Mio
The knight stepped forward. Then again. Not running. Walking. The pace of something that had waited centuries and could wait a few seconds more.
One gauntlet hung at its side. The other still clutched the broken hilt—knuckles fused around it, fingers that hadn't unclenched since the blade shattered.
It fought one-handed. Because it had forgotten how to let go.
She ran.
Not toward the exit. The collapse had blocked it—tons of concrete sealing the ramp she'd come down. No way out except through.
Through meant past the knight.
[Spark]
Two damage. It didn't slow.
[Spark]
[Spark]
Nothing.
Behind a pillar. Its fist came through a second later—not around, through—showering her with concrete fragments. She stumbled. Kept moving.
[HEMORRHAGE]
The word carved itself into her vision. She didn't see the backswing—just felt it. Gauntlet raking across her back, tearing through hoodie and skin and muscle.
[HP: 416/700]
[Bleed applied: 15 HP/sec for 10 seconds]
Seven hundred. The hunger had been busy while she wasn't looking.
The blood was warm on her spine. Her blood. Running down into her waistband.
Keep running. The bleed ticking. HP dropping.
[Spark]
The bolt crackled and dispersed. Useless against plate.
Two strides and the knight closed the distance. Faster than something that size should move.
[IRON GRASP]
Its hand found her arm. Squeezed. The bone creaked.
[HP: 340/700]
Then she was flying. Thrown. Pillar. Ground.
[HP: 215/700]
Get up.
Rolling saved her. The gauntlet cratered the floor where her head had been.
[Spark] [Spark] [Spark]
Six damage total. The knight didn't register it.
But the blooms—
The slimes. They were here. Feeding. Dying in the crossfire. Crushed under falling debris. Caught in the knight's swings.
Blooms manifested. One. Three. Seven.
She absorbed them without thinking. The hunger taking what it wanted. Reservoir climbing.
[Vitalize] [Vitalize] [Vitalize]
[HP: 700/700]
Full. The bleed ticking but she was outpacing it now. Absorb, convert, heal. The cycle that kept her standing.
The knight's helm tilted. Watching her heal.
[BLOOD SCOURGE]
Its gauntlet swept through its own blood pool. The liquid rose—not a wave, but tendrils. Whips. Three of them, lashing toward her from different angles.
First one missed. Second caught her shoulder.
[HP: 580/700]
Third wrapped around her ankle and pulled.
[HP: 510/700]
Ground again. The tendril dragging her toward the knight.
[Spark]—at the tendril, not the knight—
It burst. She scrambled up.
[HEMORRHAGE]
Too slow. The backswing caught her across the ribs.
[HP: 320/700]
[Bleed applied: 15 HP/sec for 10 seconds]
Two bleeds stacking. Thirty HP per second draining away.
Blooms. Vitalize. Blooms. Vitalize again. The cycle keeping her ahead of the bleed.
The knight raised its gauntlet. Palm flat, fingers splayed toward the ground.
[CRIMSON TIDE]
The blood pools moved.
A wave—knee-high, black and thick—surging outward from the knight in every direction. Concrete divider. Barely made it. The tide crashed beneath her, spattering her legs.
The slimes weren't so lucky. Dozens of them, swept up, membranes bursting on impact.
Blooms. Everywhere.
[+15 XP][+15 XP][+15 XP][+15 XP]
[LEVEL UP: 5]
[HP: 280/700 → 800]
[Reservoir Cap: 62,500]
The jump hit her like cold water. Over a hundred extra HP.
[NEW ABILITY UNLOCKED: Rupture]
She swiped it away.
[Please choose a designated activation word]
Another swipe. Didn't read it.
[Please choose a designated—]
Not now.
The knight's fist cratered the divider. Concrete exploded. She threw herself sideways, shoulder cracking against a support beam.
[HEMORRHAGE]
Ducked. Claws raked the air above her head.
[Spark]
The bolt crackled against plate and dispersed. No flesh to ground into.
