The underground was silent not peaceful. Stone pressed in from every direction, crushing, immovable. Lightning residue clung faintly to the shattered walls, crackling like dying nerves beneath the earth.
Lancelot lay buried.
Earth, stone, and collapsed walls had fused into a single, suffocating mass. The air was stale, thin, barely breathable.
Darkness reigned.
For several seconds, there was nothing.
Then a faint pulse.
A slow, controlled rhythm.
At the center of the collapsed ruin, Lancelot's spirit core rotated calmly within his mind, its doors sealed tight. The lightning-filled core spun steadily, neither raging nor dormant. His breathing was slow, deliberate.
He was alive.
He opened his eyes.
Darkness greeted him he shifted slightly and stopped.
Pressure.
Every direction resisted him. The collapsed tunnel had not simply buried him; it had entombed him.
Most knights would have panicked.
Lancelot did not.
Instead, he closed his eyes once more.
Assess.
His spirit sense spread outward, threading carefully through the rubble. He felt crushed tunnels, collapsed chambers, fractured ley paths. The dungeon was no longer a dungeon—it was a grave.
A grave he intended to walk out of.
"Electricity is motion," he whispered. "Stone only resists force—not vibration."
The door of his first spirit core opened.
Just a crack.
Lightning flowed not violently, but precisely.
The earth trembled.
Not an explosion.
Not destruction.
A hum.
The stone around Lancelot began to vibrate at a microscopic level, particles shivering as electricity threaded through them. Friction increased. Structural cohesion weakened.
Cracks formed.
Blood slid from the corner of Lancelot's mouth.
"…Harder than expected.
He widened the door.
Lightning surged through his body, coating his bones, muscles, and nerves. Pain lanced through him as backlash struck, sharp and unforgiving.
But he did not stop.
The vibration intensified.
Stone gave way.
With a violent rupture, the collapsed earth burst outward as Lancelot forced himself free, coughing violently as fresh air rushed into the void.
He collapsed briefly to one knee.
Breathing hard.
Alive.
The dungeon behind him was completely ruined nothing but a twisted scar carved into Stonecliff's underbelly.
Lancelot stood slowly.
"…You planned this well," he said quietly, staring at the destruction. "Retreat disguised as defeat just to lure me in here and crush me."
His eyes hardened.
Stonecliff burned.
Not only from fire but from fire and grief.
The village that had once stood proudly along the mountain path now lay in ruin. Homes collapsed. Shops shattered. Roads torn apart by battle and subterranean collapse.
Villagers filled the streets.
Crying.
Shouting.
Arguing.
"This was my livelihood!"
"They destroyed everything!"
"Where were the knights?!"
"My house, my house is gone!"
Children clung to parents. Elderly sat in silence, staring at rubble that once meant life. Merchants screamed at guards who could offer nothing but empty apologies.
Stonecliff had survived monsters before.
But this, this was different. This was human attack.
Lancelot emerged from the ruined dungeon path, stepping into the open streets.
The moment villagers saw him, their cries shifted.
"The knight!"
"It's the Knight of Britannia!"
"Did you catch them?!"
"Where is the princess?!"
Questions slammed into him like blows.
Lancelot said nothing.
He looked at the destruction.
At the broken stone.
At the suffering faces.
And for the first time since becoming a knight. His chest felt heavy.
"He failed," someone whispered nearby.
"No," another snapped. "The knight of Britainna was defeated!"
The words struck deeper than any blade.
Lancelot clenched his fist.
"…This isn't over," he said quietly, though no one heard him.
He lifted into the air once more, lightning flickering faintly beneath his feet.
The villagers watched as he flew away hope and resentment mixing in their eyes.
Far from Stonecliff, on a broken road leading south a convoy waited.
Three reinforced carriages stood in formation, surrounded by the elite soldiers clad in green-and-white uniforms. The air was tense, heavy with anticipation.
Aisha Suleiman stepped forward.
Her uniform was torn. Soot stained her sleeves. Her breathing was steady, but fatigue lingered beneath her composure.
"Transfer her carefully," she ordered.
Princess Emilia was unconscious, wrapped in reinforced cloth, her breathing shallow but stable. Two soldiers lifted her gently, placing her into the central carriage.
Yoma lay on a stretcher nearby, pale and unmoving. Mausa sat beside her, his arms shaking from exhaustion, eyes hollow.
Aisha watched them carefully.
"They're coming with us," she said.
One of the reinforcement officers hesitated. "Captain, the carriage capacity"
"Make room," Aisha snapped. "That's an order."
The soldiers obeyed instantly.
Aisha turned away, gazing toward the distant outline of Stonecliff.
Smoke rose faintly in the distance.
She tapped her communicator rune.
"All units prepare to move phare two of the mission had just begun. Destination: Riverview."
Then a warning shout.
"Captain!"
Aisha turned sharply.
The sky above Stonecliff lit up.
A streak of yellow lightning cut through the clouds, fast too fast.
A familiar presence pressed down on the battlefield like a weight.
Her eyes narrowed.
"…He survived what a monster."
Lancelot flew hard.
Faster than before.
No hesitation.
No restraint.
Lightning roared around him as he closed the distance, his eyes locked on the convoy ahead.
There.
Three carriages.
Elite formation.
Princess inside.
