"Everyone... I am going to ask you to leave."
Damien's voice carried across the battlefield, calm and absolute. The shadows swirling around him pulsed with each word.
"I am giving everyone here five minutes. Then... I am destroying it all."
Hedin, struggling to move, his body broken but his voice still intact, shouted, "What are you talking about! We are NOT retreating! Continue fighting! This is an ORDER!"
Damien turned to him. His eyes, black and depthless beneath the shadow armor, fixed on the elf.
"Finn. Knock him out and take him with you. If I hear him speak another word..." His voice dropped. "He dies."
Hedin's rage exploded. "Who—"
He did not finish. Finn was already behind him, the butt of his spear smacking into the elf's skull. Hedin crumpled.
"Everyone! Retreat! NOW!" Finn shouted.
Ottar growled. His broken arm hung at his side, his massive frame trembling with the effort of standing. He looked at Damien. Then at Reginas. Then he turned and followed the others.
Reginas watched it all. Her third eye pulsed, her snake-like tail swaying lazily behind her.
"Oh, love! That form suits you well!"
She sized him up and down. His entire body was covered in shadow armor, sleek and regal. His shoulders bore two sharp edges that gleamed with dark light. The middle of his torso glowed purple, with branching small veins of the same energy spreading outward. Even his head was fully covered...only his eyes remained visible, burning with power.
Damien's voice was flat. "Will you stop calling me that? It is kind of creepy."
Reginas laughed, the sound echoing across the ruined floor. "But why? You are my love. I remember it all. Our first time in the hotel... oh, I loved that day. I was so jealous of you having fun with Tiona. So, of course, when you did the same to me, I was so... excited!"
Damien's eyes narrowed. "Ugh. Will you stop this stupid act of yours? You know that you will never be like Ais. She is different from you. She does not need to use curses to win. She does not attack a sleeping, defenseless enemy. And she sure as hell does not serve a corrupted spirit in order to gain power." He stepped forward. "Power that is not even yours."
Reginas's smile faltered.
"You thought I would not tell? Huh? You are not powerful. You gave up your human side, all for what? Unlimited useless magic?" He tilted his head. "Seriously? What can you do outside the ranges of Floor Sixty?"
Reginas's eyes blazed. Her third eye glowed with fury.
"WHAT DO YOU KNOW OF MY STRUGGLES!"
"What struggles?" Damien's voice was cold, cutting. "Everything about you is cheap. You are an imitation of an imitation. Trying to be Ais and Revis at the same time, and even trying to be the Corrupted Spirit herself. All that endless magic, and the form you chose was not even yours. Mixing Ais and the Corrupted Spirit." He shook his head. "Struggles? People who struggle are those that dive into this dungeon day in and day out. Trying to survive. Fight. Evolve through sheer will. Doing whatever they can to win against monsters twice, three times their size."
He paused.
"Not some cheap, borrowed magic from the dungeon." His eyes locked onto hers. "What are you without the dungeon?"
He did not wait for an answer.
"Nothing."
Reginas screamed. "DAMN YOU! Do not mock my efforts! Everything I have done was to defeat her!" The dungeon shook. Hundreds of tentacles rose from the ground, emerging from every surface, every shadow, every crack. "AND HERE I AM! WINNING!"
She attacked.
Damien grinned. "Just as expected. You are an imitation."
He raised both hands. Ruler's Authority activated. The left batch of tentacles froze mid-lunge. The right batch followed. He pushed them apart, smashing them into the ground with enough force to crack the stone.
Then his foot was in her face.
The impact blew her head off. He did not stop. He lowered his foot, smashing her entire body to paste beneath him.
His eyes changed. Purple light bled from them, spreading across his shadow armor.
He looked around.
Then, out of nowhere, he was at the rightmost corner of Floor Sixty. His fist smashed through the wall. His hand found a vein...pulsing, blue, alive....and crushed it.
Blue energy exploded from the rupture.
Reginas's regenerating body screamed. She held her head in pain, her form flickering, struggling to reform.
"YOU!"
Damien dropped down, landing in front of her. "What? Felt something just now? What was it?" He smiled. "Perhaps it was the loss of some of that unlimited magic?"
Reginas's voice shook with rage. "YOU WILL NEVER SURVIVE!"
Damien's daggers spun in his hands. The shadow armor pulsed around him.
"Bring it on," he said. "You fucking imitation."
...
Damien moved.
His feet carried him across Floor Sixty faster than thought, faster than light, faster than anything the dungeon had ever seen. The shadow armor pulsed around him, feeding him power, speed, strength. His eyes burned purple as he scanned the walls, the ceiling, the ground....searching for the veins.
The first one was to his left. Hidden beneath a layer of corrupted flesh, pulsing with blue energy. He was there in an instant, his fist driving through the wall, his fingers crushing the vein. Blue energy exploded outward.
Reginas screamed behind him. "STOP!"
He did not stop.
Tentacles erupted from the ground...hundreds of them, thousands of them, filling the floor with writhing death. Damien flowed through them like water, his daggers slicing, his body twisting, never slowing. A tentacle caught his arm. He severed it. Another wrapped around his ankle. He crushed it with Ruler's Authority.
The second vein was in the ceiling. He leaped, his fist punching through stone and flesh alike, finding the pulsing blue light. He crushed it.
"NO!"
Reginas unleashed everything.
Monsters poured from the walls—white-skinned creatures, corrupted beasts, things that had no name because no one had ever survived long enough to name them. They swarmed toward Damien like a tidal wave of fangs and claws.
