Bell stepped up from the eighteenth floor, cloak discarded for full mobility, Crimson Order strapped to his back with a thin string of fire.
Alfia trailed behind, her own cloak gone, white hair and black dress catching dim light reflected from blue stalagmites as they climbed.
A path split into three corridors ahead, low growls of different monsters resounding from every direction.
Bell glanced back at her.
"Aunt, let me lead this time."
Alfia did not react visibly. She just tilted her head slightly in acknowledgement.
He turned back and walked into the middle corridor, heels meeting ground first, then soles, then toes, each footfall precise and calm.
"Haah..."
Bell took a deep breath. His fingers curled inward into fists, knuckles whitening by a fraction, muscles standing taut across wrists that had begun to flush.
He didn't stop. His boots found rhythm on the stone.
Step. Breath. Step.
That flush climbed. From his forearms to elbows. Shoulders. A vein surfaced at his temple. Then another at his neck. The red reached his collarbones and kept going—ears, cheeks, nose where blood ran just beneath skin.
His tunic darkened from the front. Sweat beaded down his throat in continuous spirals.
Breath. Step. Breath.
His back drew tight. Muscles locking in place along his spine. Abdomen hardening. The tendons in his neck rising with every breath.
Steam rose from his shoulders.
Alfia watched. Her weight shifted to her back foot, chin lifting an inch.
His boots left scorch marks on the ground now.
A Spartan doesn't warm up. He burns from the first step.
Sweat broke free from his jaw.
And hung midair.
Because the body that had shed it was already gone. Three steps ahead. Five. Ten.
By the time it hit stone, no one was there to hear it.
Floor seventeen.
The corridor walls blurred to grey lines. Ahead sharpened into focus. Behind dissolved into something that didn't exist anymore.
Multiple sounds thickened—clicks, scrapes, the slap of bare feet on stone, all echoing together into one noise that grew louder by the second.
A corridor full of monsters.
Bell ran.
His foot hit the left wall.
Flame bloomed—and carved. His sole dragged through stone, leaving a three-inch-deep groove there that glowed orange with molten rock.
He pushed off. His body crossed the corridor diagonally. His other foot found the right wall. Same flame. Same melt. Another groove, burning.
Left. Right. Left.
Three steps hit stone before a crack reached his ears—arriving late and muffled, chasing his back. Three distinct footfalls compressed into one.
A Ligerfang lunged from ahead.
Bell caught the Ligerfang's wrist mid-air, swung it up over his head, and let go.
It flew backward. Arms wide. Mouth tearing open.
Alfia entered the corridor.
Her foot found the first groove. Sank an inch into molten stone, enough to grip, not slow. The heat from it sizzled her sole and she didn't flinch. Same angle. Same depth. She pushed off and stone behind her ignited with orange sparks.
Right wall. Second groove. Her elbow met that Ligerfang's temple on her pass.
She didn't look at it. Third groove. Pivot.
Two Almirajs. Lunging from opposite sides.
Bell hit a wall, launched, and his left hand caught an Almiraj by its horn on his way. He didn't throw it. He let it go at the peak of its arc—momentum doing the rest.
That Almiraj tumbled backward, spinning through air.
Alfia's knee was already rising from another wall's groove. Not because she saw it coming—because the groove's angle had set her shin in motion before the Almiraj existed in her path.
Torso met kneecap. Crack. It folded.
The second Almiraj reached him. He snatched it mid-zigzag—one hand on its paw, one pushing its side, angle adjusting, and then released.
It screeched, slamming horn-first into stone beside a groove, just as a minotaur's club smashed into that very groove.
Alfia adjusted mid-air, vaulting over the club and using that Almiraj as a makeshift platform to pivot.
The monster beneath her folded.
Floor fifteen.
A minotaur charged. Steam curled from its nostrils. Tons of muscle accelerating from standing to sprint in a single stride, club whipping behind it.
Flames wound around Bell's arm, solidifying into an Aspis.
He threw it at its legs.
That minotaur couldn't stop. Lead hoof mid-stride when the shield connected below its kneecap. Its leg folded, but momentum didn't. The charge became a fall.
Bell's crown met its falling chest. Neck locked, legs driving, skull hitting bones where ribs from either side met. Crunch. The minotaur was dragged back with him.
Aspis clattered behind them, still burning.
Alfia reached it a moment later. Her heel kicked the shield's rim at a low angle. It launched forward, edge leading at a considerable height.
The minotaur had just pushed onto one knee, mouth opening for a bellow.
Aspis passed through.
A head left its shoulder.
Bell was already ahead. Body parallel to the floor, sliding beneath a second minotaur's legs. Crimson Order's edge on his back caught its shin on the pass.
