As the sword was about to cut Damien's head, his hand shot up and grabbed the blade with his bare hands.
Damien's eyes opened.
"I am gone for one minute and someone is already out for my head, eh?" He smiled.
His hand moved, smacking Hogni in the chest and sending him flying across the tent. Hogni smashed into the furniture, struggling to get up.
"How...?" he questioned.
Damien got up. He saw Samira face-first on the ground, passed out. Ryuu was on her knees, smiling through her exhaustion.
"Damien..."
Seeing both of them suffering, Damien's expression hardened. "You did good, girls. You protected me." He turned to face Hogni. "Now I will return the favor."
Hogni drew his blade again, his stance tightening despite his pain. "You are no match for me, rookie. And no match for my blade, Victim Abyss."
He raised the sword and aimed it at Damien. Then he rushed forward, attempting to slash him.
Damien watched the blade come for his neck. He dodged it, but something felt wrong. The threat remained. He grinned, dodged further, and delivered a punch straight to Hogni's gut.
The punch alone lifted Hogni off the ground. But before he could fly too far, Damien grabbed him by the neckline of his shirt and smashed him back down. Face first.
Hogni cried out in immense pain. Damien placed his foot on Hogni's hand and pressed down hard.
Hogni's fingers opened. The sword clattered to the ground. Damien picked it up.
"A weapon that extends in secret?" He studied the blade. "Interesting. Very, very interesting."
"How... did you figure it out?" Hogni's voice was strained, desperate.
Damien tilted his head. "Hmm... well, you see, the blade itself is hidden, but the slight particles of mana it moves as it slashes are not. So it was quite obvious." He smiled. "To someone as great as me, that is."
He used his foot to roll Hogni onto his back, then lowered the man's mask.
"You are one of Freya's goons." Damien's voice was cold. "Well, well, well. I was wondering when she would decide to target me. Looks like it is inside a dungeon, right after I was poisoned with corruption from a Great Quest level monster." He nodded slowly. "Quite smart for her. Really."
Hogni's eyes were wide, his composure crumbling. "No... she... she... she does not KNOW!"
"Oh?" Damien raised an eyebrow. "If so, why the hell is a nobody like you after me?"
"It... it... it was Hedin's idea!" Hogni screamed in fear.
Ryuu's head snapped toward them. "That bastard!"
Damien glanced at her. "You know this Hedin?"
"Yes. He is the leader of the subjugation party sent by the Guild. He forced everyone to attack the Corrupted Spirit suddenly, without waiting for you." Ryuu was trying to feed a healing potion to Samira, her hands shaking. "Damien... everyone is there."
Damien nodded.
He turned back to Hogni and stabbed him with his own sword.
"This is the only time I will spare you." His voice was ice. "If you survive this, never cross my path."
Hogni could not respond. He had already passed out.
Damien disappeared into the shadows.
....
Meanwhile, on Floor Sixty, the war was waging. But it was not going as Hedin had expected.
At first, his plan to attack with an arrow formation worked well. The elite team cut through the heart of Floor Sixty, pushing toward the Corrupted Spirit's location. The formation was tight, efficient—adventurers protecting each other's flanks, mages casting from the center, front-liners carving a path through the sea of tentacles and Demi Spirits. It was difficult. Some soldiers lost their lives. But they continued.
Ottar led the charge against the Corrupted Spirit's physical body. Every elite member surrounded her, striking again and again. Her beautiful upper half—the face, the three eyes, the seductive form—was hacked, slashed, and blasted from every angle. Yet it did not matter. Her physical body was not her real body. It regenerated instantly upon each attack, wounds closing as fast as they were opened.
Her laser beams made it worse. They were too wide and too varied to dodge properly. Purple energy rained down on the expedition from every direction, and everyone was suffering damage. Leon took a beam to his shoulder, his armor cracking. Mia Grande deflected another with her cleaver, but the force sent her sliding back. The Gulliver Brothers dodged and weaved, but one of them caught a glancing blow that sent him spinning. Even Ottar, the strongest warrior in Orario, was forced to raise his shield and brace against the barrage.
But they were surviving. Hedin had planned for this.
He knew the Corrupted Spirit's true body was not the woman they were attacking. It was the massive purple meat bubble floating in the sky above them—the pulsing blob of flesh connected to every tentacle, every tendril, every part of this corrupted realm. Destroy that, and the Spirit would fall.
So he devised an ambush.
While the main force occupied the Spirit's attention, Hedin and the Gulliver Brothers broke formation. They moved through the chaos unnoticed, using the chaos of battle as cover. They climbed the tentacles, leaped from platform to platform, and positioned themselves high above the battlefield, directly in front of the pulsing core.
Hedin raised his blade. The Gulliver Brothers raised theirs.
They struck together.
It was a coordinated assault, each of them aiming for the same spot on the core's surface. Their blades connected. Magic exploded from the impact. For a moment, Hedin believed they had done it.
Then the light faded.
The core was untouched. Not a scratch. Not a crack. Not even a mark.
Hedin's attack had failed. The Gulliver Brothers' attacks had failed. They had not even grazed it.
The Corrupted Spirit noticed.
Her three eyes found them—the little insects who had dared to strike her heart. Her rage exploded outward. Tentacles slammed down across the expedition with renewed fury, killing adventurers, injuring dozens more. The Gulliver Brothers were thrown from their perch, crashing into the chaos below. Hedin barely managed to grab a tentacle and swing to safety.
The core pulsed, unharmed.
Ottar and the other elites saw the opening. While the Spirit was focused on Hedin's failed ambush, they joined together and struck the core with everything they had. Leon's sword. Mia's cleaver. The combined might of Freya Familia's finest. They threw themselves at the purple blob, attacking with a ferocity that should have torn through anything.
They failed too.
The core remained. Unbroken. Unharmed.
Riveria stopped fighting. She stood back, her jade eyes fixed on the pulsing meat bubble above. Her mind raced, analyzing, calculating.
'It is massive. It looks weak. But it is not.'
She watched the patterns. The way the tentacles fed into it. The way the magic flowed from the core to the Spirit's body and back again. The way the Spirit herself seemed to draw power from something deeper.
'Years, Riveria realized. She has been preparing for years.'
The reason the Corrupted Spirit moved so slowly on her way up the dungeon was not weakness. It was not caution. It was strategy. At all times, she kept sixty percent of her magic feeding into the core's protection. Layer after layer. Spell after spell. Constant, never-ending, stacking protection buffs that made her heart nearly invincible.
'That is why we cannot hurt her.'
Riveria's mind raced further. If the protection was magic, it could be undone. If it could be undone, there was a way. A solution. A spell—no, a combination of spells. Something that could cancel the protections, strip them away, leave the core vulnerable.
She was so lost in her thoughts that she did not notice.
The Corrupted Spirit turned. Her three eyes locked onto the high elf standing still in the middle of the chaos. Her mouth opened. Purple energy gathered in her throat.
A beam of pure destruction shot toward Riveria.
She did not see it coming.
She did not understand what was happening.
She only felt something push her aside—hard—and saw Ais standing where she had been, smiling, accepting death in her place.
The beam rushed toward the Sword Princess.
Then a blade cut through the light.
Damien stood beside Ais, his hand holding one dagger, the edge of his weapon having slashed the beam away. The purple energy dissipated into nothing.
He turned to Riveria.
"Miss me?"
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