Chimera maintained its pace. It swept a paw forward, claws glowing with an ethereal, ghostly light that easily bypassed physical matter.
There was an absence of an impact sound, replaced only by the screech of shattering magic. Tomas's shield disintegrated into sparks, and the ethereal claws continued their arc, carving deep, bloodless furrows through his plate armor and into his chest. He was lifted from his feet and hurled backward, slamming into the stone wall with a bone-breaking crack before sliding down into a motionless heap.
Makon, the brawler, now stood alone. He raised his fists, trembling violently, his eyes darting between his fallen comrades and the monster that had dismantled their tank with a single, bored swipe. He opened his mouth to shout, to scream, but fear locked his jaw tight.
Ignoring him entirely, the Chimera swallowed the rest of the Demon Drake and took another slow, heavy step forward, its gaze passing over Roy's team without a flicker of interest.
"How arrogant," FDR murmured, the lights in his optical sensors narrowing.
"Should we—?" Eryndra began, shifting her weight.
Her words cut off as mana flashed at the center of their formation. Orin hurled himself forward, ripping free of the Fireside Ascent tether with a crack of magical feedback.
Lynder reacted instantly, his hand snapping up, shadows coiling around his fingers to weave a binding spell. "Foolish boy, stop!"
A hand clamped over Lynder's wrist, forcing it down with crushing strength. Eryndra stood beside him, eyes locked on the streak hurtling across the chamber.
"I have him covered," she said, her voice tight with anticipation. "Let's see what he will do."
With a sharp hiss, the vents along her body popped open a quarter of the way, mist shimmering in the air around her.
After Orin crossed the distance in two bounds, he vaulted high into the air above the metal beast. The Chimera paused, the dragon-head on its tail whipping around to peer upward. Its reptilian eyes locked onto Orin for a fraction of a second, assessed him as worthless, and turned away with dismissive indifference.
Below, Makon stared up at the boy falling toward certain death, his face twisted in a rictus of terror. "What are you doing..." he wheezed, tears streaming down his dust-caked face. "A weakling like you can't save..."
Orin's grip tightened on the hilt of his greatsword as he reached the apex of his arc.
"Gonna have to use the full set," he said to himself as he began his sword swing.
Ethereal black plates materialized around his limbs and chest, slamming into existence. The sudden, incredible increase in mass yanked Orin downward, imbuing his swing with a thousand tons of kinetic violence.
He screamed, straining against the weight to scrape out all the force he could muster, dragging the blade down as gravity became his weapon.
The Chimera's metal hide, which had shrugged off magic and steel alike, parted like water. A shriek of tearing metal rang out, agonizing and loud, as the enormous greatsword drove through the monster's spine, through its ribs, and buried itself deep into the stone floor beneath.
Orin released the armor's chest section a microsecond before his boots touched the ground. He landed in a crouch, dust billowing around him, the two halves of the massive Chimera sliding apart with a wet thud on either side of him.
Silence rushed back into the room, heavy and awkward, broken only by the settling dust and the ragged breathing of the survivors.
Ansel, the leader of Lantern Quay, stared up at the figure rising from the debris, his mouth opening and closing without sound. Beside him, Azenya, the mage who had once mocked Orin's relentlessly, stood frozen, her staff lowered and forgotten. Makon, the brawler who used to shove Orin for sport, looked from the massive sword embedded in the stone to his own bruised knuckles with a look of utter, terrifying disbelief.
"Orin?" Ansel finally choked out, the name tasting like ash. "Is... is that you?"
A wide, genuine grin broke through the grime on Orin's face. He wiped monster blood from his cheek with the back of his hand. "Yup! It's me!"
Roy walked into the room, flanked by Eryndra and the Presidroids, looking every inch the terrifying dungeon conqueror. He stopped beside Orin, looking down at the battered party with a gaze that could have frozen magma.
"You know these guys, Orin?" Roy asked, his voice dripping with a feigned ignorance that made Makon flinch.
"Yeah!" Orin beamed, pointing a thumb at the trembling knight. "This is the team that fired us, remember? They said we were useless! I like these guys!"
Roy's eyes narrowed, a cold, predatory smile touching his lips as he looked at Ansel. "Ah yes, I remember now!"
Ansel weakly scrambled backward, his charismatic facade crumbling. "We... it was a business decision... we didn't..."
"Business," Roy repeated flatly. He glanced at Tomas, the shield knight who was groaning against the wall, clutching his chest. "Looks like business is booming."
