Mio
The shimmer swallowed her whole.
[ENTERING INCURSION]
[Shibuya Metro — Grade: C]
[Type: Construct]
[Hostiles: 25]
Twenty-five. She could work with that.
Kaito materialized beside her. Saw her staring at nothing.
"You seeing something, or did fear catch your throat?"
"Twenty-five hostiles. Construct type. C-grade."
He paused. Processed.
"That's more accurate than our biometrics."
"I guess."
The stairs went down farther than they should have.
Mio counted. Thirty steps. Forty. The metro entrance above them shrank to a gray square, then a slit, then nothing. The incursion had stretched the architecture—turned a two-flight descent into something that kept going.
The thumping grew louder. Heavy. Rhythmic.
Kaito moved ahead, footsteps silent. He didn't use a light. Neither did she. The incursion provided its own—veins of pale blue running through the walls like circuitry, pulsing in time with the thumps.
The platform opened below them. Shibuya Metro, unrecognizable. The tracks had been torn up, the tile cracked and heaved. Crystalline formations jutted from the walls—mana residue, solidified into something almost beautiful.
And standing among the formations: golems.
[Mana Construct — C-grade]
[HP: 1,000]
Stone and crystal, fused into humanoid shapes twice her height. Twelve of them.
The nearest one turned. No eyes, no mouth, just angles. But it tracked her.
Mio was already moving.
Instinct. She didn't think about the drop, didn't calculate the distance. Her body knew. Can knew. The knight had fought without a blade for so long, and now that he had one again—
She hit the platform. The golem's arm was already swinging.
Blue light flared around the construct—a barrier of compressed mana.
Can went through it like paper.
The blade carved through the barrier, through the stone arm, through the crystal core. The golem split. Collapsed. The blue light died.
A bloom manifested. Pale, almost colorless—constructs weren't truly alive, just animated.
She absorbed it. Kept moving.
[Debt: -98,000 → -97,000]
The second golem raised both arms. Mana gathered at its palms—a drain effect, reaching for her.
It hit Mio.
Nothing happened.
The construct hesitated. Tried again.
She took its head off.
[Debt: -97,000 → -96,000]
The rest came for her. She let them.
Golem. Barrier. Shatter. Kill. Bloom. Absorb.
[Debt: -96,000 → -95,000]
[Debt: -95,000 → -94,000]
Can sang with each swing. The VIT stat translated into speed that shouldn't belong to a seventeen-year-old, force that cracked stone and sheared crystal. The knight's instincts guided her hands. She didn't aim. Didn't plan. Just moved, and things died.
Twelve constructs. Twelve blooms.
[Debt: -98,000 → -86,000]
The platform fell quiet. Crystal dust settled.
Kaito descended the last few steps. Hadn't lifted a finger.
"You don't need backup."
"No."
"Bureau's going to hate that."
Something scraped in the tunnel ahead. Stone on stone.
Three constructs emerged from the darkness. Bigger than the others. Their cores burned brighter.
[Mana Construct (Reinforced) — C-grade]
[HP: 2,000]
The first one charged. Stone fist the size of her torso.
Mio sidestepped. Can opened its chest. The golem kept coming—no vital organs, just mana and stone and stubborn animation.
It hit her.
[-127 HP]
[HP: 1,293/1,420]
She stumbled. The second one was already there, fist raised.
She caught it on Can's edge. The impact jarred her arms. Her feet skidded on broken tile.
The third golem flanked. Stone fingers closed around her arm.
[-43 HP]
[HP: 1,250/1,420]
She drove Can into its wrist. Blight spread. The stone cracked, greened, crumbled.
The first golem hit her again.
[-89 HP]
[HP: 1,161/1,420]
She let it. Can buried itself in the core.
The second golem's fist came down.
Can came up. Met the strike. The blade held—eight hundred years of holding a threshold alone.
The golem's arm shattered.
Mio drove forward. Through the broken arm, through the core that pulsed and died.
Three blooms. Six thousand points.
[Debt: -86,000 → -80,000]
[LEVEL UP: 11]
[+5 Unallocated Points]
[HP: 1,440/1,440]
Five points. Sitting there. Waiting.
Probably should've paid more attention to the weird scientist.
Later. After she wasn't dying.
They moved deeper. The tunnel narrowed, widened, narrowed again. More constructs waited in the dark—seven, then two more. None of them lasted longer than a breath.
Nine more blooms. Nine thousand points.
[Debt: -80,000 → -71,000]
[LEVEL UP: 12]
[+5 Unallocated Points]
[HP: 1,460/1,460]
Ten points now.
Kaito fell into step beside her.
"You fight like something old."
"Eight hundred years old."
"The knight."
"In the blade. In me, now."
He didn't ask if she was still herself. Just nodded, like the answer didn't matter as long as the job got done.
"Core chamber ahead. Boss will be guarding it."
"Good."
They moved through the last stretch of tunnel. The station opened into a cavern.
The original architecture was barely visible—pillars wrapped in crystal, ceiling lost in shadows, the platform transformed into a throne room.
And at the center—
The Guardian.
