Camylle moved first.
She slammed her heels against the stone, and with a roar like a furnace, jets of flame erupted from the soles of her boots. The blast hurled her forward, her body streaking through the air like a blazing spear. Her left arm cocked back, knuckles coiled tight, her gaze locked on a single, unfortunate Sentry Legionnaire at the front line.
"Ignia!" she shouted, her voice breaking like a whip through the cavern.
Her fist, shrouded in searing flame, met stone. The impact detonated with a thunderclap, scattering shards of granite as the Legionnaire was thrown backward, its chest runes flickering erratically.
Camylle Aursburst—fire incarnate, a martial-battle mage who never hid behind walls of theory or incantation. She lived where spell and strike met flesh and stone.
Her dominion was the Elemental Aspect of Flame Manipulation, but hers was no scholar's flame, unlike the usual mages that hid behind the frontlines and murmuring incanctations. She wielded Ignis Imperii Progressus, the "Imperial Advance of Fire"—a spell-tree common across the Central East. Yet Camylle had fused it with something deeper, older: her body's own doctrine of war.
Salil, a Southern blend of Silat's fluid throws and Ringen's grappling holds, teaching her how to redirect force.
Kamsport, the practical self-defense of the Decantonian east, stripped-down and brutal, the art given to commoners barred from imperial schools.
Zentrale Kampftechniken, the ancient Central-Northern discipline of footwork and crushing kicks, designed for battlefields of shield walls and bloodied mud.
Each art was firewood. Her flames were the spark. Together, they made her an inferno.
She met the next Legionnaire without pause. Camylle grabbed a handful of its stony face, fingers searing into granite as though it were clay. With a guttural roar, she slammed its head into the cavern floor, the ground cracking under the force.
Flames bloomed where her palm pressed. Runes sputtered. The creature struggled for an instant before her boot came down, heel-first, shattering its skull in a burst of burning fragments.
Not done, she pivoted on her other foot and spun into a finishing kick, her heel striking the Legionnaire's chest. The blow resounded with a flare of molten fire, and the soldier's torso caved inward, its core shattering like glass beneath her strike.
One down.
The others advanced.
But for Camylle, this was no wall of stone—it was fuel. Embers flickered around her, clinging to her fists, coiling at her ankles. Her aura glowed like a forge at full heat as she plowed into the next line, fists blazing, boots cracking against cores.
Wherever she struck, stone soldiers broke apart, heads crushed, chests cored, torsos burning from the inside out. She was less fighter now and more wildfire, bulldozing through the advancing host, every movement a marriage of martial technique and unrelenting flame.
Trevus moved without a word.
His twin sabres gleamed faint frost under the cavern's light as he lunged into the advancing line of stone soldiers. What followed was not brute force, but the fluid grace of a dancer with death for a partner.
Eight strikes flashed in less than a breath—slashes so clean they seemed to pass through stone rather than resist it. Three Legionnaires collapsed in silence, their bodies splitting apart in perfect, surgical cuts. Before their runes could stabilize, Trevus stepped in close, his sabres thrusting with surgical precision—crack, crack, crack—each core shattered, their lights extinguished.
Trevus Regulus—the quiet storm, once called Knight, now called Bladedancer. Where others hacked and hammered, he flowed. His twin sabres sang with Flow-Style, the old martial school of the Central frontier: a dance of footwork, shifting stances, and strikes guided by momentum instead of muscle.
The title of Knight was antiquated, romantic. Bladedancer was truer, for his battlefield was not a duel—it was a performance of death in motion.
He shifted low, knee surging upward with mana-reinforced strength. The strike cracked into a Legionnaire's chest, the core shattering under the impact before the body launched backward, slamming into a wall and falling limp.
Sharp eyes cut to his flank. A stone soldier raised its hammer-like arm, but Trevus was already there—his sabre drove straight into its chest, piercing the glowing rune-core with surgical finality.
He flowed onward before the fragments even hit the ground, weaving through the forest of granite limbs. Fists of stone swung down, crushing where he had been a second earlier, striking only air.
Trevus spun, sabres widening into a gleaming arc—two Legionnaires lost their heads, their glowing eyes snuffed in the same instant.
Planting his heel, he pushed off the ground with mana-born force, launching himself upward in a tight arc. His blades crossed, frost crackling along their edges, as he gathered his power.
"Hex Burst."