"Why aren't you mad?" Roy asked, turning his attention back to Orin, ignoring the terrified adventurers entirely. "They kicked you out. They humiliated you in front of all of Technomendia. You should want to crush them... Ishould crush them for you."
Orin blinked, tilting his head as if Roy had asked why the sky was blue. "Mad? Why would I be mad?"
He gestured to the dead monsters, then to his terrified former teammates.
"Think about it, Captain. When we were with them, we couldn't even get past Floor 100. We held them back. Because they cut us loose, they made it all the way to Floor 175! That's a new record for them!"
Orin puffed out his chest, radiating pride.
"And because they fired us, I met you! And now I'm here, and I have cool armor, and I still have my friends! Everybody won! It's the best thing they ever did for us!"
Roy stared at the boy for a long moment. The absolute lack of malice, the pure, unfiltered optimism, was almost blinding. There was no irony in Orin's voice, no hidden barb meant to wound. He truly believed it.
"But," Orin continued, "I'd have saved them either way."
"You're a weird kid, Orin," Roy said softly, trying his best to conceal his pride.
"Wait," Ansel stammered, standing up on shaky legs, his ego unable to process the situation. "You... you'd still save us. After everything we said? After tearing up your stupid waivers?"
Orin looked at him, confused by the question. He tapped the hilt of his greatsword.
"I'm tall," Orin said simply. "That's what tall people do."
The words hung in the air, heavier than the sword.
For Ansel, it was a knife twist. The phrase he had mocked a thousand times, the quirk he had called a childish delusion, was the only reason he was still breathing. The eccentricity he had despised was the source of a strength he could never hope to match.
Azenya looked away, unable to meet Orin's eyes, the memory of calling him "dead weight" burning in her throat. Makon stared at the floor, the realization that the boy he bullied was now a titan sinking in like a cold stone.
And Tomas, leaning against the wall, closed his eyes. The silence he had kept while Orin was bullied didn't feel like neutrality anymore; it felt like cowardice in the face of something pure.
He opened his eyes, pushing himself off the wall with a wince, and looked at Orin with a mixture of shame and respect. His lips parted, a tremor in his voice as he started to speak. "Orin, I'm sor—"
"Womb Tomb," Andri said, slapping her hands onto the stone floor.
The ground surged upward, liquid and hungry, swallowing Tomas mid-syllable. Ansel, Azenya, and Makon were pulled down with him, their surprised yelps cut short as the earth sealed over their heads, forming four pulsating, underground eggs.
"That should fix them up in an hour or so," Andri said, dusting off her hands without looking at the lights. "They can find their own way up after that."
"Hilarious," Roy said with an approving nod. "Let's go."
FDR initiated the Fireside Ascent sequence, the runes flaring to life beneath their feet. As they lifted off the ground, leaving the earthen eggs behind in the silence of the boss room, Lynder glanced back at the bisected corpse of the metal Chimera.
"Good practice for Orin," Roy said, signaling FDR. "Hit it, triple time."
Gravity engaged, pulling the Fireside Ascent into a streak of light that punched through the tunnel and swallowed the miles. Velocity replaced time, turning the dungeon into a smear of shifting biomes where magma on Floor 180 flashed by as a streak of orange steam, and the crystal golems of 190 shattered under Truman's fission orbs before they could even finish manifesting.
By Floor 200, another full floor boss domain of what Lynder called the Carrion Lord, the floor of the chimera they fought earlier became clear, as the bone giant Eryndra dismantled with her bare hands rode atop that very same chimera. The Trio ate snacks in the anti-gravity field while the giant collapsed, its origin confirmed but irrelevant against their momentum. Pressure to catch Zehrina drove them deeper, past ice and rot and void, until the marker for Floor 230 flashed in the dark.
Roy raised a hand, voice hoarse from the recycled air. "Hold up."
The formation drifted into a side sector, a dusty network of stone corridors smelling of nothing but old air.
"We need a break," Roy said, dropping his feet to the ground as the gravity field disengaged. "Just for a few hours. Even Eryndra has to sleep eventually."
"I do not!" Eryndra objected.
They swept the perimeter twice. Nothing. No traps, hidden alcoves or even any mana signatures. It was the most boring, safe-looking room they had seen in fifty floors.
"Perfect," Roy sighed, unrolling his sleeping bag against the far wall. "Finally. A nice, safe floor."
He closed his eyes, the exhaustion washing over him like a tide.
Behind him, unseen by anyone, a shadow on the wall shifted, though nothing had cast it. A breath of cold air touched the back of his neck.