The ten-minute rest felt more like an insult than a relief.
Renn sat on a jagged crystal formation jutting from the ground like a broken tooth. Around him, the sound wasn't silence, but the metallic clatter of men and women trying to pull themselves together.
Korg walked past, carrying a supply crate with one arm as if it were a feather. He stopped in front of a group of young soldiers who looked about to faint.
"Eat," he grunted, tossing ration packs into the kids' laps. "Chewing kills the fear."
"I'm not hungry, sir," muttered one soldier, a red-headed boy with shaking hands.
"I didn't ask if you were hungry. Your body is a machine; if you don't put fuel in it, it shuts down. And if you shut down, you die. Eat."
The boy opened the package with clumsy fingers.
A few meters away, Bram was checking a lancer's armor. The dwarf tapped a small hammer against a dent in the chest plate.
"Trash," Bram grumbled. "Cheap metal. Who forged this? A baker?"
"Alliance Quartermaster, sir," the lancer replied nervously.
"Knew it. A blind, one-armed baker. Look at this," Bram pointed to a hairline crack near the shoulder. "One more hit here and you lose an arm. I don't have time to forge you a new one, so try not to get hit on the left side."
"Understood, sir."
Renn let out a sigh.
Valeria materialized at his side. Simply put, one second she wasn't there and the next she was, standing there looking at him with that empty expression that usually made others nervous.
"Your shoulder," she said.
"I'm fine."
"You're favoring your right side. I saw you sit down. Show me."
Renn knew arguing with Valeria was like talking to a brick wall. He undid the leather straps of his pauldron and exposed the shirt beneath the armor.
There was a massive, angry purple-black bruise blossoming right where the metal plate met the mail, radiating heat.
Valeria knelt beside him. Her fingers, cold as ice, prodded the swollen area.
"Severe blunt force trauma," she diagnosed with a clinical tone. "The magical barrier stopped the point, but the kinetic energy transferred directly into the muscle tissue. You have extensive subcutaneous hemorrhaging."
She pressed around the injury, and Renn clenched his teeth, letting out a hiss. "Does it hurt?"
"It's a giant bruise, Valeria. They tend to hurt."
"Better a bruise than a hole. But the tissue damage is significant."
She pulled a small vial from her belt and poured a clear liquid over the inflamed skin. It absorbed instantly, burning as if she had poured acid on him.
"Shit!" Renn flinched. "What is that?"
"Transdermal cellular stimulant. It accelerates the reabsorption of the hematoma. Shut your mouth and stay still."
Valeria took out a bandage and began wrapping his shoulder with quick, precise movements to apply compression.
"Your armor has a design flaw at the joint," she added, pulling the knot tight. "Without Her Highness's barrier dampening the impact, that arrow wouldn't have just bruised you; it would have shattered the clavicle and punctured the lung."
"Thanks for the optimistic prognosis."
"It is realism. Dying due to defective equipment is an unacceptable inefficiency." She finished the bandage and patted his good arm. "Done. No sudden movements for twenty minutes."
"We're in a Dungeon, Valeria. Everything is a sudden movement."
She shrugged and stood up, floating slightly above the ground. "Then try not to get killed. It would be a waste of resources."
Lysandra, who was leaning against Renn's shoulder with her eyes closed, let out a soft giggle.
"How touching," the cat-girl said without opening her eyes. "Her concern for you is almost human. Almost."
Renn put his armor back on, grimacing. "You could help, you know. You said you have healing magic."
Lysandra opened one eye, the amber iris glowing in the gloom. "I could. But Valeria does it so well... Besides, wasting mana on scratches is for commoners."
"It's an arrow, not a scratch."
"Details." Lysandra stretched, arching her back in a way that was far too reminiscent of a feline. Her ears twitched under her hood. "What really bothers me is the smell. Those goblins stank of rotting meat. They've ruined my appetite."
"You don't need to eat," Renn reminded her.
