The Swarm Leader did not hesitate.
It didn't care about honor or bravery. It saw a target that had stopped moving, and it lunged.
The motion was a blur of chitin and muscle. The massive head snapped forward with the speed of a striking cobra, driving the serrated mandibles straight into the small, silver figure standing in the center of the cavern.
BOOM.
The impact shook the entire cavern. The ground beneath Lucianna exploded. Stone shattered into dust, and a shockwave of debris blasted outward, burying her instantly.
"Lucianna!" Drex yelled, his voice lost in the roar of crumbling rock.
He stared at the cloud of dust, his heart sinking. No one could survive that. Not without a shield skill, not without dodging.
But as the dust swirled, the hidden history of the Arbalest family remained standing in the wreckage.
They were one of the Great Families that had led humanity during the Ending Times, a lineage of iron-willed Awakened knights.
Lucianna was the only daughter of the family head, a prodigy who had received her Seed when the Goddess first granted power to humans she selected with unknown metrics. She was only six years old at the time.
Most children received Common-grade seeds. Some received Rare ones.
Lucianna had received a Legendary-grade Seed.
The innate power defied laws. Upon activation, it rendered her temporarily invulnerable, absorbing 100% of any form of incoming damage and converting it into raw power to fuel her next strike.
As a child, Lucianna had become obsessed with testing the limits of the power. She had crazily experimented with every form of damage she could find, smiling through the agony of poison, bruises, and fractures.
Her father had been horrified. He banned her from ever using the ability again, fearing his daughter would lose her mind to the sensation.
She had obeyed. She had hidden this side of herself from her instructors, her fellow knights, and her father. She played the part of the stoic, noble warrior.
But here, deep in the dark of the Outerverse, with no one to judge her—only a strange man and a crazy kid—she finally let go.
The dust began to settle.
Drex braced himself to see a broken body. He expected blood. He expected the monster to be chewing on armor.
Instead, he heard a sound that made his blood run cold.
"Heh... hehehe..."
A low, breathy, uncontrollable giggle.
The Swarm Leader was frozen. Its massive mandibles were clamped down on Lucianna's waist, but they hadn't pierced the metal. They hadn't even dented it.
Lucianna was standing in the center of a crater, her feet buried deep in the pulverized stone. She was completely unharmed.
She looked up, revealing her face.
She wasn't in pain. Her face was flushed a deep, scarlet red. Her eyes were glazed over, swimming with a delirious, mad ecstasy. A wide, wavering smile stretched across her face, trembling with the aftershocks of the hit.
"More..." she breathed, gripping the monster's mandibles with her bare hands.
"What the hell?" Drex whispered, his jaw hitting the floor.
The air around Lucianna began to warp. The kinetic energy of the colossal impact hadn't vanished; she had stored it. Her armor began to glow with a blinding, golden light.
"Come harder!"
Lucianna shrieked, half in rage, half in delight. She wrenched the massive jaws open. Then, with a grunt of exertion, she twisted her body.
Using the stored energy, she lifted the Swarm Leader—a creature that weighed easily twenty tons—off the ground and swung it like a sack of potatoes.
She flung the massive beast across the cavern. It sailed through the air, flailing its hundreds of legs, before smashing into the far wall with a sickening crunch that cracked the stone ceiling.
Drex stared at the scene, his brain refusing to process it.
"That ability is broken," Drex muttered, eyeing the glowing knight who was now panting heavily, her face still flushed with that unsettling blush. "And... she's totally enjoying it. That's terrifying."
Sai stepped out from the shadows, shaking his head. He didn't look surprised, just exasperated.
"What a crazy girl," Sai sighed. "I knew she had a screw loose somewhere."
The Swarm Leader shrieked, dazed and struggling to right itself from the pile of rubble. Its shell was cracked from the impact against the wall.
"Finish it," Sai called out.
Lucianna didn't need to be told twice.
Grabbing her spear, she charged across the cavern, moving faster than any human had any right to move.
"Drex! Pin it!" Sai commanded.
Drex snapped out of his awe. "Right! On it!"
He slapped his palms against the ground.
[Skill Activated: Sovereign Dominion]
Shadows erupted from beneath the struggling monster. They rose up like thick, black tentacles. Drex willed them to solidify. The shadow limbs wrapped around the monster's legs and torso, binding it to the cavern floor.
The Swarm Leader thrashed, but the shadows held just long enough.
Lucianna leaped into the air. She channeled every ounce of the absorbed impact into her spear tip.
"DIE!"
She came down like a meteor.
The spear pierced the thickest part of the carapace, right between the head and thorax. The golden energy detonated inside the beast. The Swarm Leader convulsed once, screeched a final, gurgling cry, and then collapsed.
Silence returned to the cavern.
Lucianna stood atop the carcass, wrenching her spear free. The golden glow faded from her armor, and as the energy left her, so did the madness. She slumped slightly, the flush fading from her cheeks, replaced by the heavy breathing of exhaustion.
"It's down," she said, her voice trying to return to its usual professional tone, though it cracked slightly.
"Good job," Sai said, walking past the corpse toward the nest. "Now for the anchor."
In the center of the webbed nest, the Anchor pulsed with that sickly brown light.
Sai didn't waste time with ceremony. He raised a hand, increased the gravity around the stone, and crushed it into dust.
"Gate's closing," Sai warned. "We have maybe a few minutes or hours before the bridge collapses."
Drex was already heading for the exit, but he stopped when he saw Lucianna freeze.
She was standing near the back of the nest, staring at a pile of debris.
Partially buried under the webbing and frozen rock was a suit of battered, silver armor. It was the same design as hers, but older, heavier. Inside the chest plate was a crushed ribcage.
It was the remains of her father.
His eaten hand was still gripping a weapon. It wasn't a standard issue halberd; it was a weapon Curio shaped like a Great Lance of old. The shaft was thick, carved from dark wood that spiraled toward a heavy steel point, protected by a wide, flared metal guard above the grip. It looked impossible to wield on foot, yet it radiated a faint, regal blue mana, pulsing like a slow heartbeat in the dark.
Lucianna didn't say a word.
She knelt in the snow. She reached out and gently pried the lance from the skeletal fingers. She held it close to her chest, her head bowed. She didn't cry. She just stayed there, silent and solemn.
Drex watched her, feeling a lump in his throat. He wanted to say something cool, something heroic, but he realized this wasn't his scene.
He looked at Sai. Sai nodded respectfully at the fallen knight, then checked his imaginary watch.
"We have to go," Sai said gently.
Lucianna nodded. She stood up, fastening her father's lance to her back alongside her own spear. She looked at the skeleton one last time, whispered a silent goodbye, and turned around.
"Let's move," she said. Her voice was steady again.
"Don't dawdle," Sai warned, looking back up the tunnel. "These Gates are unstable. There's no countdown timer. It could stay open for hours, or it could snap shut in seconds. I don't like gambling with inter-dimensional travel."
They sprinted back up the spiral tunnel, their boots echoing against the cold stone.
They burst out of the cave mouth and scrambled up the icy path of the ravine.
At the top of the ridge, the Rift was still there.
It looked exactly as they had left it, perfectly stable.
"It looks fine," Drex huffed.
"Don't trust it," Sai said, not slowing down. "Jump."
They didn't hesitate. They leaped through the swirling brown curtain, tumbling out of the freezing cold of the Outerverse and crashing onto the warm, cobblestone street of the ruined Merchant Quarter.