[Please choose a designated—]
She swiped away once more. It flickered, dimmed, waited at the edge of her vision.
The knight backhanded her into a pillar.
[HP: 140/820]
Blooms. Two of them. Pulled in. Vitalized.
[HP: 380/820]
But it kept coming. Kept swinging. Driving her back.
Back toward the center of the garage.
Back toward the blood pool where the Crimson Tide had killed dozens of slimes.
Back toward the blooms.
[BLOOD SCOURGE]
Tendrils from three directions. She dove—
[HP: 190/820]
—rolled through something wet and cold—
—came up in the center of the garage. Right where the knight had been kneeling when she first saw it.
Blooms everywhere. Dozens of them. Hovering over corpses, over puddles, over the remains of slimes. Pulsing. Waiting. Close enough to touch.
Too many to absorb fast enough.
[Please choose a designated activation word]
The notification pulsed again. Patient.
I don't have TIME—
The knight stepped into the blood pool. Closing the distance.
Fifteen thousand HP. At two damage per Spark, seven thousand five hundred casts to kill it.
She didn't have five hundred.
[IRON GRASP]
The knight's hand closed around her throat.
[HP: 280/820]
Lifted off the ground.
[HP: 220/820]
Feet kicking. Hands clawing at the gauntlet. Useless. The fingers were fused solid, locked around her windpipe.
[HP: 160/820]
Couldn't breathe. Couldn't move. The blooms floated around her—dozens of them, close enough to see the light pulsing inside—and she couldn't reach a single one.
[HP: 110/820]
Get up.
No up. Only the knight's grip and the pressure building behind her eyes and the grey spots eating her vision.
[HP: 70/820]
Get up get up get up—
[Please choose a designated activation word]
The notification pulsed. Patient. Waiting for an answer she didn't have.
[HP: 40/820]
Nana's face. The kitchen. Bubble wrap on the floor. A stupid sound effect for a stupid game, her sister's laugh when Mio said it wrong—
[HP: 18/820]
The word left her throat with the last air she had.
"Pon."
The nearest bloom detonated.
Which touched the next. Which touched the next. Which touched the next.
She was in the center of the cluster.
Green-white. Blinding. The world became noise and light and force—explosions cascading outward in every direction, blooms rupturing in sequence, the chain reaction racing through the mass of corpses and blood and accumulated death.
The knight's grip vanished.
Ground. Couldn't see. Couldn't hear. Just ringing and afterimages and iron on her tongue.
[HP: 8/820]
Air flooded back in. Sweet and cold and real.
She lay there. Breathing. Eight HP between her and nothing.
The ringing faded.
She looked up.
The knight was standing.
But—
Its armor was gone. Chestplate shattered. Pauldrons blown off. Gauntlets cracked and hanging loose. The explosions had stripped it down to grey flesh and black veins.
And underneath—scars. Old ones. Older than the rot. Blade marks across its chest, healed white and smooth before the corruption ever touched it. A puncture wound above the hip. A long slash across its shoulder.
[PUTRID KNIGHT: 9,847/15,000]
Over five thousand damage. From one word.
The knight looked down at itself. At the exposed flesh. At the scars it couldn't remember earning.
Then it looked at her.
And charged.
Blooms. Three. Four. Whatever was left. Pulled in. Vitalized. Vitalized again.
[HP: 380/820]
Her throat was raw. But she was breathing.
And she finally read the notification she'd been ignoring.
[Rupture]
Activation: Vocal command ("Pon")
Detonates nearest Life Bloom within 10 meters.
Damage: 50 + (Bloom Value × 150%)
Chain reaction: Detonation triggers adjacent blooms within 2 meters.
Nearest bloom. Chain reaction.
Thirty blooms. She'd been standing in the middle of thirty blooms.
[Armor destroyed — Blight can now apply to flesh]
The knight swung. She ducked.
[Spark]
Point-blank into exposed flesh.