"It's the principle that counts. I miss the ritual. Sitting down, drinking wine, eating something that wasn't alive five minutes ago... Civilization." She looked around at the tired, dirty soldiers. "This is barbaric."
"Welcome to my life," Renn murmured.
A scream broke the conversation. It came from the vanguard, where the scouts had been checking the terrain.
"MEDIC! HERE, FAST!"
The voice was Varic's, and it sounded bad.
Renn jumped up, ignoring the pull in his shoulder. Lily was already running toward the front with her medical supply bag bumping against her hip.
"Let's go," Renn said.
Valeria and Lysandra followed him. When they reached the front of the column, a group of soldiers had formed a circle. Varic was in the center, kneeling.
On the ground was a body. Or what was left of it.
It wore Alliance armor, but the metal was corroded, as if dipped in strong acid. The flesh underneath... Renn had to swallow hard to keep from vomiting. The skin had turned grey and liquid, melting off the bones.
"It's Torvald," Bram said, appearing at Renn's side. The dwarf's face was pale beneath his beard. "I recognize the shield. Lord of House Grimshadow."
"What happened to him?" Renn asked, forcing himself to look.
Lily was examining the body, but she didn't touch it. She kept her hands in the air, white light glowing in her palms, scanning.
"Necrotic magic," Lily said, her voice trembling slightly. "Pure and concentrated. He was hit a while ago, probably during the ambush in the previous corridor. The spell acts slowly. It rots you from the inside without you noticing until..." She made a vague gesture toward the mess on the ground. "Until you collapse."
"He didn't even scream," one of the scouts murmured. "He was walking behind me and suddenly... he came undone."
Varic stood up slowly. His face was a mask of stone.
"Torvald was level twenty-eight," the Supervisor said, looking at his men. "A good warrior."
"If a level twenty-eight ends up like that..." someone in the back row started to say.
"Shut your mouth," Varic cut in. He turned to the group. "Listen well. Torvald Grimshadow has fallen. We can't do anything for him now. We can't carry the body; it's a biological and magical hazard. If you touch that flesh, the necrosis will pass to you."
A heavy silence fell over the group. Leaving a comrade behind was taboo, but leaving him like this...
"We leave him here?" asked the scout. "Like trash?"
"No," Varic said. "Bram, give me an incendiary bomb."
The dwarf nodded, pulled a metal sphere from his backpack, and tossed it to Varic.
"Remove the ID tags. The rest burns," Varic ordered. "It's the only way to purify the magic and stop him from rising as an undead."
Lily recovered the tags with long tongs, using surgical care. Then, everyone backed away. Varic activated the bomb and dropped it onto the corpse.
A white and blue flare consumed the remains in seconds, without smoke, without smell. Just clean fire.
"Move out," Varic ordered before the flames died down. "We don't have time for mourning. We'll grieve for the dead when we get out of here. Now, move."
It was brutal. It was necessary.
The column reformed. Renn walked between Lily and Lysandra. He noticed Lily had her hands clenched into fists, knuckles white.
"Are you okay?" he asked quietly.
"I knew him," Lily said without looking at him. "He was one of the first to help me when I joined the Alliance."
"I'm sorry."
"Don't worry, Renn. It's a risk we all take; we Lords flirt with death daily. Just... take care of yourself, yeah? I wouldn't want to lose you."
"Deal."
The tunnel began to descend more steeply. The walls changed, no longer natural rock but showing obsidian bricks, perfectly cut and fitted without mortar. The air grew colder.
"How much longer to the core?" Thrain asked from ahead, spinning his twin swords in a nervous tic.
"Maps are useless," responded one of the trackers, checking a compass that was spinning uncontrollably. "The Rift magic is distorting space. We could be a hundred meters away or ten kilometers."
The tunnel ended abruptly. There was no door, just an exit into nothingness.
"By all the..."
