The suffocating pressure of a Silver Rank aura crushed the air out of the narrow corridor.
Kaelen stared up at the colossal skeletal serpent. Its skull was easily the size of a shipping container. Glowing blue crystals jutted from its jagged vertebrae, pulsating with freezing, unnatural magic. Empty eye sockets burned with cold blue fire, locking entirely onto Kaelen and Lyra.
The ethereal interface in Kaelen's vision turned a blinding, frantic crimson.
[Warning. Silver Rank Abyssal Undead.]
[Target essence highly corrupted. Direct absorption will result in fatal Host mutation.]
[Suggested Action: Flee.]
"I hate this system," Kaelen gritted his teeth. He grabbed Lyra by her silver collar and hauled her backward just as the serpent lunged.
Massive bone jaws slammed into the stone floor exactly where they had been kneeling. The impact triggered a localized earthquake. The sheer kinetic force threw Kaelen and Lyra against the cracked wall. Stone shrapnel exploded outward like grapeshot. Kaelen shielded Lyra with his body, letting his Ironclad Carapace absorb the jagged debris. Sparks flew as the stone scraped against his magically hardened skin.
Further down the corridor, Lord Valerius screamed in absolute terror. The arrogant noble scrambled over the crushed remains of his own mercenaries, abandoning his sword as he fled blindly into the dark.
The skeletal serpent ignored the fleeing noble. It whipped its massive skull toward the highest concentration of magic. It targeted Lyra.
"Get up!" Kaelen hauled the dazed knight to her feet.
"My core," Lyra gasped. Blood dripped from her nose. "You drained the overload, but my pathways are completely fractured. I cannot cast a heavy shield."
"You do not need a shield," Kaelen stated. He raised his Vanguard dagger. The rusted metal was still hot from the explosive mana he had siphoned earlier. "You just need to give me a bomb."
The serpent reared back. The blue crystals along its spine flared with blinding intensity. It opened its jaws and unleashed a torrent of freezing blue fire. The temperature in the corridor plummeted instantly. Frost crept up the stone walls, freezing the air itself.
Kaelen activated Street Stealth. His center of gravity dropped, and his silhouette blurred into the shadows. He grabbed Lyra and dove behind a collapsed stone pillar. The blue fire washed over their cover. The thick stone instantly shattered under the extreme thermal shock, turning into brittle ice.
"It is going to freeze us alive," Lyra shouted over the roaring flames.
"Look at its chest," Kaelen pointed a bloodstained finger.
Deep within the ribcage of the skeletal monster rested a massive, perfectly spherical blue crystal. It beat like a heart, pumping the freezing magic through the creature's bones.
"That is its power source," Kaelen said rapidly. "My raw stats cannot break Silver Tier bone. But if I hit that core, the magic will destabilize."
"You will never get close enough," Lyra argued. "The frost aura will freeze your blood before you can strike."
"That is why you are going to heat me up." Kaelen shoved his Vanguard dagger into her armored hands. "Overcharge the blade. Give it everything you have left without killing yourself."
Lyra stared at the chipped weapon. She did not hesitate. She wrapped both hands around the leather hilt and closed her eyes. The fractured crystal on her chestplate flared. Blinding white heat poured from her palms directly into the rusted steel. The dagger hummed violently, vibrating with unstable, highly concentrated Aether.
"Take it," Lyra gasped, dropping to her knees in pure exhaustion. "It will detonate on impact."
Kaelen snatched the glowing weapon. The heat blistered his palm despite his passive resistance, but the pain only sharpened his focus.
The blue fire ceased. The serpent slithered forward, crushing the frozen pillar into powder. It loomed over them, opening its jaws to swallow them whole.
Kaelen did not run. He channeled his remaining mana into his legs and vaulted directly off the wall.
He launched himself straight at the monster's open mouth. The freezing aura bit into his skin, instantly covering his clothes in a layer of frost. His joints stiffened. The cold threatened to stop his heart, but the blistering heat radiating from the overloaded dagger kept his blood pumping.
The serpent snapped its jaws shut.
Kaelen used his Street Stealth agility to twist midair. He barely slipped through the closing teeth, dropping directly into the hollow cavern of the beast's ribcage.
He landed heavily on a massive skeletal vertebrae. Below him pulsed the giant blue crystal core.
"Feed on this," Kaelen roared.
He raised the glowing Vanguard dagger with both hands and drove it downward with every ounce of his Bronze Tier strength. The overloaded blade struck the surface of the blue crystal.
The rusted steel could not handle the sheer density of Lyra's magic. The dagger shattered instantly on impact.
But the explosive white fire contained within the blade violently erupted.
A shockwave of pure, unadulterated heat blasted outward. The explosion cracked the Silver Rank core. Deep fissures spiderwebbed across the blue crystal. The skeletal serpent unleashed a deafening, unnatural shriek of pure agony. Its bones rattled violently, losing their magical cohesion.
Kaelen was thrown backward by the blast. He tumbled out of the ribcage, hitting the frozen stone floor hard.
[Target Core destabilized.]
[Warning. Catastrophic magical implosion detected.]
The cracked blue crystal did not shatter outward. It collapsed inward. A singularity of conflicting white heat and freezing blue magic formed in the center of the corridor. It sucked the air out of the room, creating a suffocating vacuum.
"Hold on!" Kaelen screamed, scrambling across the floor to grab Lyra's waist.
The singularity detonated.
The explosion did not just destroy the Silver Rank beast. It pulverized the very foundations of the Abyssal Labyrinth. The thick stone floor beneath Kaelen and Lyra completely disintegrated into dust.
Gravity vanished.
The system interface flashed a final, bloody crimson warning as Kaelen and Lyra plummeted into the pitch black abyss yawning open beneath Sector One.