The deeper levels of the Quarry smelled different.
Heavier. The wet copper from the upper tunnels was still there but underneath it was something else. Sweet in a wrong way, like fruit that had been sitting in a closed room too long.
Fen noticed too. "That's mana saturation," he said, because Fen had apparently spent the night between yesterday and today reading everything the town library had on dungeons. Which was two books and a pamphlet. "The crystals produce ambient mana and in enclosed spaces it builds up. It's why the deeper levels are harder. The monsters feed on it."
"You read that in a pamphlet," Orrin said.
"I read it in two books AND a pamphlet. There's a difference."
They were alone this time. No Dorn. Fen had been right about that. The Swordsman hadn't come back and nobody else had signed up for a Quarry run with a Common and a mystery class. The dungeon master had looked at Orrin's registration, looked at his public profile, Rare, Summoner, the System's lie printed clean on the chit, and waved them through.
Two people. For a dungeon rated for five.
Orrin had three Footmen now.
He'd figured out the summoning overnight. Not the mechanics. Not the theory. Just the door. The thing in his chest that opened when he pushed on it from the right angle. Each Footman cost mana. The first was barely noticeable. The second sat behind his eyes like pressure before a storm. The third was where his body started telling him to stop.
Three was his limit. Maybe four if he wanted to pass out.
They moved in a column. Three golden constructs in front, Orrin behind them, Fen behind Orrin. The Footmen walked in a loose formation that Orrin hadn't arranged. They'd just done it. Spread out to cover the tunnel width, close enough to support each other. Military spacing. He'd seen formations like this in engineering textbooks from his old life. Load distribution across a structural frame. Same principle. Different material.
"Right, so I've been thinking," Fen said. He was always thinking. Or talking. The difference wasn't always clear. "About what you said yesterday. About not knowing what your class does."
"I know more than I did yesterday."
"Yeah, you've got three of them now. Three golden knights. That's..." He did the thing where he looked at the Footmen and then at Orrin and then back at the Footmen like he was trying to match the product to the manufacturer. "That's a lot. For a Fledgling."
It was. Orrin knew it was. The dungeon team lead who watched the garrison's Vanguard-grade summoner struggle with two smoky wolf constructs would know it too. Three fully armored Footmen with trained combat instincts at Level 3 was wrong. Not illegal. Just wrong in the way that a building with too many floors for its foundation was wrong.
The engineering part of his brain filed it under structural concern and moved on.
The first chamber of the deeper level had bigger Stalkers. Three of them, working together. Pack behavior. The upper-level ones had been solo. These moved as a unit, one drawing attention while the others circled.
The Footmen handled it. Clean. Fast. The lead engaged the decoy while the other two cut off the flankers. No commands from Orrin. They just did it.
Fen's fire was bigger today. Not much. Maybe two thumbs instead of one. He hit a Stalker in the leg and it stumbled. Didn't go down, but stumbled.
"Did you see that?" Fen said. "I made it stumble."
"I saw."
"That's progress. Yesterday I was a candle. Today I'm a slightly aggressive candle."
"Congratulations."
"You're mocking me."
"A little."
Fen grinned. The big one. "Fair."
They cleared two more chambers. The Footmen did the work. Orrin directed them mentally, or tried to. The connection between him and the constructs wasn't what he expected. Not like giving orders. More like having an intent and the Footmen interpreting it. He'd think "check that tunnel" and the nearest one would turn its head before he'd finished the thought.
The mana drain was manageable. Three Footmen at steady output. His head ached behind his eyes. A dull thing. Like being tired from the inside.
The fourth chamber was where it went wrong.
It wasn't a Stalker. It was something else. Bigger. Lower to the ground, with a body that was more insect than mammal. Six legs, armored plates along its back, mandibles that clicked in a rhythm that made Orrin's teeth hurt. The mana crystals in this chamber pulsed fast. Agitated. The sweet-wrong smell was thicker here and the creature was sitting in the center of it like it had been waiting.
A Quarry Borer. Level 8. Orrin knew this because his System displayed it in small gold text that only he could see.
Level 8. They were Level 3.
The first Footman engaged. The Borer was fast. Faster than anything in the upper levels. It caught the Footman's sword on its mandible and shoved and the construct slid back across the stone. The second Footman flanked. Got a hit in. Golden blade on armored plate. The plate held.
"That's bigger than the others," Fen said. He was pressed against the wall near the entrance. His hands were up, sparks between his fingers barely visible in the crystal light.
"Stay there," Orrin said.
The third Footman joined. Three on one. The Borer was strong but outnumbered. It backed toward the far wall, mandibles clicking faster. Orrin pushed the constructs forward. Pressing.