A pulse of raw mana erupted outward, a simple spell made deadly in his practiced hands. The blast rippled like a frost-laced shockwave, hurling half a dozen Legionnaires back, their bodies slamming into walls and floor, runes flickering as they scrambled to rise.
Trevus landed lightly, sabres drawn close, his breath steady. Around him, the battlefield had carved a new rhythm—the silent song of a bladedancer cutting down stone.
And then came the two pillars—the weight that held the Party steady when the storm grew too wild.
Harlen Sprieggen and Lotha Mireyer.
Harlen was first to push forward, his barrier wards already humming faintly on the battlefield's edge. The air shimmered faintly around him, that invisible lattice of protection only he could weave. Yet where most saw him as a support mage, Harlen wielded his blade like a challenge to every swordsman alive.
No falchion, no sabre, no longsword—he chose the arming sword, the "secondary" blade dismissed by most schools of war. With both hands locked tight upon its grip, he wielded it as though it were a spear of steel.
His sword burned bright, glowing red-hot from the mana he funneled into its edge. Each thrust came like lightning, a blur of forward momentum that outpaced even Trevus's flowing sabres. Stone cores shattered in rapid sequence—one, two, three, until eight Legionnaires fell upon his path, their runes snuffed out like candles.
Sweat beaded his brow, his blond hair clinging to his temple as he brushed it aside with a quick jerk of his head. He exhaled through gritted teeth, blade still glowing, and with a single clean slash, cut another soldier in half. The granite halves collapsed to the floor, glowing red fissures splitting their chests where the heat had cooked them from within.
Beside him came Lotha Mireyer—once Priestess, now Paladin.
Her shift in role had not come gently. It had been rebellion, a breaking away from the Staynic Matron's path that had sought to chain her into endless hymns and endless blessings. But here, on the battlefield, she was free—and in her freedom, she had discovered a truth: her mana was made not for soft prayers, but for breaking.
Her mace swung with staggering force. She brought it down upon a stone soldier, and the impact was like a hammer to glass. The Legionnaire didn't merely crack—it exploded into rubble and dust, its core snuffed in the same blow. The sheer roughness of her mana surged with each strike, pulverizing everything her weapon touched.
And yet, she had not abandoned her duty to protect. With her gauntleted hand raised, golden runes etched into the air, a ward spread out across Party 5. It was no longer the old barrier—a continuous shield woven by incantation and song. This one was alive, reacting in the blink of an eye, activating only at the moment of impact.
The test came quick.
Camylle, laughing as she tore through another soldier, left her flank open. A stone fist of granite swung down, ready to smash her ribs to dust. But before it landed, a golden flare sparked in front of her—a barrier appeared at the last instant, shattering the blow.
Camylle blinked, then glanced over her shoulder with a grin. "New spell, huh? No more singing yourself hoarse while keeping a wall up?"
Lotha smashed her mace into the soldier that dared strike Camylle, the core breaking like brittle fruit. She tossed her hair back, smirking. "Oh please. You've gotta admit—it looks cooler now."
Camylle snorted. "Cooler? Sure. But trusting a barrier to show up just before a fist lands? Sounds like gambling with your ribs."
Lotha's smile turned sly, almost sing-song in her tone. "Oh, just have faith, Camylle~."
Camylle rolled her eyes, flames swirling hotter at her fists. "Tch. I'll keep my faith in my you."
Though Trevus had told her to hold the backline, Mina Orlean could never resist the pull of the front. She lingered just outside Harlen's protective barrier, the itch to test her newest edge too strong to ignore.
Her hand gripped Ruth, the dagger bound to her mana—its shaft of polished silver, redwood hilt snug against her palm. The blade thrummed as she willed the enchantment awake, its edge suddenly drawing upon unseen weight. The air seemed to bend faintly around it, a distortion as though reality itself strained beneath invisible burden.
Ruth was now a mountain in disguise. To Mina, however, it still felt light as air.
She darted forward, nimble as a shadow. With a single slash, the blade struck a Legionnaire. Where a normal dagger would have bounced harmlessly, Ruth carved clean through the granite torso, the core shattering in a single spark. The golem collapsed into rubble, the weight of its own pieces echoing hollowly on the cavern floor.
Mina fought differently than the others. Where Camylle blazed, Trevus flowed, and Harlen pressed like a spear, Mina danced between stone fists with calculated agility.