Flesh tore. Bone parted. That minotaur buckled sideways.
Right into Alfia's rising knee closing in from behind.
Its skull snapped backward, head leaving its neck in an arc, spinning through mid-air, and crashed into a third minotaur's skull ahead of Bell.
Two cracks overlapped in a single sound.
Both broke.
Floor thirteen.Twelve.
Another corridor opened into a gallery.
It was wide, ceiling covered in shadows. The far wall, thirty paces away, had a single, narrow exit. The only way forward.
And it was blocked.
War shadows in rows. Orcs behind them with clubs. Needle rabbits rolling across every gap. Goblins crouching behind those orcs, javelins ready. Crystal mantises sneaking in between, spikes aimed at the exit.
Bell's steps did not pause.
And just as he closed the distance—
Clunk
Finally.
Hundreds of golden threads, dimmer than usual, spread through the gallery. Each tracing a path to a moment where something would be open, stumble, and leave a gap.
He could see them now. Only partially, but it was enough.
Bell's foot swept the ground.
A loose stone skipped once, twice, hit a crystal mantis's spike mid-fire. That spike redirected and crossed the gallery. Hit an orc on its elbow. The orc's club swung wide into a wall. That wall cracked.
Ten stalactites shuddered loose from above.
They fell like jagged spears, impaling three war shadows that had just finished forming. The impact sent bodies stumbling. Rabbits scattered. A goblin's javelin flew wild. An orc lost its balance. Gaps opened in their formation like cracks in ice.
For a single, fleeting second, the enemy line was a mess of stumbling bodies and wasted attacks.
Bell was already moving.
He hit the left wall.
Flame. Groove. Push off.
Right wall. Same flame. Same groove.
He vaulted over the front line entirely, dropping right into the middle of the formation.
His hand caught an orc's fist mid-swing. Fire pulsed from his fingers in thin strings, wrapping around its whole being until its body locked, posture rigid and hands wrenched upward by those threads. Just like a pillar.
He jumped on that orc's shoulder, pushed off, and caught another's back. Strings expanded, locking it straight with arms extended up—a second pillar beside the first.
The third and fourth followed in rapid succession, each caught mid-motion and held rigid by threads that burrowed into the floor below.
He pushed them together while swinging his arm to behead a wayward war shadow.
While the remaining horde surged toward him from all sides, a mindless tide of claws and weapons, Bell moved between them like an architect laying bricks, bracing those orcs shoulder to shoulder in the chaos. Two on the left. Two on the right.
A fifth orc swung at him. Bell ducked. His heel hit the orc's chest, it was launched upward, red strings wound across it as it fell atop those orc pillars.
Just like a ceiling beam.
A needle rabbit tried to sneak up on him. He caught it by its quills, redirected its spin upward, and threw it into a gap where those vertical and that horizontal orc met. Its quills sank into the space as it shrieked, bones creaking under strain.
That loose gap was filled, making it structurally sound.
Bell walked through without looking back.
Alfia entered the gallery. She saw stalactites fallen, mantises firing at nothing, orcs stumbling in the aftermath of a chain reaction. And at the end of it all, a structure.
Monsters bound in the shape of a doorway.
She walked toward it. Her eyes traced its shape. Pillars. Beam. Filler.
Each body held in place by the bodies around it.
On her way, she grabbed the arms of two orcs still stumbling around and dragged them behind her, passing through the gate.
Both of those orcs got stuck, backs grinding against backs, fronts grinding against those pillar orcs, heads wedged against the beam orc.
They thrashed. But crimson threads wound around them too, locking them in place.
Those monsters on the other side finally registered what had happened, charging toward that door in a tide.
Leaving the orcs locked in place, Alfia walked over to stand shoulder to shoulder with Bell.
She then glanced back.
"Why create this?"
"We don't have time to fight that many monsters." He replied.
Alfia kept her gaze on his face.
Bell brought an arm up in a familiar motion. The one he had made while naming Wiene.
Those threads around orcs blazed brighter, their heat intensifying.
Alfia's eyes remained calm. "You were the one who made that crater from earlier?"
"Yes." Bell spoke.
Snap
Nothing happened.
Then—
BOOOOOM
An explosion detonated behind them, illuminating their faces together.
"Good."
Alfia's voice—swallowed beneath the explosion.
Bell still heard it.
She turned and walked.
Not behind this time.
Beside.
...
..
.
***
[300 Power Stones = 1 Bonus Chapter]
[8 chapters ahead on P@tr3on = [email protected]/Not_Aaryan]
...
[Authors Thoughts]
Bell has architect talent too? Better word would not be architect but demolition expert, bro just keeps blowing things up.
Now, who wants to see him blow Evilus's base and Dix Pendrix up?