"Before we push further," Kazike said, voice low, "you should know there's something guarding the circle down to the next stretch. Something strong."
"What kind of something?"
"Guild intel says vampire. At this depth, could be a High Vampire — those move faster than anything you've fought so far."
"Do you think you can handle it?"
He put on a confident face that didn't quite reach his eyes. "Of course. Probably. It's strong, but we're prepared." A beat. "Mostly."
"Rosalia always says every creature has a weakness," I offered. "If we're struggling, we just need to find it."
"True enough. Vampires usually fold to holy magic — problem is, neither of us has any. You're fire only, right?"
"Right—" The word cut off as every hair on my arms rose at once, my Murderous Intent Detection flaring hard enough to steal my breath. "Kazike. There's a lot of them. Close. Too many to count."
His hand dropped to his sword hilt, eyes narrowing into the dark. "A horde. Get ready, Kazu."
"Ready."
"NOW!" He was already moving, blade tearing into the darkness. "Blade Strike! Blade Frenzy!"
The vampires came apart out of the shadows all at once — pale shapes with claws and teeth catching what little light the crystals threw, and Kazike met every one of them with brutal, practiced precision, his sword a blur I could barely track.
"Behind you, Kazu!" He didn't even turn to look — just hurled his shortsword backward with perfect aim, pinning a vampire mid-drop before it could reach my throat.
I spun, fire already gathering in my palm. "Kazike — yours, behind you! Fire Pierce!" The bolt caught one closing on his blind side, and it went down burning before it could land a claw on him.
"Thanks," he called back, breathless but grinning. "Watch my back — I've got the front!"
"Got it!"
He fought like something out of the stories I used to read secondhand — fists and blade moving together, one vampire crumpling against the cavern wall, another falling to a spinning arc of steel. He's incredible, I thought, and for a moment I let myself just watch.
That moment cost me.
A blur of motion slid past Kazike entirely, too fast for either of us to track, and fangs sank into my neck before I understood I'd been caught.
The pain came first as fire, then as ice, spreading fast enough that I felt my knees start to buckle before I'd even registered the venom for what it was.
"KAZU!" Kazike's voice cracked with fury as his blade came down, cleaving clean through the High Vampire and tearing it off me in the same motion. "Don't move — stay with me!"
My legs weren't listening anymore. The tunnel dimmed at the edges, sound going thick and distant. "Kazike… it's going dark…"
He dropped beside me, already digging a vial free of his pack. "Drink this — fight it, Kazu. I'll get you to the safe zone."
I got the vial to my lips. I don't remember whether I managed to swallow before the dark took the rest of the decision out of my hands.
I woke to warm light — the particular gold of a Magic Barrier, soft moss beneath me instead of stone. My neck ached, but whatever venom had been in it was gone.
"Kazike?"
No answer. The safe zone was empty except for a small stack of food, a few healing potions, and a scrap of parchment folded beside them.
Kazu — sorry I let you get hurt. Rest here. The scroll's on Floor 35, and this is on me to finish, so I'm going ahead. Back soon.
My stomach dropped somewhere past the floor. He's down there alone. If that vampire nearly took me out with him standing right there —
I was moving before I'd fully decided to, potions shoved into my pocket, aches forgotten, back into the dark.
Floor 25.
Kazike fought like a man trying to outrun something that had already caught him. His armor hung in shredded, blood-slicked pieces, and still he pressed forward, cutting through an entire nest of ogres with a fury that had nothing to do with strategy and everything to do with guilt.
This is on me, he thought, chest heaving between strikes. I let the kid get bitten. I finish this. For him.
An hour of that fury carried him to the floor's boss — a High Ogre, its club the size of a felled tree, eyes glinting with something closer to hunger than intelligence.
"You're the one running this floor?" Kazike bared his teeth, already charging. "Then you're the one who pays for it!"
The fight that followed left neither side room to breathe. Kazike dodged blows that could have caved in a wall, answering with strikes too fast for the ogre to fully track — until exhaustion caught up with him at exactly the wrong moment, and the ogre's fist connected with his side hard enough to throw him bodily into the cavern wall.
Blood sprayed across the stone. Kazike pushed himself back up anyway, because stopping wasn't a decision he was willing to make.
Floor 23.
I found the cavern empty — no living enemies, just ash and scattered corpses where something had already come through. Kazike's cleared this. I need to catch up, now.
I stopped bothering with caution after that. Explosive Blink carried me down through the winding tunnels in bursts, skipping past whatever stray monsters crossed my path without stopping to finish what I started. Every second felt like it mattered more than the last.
Floor 25.
My heart went somewhere far below my feet the moment I reached the boss chamber.
Kazike was on the ground, unconscious, lying in a spreading pool of his own blood. His sword lay shattered a few feet away. His right arm and left leg had been crushed and torn nearly free.
"KAZIKE!"
I hit my knees beside him, hands shaking too hard to be much use at first. "Wake up — please, wake up —"
His eyes cracked open, bloodshot and unfocused. "Kazu… you're alive. Don't worry about me. Run. Finish it…"
Tears blurred my vision as I pressed both hands over what was left of his arm, forcing every ounce of focus I had into the words. "I am the mighty God. Bless this one to survive — Healing!"
