The silence that followed the explosion of Vex's head was heavy and Serra was trembling so hard her staff rattled against the stone floor.
Her eyes were wide and fixed on the headless ruin that used to be a comrade. Garrick was paralyzed, his breath coming in shallow hitches.
Klaus, however, remained unnervingly still. He wasn't a psychopath… he didn't want his teammates dead but a part of his mind… understood the math a bit.
To find wealth that could buy a haven, to see a path out of the muck and blood of the adventurer's life forever... if he were in Kahn's boots, he would at least have considered it.
The thought would be a dark intrusive spike in his mind. Did that make him a bad person? Perhaps but in Klaus's book, the only thing worse than a man with a dark thought was the man who lacked the restraint to keep it buried.
Kahn wiped a streak of Vex's brains from his forehead, his expression shifting from rage back to that terrifyingly casual joviality.
He looked over at the corpse and let out a hearty, booming laugh which was kind he usually reserved for a successful battle.
"I ask again…" Kahn said, his voice echoing off the Metil Diamond walls. "Is everyone ready to surrender their shares? Or do I have to murder every single one of you in this room?"
He gestured vaguely at the tunnel behind them.
"There are no rules in a dungeon. It's the perfect graveyard. By the time I'm done twisting the story, the guild will hear about how you all died noble deaths, just like poor Vex over there." He laughed again letting off a sound that bordered on the manic. "It's quiet, isn't it? Weird to no longer hear him chirping away. I think I prefer it this way."
Garrick's paralysis snapped.
The sheer disrespect, the casual dismissal of a man they had bled with for years, lit a fire in his gut that burned hotter than his fear. He drew his sword and the steel sang as it left the leather sheath.
Khan didn't have his hammer and he was currently unarmed so Garrick saw an opening, a sliver of hope born of desperation in a way.
"You're insane," Garrick whispered with his voice gaining strength after each word. "I looked up to you, Kahn. We all did. You just turned Vex into a memory for what? For rocks? Doesn't it hurt? That was a comrade! He was here before I even joined the damn squad! Don't you feel anything?"
Kahn didn't even blink.
He looked at Garrick with the tired eyes of a man explaining a simple concept to a child.
"I told you to drop the shares… I gave you the chance to walk... You didn't take it." He paused. "Will I feel hurt? Of course. I'll mourn you properly. I'll cry for you from the balcony of my mansion in a coast city, with my sister safe and fed. I'll remember you while I'm enjoying the fruits of a life I earned."
Garrick shook his head, his orange hair shadowed by the dim light.
"Despicable. Everyone here has a family, Kahn. Vex had his cousin. I have my sister. You think your sister's happiness is worth the blood of everyone else's? You're selfish… no You're a monster."
Garrick adjusted his grip on his hilt. He looked back at Serra and Klaus.
"If I die today," Garrick said with a smile, "and you two manage to get out... Serra, promise me. Promise me you'll save Vex's cousin from those nobles and put my sister in a good Academy, somewhere her talent won't be wasted in a hole like this."
Serra opened her mouth to protest as her eyes brimmed with tears but Garrick didn't give her the chance.
"RUN!" he roared.
Klaus blinked.
'Run where?' The thought flashed through his mind in confusion.
The Boss chamber was ahead… the path back was a maze of narrow tunnels, and Kahn was the apex predator of the group. There wasn't even an escape portal until the boss was defeated.
As long as the Dungeon's heart still beat, they were trapped in a cage with a tiger.
Garrick didn't wait for a response.
He launched himself forward with his aura flaring white-hot around his boots as he closed the distance. Garrick reared his sword hand back, pouring every ounce of his soul into a singular desperate strike but Kahn didn't move.
He didn't even take a defensive stance. As Garrick entered his reach, Kahn simply shifted his weight and delivered a casual open-palmed slap to the center of Garrick's forehead.
WHAP!
The sound was like a thunderclap. The sheer kinetic energy behind the slap was so immense that it didn't just stop Garrick; it flipped him.
The swordsman spun mid-air, his momentum reversed instantly as he crashed face-first into the stone floor. His nose shattered on impact with blood spraying across the blue diamonds.
Kahn looked down at the crumpled man, his crimson energy leaking from his eyes like smoldering smoke. He didn't even try to finish him yet and that was a display of utter crushing disrespect.
"Right from the beginning," Kahn said, standing over him. "I've been the one doing the heavy lifting. I'm the vanguard. I'm the one who takes the hits so you lot can play adventurer. So tell me, Garrick... why do you think you deserve a single copper of this?"
"Because..." Garrick coughed, spitting a tooth into the dirt as he struggled to push himself up. "Because we pulled our savings. We risked... we risked everything to fund these raids."
"Savings from the raids where I dominated?" Kahn countered. "The money was mine the moment I swung the hammer. You were just along for the ride."
"That's... a load of bullshit!" Garrick yelled.
Kahn raised a massive boot, intending to stomp Garrick's chest into a pulp, but the swordsman's survival instincts finally kicked in.