A colossal canyon opened up inside the mountain, stretching upward and forward beyond where any light could reach. And the ceiling... was broken.
It was as if someone had punched reality until it cracked. Through the fissures, Renn didn't see the sky of the Infinite World, but a deep, rich purple firmament, crossed by veins of neon green light that pulsed like auroras. Hanging in that sky, three glowing orbs rotated slowly: one pink, one sickly yellow, and one bluish-white that hurt to look at.
"What the hell is that?" Darian asked, his voice higher than usual.
"That is the sky of their original dimension," Lysandra said quietly. "Preserved at the moment of collapse."
"It's beautiful," Sera sighed.
"It is a scar," Lysandra corrected. "Beauty born of a catastrophe."
"Is that what their world looked like?" Renn asked, unable to look away.
"Before this fragment was teleported, yes. Three suns, atmosphere rich in compounds you would consider toxic, different gravity." Lysandra tilted her head. "An alien world. And now only this remains."
"Three suns," Lily murmured. "How did that work?"
"Complex cycles. Days that lasted what would be weeks for you. Nights that were never completely dark." Lysandra pointed to the pink orb. "That was the primary sun. The other two were smaller, satellites captured millennia ago."
"And the green thing?" Thrain asked.
"Residual dimensional energy. The fabric between worlds bleeding through the fracture."
But the sky wasn't the most shocking part. The canyon floor was covered in ruins. Black stone buildings rose in orderly rows, some five or six stories high, with glassless arched windows staring like empty sockets. The streets were paved with slabs of a material that glowed faintly, forming geometric patterns, and there were plazas with dry fountains and gardens where alien plants lay petrified.
And statues. Dozens of humanoid statues, but strange: three arms each, eyes where mouths should be. Proportions slightly deviated from human that made Renn's brain protest.
"Something lived here," Lily said. "Something... civilized."
"The Ancients," Lysandra confirmed. "The dominant species of this world before the collapse. The goblins were their working class. Their slaves, probably."
"And what happened to the Ancients?" Renn asked.
"Extinct. When their world collapsed, they didn't survive the dimensional transition process. The goblins, more adaptable and resilient, did."
"So the slaves inherited the kingdom," Bram murmured.
"Something like that."
"And now it's a tomb," Greta stated with a husky voice.
"And a battlefield," Varic added, hand on the hilt of his greatsword. "Because someone else claimed it."
He was right. As they advanced through the dead streets, Renn noticed signs of recent habitation: extinguished campfires, gnawed bones, broken weapons, and symbols painted on the walls with something resembling blood.
"Goblins," Bram identified. "But not primitive tribes. This is writing. They are organized."
Renn approached one of the symbols. It looked like an eye with three pupils surrounded by angular runes.
"Can you read this?" he asked Lysandra.
"It is their territorial property symbol. Basically says: 'This zone belongs to the Blood of Kral tribe'. A formal claim." Lysandra touched the wall. "And it's recent. Painted in the last few days."
"So they know we're here."
"Of course they know. We killed fifty of their archers and collapsed their ambush tunnel." Lysandra looked at him. "The question isn't if they know. The question is what they are going to do about it."
As if her words had been a signal, the sound began.
THOOM. THOOM. THOOM.
Drums. Deeper than before, slower and ceremonial.
"Defensive formation," Varic ordered, his voice calm but with an edge of steel. "NOW."
The group compacted instantly: shields up, weapons ready, mages charging spells.
The drums got louder and then, from the end of the main avenue where the ruins ended, a fortress of dark wood appeared, almost black, reinforced with metal plates and bone. Fifty meters high, towers crowned with fur banners, thick walls, and massive closed gates.
"They built that," Lily said, incredulous. "The goblins built a fortress inside the Dungeon."
"No," Lysandra corrected, narrowing her eyes. "They didn't build a fortress. They built a nation."
"How long does something like that take?" Sera asked, voice trembling.
