Chapter 36: Two Idiots In A Dungeon

Frey maintained his ridiculous pose for several seconds, arms spread beside the crushed remains of the Ironbone Sentinel as though Greyhaven itself should have started applauding.

Jet eventually walked past him and crouched beside the corpse, using the Vorpal Blade to pry loose one of the larger pieces of reinforced bone armor that had survived Vritra’s Coil.

"You can stop posing now. Help me collect the valuable parts."

Frey lowered his arms with visible disappointment. "You really don’t appreciate art."

Jet glanced at the mangled corpse. "You compressed a monster into minced meat."

"Exactly. Art."

Despite the argument, Frey crouched beside him and started gathering whatever remained usable. Between what Jet remembered from working around Raiders and what Frey had learned before registering, they could recognize enough valuable materials not to leave everything behind.

Grave Gnawer claws and teeth went into their inventories, Gallows Hound fangs and intact ocular organs followed, while the Sentinel’s reinforced bone plates were worth taking whenever Frey hadn’t completely destroyed them.

That last condition, Jet quickly realized, was going to become important.

They moved deeper into Greyhaven instead of heading directly toward the distant chapel, choosing the wider streets and checking buildings whenever scratching or growling carried through broken windows.

Their next encounter came before they crossed another marketplace. Grave Gnawers poured across the rooftops while two Gallows Hounds burst from opposite alleys, forcing Jet and Frey apart. Jet met the Gnawers first.

The Vorpal Blade moved differently in his hand now than it had when they entered. His swings were shorter, his steps cleaner, and he no longer wasted movement retreating from attacks he could avoid by shifting a few inches. Asura Physique continued working beneath everything, taking every exchange and refining his body through it.

A Gnawer dropped toward him with both claws raised.

Jet stepped inside its reach, cut through its abdomen, turned beneath the falling corpse and immediately met the next one with a thrust through the throat.

Across the street, Frey fought differently. Where Jet was becoming increasingly economical, Frey seemed happiest when the fight gave him room to move. His twin curved blades swept through broad but controlled arcs as he redirected one Gallows Hound into a wall, pivoted away from another and carved a deep wound across its ribs.

When three Gnawers attempted to surround him, a dark indigo spectral coil formed around two of them and tightened just enough to pin their arms against their bodies.

"Jet!" Frey shouted, but Jet was already moving.

He passed between the immobilized monsters with two quick cuts, leaving both collapsing behind him while Frey released the coil and intercepted the third.

By the time they cleared the street, Jet had noticed a pattern. Frey wasn’t using Vritra’s Coil only to crush things.

Against weaker monsters, that would have been wasteful. Instead, he manifested smaller coils around limbs, torsos or groups positioned close enough together, immobilizing them for a second or two while Jet finished them.

It turned an overwhelmingly destructive ability into battlefield control. As they harvested another Gallows Hound, Jet finally asked, "So that ugly snake that you got is your Divine Rune?"

Frey grinned widely at him and shrugged. "I told you to get one..."

Jet just shook his head and asked. "So what exactly is your Divine Rune? You told me A-Rank, but you never mentioned awakening a giant snake."

Frey wiped blood from one blade before answering. "Vritra, the World-Encircling Serpent. The simple version is that Vritra’s whole thing is encirclement and compression. If my coils completely surround something, I can compress whatever is inside them. Flesh, armor, barriers, probably even spells if I’m strong enough. Right now my range and size are limited, and anything significantly stronger than me can resist or break the coils."

He paused before a grin slowly appeared. "Eventually, though? I’m going to be able to squeeze some very expensive things."

Jet gave him a suspicious look. "Why specifically expensive things?"

Frey shrugged as they resumed walking. "Because destroying cheap things doesn’t make people emotional."

Jet decided there was absolutely no point asking further. Vritra was dangerous even with its current limitations.

Frey could crush ordinary White-Class monsters outright, but its real value in a team was becoming obvious. Restrain an enemy, ruin its balance, compress armor or interrupt movement, then allow someone else to exploit the opening.

Combined with Frey’s existing weapon training, the Rune suited him disturbingly well. It gave an already aggressive fighter control over where his opponents could move, while Jet’s Asura Physique made him increasingly capable of recognizing and exploiting the openings Frey created.

Their third major encounter began inside a long avenue lined with ruined workshops. An Ironbone Sentinel smashed through a doorway while Grave Gnawers descended from the buildings behind it.

Jet stepped forward to meet the Sentinel’s cleaver, watching the weapon instead of the monster carrying it.

Frey’s voice immediately cut across the street. "Stop watching the blade! Watch the shoulder! The weapon is already moving by the time your eyes follow it."

Jet shifted his attention upward just as the Sentinel’s shoulder rotated. The warning reached him before the cleaver descended. He stepped aside, felt the weapon crash into the road beside him, then slashed at the exposed elbow joint.

The cut wasn’t deep enough, but Jet understood what Frey meant.

Three encounters later, he was doing it without thinking. A Gallows Hound snapped its elongated neck toward him, but Jet read the tension through its upper body before the jaws extended. He moved first.

Against another Sentinel, he watched the shoulder and hip rather than the enormous cleaver, predicting the diagonal swing early enough to step through the safe angle and attack the unprotected joint beneath its arm.