Her art was not strength—it was abuse of physics. Mass and velocity. A blade that held the weight of mountains, swung with the speed of a dagger. The equation was simple. The results were catastrophic.
Two more stone soldiers lumbered toward her, arms swinging down like hammers. Mina spun aside, each dodge a narrow slip of red hair and quick feet, the blows grazing where she had just been. Granite fists cracked the floor, but Mina was already moving, closing the gap.
She lunged, Ruth's tip driving deep into the chest of the first Legionnaire. The weight of mountains behind the thrust pulverized the rune-core instantly, shards of light scattering across the cavern. The soldier collapsed, lifeless rubble before it even finished its swing.
The second soldier met her in a downward strike. Mina rolled low, sliding between its legs, then slashed upward in a blur. The arc carried all of Ruth's mass and all of Mina's velocity. The soldier's torso exploded outward in a cloud of fragments, the perfect strike reducing it to rubble.
Mina exhaled, flicking dust and glowing shards from her dagger's edge, eyes sharp, lips curved in the faintest smirk. So this is what S-rank enchantments feel like in the field.
The waves of stone soldiers broke against Party 5 like a tide striking iron.
Trevus slipped back from the crush, his body weaving just beyond the path of a granite fist that slammed into the ground, shattering stone where he had stood. His sabres answered in kind, cutting arcs of frost-laced steel that opened glowing fissures through the Legionnaire's chest.
Beside him, Camylle spun—her movement fluid, fiery, almost a dance. She twisted midair, her heel jets flaring, and came down with an elbow strike wreathed in fire. The blow crashed into a Legionnaire's chest, the rune-core bursting under the impact, the body disintegrating into dust and glowing cinders. She landed light, flames curling off her in a dancer's pirouette.
In the backline, Lotha kept watch, golden barriers shimmering at the edges of every strike that came too close. She stood near Mina, who was still testing Ruth's devastating weight with each careful thrust. Though Mina fought with ferocity, Lotha's presence loomed protectively, ready to shield her from overreach.
The battle stretched on. Stone shattered, flames roared, sabres cut. Minutes passed until the tide finally broke.
Camylle claimed the last soldier for herself. With a gleeful growl, she tackled it head-on, flames wreathing her limbs. She seized its arm and tore it free with brute force, the crack of stone echoing through the cavern. Then another limb—snapped and tossed aside like driftwood. Soon only its torso and head remained, runes flickering weakly.
"Not done yet," Camylle muttered, planting her boot against its chest. With a savage kick, she sent it sailing off the ledge into the black waters below. The splash hissed faintly in the distance, swallowed by the void.
Silence followed. Dust settled. The cavern smelled of scorched granite.
"That was… a bit much, don't you think?" Lotha exhaled, lowering her mace, her expression caught between disapproval and fatigue.
"Too harsh? Please. They're not even alive. Just rocks that walk." Camylle turned, embers still glowing across her knuckles, her grin feral and unrepentant.
"Rocks or not, there's no need to look like you're enjoying it." Lotha frowned, crossing her arms.
"Enjoyment's what keeps me burning, Paladin. Without it, I'm just ash." Camylle's eyes glinted like hot coals as she bared her teeth in a half-snarl, half-smile.
The battlefield stilled at last, only the hiss of black waters and the crackle of dying embers filling the cavern.
Trevus lowered himself onto a fallen stone pillar, his sabres laid carefully across his knees. His chest rose and fell, breath steadying after the relentless flurry of strikes. He let the silence linger a moment before speaking, voice even but edged with iron.
"Rest for now," he said, scanning the group with sharp eyes. "That wasn't the main course. Those soldiers were just… an appetizer."
The others needed no further encouragement. One by one, they settled onto the broken stone, the air thick with heat and dust. Camylle wiped her brow with the back of her arm, grumbling, but even she lowered herself onto the ground, vexes still circling lazily above her like tired fireflies.
At last, Ashe emerged from the backlines, his cyan thread glimmering faintly. Mina spotted him immediately and rose, dagger still twirling between her fingers.
"Dude, where have you been?" she said, half-grin, half-accusation. "I thought you got crushed under all that rubble."
Ashe gave a sheepish laugh, rubbing the back of his neck. "Hah, nothing like that. I was with Nira—keeping low inside Harlen's barrier. Didn't see much sense in standing around where fists the size of boulders were flying."