"Years. Decades, maybe." Lysandra pointed to the towers. "Look at the construction. They are using techniques of the Ancients, adapted to their own needs. This is not the work of savage tribes."
"Shit," Korg muttered. "This is worse than I thought."
The drums stopped, leaving a silence so dense Renn could hear his own breathing amplified by his mask. Then, with a groan of tortured wood, the gates began to open slowly and dramatically.
From the darkness inside, the army emerged.
The first thing Renn saw were the mammoths. Massive creatures the size of small houses, with black-brown fur covered in riveted metal armor plates and tusks wrapped in barbed chains. Their eyes glowed red with what seemed to be enhancement magic. Mounted on wooden platforms on each beast's back were squads of Hobgoblins in chitin armor, brandishing what made Renn's heart stop.
Rifles.
Primitive, likely black powder arquebuses, but rifles nonetheless.
"They have firearms," Darian Volt's voice sounded strangled. "The goblins have firearms."
"How is that possible?" Arcturus asked. "Goblins don't have the technology to..."
"The Ancients had it," Lysandra interrupted. "And the goblins learned. Three thousand years is a long time to study the ruins of your former masters."
One mammoth, two, five, ten... dozens. And behind them, the cavalry. Battle wolves in disciplined formation, larger than the previous ones, wearing plate armor. Their riders carried long lances with pennants and curved sabers.
Fifty riders. Seventy. A hundred. And they kept coming out.
"How many are there?" Thrain asked, his voice tighter than Renn had ever heard it.
"Too many," Bram replied.
Then came the shamans. They walked in two parallel rows, thirty in total, wearing robes of fur and runic bones, chanting in a guttural tongue that made the air vibrate. On the walls, hundreds of Hobgoblin archers readied their arrows, and among them stood the giants: mutated Hobgoblins three meters tall, with muscles so grotesquely developed they looked about to burst their green skin. They wielded battle axes so large a normal human couldn't even lift them.
The entire army deployed in perfect formation. And at the front of it all, mounted on the largest mammoth, a Hobgoblin who was clearly the leader.
He wore full black plate armor engraved with red runes. A horned helmet. And a banner behind him: a three-eyed skull on a blood-red background.
"That is Kral'thak," Lysandra murmured. "The leader's name."
"How do you know?"
"The banner. That is his personal symbol."
The leader raised a metal-gauntleted hand.
The sound of drums ceased instantly. The silence that followed was worse than the noise, a dense pause where only the snorting of Wargs could be heard.
The leader leaned forward in his saddle. When he spoke, his voice was amplified by magic. It sounded like grinding stones, deep, raspy, and full of ancient hate. He spoke in a guttural tongue, full of clicks and deep growls that tore at the air.
Renn saw Varic and the generals touch their ears, adjusting their translation devices with expressions that hardened by the second. They understood. Renn didn't.
He felt a warm breath near his ear. Lysandra had leaned in, lowering her voice to a whisper almost inaudible to the others.
"He says: 'Soft-skinned insects. Rats crawling in the dark'," she murmured, translating in real-time with a tone of absolute boredom.
The Hobgoblin leader shouted again, pointing at the group of humans with a black halberd dripping dark magic.
"He says we have entered Kral'thak's domain," Lysandra continued whispering, her lips almost brushing Renn's shoulder. "That we have stepped on sacred stone with our dirty boots."
The leader struck the handle of his weapon against the mammoth's skull, making the beast bellow.
"'This land is mine. Took it with blood. Keep it with blood. No negotiation'," she translated. Renn noticed Varic clenching his jaw as he heard the direct version in his earpiece. "He says there is no peace for invaders."
Kral'thak pointed to the ground, then made an unmistakable throat-cutting gesture. His laugh rumbled through the plaza, an ugly, wet sound.
"Here comes the offer," Lysandra whispered, looking at her own nails as if the villain's rhetoric were a bureaucratic formality. "'You have two options, fresh meat. Option one: Kneel. Drop your weapons. Put on the collars'."
