Chapter 38: Say When

Dust swallowed the underground chapel as the third shockwave tore through what remained of the ceiling.

Jet hit the ground shoulder-first, rolled across broken stone and slammed against the remains of a pew before finally stopping.

Pain spread through his ribs when he tried to breathe, while several cuts along his arms burned beneath his torn clothes.

Somewhere beyond the curtain of dust, stone continued crashing down, followed by the heavy steps of the Bell-Tower Executioner.

Jet forced himself upright and found Frey on the opposite side of the chamber, pushing a broken pillar away from his legs.

His cream jacket was practically destroyed, blood ran from his forehead, and the glow of Vritra beneath his clothes had weakened considerably.

Frey still had both curved blades, though, and when their eyes met across the ruined chapel, he raised one as if to confirm he could continue. Jet answered with a nod before looking toward the massive silhouette emerging through the dust.

The Executioner was damaged too. Cracks covered its fused armor, its left knee had been opened by repeated attacks, and several joints leaked dark blood, but the monster remained terrifyingly functional.

The chain connected to its bell dragged across the floor as it moved, while the green lights inside its iron hood burned brighter than before. Jet watched it carefully instead of charging.

Asura Physique had been studying the creature throughout the battle, feeding him details he hadn’t consciously noticed during the earlier exchanges.

Its weight shifted before every axe swing.

The fused armor around its right shoulder tightened whenever it prepared an overhead strike. More importantly, something happened whenever the Bell-Tower Executioner activated Toll of Ruin. Mana didn’t simply appear inside the bell. It traveled there.

Jet had seen the flow several times now: energy gathered inside the monster’s torso, rushed upward along its spine, then entered the iron supports connecting the bell to its back. For the brief moment before the bell released its shockwave, the concentration of Mana protecting the surrounding armor weakened.

The bell wasn’t merely a weapon attached to the Boss.

It was part of its Mana circulation.

Jet’s eyes narrowed. That meant they didn’t need to overpower the entire monster. They needed to sever the connection.

The problem was getting behind it.

The Executioner suddenly charged Frey, dragging its axe through fallen masonry before swinging upward. Frey jumped aside and barely avoided the blade, but the movement lacked his earlier speed. His Mana was dropping.

Every manifestation of Vritra’s Coil consumed more, and repeatedly restraining something stronger than himself had accelerated that drain. Jet rushed across the broken chamber while the Boss turned, cutting at its damaged knee to pull its attention away.

The Executioner responded immediately, sweeping its axe horizontally. Jet ducked beneath the weapon, felt the pressure pass over his head and retreated before the bell could move.

"Frey!" he shouted.

His friend circled toward him, breathing heavily but still smiling like this was somehow enjoyable.

Jet pointed toward the Boss. "Can you hold the whole thing?"

Frey looked at the four-and-a-half-meter monster, then at Jet as though the question itself had offended him. "No."

Jet wiped blood from his mouth. "Can you hold it for one second?"

Frey stared at him for half a heartbeat.

Then his gold tooth appeared.

"That I can do."

There was no need for a longer explanation. Jet moved toward the Executioner’s left while Frey went directly at its front.

The Boss raised its axe and brought it down with enough force to split the floor, but Frey changed direction at the final moment, sliding beneath the descending handle before both curved blades struck the exposed gap beneath its arm.

Metal screamed against metal. The Executioner turned and swung again. Frey stepped inside the arc, rotated around its wrist and slashed twice across the damaged armor before retreating.

His movements were faster now despite his exhaustion, not because he’d suddenly recovered, but because he had stopped conserving anything.

Every remaining ounce of Mana and strength was being committed to creating one opening.

Jet understood immediately and began running.

Indigo light exploded from beneath Frey’s clothes.

Vritra answered.

The first spectral coil formed around the Executioner’s axe arm and tightened. A second wrapped around its waist. The third snapped around its damaged left leg, while another materialized around one of the iron supports holding the massive bell against its spine. Frey didn’t stop. Every coil he could currently manifest appeared around the Boss until sections of the World-Encircling Serpent covered its enormous body in luminous violet scales.

"Come on, you ugly bastard," Frey growled, planting both feet against the cracked floor.

The coils constricted simultaneously.

The Executioner stopped for one second.

Blood immediately ran from Frey’s nose.

The Boss roared and flexed its right arm. Cracks spread across the spectral coil restraining the axe. Another around its waist flickered violently as the Green-Class monster forced itself forward.

Frey’s knees bent beneath the pressure, and his teeth clenched as Vritra’s manifestations began breaking one after another.