[Guardian Construct — C-grade]
[HP: 10,000]
Polished marble, almost deliberate. The core in its chest burned steady and patient. Its arms ended in crystallized blades, edges honed by days of stillness.
It turned toward them.
This thing had never lost.
"Together," Kaito said. "I'll flank, you draw aggro—"
Mio charged.
"—Dammit."
The Guardian met her in the center of the chamber. Mana blades swept down in an arc that would have bisected her from shoulder to hip.
She wasn't there.
The knight's instincts read the attack before it started. She was inside its guard, Can driving toward the core—
Blue light exploded outward.
[Mana Pulse]
[-340 HP]
[HP: 1,120/1,460]
The force threw her back. She hit a pillar, cracked crystal, fell.
[Guardian: 9,800/10,000]
The Guardian advanced. Its blades reformed from the pulse, sharper than before.
Mio rose. Spat blood.
"Told you." Kaito appeared at the thing's flank, sheath cracking into its leg. "Together."
The Guardian spun. One blade for her, one for him.
Mio lunged. Can met the mana blade, locked, held.
[-78 HP]
[HP: 1,042/1,460]
"Now," Kaito said.
He was at its back. His sheath hammered into a seam in the stone. Cracks spread.
[Guardian: 9,200/10,000]
The Guardian's knee buckled. Just for a moment.
Mio disengaged. Circled. Struck at the damaged leg.
[Guardian: 8,800/10,000]
Kaito hit it again. Same seam. Deeper.
[Guardian: 8,400/10,000]
They fell into a rhythm. Sloppy, uncoordinated—Mio swinging too wide, Kaito having to compensate, the hunger screaming at her to finish it NOW—but it was working.
[Guardian: 7,100/10,000]
[Guardian: 6,200/10,000]
"It's weakening," Kaito said. "One more push—"
[Guardian: 5,200/10,000]
The Guardian stopped.
The core went dark.
Silence.
"Is it—"
The core ignited. Blinding blue.
[Phase Shift]
[Guardian: 5,000/5,000]
[Berserk Mode]
The cracks in its body sealed. The blades at its arms lengthened—three feet, four, five—until they scraped the floor.
It moved.
Faster than before. Faster than something made of stone had any right to move. The first blade came for Mio's throat.
She got Can up in time. Barely. The impact drove her back.
[-120 HP]
[HP: 922/1,460]
The second blade came from the side.
She couldn't block both.
Lacquered wood rang. Kaito's sheath caught the strike inches from her ribs.
"I don't need your help!"
"Neither did my sister."
The words landed harder than the Guardian's fist.
Kaito shoved the strike aside, forced the Guardian back a step. "Look how that turned out."
[Guardian: 4,400/5,000]
Mio's grip tightened on Can. The hunger was still screaming—kill it, kill it now, don't share the bloom—but something else cut through. Something that looked like Aoi's hair clip in Kaito's pocket.
"Fine." She reset her stance. "Together."
"Together."
The Guardian charged. Both blades high, a killing stroke that would split them both.
Kaito went left. Mio went right.
They hit simultaneously.
Can carved through the left leg. Kaito's sheath cracked into the right. The Guardian stumbled.
[Guardian: 3,200/5,000]
It raised one blade. Mana gathered at the edge, brighter and brighter.
"The core," Kaito said. "Now."
She drove forward. Can leading, Blight spreading through marble.
[Guardian: 2,400/5,000]
The Guardian brought its blade down.
Kaito's sheath met it. The impact drove him to one knee, the mana edge inches from his face.
"Do it!"
Can punched through the core.
[Guardian: 0/5,000]
The Guardian's blade stopped. The light in its chest flickered once, twice—
Gone.
It fell. Slow. Like a statue tipping from its pedestal.
[BOSS ELIMINATED]
The bloom was massive. Ten thousand points of accumulated mana, condensed into something almost solid.
She absorbed it.
[Debt: -71,000 → -61,000]
[LEVEL UP: 13]
[+5 Unallocated Points]
[HP: 1,480/1,480]
Fifteen.
The cavern began to collapse. Crystal formations dulling, the unnatural architecture starting to correct itself.
[INCURSION CLEARED]
[Grade: C]
Mio looked around. "Where's the core?"
"That was the core."
She stared at the rubble where the Guardian had stood.
"The boss is the core?"
"Sometimes." Kaito rested the sheath on his shoulder. "Incursions aren't consistent. Some have cores you can destroy. Some have bosses guarding them. Some—" He gestured at the fading light. "The boss and the core are the same thing."
Mio filed that away. Putrid Knight. The thing in the parking garage. Had that been Shinjuku-7's core too?
Kaito rolled his shoulder where the Guardian's final strike had nearly broken him.
"That's how it works," he said.
"What?"
"Party tactics. You don't have to like it."
"I don't."
"That's your problem."
She checked the timer.
[ENGINE: OBJECTIVE]
Clear C-Grade Incursion: 1/2
Time Remaining: 2:47:33
Failure: ???
"Second incursion," Kaito said. "Meguro district. Van's faster than running."
They climbed out of the collapsing station.
Sixty-one thousand points to go. Two hours forty-seven minutes.
One incursion left.
✦✦✦
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