The silence in the collapsed tunnel was absolute, broken only by three sounds:
The terrified, ragged breathing of the three S-Rank Hunters. The furious, wet shrieking of the Corrupted Queen as it tore through the rubble, searching for Seraphina. The low, pained, furious breathing of Jera.
He was the man in the middle. His back was a raw, scorched wound. His armor was gone. Seraphina was a terrified, (hopefully) non-claustrophobic prisoner in his Unlimited Inventory.
"Aegis... what... what was that?" Velocity panted, her daggers held low. "He... he ate her. He ate the civilian!"
"He's a Void-Demon," Conduit whispered, his cannon shaking. "Kane was right. He's not human. He... he's hollow..."
Jera ignored them. He was focused on the real problem. The Corrupted Queen was almost free of the rubble. Its massive, oily black form was swelling, its tendrils lashing out, tasting the air.
It's hunting her, Jera realized. It can still sense her, even in my Inventory. It's hunting me.
He had no mana-attacks. He couldn't get close enough to punch it. His S-Rank powers were useless.
He was a god with no divinity.
He was just a man with a lot of raw, physical strength.
But he wasn't.
A sudden, cold, logical thought cut through his human panic. The "Cain Walker" mask settled back into place, not as a disguise, but as a tool.
The System is not a cage. It's a set of rules. The Bleed follows different rules.
His mana skills were useless. His Inventory-Store was useless on the Bleed.
But his Inventory was not just for storing.
It was a temporal and spatial manipulation device.
It was a pocket dimension.
And what goes in... must be able to come out.
"It's free!" Aegis-7 roared, raising his dented shield as the Corrupted Queen burst from the rubble, larger and more monstrous than before.
It ignored Jera. It saw the three S-Ranks, their bodies glowing with delicious, pure, S-Rank mana. They were a three-course meal.
"It's... it's beautiful," Conduit whispered, his eyes wide. "The power..."
"Conduit, no!" Aegis-7 yelled. "Don't look at it! It's a... a psychic-class! It's..."
But it was too late. The Bleed, the voice of the Corruption, had found its weakest link.
"Yes..." Conduit said, his cannon lowering. "The cage is broken. The Weavers were wrong. We should... welcome..."
"Conduit, snap out of it!" Velocity screamed, smacking him across the helmet.
"FIRE ON THE TRAITOR, CAIN WALKER!" Aegis-7 commanded, making a final, fatal decision. "HE'S THE ONE CONTROLLING IT! TAKE HIM DOWN!"
Velocity and Aegis-7 charged Jera again, their duty as Hunters overriding their fear.
Jera looked at them. Then at the monster. Then at the S-Rank cannon on Conduit's shoulder.
He had an idea. A terrible, brilliant, Overlord idea.
"You want a fight?" Jera said, his voice a low, cold growl. "Fine. You're all ammunition."
Aegis-7 was the first to reach him, his massive shield raised for a ramming attack.
Jera didn't meet the charge.
He simply said, "Store."
Aegis-7's S-Rank, dimensionally-hardened Tower Shield vanished from his arms.
The S-Rank Hunter, his entire momentum committed to a charge that was now weightless, stumbled, his eyes wide with comical, horrifying shock.
"What—"
Jera didn't give him time.
He aimed at the Corrupted Queen, who was now lunging, its giant maw open.
[Action: Kinetic Ejection. Agility Multiplier Roll: $\times 912$.]
"Eject," Jera commanded.
The S-Rank shield reappeared. It didn't just fall out of his Inventory. It was shot out. It was ejected at 912 times its normal, potential velocity.
It became a 2-ton, S-Rank railgun slug.
FUSSSSS-THOOOOOM!
The sound was a deafening, high-speed shriek. The shield, spinning like a disc, crossed the 200-foot gap in a nanosecond. It hit the Corrupted Queen's open mouth and kept going.
The kinetic force, pure and non-magical, was something the Bleed could not eat. It was just physics.
The shield tore through the Queen's entire body, end-to-end, and exited its back, finally embedding itself halfway into the dungeon's bedrock wall, 500 feet away.
The Corrupted Queen froze.
It gurgled.
And it exploded in a colossal, rainy shower of black, corrosive oil.
"GET DOWN!" Jera roared.
He dove forward, grabbing the two stunned, shield-less S-Ranks (Aegis-7 and Velocity) and dragging them into the same small alcove he had hidden Seraphina in. He shielded all three of them with his own bleeding, unarmored back.
The corrosive rain pelted the tunnel. It hissed as it hit the concrete, melting it. It sizzled as it struck Jera's back, hissing against his post-Trial, super-dense skin. The pain was excruciating, a thousand white-hot needles. Jera bit his tongue to keep from screaming.
But the plan had worked.
The "host" monster was dead, obliterated by pure, unadulterated physics.
The black, oily substance, the Bleed itself, had lost its anchor. Without a body to inhabit, it sizzled on the ground, its corrosive properties fading. It was... evaporating.
It was neutralized.
The tunnel was silent.
Aegis-7, his helmet gone, stared from the alcove. He watched the last of the black oil turn to harmless steam. He watched Jera push himself up, his back a ruined, smoking, bloody mess.
He had... saved them.
He had saved them after they shot him in the back.
"He's... he's not a monster," Aegis-7 whispered.
"He... he is," Velocity stammered, pointing a shaking finger. "Aegis... look... his back... it's... it's healing.
Jera stood up, his body shrouded in steam. His flesh was visibly knitting back together. His multiplied, post-Trial base stats were so high that his natural regeneration was S-Rank.
"Conduit," Jera said, his voice a low pant. He ignored his wound. He turned to the third S-Rank, who was still standing in a daze, his eyes wide. "Are you... back with us?"
Conduit shook his head, the psychic "call" of the Bleed broken. "...I... I heard it. It... it was beautiful. It... it..."
"It was a lie," Jera said, walking toward him. He looked at the smoking, half-melted tunnel. He had won.
Jera now faced the S-Ranks. The fight was over. The adrenaline was fading.
And the situation was... incredibly awkward.
The three most powerful Hunters in Chicago stood in a broken circle, staring at the unarmored B-Rank who had just saved their lives by (a) tanking their attacks, (b) breaking their gear, and (c) inventing a new form of S-Rank combat.
"...So," Aegis-7 finally said, his voice rough. "About... 'eating' the civilian."
Jera's face, visible under the grime, flushed. He had almost forgotten.
"She's... she's not 'eaten,'" he grunted.
"Then... where is she?" Velocity asked.
Jera held his breath. This was it. The big reveal.
He focused.
"Eject. Gently."
There was a soft pop in the air next to him, like a vacuum being unsealed.
Seraphina fell out of his Inventory, landing on her hands and knees. She was pale, shaking, and immediately threw up on the tunnel floor.
"Oh, gods... never... never do that again!" she gasped, wiping her mouth, her eyes spinning. "It's... it's dark in there... and there's... there's just so much ore!"
The three S-Ranks stared.
Their "Void-Demon," the "Cannibalistic Invader"... was just a man with a bag. A really, really weird bag.
Aegis-7 looked at Jera's bleeding back, at the shattered monster, at the terrified, vomiting Oracle, and at his own bent, broken armor.
The "Exterminate" order was a catastrophic failure.
"Captain Kane," Aegis-7 said into his comm, his voice hollow. "You... you need to see this."