He did not care.
He ran through them. Over them. Past them. His daggers carved a path, his body a blur of shadow and steel. The monsters died behind him, cut down by the dozens, but more kept coming. Always more.
Laser beams followed next. Purple light rained from above, from below, from every direction. Damien dodged, weaved, twisted. A beam caught his shoulder. The shadow armor held. Another grazed his leg. He kept moving.
Fire erupted around him....walls of flame that should have been impossible in this frozen hell. Reginas had copied fire magic from somewhere, someone, anyone. Damien leaped through the flames, his armor smoking, his skin blistering beneath.
Wind followed. Ais's magic. Ariel, but twisted, corrupted, wrong. Blades of air sliced toward him from every angle. He dropped low, rolled, came up running. A blade caught his cheek. Blood sprayed. He did not stop.
Reginas screamed in frustration. "WHY WON'T YOU DIE!"
Damien found the third vein. Crushed it. The fourth. The fifth. Each one he destroyed sent a shockwave through the floor, through the dungeon itself. The walls began to crack. The ceiling began to groan.
The Juggernauts appeared.
Four of them. Massive, eyeless, pale. The dungeon's ultimate punishment, summoned to destroy the one who was tearing it apart from within. They moved faster than anything had a right to, their claws reaching for Damien's throat.
He dodged the first. Leaped over the second. Slid under the third. The fourth caught him across the back, its claws raking through his shadow armor. He stumbled. Kept running.
The sixth vein was behind a waterfall of corrupted flesh. He plunged through it, his hands finding the blue light, crushing it.
The seventh was inside the mouth of a Demi Valgang Dragon. He ran into its jaws, crushed the vein behind its throat, and ran out the other side before it could bite down.
The eighth. The ninth. The tenth.
Reginas was slowing. Her attacks came slower, weaker. The monsters were fewer. The laser beams thinner. She was running out of magic, running out of power, running out of everything that made her invincible.
Damien found the eleventh vein. Crushed it.
The twelfth. Crushed it.
The thirteenth.
His vision blurred. The shadow armor flickered. He had been in this form for nearly five minutes. His body was screaming, his lungs burning, his heart pounding against his ribs like a caged animal.
One more.
He found it. At the very center of Floor Sixty, where the Corrupted Spirit's core had once pulsed, a final vein throbbed with blue light. The last connection. The last source of her power.
Damien raised his fist.
Reginas screamed. "NO! PLEASE!"
He crushed it.
The floor collapsed.
Blue energy exploded outward in a wave that shattered stone, melted flesh, destroyed everything it touched. Reginas fell to her knees, her body flickering, her third eye dimming. She was slowing. Dying.
Damien fell too.
The shadow armor dissipated, crumbling away like ash in the wind. His daggers clattered to the ground. He landed on his back, staring up at the crumbling ceiling, unable to move, unable to breathe.
The Juggernauts caught up.
They stood over him, four pale monsters, their claws raised. He could not run. Could not fight. Could not even lift his arms.
Reginas crawled toward him. Slow. Tired. Her white skin was cracked, her blonde hair dull, her third eye barely glowing. She still had some power left. Not much. But enough.
"You..." she whispered, dragging herself across the broken ground. "YOU!"
Damien laughed. The sound was weak, broken, but genuine.
"I win."
"YOU WIN... Yes..." Reginas reached him, her hand closing around his throat. "You win... BUT YOU DIE FOR IT!"
Her tail rose. The sharp tip aimed at his heart.
A sword pierced her back.
Reginas gasped. She turned her head, her third eye widening.
Ais stood behind her, Desperate buried in her spine. Her golden eyes were cold, her face expressionless.
"Ais..." Reginas whispered.
"Die," Ais said.
She swept her sword to the side. Reginas's head left her shoulders, spinning through the air before landing on the crumbling ground. Her body followed, collapsing into dust.
Reginas Revis died instantly.
Ais did not wait.
A Juggernaut lunged at her. She dodged, Desperate carving a line across its chest. It stumbled back—then a massive rock fell from the ceiling, crushing it beneath tons of stone.
Another Juggernaut tried to circle around her. The ground beneath it cracked, split, and gave way. It fell into the darkness below, swallowed by Floor Sixty-One.
The remaining two advanced.
"You...Fool...I told you to run..." said Damien in a low voice
Ais grabbed Damien. She pulled him into her arms, his head resting against her shoulder, his body limp and heavy.
"I will save you now," she said.
She activated Ariel.
Wind exploded around her....not the corrupted version Reginas had used, but pure, clean, Ais's wind. It wrapped around her and Damien, lifting them, propelling them forward.
She ran.
The Juggernauts chased her, their claws scraping against the crumbling ground, their bodies crashing through falling debris. Ais did not look back. She held Damien tight, her arms wrapped around his chest, her wind pushing them faster, faster, faster.
The entrance to Floor Fifty-Nine appeared ahead. A staircase carved into the stone, leading up, leading out, leading to safety.
Behind her, Floor Sixty died.
The ceiling collapsed in sheets of stone and flesh. The walls crumbled inward. The ground split open, swallowing everything—the monsters, the veins, the last traces of the Corrupted Spirit's realm.
A Juggernaut lunged. Ais leaped. Its claws missed her by inches.
She landed on the staircase.
She turned.
Floor Sixty was gone. Nothing remained but a gaping chasm, falling forever into the darkness below. The last Juggernaut tumbled over the edge, its pale body disappearing into the void.
Ais held Damien tighter.
She climbed.
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