Jet was already moving.

"JET!"

He planted one foot on a fallen pillar and launched himself upward. The Executioner’s axe arm broke partially free, but Jet landed directly on the flat of the enormous weapon before the monster could swing.

He ran along its length, jumped onto the fused armor covering its shoulder and grabbed the edge of the iron hood with his left hand to keep himself from falling.

The bell began glowing.

Mana surged from the Executioner’s torso.

Jet felt it.

Up the spine, through the supports and into the bell. The armor around the connection weakened, behind him, another spectral coil shattered.

Frey screamed, "NOW!"

Jet released the iron hood, twisted his entire body and swung the Vorpal Blade with everything he had. His legs, hips, waist, shoulder and arm moved together, every lesson Asura Physique had absorbed throughout Greyhaven feeding into one committed strike.

SHRAAAAK!

The Vorpal Blade tore through corroded armor, dark flesh and the weakened Mana channel beneath it. The iron support split apart. The massive church bell ripped free from the Executioner’s back and crashed onto the floor hard enough to crack the stone.

Mana went berserk.

Green light erupted from the wound as the Boss staggered forward, its entire body spasming while unstable energy surged through pathways that no longer had anywhere to discharge.

Frey released Vritra’s remaining coils before the backlash could reach him and crossed both curved blades over his chest. Jet kicked away from the Executioner’s shoulder and landed behind it, nearly collapsing when pain shot through his injured ribs.

The monster turned toward him.

Too late.

Frey attacked from the front.

Jet attacked from behind.

Frey’s twin blades entered the exposed opening beneath the iron hood as Jet’s Vorpal Blade cut through the damaged connection at the back of the neck. Their attacks crossed through flesh, armor and the concentrated Mana organ buried between them. For a moment, the Bell-Tower Executioner remained standing.

Then the green lights inside its hood went dark.

Its axe slipped from its hand.

The enormous body collapsed.

Silence returned to Greyhaven.

The System appeared before both Raiders.

[Dungeon Boss Eliminated.]

[White Dungeon — Ruins of Greyhaven Cleared.]

Frey stood motionless for several seconds before dropping onto the nearest piece of rubble.

"I would like the record to show that I carried this operation." Jet sat beside the fallen Boss and laughed despite the pain in his ribs.

"You flew through two pews." Frey pointed a blade toward him.

"Tactical flight." Jet looked at his destroyed jacket, bleeding nose and dust-covered hair. "Your tactical flight ruined your hairstyle."

Frey’s hand immediately went to his head.

"Fuck."

-------

They rested only long enough to breathe before beginning the less glamorous part of being Raiders. Dungeons didn’t shower them with treasure because a Boss died. Valuable resources still had to be harvested.

They retraced their route through Greyhaven and collected only materials worth carrying: Grave Gnawer claws, teeth and small Mana glands; Gallows Hound eyes, fangs, tracking tissue and usable sections of hide; Ironbone Sentinel armor plates, bone cleavers and several dense marrow crystals.

Frey had destroyed enough bodies with Vritra’s Coil that Jet complained twice about lost money, which Frey dismissed as necessary sacrifices for artistic expression.

The Bell-Tower Executioner provided better materials. Portions of its fused armor remained intact, the enormous axe was valuable despite being impractical for either of them, and fragments from the fallen bell retained enough Mana conductivity to be worth harvesting.

Deep beneath the creature’s neck they also removed a dense Boss Mana organ, which Jet stored separately before they searched the chamber itself.

The Executioner’s death had collapsed part of the stone platform behind the altar. Through the opening, Frey noticed a faint blue-white glow.

They cleared the rubble together.

A small natural cavity had formed beneath the floor, and embedded throughout the exposed stone was a cluster of translucent crystals emitting steady Mana.

Low-Grade Mana Crystals.

Not a fortune but definitely money.

Frey stared at the cluster, then at the materials filling their inventories. "We’re rich."

Jet looked at him. "You drive an Asterion."

Frey considered that for a moment and grinned. "...We’re richer."

Jet laughed and carefully removed one crystal from the deposit. Unlike Monster Cores from the Beyond, Mana Crystals were one of the fundamental resources of Dungeons, concentrated stores of raw Mana that Awakeners could absorb toward their Star progression. Monster Cores developed Divine Runes.

Mana Crystals strengthened the foundation carrying them.

Two worlds, two resources, two paths of progression.

Jet turned the Low-Grade Mana Crystal between his fingers, watching pale light move inside it.

For the first time, he possessed both.