The nine-headed monstrosity roared, and the battle began.
Damien moved first not toward the creature, but around it, his speed carrying him in a wide arc as he assessed the threat. The amalgamation was massive, ten meters of fused dragon flesh with a corrupted Valgang at its core and nine writhing heads extending from its lower half like some nightmarish Scylla.
"Tiona! Tione! Flank left!" Finn's voice cut through the chaos, command clear despite the horror before them. "Gareth, you're with me on the right! Riveria, support from the rear! Damien"
"I see it." Damien's eyes never left the creature's core. "The center head. That's the original. Kill that, the rest die."
The dragon if it could still be called that answered with fire. All nine heads unleashed simultaneous blasts, filling the cavern with enough heat to melt stone. The party scattered, each member moving on instinct honed by years of dungeon diving.
Gareth crashed through the flames rather than around them, his Dwarven magic Earth Raid already rising. The ground beneath the creature erupted, stone spears punching toward its underbelly. But the dragon's serpentine heads snapped down, crushing the spears before they could strike true.
"Bastard's fast!" Gareth roared, already swinging his axe at a descending head. The blade bit deep into serpentine scale, and black ichor sprayed. The head screamed, recoiling, but two more took its place.
Tiona bounced off a wall, then another, her Ariel Maneuver carrying her in unpredictable arcs. Urga flashed as she passed, opening wounds on three different heads before any could track her. "Come ON! Is that all you've got?!"
"Sister, behind you!" Tione's warning came just as a head lunged for Tiona's back. Tione was there, Zolas crossed, catching the strike and throwing it aside with a grunt of effort. "Watch your damn blind spots!"
"I had it!"
"You DIDN'T!"
Finn's spear Fortia sang through the air, Tir na Nog blazing as it punched through one head's eye. The creature screamed, the head going limp. But already, the wound was closing, corrupted flesh knitting back together.
"Riveria!" Finn called. "That healing it's too fast!"
Riveria's jade eyes were wide with recognition, with fear. "I know this! Finn, Gareth the last expedition! The Fifty-Ninth Floor!"
Gareth's axe paused mid-swing. "You don't mean..."
"This dragon has been turned into a Demi Spirit!" Riveria's voice cracked. "Just like that creature we faced! But this one is stronger it's been fused with more hosts, more power!"
Damien appeared beside her in a blur of shadow. "What the hell!....a Demi Spirit?"
"Corruption!" Riveria's wand never stopped moving, ice spells lancing toward the creature with every word. "The dungeon or something in the dungeon takes monsters and infuses them with spirit energy! It makes them stronger, faster, harder to kill! The one we faced nearly killed us all! I think...That woman from before...Who kidnapped Ais...She's the reason for the Corruption...It's safe to say..That she is a Corrupted Spirit"
"Then we kill it faster." Damien's daggers reversed in his grip. "Forget analyzing. Just...."
He stopped.
They all stopped.
Because more dragons were coming.
They emerged from the shadows at the edges of the cavern, from holes in the walls, from the very darkness itself. Not amalgamations these looked like normal Valgang Dragons. But wrong. Their scales shimmered with an otherworldly light, their eyes burned with the same corruption as the Demi Spirit, and their auras...
They had been spiritualized. Just like their master.
"How many..." Tiona breathed.
A dozen. Two dozen. More, pouring from every direction.
"Shit." Tione's blades came up. "SHIT!"
Damien's jaw tightened. His shadows most of them were still at the camp, guarding the exhausted expedition. He had fifty here with him, fighting the Demi Spirit. The rest...
No choice.
He reached out through his connection, past the boundaries of floors, past the stone and distance, to where Igris stood watch over sleeping adventurers.
"Arise"
The response was immediate a surge of movement, of darkness flowing through shadows, crossing floors in ways that physical bodies never could. From the camp, from the Fifty-Seventh, from every place his soldiers waited, they came.
Twenty shadows became Forty . Forty became a Eighty. And more, still coming.
The spiritualized dragons descended upon them and met a wall of darkness.
Igris led the charge, his greatsword carving through the first dragon like it was paper. Diana's scimitar spun in deadly arcs, each revolution claiming another corrupted beast. Adonis's fists and feet shattered scale and bone with every strike. The Ice Elf archers filled the air with frozen death. The Ice Bears tore through anything that came close.
And the forty ant warriors newly risen, hungry for battle swarmed over the dragons like their living kin never could.
"Damien!" Tiona's voice was awed. "You... all of them?"
"The Expedition will survive few hours without my Shadows...They're Adventurers not children" he then pointed at the Shadows "They'll handle the reinforcements." Damien's eyes never left the Demi Spirit. "We handle that thing. NOW!"
