Mio
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.
[Status: Necrotic Blight — 1 stack]
[HP: 9,847/15,000]
There.
The rot was inside it now. Eating. Growing. Finally doing what it was meant to do.
The knight charged. She backpedaled, firing.
Another bolt landed. Another. Each one drove the Blight deeper, black veins spreading through the knight's exposed flesh like roots through soil.
Two stacks. Three.
She tried to dodge a sweeping claw and wasn't fast enough—it caught her across the shoulder and spun her into a pillar hard enough to crack concrete.
[-200 HP]
[HP: 180/820]
She grabbed the blooms she could reach. The few that remained. Vitalize washed through her, knitting what it could.
[HP: 380/820]
Two more bolts. Four stacks. Five. The rot couldn't stack any higher, just kept eating at what it had already claimed.
[Status: Necrotic Blight — 5 (Maximum)]
[HP: 7,200/15,000]
The knight's movements were getting slower. Stiffer. The rot chewing through joints that had held together for centuries.
She'd burned through almost every bloom in that chain reaction, but the Blight was winning. She could see it in the way the knight lurched, the way its leg dragged, the way the purple light in its chest flickered like a dying flame.
Then the flickering stopped.
The light didn't fade. It flared. Too bright, burning through the cracks in the knight's helm, through the gaps in its armor, through the holes the Blight had eaten.
[Enrage: Undying Vigil]
Eight hundred years of vigil compressed into one final surge.
The first blow caught her across the ribs before she could move. She flew, hit the ground, rolled.
One bloom still floating from a slime she'd killed on the way up—she grabbed it, pulled, felt Vitalize wash through her just as the second blow drove her back down.
Gauntlet cratering concrete beside her head, missing by inches, the shockwave alone sending her skidding across wet stone.
[-160 HP]
[HP: 180/820]
She scrambled backward. The knight followed. Relentless.
The rot was eating it alive and it didn't care anymore. Claws across her thigh, deep, and she couldn't stop moving long enough to heal.
[-102 HP]
[HP: 78/820]
[HP: 4,500/15,000]
The knight raised both arms. Brought them down like hammers.
She rolled. The impact shook through the floor, through her bones, through whatever was left of the ceiling above them.
One more hit would kill her. But the Blight was winning.
The knight stopped.
It swayed there, caught itself on a pillar, gauntlet scraping against concrete. The purple light in its chest was guttering now, but it wasn't done.
[HP: 1,800/15,000]
It raised its gauntlet—the one that could still move—and the blood answered.
[Blood Prison]
The blood rose around her like a tide. It climbed her ankles, her knees, her waist, hardening as it went.
Locking her legs in place. Freezing her arms at her sides.
She couldn't move. The blood tightened. Squeezed. Her ribs creaked.
The knight watched her struggle. Then it raised its other hand—the one that had held the broken hilt since the beginning, through centuries of darkness, through everything this place had thrown at it.
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 spread wide.
[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, from whatever was left of the thing that had once been a knight.
All of it flowing upward, converging on that raised hand.
The knight was emptying itself.
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, pouring everything it had left into one final shot.
Its legs buckled. It caught itself on one knee, arm still raised, still channeling.
The rune in its palm was blinding now—brighter than before, brighter than anything she'd seen in this garage.
Every vigil. Every moment spent alone in the dark. All of it, compressed into light.
The knight's visor went dark. Empty. Only the hand remained. The rune. The hum shaking dust from the ceiling.
[HP: 120/15,000]
She could feel it dying. The light draining out of it with every second, the Blight eating faster than it could channel.
A race she couldn't affect. A countdown she couldn't see.
Come on come on come on—
"COME ON!" Her emerald eyes brimmed.
The geometry locked. The light pulsed.
The knight fired.
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—and then the rune 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.
[HP: 0/15,000]
The knight stayed there for a moment. Kneeling, palm raised, still trying.
Then it fell.
It hit the concrete with a sound like a car crash. Armor clattering, pieces scattering across the floor. The broken hilt lay where it had fallen, waiting for a hand that would never pick it up again.
[Elite Eliminated]
[+2,500 XP]
[Level Up: 6]
[Level Up: 7]
[Level Up: 8]
[Level Up: 9]
[Level Up: 10]
[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 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.
[Incursion Cleared]
[Grade: C]
[Engine: Objective — Complete]
Clear C-grade Incursion: 1/1
The darkness began creeping in at the edges.
She didn't let it.