The bolt didn't disperse this time. It punched through grey skin and stayed—crackling through muscle, grounding in bone. Where the lightning touched, something changed. Black veins spread from the entry wound like frost on glass. Slow. Inevitable.
[Hit: 56 damage]
[Necrotic Blight applied: 1 stack]
There.
The rot was inside it now. Eating. Growing. Finally doing what it was meant to do.
[PUTRID KNIGHT: 9,791/15,000]
The knight charged. She backpedaled, firing.
[Spark]
[Necrotic Blight: 2]
[Spark]
[Necrotic Blight: 3]
[HEMORRHAGE]
Tried to dodge. Too slow. Claws across her shoulder, spinning her into a pillar.
[HP: 180/820] [Bleed applied]
Blooms—the few that remained. Grabbed. Vitalized.
[HP: 380/820]
[Spark]
[Necrotic Blight: 4]
[PUTRID KNIGHT: 9,200/15,000]
[Spark]
[Necrotic Blight: 5 — Maximum]
[Total: 2.5% HP/sec — 375 HP per tick]
Now it was a race.
The Blight was working. But the knight kept fighting.
[BLOOD SCOURGE]
Tendrils from two directions. She dove—
[HP: 280/820]
—rolled, came up, fired.
[Spark]
Refreshing the stacks.
[PUTRID KNIGHT: 8,400/15,000]
The knight's movements were getting slower. Stiffer. The rot eating its joints.
Almost no blooms left. She'd burned through everything in that chain reaction.
[PUTRID KNIGHT: 8,000/15,000]
A cluster. Three blooms. Near a collapsed pillar.
"Pon."
[-234]
[-187]
[-156]
[PUTRID KNIGHT: 7,623/15,000]
The knight staggered. Kept coming.
[IRON GRASP]
Its hand found her arm. Squeezed.
CRACK.
Radius. Ulna. Snapping like dry sticks.
[HP: 180/820]
Vitalize. The hunger pulling from the tank, green light flooding through her arm, bone grinding against bone, knitting—
She screamed. Not from the break. From the healing.
The knight had her wrist. Her other hand came up—
[Spark]
Point-blank.
The grip loosened. She twisted free.
[PUTRID KNIGHT: 7,200/15,000]
More blooms. Two of them. By the exit ramp.
"Pon."
[-198]
[-267]
[PUTRID KNIGHT: 6,735/15,000]
The knight stumbled. Caught itself.
[HEMORRHAGE]
Ducked. Claws grazed her scalp.
[Spark]
[PUTRID KNIGHT: 6,300/15,000]
Below half. The Blight eating it alive.
But the blooms were gone.
[PUTRID KNIGHT: 5,900/15,000]
Something changed.
The knight stopped retreating. Stopped defending. The dim purple glow behind its visor flared bright—too bright, burning through the cracks in its helm.
[ENRAGE: UNDYING VIGIL]
It charged.
Not the measured advance from before. Desperation given form—eight hundred years of vigil compressed into one final surge.
Tried to dodge. Too slow.
First blow caught her across the ribs. She flew.
[HP: 340/820]
Hit the ground. Rolled. Tried to rise—
Second blow drove her back down. Gauntlet cratering concrete beside her head, missing by inches, but the shockwave alone—
[HP: 180/820]
Scrambling backward. The knight followed. Relentless. The rot eating it alive and it didn't care anymore.
[HEMORRHAGE]
Claws across her thigh. Deep.
[HP: 78/820] [Bleed applied]
Blooms. Need blooms.
Nothing. She'd burned through everything.
The knight raised both arms. Brought them down like hammers.
Rolled. Barely. The impact shook through the floor, through her bones.
[PUTRID KNIGHT: 4,200/15,000]
The Blight was winning. But so was the knight.
[PUTRID KNIGHT: 3,100/15,000]
Slower now. Lurching. One leg dragging, the joint half-rotted. But closing. Swinging.
Couldn't outrun it. Couldn't outheal it. The Reservoir was almost empty and there was nothing left to kill.