The enemy army struck their weapons against their shields in unison. CLANG! CLANG!
"'My mines need strong backs and my beasts need food'," she went on. "'Live as slaves and serve the Horde'."
Kral'thak lowered his voice to a sinister growl that reached every corner of the plaza.
"'Option two: Die'," Lysandra translated softly. "'We will flay you alive. We will use your skins for our flags and your bones for our thrones. I will bathe this city in your blood until the fountains run red again'."
Kral'thak roared one final sentence, raising the halberd toward the fractured sky.
"Basically," Lysandra summarized in Renn's ear, returning to her normal tone. "Slavery or painful death. And something about eating our livers, but I think that's just for color."
Silence fell over the group again. They could see the rifles aiming at them. They could see the hunger in the wolves' eyes.
"Charming," Renn murmured without taking his eyes off the enemy. "Think he's open to counteroffers?"
"I doubt it," Valeria responded from the other side. "He does not seek dialogue, he seeks execution."
Darian Volt took a step back, face pale. "We have to leave. Now. We can't win this. They have artillery and there are hundreds of them!"
"If we turn around, they will shoot us in the back," Varic said, eyes fixed on the enemy leader. He didn't need translation; he had heard every insult. "And the wolves will catch us before we reach the tunnel."
"It's suicide!" Darian shrieked.
Renn looked at Lysandra sideways. The cat-girl was yawning. Openly, in front of an army of eight hundred armed monsters.
"Aren't you scared?" Renn asked quietly.
"Scared?" Lysandra looked at him as if he had said something stupid. "Of him? Please. He smells like wet dog and has the vocabulary of a three-year-old. He is loud, I'll give him that."
"He threatened to flay us."
"Small dogs always bark a lot." Lysandra smiled, showing just the tips of her fangs. "Besides, he called me a 'rat'. That is offensive. I am a feline of high lineage."
"I think technically he referred to all of us as a species," Renn pointed out.
"I don't care. I took it personally."
"Good." Lysandra cracked her knuckles. "Now, can we kill them already? His leader is giving me a headache with all that screaming."
Varic turned to his lieutenants. He had heard enough.
"General Stormhand, General Emberclaw. Situation."
Arcturus Stormhand, the veteran in silver armor, spat on the ground. "It's a classic phalanx formation, but with shock beasts. If those mammoths charge, they'll break our center line in seconds."
"My mages can raise barriers," said Kyra Emberclaw, her eyes glowing with contained fire magic. "But those rifles are the problem. If they fire a concentrated volley, they'll break the magic shields by pure kinetic saturation."
"We need to nullify their range advantage," Valeria analyzed. "If we stay here, we are target practice."
"Stormhand," Varic ordered. "Can you hold a charge?"
"I can hold the wolves and the infantry," the General said, banging his shield. "My Armored are a wall. But the mammoths..."
"The alternative is being slaves in a mine," Lily said, unsheathing her sword and stepping up beside Renn. "I prefer the risk."
Varic nodded.
"Good. Stormhand, shield line to the front. Emberclaw, archers and mages behind, suppression fire on the mammoth shooters. Darian... stop crying and cover the right flank."
Varic raised his greatsword and looked the Hobgoblin leader in the eyes, across the three hundred meters of empty plaza.
"WE DO NOT KNEEL!" Varic roared, finally answering the offer, his voice boosted by his own command aura. "COME AND TAKE US IF YOU CAN, BASTARD!"
Kral'thak smiled upon understanding the challenge. It was a horrible smile full of yellow teeth. He lowered his halberd slowly.
"Then, die."
The war horn sounded.
And the ground began to shake under the charge of eight hundred monsters.
"Here they come," Renn said, taking a deep breath.
"Finally," Lysandra said, and her eyes changed. The pupils became thin vertical lines. The boredom vanished, replaced by the cold anticipation of a predator. "Let's see what color they bleed."