"Damien is in a pinch… should we?"
The question left Finn's mouth quietly, but there was nothing light about it. From the ridge overlooking the lower levels, the executives of the Loki Familia watched the distant devastation.
Gareth's voice thundered through the expedition line. "Move! All of you, move! Floor Fifty isn't going to wait for us!" His axe rested on his shoulder, but his eyes kept drifting toward the horizon where the mountain had just been erased.
Riveria stood at the front, emerald hair flowing as layers of magic circles rotated before her. Through them, she observed the battlefield miles away, her expression tighter than usual.
"I didn't know Balor could use such an attack," she said, voice low and controlled. "The Guild never reported anything like that. That beam… it erased terrain."
Finn's sharp eyes narrowed. "He might not survive this alone."
Riveria's fingers tightened around her staff. For a moment, she looked less like the calm High Elf and more like someone watching a student step onto a blade's edge.
"No," she said firmly. "We continue. Trust in him. He said it himself—if he was truly in a pinch, he would teleport to us."
Finn held her gaze for a long second.
Then he nodded. "Then we carry on."
And the expedition marched forward, even as the echoes of annihilation still rang through the Dungeon.
…
On the ruined battlefield, there was nothing left.
No army.
No mountain.
No witnesses.
Damien stood facing Balor, boots grinding against cracked stone. His body trembled from exhaustion, armor scorched, cloak torn. Blood dripped from cuts that refused to close. Across from him, the colossal goat-headed giant stood like a monument carved from hatred, flesh hanging in shredded slabs from sixty brutal wounds.
They stared at one another.
Damien could see it in Balor's eye.
That beam… had cost him.
The glow was dimmer now, unstable. It had been a final gambit, not a repeatable weapon.
And Balor could see it too.
Damien's breathing was uneven. His mana was nearly gone. The Shadow Slash had drained him dry.
Two monsters.
Both on their last breaths.
No armies.
No overwhelming advantage.
No trump cards
Almost none.
Damien exhaled slowly.
"Igris."
With the last drops of mana in his body, he summoned him.
The Black Knight rose beside him, silent as ever, sword already drawn. The cost of the summon made Damien's vision blur for a fraction of a second, but he did not falter.
"This is it," Damien muttered.
They rushed forward together.
Balor roared and slammed his fist into the ground. The impact detonated stone upward in a violent shockwave. Damien and Igris split apart mid-charge, both narrowly avoiding the eruption.
Damien's eyes flicked upward—
and saw it.
Balor's second hand was already descending toward the space Damien had dodged into.
Fast.
Too fast for his size.
Damien grinned.
He twisted sharply mid-step, his body folding low as the massive palm crashed down inches from him. In the same motion, he became a blur of spinning steel, both daggers carving upward along Balor's descending arm.
He cut like a saw blade.
From wrist
To forearm
To elbow
To shoulder.
A deep, spiraling trench opened along Balor's entire arm, muscle splitting apart as blood burst outward in a violent spray.
The giant did not scream.
He retaliated.
Balor used his other arm and brought it smashing down again, attempting to squash Damien like an insect beneath raw mass alone.
Igris moved first.
The Black Knight leapt upward, sword aimed like a spear. The blade drove straight into the center of the descending palm, piercing through flesh and bone, halting it for a fraction of a second.
But it kept coming.
Even impaled, the hand continued downward, overwhelming through sheer weight.
Igris was about to be crushed.
Damien shot forward, grabbed Igris by the armor, and shadow-stepped onto Balor's shoulder in one fluid motion.
"Don't die now," Damien muttered through gritted teeth. "I need you."
Balor's eye flared with rage.
His red aura ignited violently, engulfing his entire body. Heat surged outward, turning his skin into something akin to molten lava. The air itself warped from the temperature.
Damien felt the burn instantly.
"Jump!"
He and Igris leapt away together, both launching into the air as Balor's body became an inferno beneath them.
Midair.
Weightless.
For a single second
Balor smiled.
His eye began to shine again.
Damien's instincts screamed.
The beam.
There was no foothold in the air. No cover. No angle to dodge something that erased mountains.
The glow intensified.
Damien grinned.
"I knew you were just pretending…"
His armor pulsed faintly.
Five seconds.
The world shifted.
His vision fractured into possibility.
He saw the beam's trajectory.
Saw himself disintegrated.
Saw the angle Balor had calculated.
The giant wasn't firing wildly.
He had learned.
Balor had realized Damien was the true threat.
The beam was aimed precisely where Damien would fall.
The future snapped back into place.
Damien's boots slammed lightly against Igris's in midair.
Without words, they moved as one.
They kicked off each other violently, propelling themselves in opposite directions. Igris shot upward toward Balor's head, sword raised high. Damien angled downward toward the ground.
Balor's massive eye tracked instantly.
He evaluated.
The knight would not kill him.
The human could.
The beam shifted.
It followed Damien.
The laser erupted.
A pillar of annihilation tore through the air toward the falling figure.
And at the exact instant the light swallowed him
Damien smiled.
"Shadow Exchange."
Since the beginning of the battle, he had never used it.
He had hidden it.
Saved it.
The world flickered.
Damien and Igris swapped places.
The beam consumed Igris instead.
The Black Knight vanished in a flash of obliterating light, erased without hesitation.
And Damien
Damien was now directly in front of Balor's throat.
Spinning.
His body became a drill of pure killing intent. Both daggers extended forward, shadow coating their edges as he accelerated with everything his broken body had left.
He tore through flesh.
Through muscle.
Through tendon.
Through bone.
Balor's neck exploded in a fountain of blood as Damien's spinning strike shredded a massive, gaping hole straight through the giant's throat.
The momentum carried Damien past him. He landed behind Balor, boots sliding through pooling blood.
For a second, nothing happened.
Then Balor's eye flickered.
The glow died.
Blood erupted from his ruined neck in catastrophic bursts.
The colossal body swayed once and crashed face-first into the broken ground, shaking what remained of the battlefield.
Silence returned.
No aura.
No movement.
Balor was dead.
Damien stood there, drenched head to toe in hot, sticky blood. His daggers slipped from his fingers and dissolved into shadow. His legs trembled violently now that the adrenaline was fading.
He looked at the fallen giant.
The hardest battle of his life.
Won.
He took one step forward
and then his body finally gave in.
Damien collapsed onto his back, staring up at the cracked ceiling of the Dungeon, chest rising and falling unevenly.
"That was fun....Thanks Igris...Wouldn't have done it without you buddy" he muttered faintly.
Then even the strength to speak left him.
Alone on a battlefield of ruin, the Human Monster lay there, utterly exhausted, victorious by the narrowest margin imaginable.
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