The bolt didn't disperse this time.
It punched through grey skin and stayed, crackling through muscle, grounding in bone. Where the lightning touched, something changed. Black veins spread from the entry wound like frost on glass. Slow. Inevitable.
[Putrid Knight: 9,791/15,000]
[Necrotic Blight: 1 stack]
There.
The rot was inside it now. Eating. Growing. Finally doing what it was meant to do.
The knight charged. She backpedaled, firing.
Another bolt landed. Another. Each one drove the Blight deeper, black veins spreading through the knight's exposed flesh. Two stacks. Three.
Tried to dodge. Too slow. Claws across her shoulder, spinning her into a pillar.
[-200 HP]
[HP: 180/820]
[Bleed: 15 HP/sec]
Blooms. The few that remained. Grabbed. Vitalize.
[HP: 380/820]
Two more bolts. Four stacks. Five. The rot couldn't stack any higher, just kept eating at what it had already claimed.
[Necrotic Blight: 5 — Maximum]
The knight's HP was dropping fast now. Three hundred seventy-five per tick. The Blight eating it from the inside while she kept refreshing the stacks.
She dove under a tendril strike, rolled, came up firing. Refreshing the stacks.
[Putrid Knight: 8,450/15,000]
The knight's movements were getting slower. Stiffer. The rot chewing through joints that had held together for centuries.
Almost no blooms left. She'd burned through everything in that chain reaction.
[Putrid Knight: 7,700/15,000]
Below half. The Blight winning.
[Putrid Knight: 5,900/15,000]
Something changed.
The knight stopped retreating. Stopped defending. The dim purple glow behind its visor flared bright, too bright, burning through the cracks in its helm.
[Enrage: Undying Vigil]
It charged.
Not the measured advance from before. Desperation given form. Eight hundred years of vigil compressed into one final surge.
Tried to dodge. Too slow.
First blow caught her across the ribs. She flew.
[-260 HP]
[HP: 120/820]
Hit the ground. Rolled. One bloom still floating from the slime she'd killed on the way up. Grabbed it.
Vitalize.
[HP: 340/820]
Tried to rise.
Second blow drove her back down. Gauntlet cratering concrete beside her head, missing by inches, but the shockwave alone sent her skidding.
[-160 HP]
[HP: 180/820]
Scrambling backward. The knight followed. Relentless. The rot eating it alive and it didn't care anymore.
[Putrid Knight: 4,800/15,000]
Claws across her thigh. Deep.
[-102 HP]
[HP: 78/820]
Reservoir still had juice, but she couldn't stop moving long enough to Vitalize.
The knight raised both arms. Brought them down like hammers.
Rolled. Barely. The impact shook through the floor, through her bones.
[Putrid Knight: 3,500/15,000]
The Blight was winning. But one more hit would kill her before it finished.
[Putrid Knight: 3,100/15,000]
Slower now. Lurching. One leg dragging, the joint half-rotted. But still closing. Still swinging.
[Putrid Knight: 2,400/15,000]
The knight stopped.
Swayed. Caught itself on a pillar, gauntlet scraping concrete. The purple light in its chest was guttering now. Dying.
But it wasn't done.
[Putrid Knight: 1,800/15,000]
The knight raised its gauntlet. The one that could still move.
[Blood Prison]
The blood rose. A cage. It climbed her ankles, her knees, her waist, hardening as it went, locking her legs in place, freezing her arms at her sides.
Couldn't move.
The blood tightened. Squeezed. Ribs creaking.
The knight watched her struggle. Then it raised its other hand. The one that had held the hilt since the beginning.
The fingers unclenched.
The broken sword fell. Clattering against concrete. Rolling into a blood pool.
Eight hundred years of holding on. And now, at the end, it let go.
Palm out. Fingers spread wide.
[Final Vigil]
No.
The hum started. Low. Building.
But this time was different.
The purple light drained inward. Pulling from everywhere, from the cracks in its flesh, from the dim glow behind its visor. All of it flowing upward, converging on that raised hand.
The knight was emptying itself.
[Putrid Knight: 1,200/15,000]
The rot kept spreading. And beneath it, grey flesh knitting. Muscle threading back together even as it sloughed away. The knight's body at war with itself. Healing and rotting in the same breath.
[Putrid Knight: 800/15,000]
Its legs buckled. Caught itself on one knee, arm raised, channeling.
The rune in its palm was blinding now. Brighter than before. Brighter than anything she'd seen in this garage.
Everything it had. Every vigil. Every moment spent alone in the dark.
All of it, compressed into one shot.
[Putrid Knight: 400/15,000]
The knight's visor was dark now. Empty. Only the hand. The rune. The hum shaking dust from the ceiling.
[Putrid Knight: 120/15,000]
The HP ticked down. Eighty. Forty.
Come on come on come on—
"COME ON!" Her emerald eyes brimmed.
The geometry locked. The light pulsed.
[Putrid Knight: 60/15,000]
The knight fired.
But its shoulder gave out first.
The joint the Blight had been eating for the last thirty seconds finally liquefied. Grey rot spreading through the socket, severing whatever connected arm to will.
The beam carved a line across the ceiling three inches above her head. Concrete vaporized. Rebar glowed white.
The rune cracked. The geometry fractured into noise, purple light scattering in directions it was never meant to go.
The arm dropped. Raised. Trying. But no longer attached to anything that could aim it.
[Putrid Knight: 0/15,000]
The knight stayed there for a moment. Kneeling. Palm raised. Trying.
Then it fell.
It hit the concrete with a sound like a car crash. Armor clattering. Pieces scattering.
The broken hilt lay where it had fallen. Waiting for a hand that would never pick it up again.
[ELITE ELIMINATED]
[+2,500 XP]
[LEVEL UP: 6 → 10]
[NEW ABILITY UNLOCKED: Chimera]
The blood cage dissolved. Liquid again. She collapsed onto her back, head bouncing off wet concrete.
"Ow."
Gasping, shaking, she let herself stop. Just for a moment. Just long enough to remember she was alive.
Around her, the surviving slimes stopped moving. The corruption that had bound them to this place was gone. One by one, they dissolved. Unmade. Returning to whatever they'd been before the knight's rot gave them shape.
They left nothing behind.
[INCURSION CLEARED]
[Grade: C]
[ENGINE: OBJECTIVE — COMPLETE]
Clear C-grade Incursion: 1/1
The darkness began creeping in at the edges.
She didn't let it.
✦✦✦
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