[PUTRID KNIGHT: 2,400/15,000]
The knight stopped.
Swayed. Caught itself on a pillar, gauntlet scraping concrete. The purple light in its chest was guttering now. Flickering. Dying.
But it wasn't done.
[PUTRID KNIGHT: 1,800/15,000]
The knight raised its gauntlet. The one that could move.
[BLOOD PRISON]
The blood rose. A cage. It climbed her ankles, her knees, her waist—hardening as it went, locking her legs in place, freezing her arms at her sides.
Couldn't move.
[HP: 62/820]
The blood tightened. Squeezed. Ribs creaking.
[HP: 48/820]
The knight watched her struggle. Then it raised its other hand—the one that had held the hilt since the beginning.
The fingers unclenched.
The broken sword fell. Clattering against concrete. Rolling into a blood pool.
Eight hundred years of holding on. And now, at the end, it let go.
Palm out. Fingers splayed.
[FINAL VIGIL]
No.
The hum started. Low. Building.
But this time was different.
The purple light drained inward. Pulling from everywhere—from the cracks in its flesh, from the dim glow behind its visor. All of it flowing upward, converging on that raised hand.
The knight was emptying itself.
[PUTRID KNIGHT: 1,200/15,000]
The rot kept spreading. And beneath it, grey flesh knitting. Muscle threading back together even as it sloughed away. The knight's body at war with itself—healing and rotting in the same breath.
[PUTRID KNIGHT: 800/15,000]
Its legs buckled. Caught itself on one knee, arm raised, channeling.
The rune in its palm was blinding now. Brighter than before. Brighter than anything she'd seen in this garage.
Everything it had. Every vigil. Every moment spent alone in the dark.
All of it, compressed into one shot.
[PUTRID KNIGHT: 400/15,000]
The knight's visor was dark now. Empty. Only the hand. The rune. The hum shaking dust from the ceiling.
[PUTRID KNIGHT: 120/15,000]
The HP ticked down. Eighty. Forty.
Come on come on come on—
"COME ON!" Her emerald eyes brimmed.
The geometry locked. The light pulsed.
[FINAL VIGIL: READY]
[PUTRID KNIGHT: 60/15,000]
The knight fired.
The geometry released.
But its shoulder gave out first.
The joint the Blight had been eating for the last thirty seconds finally liquefied—grey rot spreading through the socket, severing whatever connected arm to will.
The beam carved a line across the ceiling three inches above her head. Concrete vaporized. Rebar glowed white.
The rune flickered. Cracked. The geometry fractured into noise, purple light scattering in directions it was never meant to go.
The arm dropped. Raised. Trying. But no longer attached to anything that could aim it.
[PUTRID KNIGHT: 0/15,000]
The knight stayed there for a moment. Kneeling. Palm raised. Trying.
Then it fell.
Like someone had cut the strings. It hit the concrete with a sound like a car crash, armor clattering, pieces scattering.
The broken hilt lay where it had fallen. Waiting for a hand that would never pick it up again.
[ELITE ELIMINATED]
[CORE ENTITY DESTROYED]
[+2,500 XP]
[LEVEL UP: 6 → 10]
VIT: 67 | STR: 11 | AGI: 12 | INT: 12 | SPR: 16
[NEW ABILITY UNLOCKED: Chimera]
The blood cage dissolved. Liquid again. She collapsed onto her back, head bouncing off wet concrete.
"Ow."
Gasping, shaking, she let herself stop. Just for a moment. Just long enough to remember she was alive.
Around her, the surviving slimes—a handful, maybe a dozen—stopped moving. The corruption that had bound them to this place was gone. One by one, they dissolved. Unmade. Returning to whatever they'd been before the knight's rot gave them shape.
They left nothing behind. The rot letting go.
[Hostiles Remaining: 0]
[Incursion Cleared]
[Grade: C]
[Clear C-Grade Incursion: 1/1 — COMPLETE]
The darkness began creeping in at the edges.
She didn't let it.