The battle intensified.
With the shadow army occupying the spiritualized dragons, the party could focus everything on the amalgamation. And they did.
Tiona became a blur of motion, her Ariel Maneuver carrying her from head to head, opening wounds with every pass. Tione moved beneath her, targeting the serpentine necks where they joined the body, her Zolas carving deep gouges with each strike.
Gareth fought like a force of nature. His axe sang through the air, each swing powerful enough to fell a tree or sever a dragon's head. Three heads fell to his blade alone, though each time, the creature's corrupted healing fought to replace them.
Finn directed it all. His spear never stopped moving, finding weaknesses, exploiting openings, drawing the creature's attention away from his companions. "Gareth, left head! Tiona, above you! Tione, the core now!"
Tione lunged, Zolas extended, driving toward the central Valgang's exposed chest.
A serpentine head caught her mid-flight, throwing her across the cavern. She crashed into a wall with a sickening crunch.
"SISTER!" Tiona's scream was primal.
"I'm FINE!" Tione pulled herself from the rubble, blood streaming down her face, but already moving, already angry. "KILL THIS THING!"
Riveria's voice rose in chant, ancient Elven words filling the cavern. Ice formed around her wand, grew, expanded until she released it in a blast that froze three of the serpentine heads solid.
"WYNN FIMBULVETR!"
The frozen heads shattered when they struck the ground.
But the central Valgang still lived. Still fought. Still healed.
Damien watched it all, waiting, calculating. His Mind's Eye processed every movement, every attack pattern, every moment of vulnerability. The creature was strong stronger than anything he'd faced in the dungeon. Its healing made it nearly immortal.
Nearly.
There.
A pattern. When the heads attacked in sequence left, right, center, then the serpentine necks there was a moment, less than a heartbeat, where the core was exposed.
"You see it?" Finn's voice, quiet, certain.
"I see it."
"Then go."
Damien went.
His speed, already inhuman, pushed beyond its limits. He flowed through the chaos like water through rocks, past Gareth's swinging axe, past Tiona's bouncing form, past Tione's bloody but unbroken advance. The heads snapped at him he was somewhere else. Fire erupted around him he was through it.
The pattern.
Left head he ducked.
Right head he vaulted over it.
Center head he twisted between its jaws.
The serpentine necks lunged and there it was. The moment. The exposure.
Damien's daggers drove into the central Valgang's heart.
The creature screamed a sound of pure agony that shook the very walls. Black ichor poured from the wound, but Damien didn't stop. He pushed, driving deeper, twisting, destroying.
"NOW!"
The others struck as one.
Tiona's Urga carved through the last serpentine head. Tione's Zolas opened the core from the opposite side. Gareth's axe buried itself in the creature's spine. Finn's spear, Tir na Nog blazing, punched through its skull.
Riveria's final spell, all the power she had left, froze the creature from within.
The Demi Spirit Valgang shattered.
Its body exploded outward, corrupted ichor spraying in every direction, and then silence.
The cavern was still.
Bodies lay everywhere dragons, shadows, the remains of the amalgamation. The spiritualized dragons had fallen with their master, their corrupted forms dissolving into nothing. The shadow army stood silent, waiting, their work complete.
Tiona didn't wait.
She ran to Damien, grabbing his arms, her eyes wild. "Ais! We have to go after her! NOW! That thing took her and we have to"
"Tiona." Damien's voice was calm. Too calm.
"Don't 'Tiona' me! We have to MOVE! She could be dying, she could be"
"She's safe."
The words stopped her cold.
"What?"
Damien met her eyes. "Ais is safe. For now."
Finn moved closer, his spear lowering. "Damien. How could you possibly know that?"
Damien spoke "Because I planted one of my shadows on her"
He reached out with his connection, feeling the distant pulse of a shadow soldier moving, alive, present wherever Ais had been taken.
"She's alive. She's moving. And that woman..." His eyes darkened. "That woman is obsessed with her. Called her 'Aria' like she was worshiping her. Whatever she wants with Ais, it's not death. Not yet."
Tiona's legs gave out. Tione caught her, holding her sister upright.
"She's alive," Tiona whispered. "Ais is alive."
"For now." Damien turned to look at the path the woman had taken, the darkness where she'd vanished. "But we can't go after her yet."
"WHY NOT?!" Tiona's voice cracked.
"Because she's holed up somewhere very dangerous...floor Sixty...It doesn't...Look like a normal floor...I think...That Corrupted Spirit...Has done something to that floor....Something that allowed it to take over the entire floor for herself..." explained Damien as he reflected on the eyes of the Shadow...
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