Garrick rolled away in a desperate scrambling movement that barely cleared the zone of impact. He sprang to his feet with his sword held in a high guard and his breath coming in ragged gasps.
'I'm outmatched…' Garrick thought as his vision blurred. 'He doesn't even have his weapon and he's this strong…'
Kahn reached out his hand into the empty air. "Return."
The mana in the room vibrated.
From several yards away, where it had fallen outside Serra's barrier, the massive hammer began to glow with a deep red light.
With a violent whistle, the weapon shot through the air, pulled by a return seal that Kahn had kept hidden until this very moment and after it came, Kahn closed the distance.
Garrick didn't wait; he flooded his entire circulatory system with aura, pushing his physical limits to the breaking point while Kahn brought the hammer down in a vertical crush.
Garrick raised his blade to block, enforcing the steel with every drop of white aura he possessed and the collision was deafening.
Even with aura reinforcement, the sheer force of the hammer nearly snapped the sword in two. Garrick felt the vibration travel through his arms, rattling his teeth and threatening to shatter his collarbones.
He was sent skidding back, his boots smoking as they carved deep furrows into the rock.
Kahn was already moving again like a relentless crimson tide and Garrick's face was suddenly covered by shadows as Kahn loomed over him.
Something snapped inside Garrick.
The image of his sister… her smile and her future flashed in his mind like a lightning strike. The white aura around his body condensed.
'Is his aura ranking up?' Kahn thought as he sensed the change. 'A Practitioner level burst?'
It was the only explanation for the sudden shift in gravity… Garrick vanished.
He reappeared in a blur of white light, stabbing at Kahn's chest with a speed that exceeded anything he had shown before.
Kahn swung the body of the hammer, using the thick metal handle to deflect the strike, but the force of the blow made the burly leader stagger.
Kahn punched out with his free hand, his fist whistling through empty air. Garrick was already gone, appearing at Kahn's flank. The sword flashed in a clean horizontal arc that tore through Kahn's heavy armor, leaving a deep gash in the leather and slicing into the skin beneath.
Kahn spun with a snarl but the swordsman was a ghost.
Garrick appeared directly in front of him, a scream tearing from his lungs as he lunged for Kahn's face.
The hammer head met the blade again, but the white aura exploded at the point of contact, a concentrated blast of aura that forced Kahn back three full steps but Garrick didn't stop.
He couldn't stop… He was riding the high of a breakthrough and his body operating on pure instinct as well as the desperate need to survive for the girl waiting for him at home.
'I…' Garrick thought as he dodged a sweeping strike from the hammer. He side-stepped with a grace that was like liquid making his sword bite into Kahn's side carving through more armor.
'Will make…' Kahn launched a brutal backhand and Garrick raised his forearm, enforcing it with a dense layer of white aura.
The strike hit like a battering ram, but Garrick stood his ground making the white light absorb the impact.
He pivoted on his heel and threw a counter-punch with his fist catching Kahn square in the nose and blood spurted.
Kahn's head snapped back and his footing faltered for the first time in the entire dungeon.
'It home to you!' The image of his sister flashed in his mind one last time looking bright, clear, and hopeful.
He was at Kahn's side already with his blade leveled for a killing blow to the neck. He had the opening and he had the speed but Kahn was a veteran of a thousand slaughters.
Just as Garrick committed to the strike, Kahn didn't try to block. He didn't try to dodge either.
He simply roared, his crimson aura exploding outward in a shockwave that disrupted Garrick's momentum for a fraction of a second.
In that tiny window, Kahn raised the hammer high above his head, his muscles screaming as he poured every bit of his murderous intent into the swing.
CRUNCH!
He slammed the hammer down with as much force as he could manage and Garrick didn't have time to scream.
The heavy metal head hit him squarely on top of the skull and the white aura shattered like glass. The force was so absolute and so overwhelming that Garrick's head didn't just break… it flattened.
His skull was crushed into his neck, then into his chest, his entire upper body compressed in a wet instant.
The ground beneath him gave way making a crater form as the hammer finished its journey. Garrick's head was now a thin, mangled sheet of bone and hair, pressed against the stone like a piece of discarded paper.
Serra let out a choked, horrified gasp with her knees giving out.
Kahn stood over the pulp that used to be Garrick though he didn't look at the body. He slowly turned his head toward Klaus and Serra.
"Now," Kahn roared at them. "It's just you two!"
He didn't wait.
Kahn launched himself toward them with the hammer trailing a wake of crimson sparks. He closed the distance in a heartbeat making his shadow fall over the barrier. With a grunt of effort, he brought the hammer down with a massive overhead swing, slamming it into the holy dome.
The impact sent a shockwave through the ground that nearly knocked Klaus off his feet. Dust and crystalline shards erupted into the air, obscuring everything in a cloud of grey and gold.
The barrier groaned and spiderweb cracks appeared in the golden light as Kahn began to rain blow after blow upon their only defense.