Mina tilted her head, raising a brow. "What? You could've, I don't know, scrambled their heads a little? Thrown an illusion in their eyes, messed with their aim?"
Ashe shrugged, faintly smug. "Tried. Problem is… they don't have minds. Nothing to twist, nothing to invade. Just empty husks running on commands. Once I figured that out, I decided not to waste the mana. Besides…" His lips curved upward. "I knew you lot had it under control."
Mina clicked her tongue, though her smirk betrayed her irritation. "You always know how to dodge the work, don't you?"
Before Ashe could quip back, Trevus stood and approached, sabres hanging loosely at his sides. His expression was calm, but his words carried the weight of command.
"That was the right call," he said firmly. "You knew your limits and chose not to throw yourself away on something pointless. That's discipline, not weakness. Leave what you can't do to those who can."
Ashe blinked, surprised by the rare commendation. Then he nodded once, more solemn than usual. "Understood."
Camylle, still seated on a broken slab of stone, closed her eyes and slowed her breathing. The flicker of embers around her dimmed to faint cinders as she pressed her palms flat to the floor. A ripple of mana spread outward, invisible but palpable, like rings through water.
Her expression sharpened, her head tilting slightly as though listening to a melody only she could hear.
"…There it is," she murmured. "Grinding stone. Walls shifting. Shafts bending. Corridors crawling into new places." Her amber eyes opened, glowing faintly in the firelight. "The dungeon's moving again."
The others turned their attention to her at once.
She gestured to the black walls around them, her voice low but steady. "Not here. Not this cavern. This place is natural rock—untouched, unclaimed. The Computare can't lay hands on it. Everything you see shaped from real earth stays as it is. But beyond these walls? The dungeon is alive. I can hear the shafts twist and the halls groan into new shapes."
For a moment, only the faint hiss of the dark waters below accompanied her words.
Trevus leaned forward slightly. "Any threats coming closer?"
Camylle shook her head, brushing back a strand of flame-colored hair. "No heavy vibrations. No major shifts heading this way. Just distant movement. For now, it's quiet." She straightened, her lips curling in the faintest of smirks. "Which means we've done it. This chamber's ours."
A wave of relief passed over the group.
"Checkpoint secured," Trevus said, echoing her conclusion, his voice carrying that rare note of satisfaction. He glanced around the chamber, already evaluating its ridges, ledges, and lines of sight. "We can call this a conquered ground. A place to fall back to, to rest, to plan. For now, it serves as our front operating base."
"Finally. A foothold. Let the dungeon twist itself sick out there—down here, this one belongs to us." Camylle stretched, the embers sparking back into faint flame as her grin widened.
On the far side of the cavern, Harlen busied himself with the last of the sentry turrets embedded in the walls. Only two remained, their runed eyes glowing faintly in the dark.
The first loosed a beam of mana, white-hot and crackling. Harlen smirked, angling his arming sword with a deft twist. The blade—still red-hot with his imbued mana—caught the beam and deflected it with a sharp hiss, sparks scattering into the stone.
Another beam followed. Harlen flicked his wrist, parried it aside again. Then another. And another. Each strike met the flat of his blade, ringing sharp in the cavern. He almost seemed to be playing with it, sparks lighting his grin.
From behind, Trevus's voice cut sharply across the chamber. "Enough games, Harlen! End it now. They can still report back to the Computare through their eyes."
Harlen exhaled, shoulders shrugging with false laziness. "Yeah, yeah, I hear you…"
He lunged forward in a blur, dodging one last beam by a hair. His sword thrust straight into the turret's rune-core. The light in its eyes flickered, then died in silence as the stone husk slumped.
Only one turret remained.
Harlen turned toward it, lips curling. "Alright, your turn." He strode confidently, expecting more of the same harmless light show.
The turret shifted. Its mouth opened wider than the others. With a low grinding sound, a barrel extended outward—its tip glowing with an ominous heat.
Harlen blinked, brow raising. "Huh. That's new."
A moment later, it roared. A jet of wide flame erupted, bright and savage, flooding the cavern with blistering heat.
Harlen staggered back, sword raised against the blast, his face twisting in disbelief as the inferno rushed toward him.
"Wait—what?!" he shouted, half-panicked, half-indignant. "A flamethrower!?"
The chamber echoed with the roaroffire.