"You didn't escape," he whispered coldly. "All you guys we're able to accomplish is buy a small portion of time."
The wind screamed as he accelerated.
Below, Nigerian soldiers reacted instantly.
"Defensive formation!"
Shields rose. The soldier raised thier gun ready to shoot.
Aisha stepped forward, fire igniting around her hands.
"Hold position," she ordered calmly. "Do not engage recklessly."
Taiyor stood despite his injuries, sword in hand, eyes sharp.
"…He's coming alone," he said quietly.
Aisha shook her head. "No. He never is."
Lightning split the sky.
Lancelot halted midair, hovering directly above the convoy, electricity coiling around him like a living crown.
For a heartbeat.
Silence.
Then.
He smiled and whispered in his mind. Do they think they can get away with this there is no peace for those who steals a cub from the lions den. "Return the princess," Lancelot said, voice calm, cold, absolute.
The soldiers felt it.
Not a threat.
A declaration.
Aisha met his gaze without flinching.
"Knight of Britannia," she called back. "You attack foreign soldier go back now and we will over look this and what proof do you have about us adopting the princess."
Lancelot's eyes narrowed.
"You crossed the sea," he replied. "You abducted royalty. You destroyed a village."
Lightning intensified.
" i don't need proof it no longer matters what really matters now is killing all of you."
Aisha raised her hand slightly.
The convoy shifted subtly positioning, spacing, readiness.
"Engage escape protoco firel," she ordered quietly.
Lancelot noticed.
His eyes sharpened.
He dodge the bullets mid air.
The air screamed.
Bullets tore through the sky in tightly controlled arcs, their trajectories precise, relentless. The Nigerian soldiers fired without panic, without hesitation trained professionals executing doctrine rather than emotion.
Lancelot twisted midair.
One step.
Another.
His body moved as if guided by instinct alone, electricity threading faintly through his nerves as bullets passed where his skull had been an instant earlier. Each round missed by fractions of a second, piercing wind instead of flesh.
He smiled faintly.
As long as I still have electricity spirit essence, these bullets are meaningless.
The smile faded just as quickly.
Cracks spread across the inner surface of his lightning domain—thin at first, then branching, multiplying like fractures in glass. Every dodge, every micro-adjustment, drained him further.
His breathing slowed.
My spirit essence is nearly depleted.
Another bullet grazed past his shoulder, close enough that he felt the heat of friction against his skin.
If I continue… my electricity domain will collapse.
That was not damage that could be repaired.
That was death.
Lancelot shut the door to his lightning spirit core midair.
The electricity vanished instantly.
Gravity reclaimed him.
He descended—calm, controlled—straight toward the heart of the Nigerian formation.
The ground answered.
Earth surged upward violently as Mausa forced his last reserve of spirit essence into motion. The road beneath the convoy fractured, splitting inward as dust and debris exploded skyward. Stone collapsed, pathways vanished, and the battlefield folded into chaos.
Lancelot adjusted immediately.
There was only one place left to land.
The center.
He struck the ground among them.
Stone cracked outward, but he absorbed the impact cleanly, rolling once before rising to his feet, unarmed, unpowered, surrounded.
At the same moment. Fire erupted.
Aisha's spirit essence flared violently, her flames compressing outward into a massive heat barrier that sealed the air above the convoy. The temperature spiked instantly, warping vision and forcing pressure down like a crushing ceiling.
Lancelot reacted without hesitation.
Ten clones tore themselves free from his body, lightning flickering faintly within them as they hurled themselves upward.
They slammed into the heat barrier and stopped.
The barrier melt them slowly.
Relentlessly.
The clones groaned as their forms destabilized, electricity sputtering and snapping under the crushing thermal pressure. One by one, they collapsed, flattened, dispersed and erased.
Lancelot stepped onto their fading bodies, using them as footing. Then he shouted. No peace for the wicked i will hunt you down you can't run or hide from me.
Gunfire resumed.
Bullets struck the heat barrier and fell harmlessly to the ground, metal liquefying slightly from heat before clattering uselessly at Aisha's feet.
Lancelot leapt.
As he rose, clones manifested beneath him solidifying just long enough to serve as stepping stones before dissolving into sparks.
Step.
Step.
Step.
He climbed the air itself.
The battlefield fractured.
Seven Nigerian soldiers fell.
Not all at once.
Not dramatically.
One misstep.
One delayed reaction.
One clone slipping past a blind angle.
Lancelot did not waste motion.
A neck struck.
A spine disrupted.
A body collapsed.
Seven lives ended in before they could react.
Then he screamed no peace for the wicked.
Three soldiers escaped with the carriage—the one carrying Princess Emilia—vanishing down the shattered road as Yoma illusion hidding them.
Aisha shouted cover them, fire roaring outward to cover their retreat.
Taiyor moved like a shadow beside her, blade shifting shape mid-swing as he cut down clone after clone, adapting seamlessly long blade to short, curved to serrated, thrust to cleave.
Still the clones kept coming.
A hundred of them remaining.
They poured outward from Lancelot like a living storm, surrounding the battlefield completely.
Aisha realized it instantly.
Her eyes narrowed.
"…He's not pursuing the carriage."
Taiyor glanced back sharply.
"He's isolating us."
Aisha's jaw tightened.
"…He's buying time."