Neo followed his line of sight.
The street ahead opened into something wider than anything they had crossed so far. Hollow Court.
It looked, at first glance, like a break in the ruin. More room and visibility. Easier ground. The illusion lasted two seconds at most.
The place was a sunken stretch of cracked stone ringed by the remains of something larger. Broken columns stood at uneven angles around the edges, half-buried steps led nowhere, and sections of fallen wall created scattered pockets of cover without ever forming a real boundary. It was open enough to move through. It was also open enough to get surrounded.
And there were already skeletons down there.
Enough that Neo stopped counting after the first few clusters.
Some stood near the center, others farther back among the broken columns, and a few were already shifting at the edges as if the whole area had noticed them the moment they arrived.
Snot let out a low breath. "Yeah. I liked it better when the streets were trying to kill us one group at a time."
Nobody laughed.
The first wave came fast.
Max took the center because someone had to. He planted himself at the front with shield up and caught the first rush head-on, but there were too many for one point of contact to matter for long. Alice crashed in beside him and broke the nearest skeleton apart with one heavy swing, then another, but every opening she made drew something else in from the side. Marika stayed behind them, fire flashing in controlled bursts instead of wide sweeps. In a tighter street she could have burned harder. Here, she had to choose.
Neo was already moving before the line truly broke.
A second group had started angling around the left side of the Court, using a broken stretch of column and collapsed stone to come in on Marika's flank.
He cut across before anyone called it.
He did not go through the middle. That would have been stupid. He took the shorter path, stepped over a split in the stone, vaulted a low section of fallen wall, and reached the side lane just as the first skeleton came through.
His sword went into the neck.
He yanked it free before the body finished dropping and shoved the collapsing bones forward into the second skeleton just long enough to kill its balance. One half-step gave him the opening he needed. Neo slipped right and drove the blade in under its arm where the bones joined badly.
By the time the third turned toward him, Snot had arrived from nowhere.
"Bit crowded over here," he said, voice annoyingly alive even now.
He cut across the skeleton's vision first, forcing it to follow him, then slipped away before it could complete the motion.
Neo took it through the skull.
That set the rhythm.
Snot pulled the rhythm apart. Neo killed whatever stumbled out of it.
A skeleton nearly caught Neo a moment later when another one came in from his blind side. He twisted back just in time, the blade passing close enough to scrape cloth instead of flesh, then dropped low and cut through its knee before it could recover.
'Closer than I liked.'
He was back on his feet a second later.
Across the Court, Marika noticed the pressure on her flank vanish and threw him a brief look before sending fire into a skeleton climbing over the broken steps. Alice saw it too, even if she said nothing. Her eyes flicked toward Neo once, before she buried her axe into another ribcage.
Nep was harder to miss.
Even in the middle of the fight, Neo caught Nep doing it twice.
'What the hell are you waiting for?'
The end of it turned uglier than the rest. Max got pushed back a step. Marika had to burn harder than before. Alice took one clean hit to the shoulder and answered by splitting the offender in half. Snot was still talking, though even he sounded rougher now.
But they held.
When the last skeleton dropped, Hollow Court went quiet again, leaving only scattered bones, harsh breathing, and the sense that it had taken more out of them than the streets ever had.
Neo lowered his sword and looked over the Court once more.
No one moved right away.
Hollow Court had taken enough out of them that even standing still for a moment felt earned. Max set the bottom of his shield against the cracked stone and checked the edge where several strikes had landed. Alice wiped her axe clean in short, practical motions. Marika drank from her water flask with one hand still resting against her side, drawing air back into herself. Snot was talking again, though less than before, his voice quieter now, the words coming between breaths instead of on top of them.
Neo stood a little apart and cleaned his sword against a strip of cloth already stained dark from earlier.
Two things kept circling in his head: Nep's supposed boost, and the way Nep kept looking at him.
He glanced up once.
Nep was not staring this time, but that only meant he had noticed Neo checking.
Annoying.
Neo slid the sword back down and looked toward Max instead. "How many Soul Cores do we have?"
Max shifted his attention from the shield and answered without fuss. "Exactly two hundred and thirty-three."
Neo let that sit for a second.
That would be split between six later.
He had considered keeping what he killed himself, but this was faster. There was no point arguing over every core in the middle of a Breach while skeletons still wanted their throats open.
He gave a small nod. "Not bad."
Snot huffed a faint laugh. "What a glowing review."
Neo barely registered it. His patience had already thinned enough.
He dematerialized the sword properly, glanced toward a partly collapsed stretch of ruin farther off, and spoke in the same flat tone he used for most things.
"I'm going to piss. I'll be back."
No one reacted much to that.
Nep spoke almost immediately. "I need to go too."
Neo turned his head a fraction.
There it was again.
Snot noticed it too. Neo could tell from the shift in his expression, as if it had confirmed something he already half suspected.
He still chose not to make anything of it.
He only rolled one shoulder and said, "Yeah, sure. Go before we move again."
Neo did not answer. He started walking.
He heard Nep fall into step behind him a second later.
The ruins swallowed them gradually, broken walls cutting them off from the others piece by piece. Neo kept his pace even, his face blank, though his hand stayed close enough to his sword to matter if it had to.
Behind them, Snot watched for a moment longer than necessary.
Then he clicked his tongue softly, as if the whole thing had already become troublesome in his head.
"I should probably go too," he said, lightly enough to pass for nothing.