Frey saw it happen while cutting down a Gnawer and actually slowed for half a second. "...You learn annoyingly fast."

Jet pulled his blade free and smiled. "Good teacher."

Frey’s entire face brightened. "Say that again."

Jet immediately turned away. "No."

"Come on, I want to record it."

"You had your chance."

Greyhaven suffered for the next hour. The deeper they went, the more frequently monster groups appeared, but Jet and Frey became harder to separate with every fight.

Grave Gnawers swarmed from rooftops only to find Jet waiting beneath their landing points. Gallows Hounds tried using alleys for sudden bursts and were redirected into Frey’s blades.

Ironbone Sentinels became priority targets for Vritra’s Coil because their armor made them irritating to kill conventionally. Frey would lock an arm, crush a knee or bind a torso while Jet attacked the exposed joints.

Jet, in turn, learned to drive enemies toward Frey’s preferred angles. Neither needed elaborate plans anymore.

A glance, a shouted direction or a shift in position increasingly became enough.

Frey still possessed the cleaner swordsmanship and broader technical foundation, but Jet’s rate of improvement was becoming increasingly ridiculous.

Every battle gave Asura Physique more information, and every lesson Frey accidentally provided became another adjustment Jet carried into the next encounter.

The cleanest example came when another Ironbone Sentinel charged Jet through the remains of a merchant stall. Its bone cleaver rose overhead while two Gnawers followed behind it. Jet didn’t move.

He simply watched the Sentinel approach, trusting the presence on his right. Frey lifted two fingers, and a single indigo coil materialized around the monster’s left leg before snapping tight.

CRUNCH!

The reinforced bone plating collapsed around the knee, and the Sentinel’s enormous body pitched forward. Its cleaver crashed down where Jet had been standing a moment earlier, but Jet had already stepped around the falling weapon.

The Vorpal Blade entered through the narrow opening beneath the skull-like armor and drove deep into the neck. Jet twisted, pulled free and moved aside as the Sentinel collapsed.

Frey dealt with the Gnawers behind it before they could exploit the opening, his curved blades crossing once before both monsters dropped almost together.

"That was beautiful," Frey said as he flicked blood from one blade.

Jet crouched beside the Sentinel and began removing an intact shoulder plate. "You say that every time something dies horribly."

"Because I have an eye for beauty." Jet pointed toward the corpse. "You also keep destroying the materials we’re supposed to sell."

Frey frowned. "That happened once."

"You turned it into a meat cube."

"I was introducing my Divine Rune. Presentation matters."

Jet shook his head. "Next time, introduce yourself without destroying our money."

They had barely finished collecting the materials when a Gallows Hound erupted from a second-story window behind Frey. Jet caught the movement first.

"Three o’clock!" Frey ducked immediately without turning.

Jet stepped in and swung the Vorpal Blade above his head. The Relic passed so close that Frey’s black hair moved from the pressure before the edge struck the Hound’s extended neck and removed its head.

The corpse flew over Frey and crashed against the road.

Frey remained crouched for a second, then slowly touched the top of his hair. "You almost cut my fucking hair."

Jet inspected his blade as though the accusation meant nothing. "You’re alive."

Frey stood and pointed one sword at him. "That is not the point. Do you know how long it takes to make this look naturally messy?"

Jet stared at him. "Naturally messy shouldn’t take time."

Frey looked personally insulted. "That’s why you have no fashion sense."

Their argument continued through another street and only stopped when they realized the monsters had stopped following them. The change was subtle at first.

Several Grave Gnawers had been pursuing them across nearby rooftops, but one after another slowed and remained behind.

A Gallows Hound emerged from an alley, took several steps toward Jet, then suddenly lowered its body and retreated. Even an Ironbone Sentinel standing near a collapsed house refused to advance beyond the edge of the square ahead.

Jet’s amusement disappeared as he watched the creatures remain at a distance, restless but unwilling to cross some invisible boundary.

Frey noticed it as well, lowering his blades slightly while looking between the monsters. "They’re afraid."

Jet nodded. "Yeah."

At the opposite side of the square stood the old chapel they had seen after entering Greyhaven. Up close, it was larger than Jet had expected, built from heavy grey stone with a narrow bell tower rising above its damaged roof.

The wooden entrance doors had rotted away, leaving the interior exposed, but nothing moved inside. More importantly, none of Greyhaven’s monsters would approach it.

Jet tightened his grip around the Vorpal Blade.

"Boss territory."

Frey rolled his shoulders and followed him inside. The chapel’s main hall was empty except for broken benches and a cracked stone altar.

Behind the altar they found a narrow staircase descending underground. The air grew colder as they went down, and the Mana pressure steadily increased until even Frey’s usual grin faded.

At the bottom waited two massive iron doors covered in old scratches and dried black stains.

The universal System appeared before both of them at the same time.

[Dungeon Boss Territory Detected.]

[Warning.]

[Green-Class Mana Signature Detected.]

Jet stared at the final notification for several seconds. White Dungeon. Green-Class Boss.

Exactly what he’d expected. Beside him, Frey tightened his grip around both curved blades while Jet raised the Vorpal Blade, and the two exchanged a single glance before placing their hands against the massive doors and pushing them open.