The streets narrowed the deeper Neo went into the Breach. The outer area had been open enough that angles barely mattered. This part was different. Rubble clogged the roads, broken walls cut paths in half, and the remains of old buildings leaned over the streets hard enough to create blind spots everywhere. Shadows pooled between cracked stone and collapsed entrances, turning every corner into the kind of place where something could be waiting only a few steps away.
Neo looked around once and almost smiled.
'Honestly, this feels like Zone 0. I know how to move in places like this, it feels more like home.'
The resemblance had nothing to do with appearance. These ruins were older, stranger, built from something far removed from the filth he had grown up around, but their shape still made sense to him.
Tight streets. Bad visibility that punished hesitation and rewarded anyone who knew how to move through broken ground without giving the enemy a clean opening. This kind of place had raised him long before the Breach ever tried.
He spotted the next group ahead and slowed. Three skeletons. Better equipped than the ones outside. One had a shield and a proper sword, another carried a decent blade, and the last one stood farther back with a bow already in hand.
Neo stayed behind the broken edge of a wall and watched them for a second.
Going in head-on would be annoying.
He crouched, grabbed a loose chunk of stone, and tossed it across the street.
The sound cracked against the ruins. The shield skeleton reacted first, turning fastly toward it. The archer moved on instinct and fired at once.
The arrow buried itself in the shield-bearer's back.
Neo was already moving.
He came out from cover in a burst, crossed the gap before the archer could reset, and drove his sword through its neck. The second skeleton stepped in late, giving him exactly what he wanted. Neo ripped the blade free and cut across its side hard enough to break it apart. Bones scattered across the stone.
He crouched to gather the Soul Cores.
Something smashed into his back.
The hit threw him forward and pain ran across his spine in a hot line. Neo caught himself with one hand, twisted as another swing came for his neck, and saw the fourth skeleton stepping out from a dark gap in the wall behind him.
He had missed it.
'Idiot.'
He surged up before it could recover, slipped inside the next swing, and buried his sword into its ribs, then into the skull when it staggered. The skeleton collapsed a moment later.
[You have slained a Skeleton - Ember]
Beast Regeneration began smoothing over the worst of it, but the lesson stayed. This section was better for farming, that much was obvious. Stronger enemies, better rewards, streets that favored someone like him, and mistakes that cost more.
They also made every mistake cost more.
Neo picked up the last Soul Core, rose, and continued deeper into the ruins with a little more care than before.
Neo did not get far before the sound of combat reached him.
Steel struck bone somewhere ahead, followed by a short burst of voices and the dry clatter of something collapsing against stone. He stopped at once and moved toward it without rushing, keeping close to the broken sides of the street until the ruins opened enough for him to get a look from cover.
Five people.
They were fighting in the middle of a half-collapsed section where the street widened around the remains of an old square. Rubble and broken pillars had turned the space uneven, but the group handled it well enough that Neo did not mistake them for amateurs after a single glance.
One of them caught his attention immediately.
Brown hair. Brown eyes. And that nose.
Neo recognized him from before entering the Breach. The same guy who had looked like talking was compulsory for him, even while breathing. That had not changed. He was speaking now as well, throwing out comments in the middle of the fight like he had room to spare, though the annoying part was that he actually moved well.
He did not stay in front trading blows like an idiot. He slipped around angles, came in where a skeleton was already committed elsewhere, struck fast, then pulled back before the enemy could trap him. Messy at first. Less messy the longer Neo watched.
The strongest presence in the group was a blonde girl with green eyes and an axe.
Every time she stepped in, the pace shifted. Skeletons that held their ground against the others broke when she entered. One swing from her could split a body apart if it landed clean. Even from where he stood, Neo could tell the force behind it was real. But outside those moments, there was something restrained about her, as if she would have preferred not to be the one everyone's attention settled on.
Another one bothered him more than the enemies did.
He was not the biggest, and he was not the fastest, but he kept talking in a way Neo disliked on instinct. Not noise like the brown-haired one.
He kept telling one where to shift, another where to fall back, when to hold, when to move. He watched the skeletons, but he watched his own group just as closely.
'I don't like that one.'
The last two completed the formation well. One was clearly built to hold the line, meeting the skeletons head-on and keeping them from collapsing. The other was a woman who used fire in quick, sharp bursts, never wasting it, only opening space or ending an exchange the moment an opening appeared.
Not bad.
That was the problem. They were competent enough to be useful and organized enough to be annoying.
Neo stayed where he was, still half-hidden behind the broken corner of a ruined wall.
Long enough, apparently.
The brown-haired guy turned his head straight toward him.
"Hey," he called. "You've been watching for a while. Planning to help, or are you just going to keep hiding there?"
Neo did not move. He kept his attention on the brown-haired guy, a small pulse of tension running through him before he pushed it down.
'How the hell did he know I was here?'
He had kept his distance, stayed behind cover, and made sure not to shift where the light could catch him. Yet the idiot with the nose had turned and pointed him out like Neo had been standing in the open the whole time. That alone made him more alert than the five strangers ahead of him.
Still, hiding after being called out would only make it worse.
Neo stepped from the shadow with one hand slightly raised, his sword lowered enough to show he was not about to rush them.
"Sorry," he said, voice flat. "Didn't mean to make you nervous."
The woman who had been using fire let out a breath and kept her hand half-lifted, ember light still flickering across her fingers. "We thought someone was about to jump us."
The blonde with the axe said nothing. She only looked at him, like she was weighing whether he was worth the trouble.
The brown-haired guy relaxed first, which somehow made him even more annoying.
"Nah," he said. "You don't look like you came here to start something."
Neo's gaze settled on him. "And how exactly are you so sure of that?"
The guy grinned, like he had been waiting for that. "One of my abilities helps. I can get a feel for hostile intent. Immediate stuff, mostly. Killing intent, bad moves, that kind of thing, you know?" He tapped his chest with a thumb. "Comes in handy."
That explained enough to be irritating.
Before he could say anything, the one he already disliked cut in.
"We don't need him."
His tone was firm. "He's alone, he was hiding, and we know nothing about him. Bringing in a stranger inside a Breach is stupid."
'Yeah. I definitely don't like this one, but it makes sense what he said.'
The brown-haired guy clicked his tongue. "Oh, come on. We're all awakened in the first core and some of us are freshly awakened. Numbers matter."
"Until they stab you in the back."
"And until you die because you refused help."
The two stared at each other for a moment before the brown-haired one looked back at Neo.
"I'm Snot," he said. "Temporary team-up. We clear faster, safer, and everyone gets something out of it. So… are you in?"
Neo looked over the five of them again. 'Doesn't sound too bad if I want to go further.'
"I'm Neo, and fine," he said. "Temporary."