He didn't see the second Borer until it was already moving.
It came from a crack in the wall behind Fen. Small enough to fit through a gap that shouldn't have been there. Smaller than the first but faster and it was three meters from Fen before Orrin's brain caught up to his eyes.
Fen turned. Threw fire. Both hands, everything he had. The flame hit the Borer's face and it screeched, metal on metal, and kept coming.
Orrin pulled.
Not a decision. Not a calculation. The thread in his chest yanked and all three Footmen broke off the first Borer and turned and moved toward Fen. Three golden constructs crossing the chamber in a formation that burned mana like fuel. All of them accelerating. All of them ignoring the larger threat behind them because Orrin's body had made a choice his brain hadn't authorized.
The mana cost hit like a wall. Not the slow headache from before. A grey curtain dropping over his vision. His legs went soft. His hands found the cave wall and held on.
The lead Footman reached Fen first. Caught the smaller Borer mid-lunge. Blade through the gap between its mandibles. The creature twisted and a second Footman drove its sword into the thing's side.
The third Footman was already turning back toward the larger Borer, which had decided that three golden nuisances leaving was an invitation.
It charged. Full speed across the chamber. Straight at the third Footman, which was still mid-turn.
The mandible hit the Footman in the chest. Dead center. The kind of impact that should crack a construct apart. That was how summons worked. Mana given shape. Hit them hard enough and the shape breaks and you've got nothing.
Gold light.
Not from the construct. From somewhere on the construct. A barrier. A flash of golden energy that appeared for maybe half a second across the chest plate, right where the mandible connected. The light absorbed the impact. All of it. The mandible bounced off like it had hit something the Borer didn't have a word for.
Then the light was gone.
The Footman drove its sword through the Borer's head. Done.
Orrin was on his knees. He didn't remember going down. The grey was pulling back slowly. His chest was empty in a way that told him his mana was close to zero. Not there yet. Close.
Fen was on the floor too. Not hurt. Just sitting where he'd fallen when the Borer lunged. His hands were shaking. The sparks between his fingers had gone out.
"You moved them," Fen said. His voice was different. Smaller. "All three. You moved all three of them to me."
Orrin's throat was dry.
"Why?" Fen said.
The honest answer was: because you were going to die and my body decided that was unacceptable before my brain could run the numbers on whether it was tactically sound.
The answer he gave was: "Distractions are tactically useful."
Fen looked at him. For once he didn't say anything. The silence between them wasn't awkward and it wasn't comfortable. It was the kind that happens when someone does something for you and you both know the reason they gave isn't the real one.
Fen opened his mouth. Closed it. "Okay," he said.
They sat there. A minute maybe. The dead Borers leaked something dark onto the stone floor. The mana crystals pulsed around them, fast, calming down slowly.
"The shield thing," Fen said eventually. Because Fen couldn't stay quiet longer than two minutes. Orrin had started timing it. "On your Footman. The gold flash. What was that?"
Orrin looked at the third Footman. The one that should have been destroyed. Standing in the center of the chamber, sword at its side, undamaged. No crack. No mark. No sign that a Level 8 Borer had just hit it hard enough to break a construct twice its size.
He checked his System. Skill registry. Same four active skills as before. No new entries. No notification. Nothing.
"I don't know," he said.
Something had protected his summon. Something that wasn't in his skill list. Something the System wasn't telling him about.
That was becoming a pattern.
Fen stood up. Dusted himself off. His hands were still shaking but the grin was climbing back, slowly, like it had to find its way up from wherever it had gone.
"Same time tomorrow?" he said.
Orrin was still looking at the Footman. At the spot on its chest where the barrier had appeared and disappeared. Unmarked golden plate that should have been rubble.
"Yeah," he said. "Tomorrow."
They left the deeper levels. Walked up through the upper chambers without talking. Fen's silence, not Orrin's. That was new. The Footmen walked behind them in their self-arranged formation and Orrin dismissed them at the entrance. The mana flowing back in was like taking a breath after holding one too long.
Outside, the air was cold. Mineral taste. The Hum steady in the distance, the Veil doing its thing sixteen kilometers east.
Fen stopped at the mine entrance.
"I know what distractions are," he said. Not looking at Orrin. Looking at the tree line past the mine road. "I also know what they're not."
Then he walked away. Hands in his jacket. Not talking.
Fen always talked.
Orrin stood at the Quarry entrance with his hands in his pockets and an empty mana pool and a question he couldn't answer sitting where the mana used to be.
Why did you save him?
Because he was going to die.
That's not a tactic. That's just a reason.