Light poured out of me, and I watched, as stunned as he looked, as torn flesh and bone knitted themselves whole again in front of both of us.
"Kazu," he breathed, staring at his restored arm like it belonged to someone else. "You're incredible."
I stood, and the High Ogre was still coming, slow and enormous across the chamber, and something dark and familiar clawed up from wherever it had been waiting inside me since Leafa Forest.
Kazike first. He needs to be safe from whatever's about to happen.
I aimed at the ceiling above the tunnel we'd come through. "Fire Pierce!" The rock came down in a controlled collapse, sealing him behind rubble before he could argue.
Then I turned back to the ogre, and let go of whatever had been holding the rest of me back. "Bloodlust!"
The world went red in an instant. "TOO POWERFUL TO CONTROL!" The words tore out of my own throat sounding like someone else's.
Behind the rubble, Kazike pressed his eye to a gap in the stone, watching my shape twist with something he didn't have a name for. Is that still Kazu? The thought came with a chill that had nothing to do with the cavern air.
I crossed the distance to the ogre faster than either of us could have called it, slipping past its swing entirely, and drove my hand straight through its chest. I felt its heart in my fist before I crushed it.
"SUCH WEAK OPPONENTS!" The laugh that followed didn't sound like mine either.
Kazike began backing away from the crack in the rubble, torn between awe and something closer to genuine fear. I need to get clear of this. He's not himself.
A loose stone shifted under his boot.
My head snapped toward the sound. "WHAT'S THAT?"
I didn't think. I was simply through the rubble a heartbeat later, one hand already closing around his throat, lifting him clean off the ground. "GOT YOU."
"Kazu—" He choked the word out, both hands scrabbling uselessly at my grip. "Come back — it's me!"
Whatever was left of my own mind wasn't answering him. "I'M GOING TO FINISH THIS."
He stopped fighting. His eyes, wet now, held mine — or held whatever was looking out through mine. "Do it, then," he managed. "I'd rather it be you than one of them."
Something in that — the surrender in it, the trust underneath the fear — reached past the red haze in a way nothing else had.
[BLOODLUST EFFECT WEARING OFF]
My grip failed all at once. The color drained back out of my vision, and I went down hard onto the stone, my own breathing the only sound I could hear. "Ka— Kazike…"
He dropped to his knees in front of me, rubbing at the bruises already forming on his throat, and pulled me into a hug that shook with everything he was trying not to say out loud. "It's you. It's okay, kid. You're safe. Rest — we'll finish this later."
Two hours later, I surfaced slowly, the deep ache of magical exhaustion finally starting to lift. "Kazike… what happened?"
His face eased into real relief. "You're up. How do you feel?"
I sat up too fast, eyes going straight to his limbs. "Are you — your arm, your leg—"
"Good as new, thanks to you." He looked pale and worn, but whole. "I watched you take that ogre apart while my body was still knitting itself back together. You saved me twice today, Kazu."
I looked down at my own hands, still faintly trembling. "I don't remember most of it. After Bloodlust… I just lost myself."
[Assassin skill reached Level 82. Enhance now?]
Yes.
[Skill Upgraded: Bloodlust has evolved into RAGE] [Warning: RAGE requires Level 70 Strength to safely control. Currently locked.]
Strength. I don't even know how that stat builds. Push-ups? Manual labor quests? I filed the thought away for later.
"You okay?" Kazike asked, watching me stare into nothing.
"Yeah, Kuya Kazike. Just — thinking."
He stretched his newly healed arm, wincing slightly at the last of the soreness. "You really don't remember any of it? Fighting the ogre?"
"No," I admitted, the shame of it sitting heavier than I expected. "I just went somewhere else."
Something flickered behind his eyes — not quite fear, but close enough to it that he didn't let it linger. "I need to rest a while longer. Keep watch?"
"Of course. Sleep."
While he did, I pulled up the details on my new skill. Rage — boosts magic output, radiates an aura that unsettles enemies, grants movement at what the description calls light speed for two minutes. Light speed. I turned the number over uneasily. And I can't even touch it until my Strength catches up. I need to actually train my body, not just my skills.
I glanced down the tunnel toward whatever waited between us and Floor 35. We're barely past the halfway point. This is going to be a long descent.
Pacing the edge of our camp to stay alert, something caught the light near a pile of loose rubble — a smooth stone, faintly glowing, a single rune carved into its surface.
"What's this?" I picked it up, turning it over. A letter, etched in pale light: C.
[New Unique Skill Acquired: Mining]
[New Unique Skill Acquired: Smithing]
I stared at the notifications in the dim light of the cavern. Skills, just from picking up a rock? I checked my status out of pure curiosity.
[STATUS] Level: 68
Unique Skills: Exploration (Level 80), Assassin (Level 82), Cooking (Level 8), Mining (Level 1), Smithing (Level 1)
I closed the window and looked back down the dark tunnel, no closer to understanding this place than I'd been an hour ago. Whatever else this dungeon was hiding, I had a feeling we'd only scratched the surface of it.