Chapter 216: The Old Training Hall

The spiral staircase went on longer than Arthur remembered.

By the time they reached the bottom, even Felix had run out of complaints about the stairs. His lantern picked out a vaulted corridor with several open doorways along one side. Beyond the nearest archway, Arthur could make out the remains of collapsed wooden bunks.

"More rooms?" Emily asked, looking past him.

"Old living quarters," Arthur said. "The training hall should be farther in."

He walked over to the nearest doorway and looked inside. On a heavy stone table in the center of the room, a grid had been carved directly into the rock, scattered with small, flat pebbles from a game abandoned centuries ago. Beneath a rotted wooden bench, a pair of dried, cracked leather boots sat perfectly aligned in the dust.

Arthur remembered sprinting through this section in the game. Back then, it had been a bare corridor leading to the boss chamber. He’d never noticed the adjoining rooms, much less the abandoned game sitting on the table.

"Keep moving," Emily said, her eyes scanning the dark passage ahead.

They followed the corridor past the old barracks, the flagstones eventually opening into a massive, high-ceilinged chamber.

Arthur stepped out from behind Felix’s shield. The room was an old training hall. Low stone partitions, partially collapsed wooden walkways, and rows of rusted iron weapon racks divided the floor into a maze of practice areas. It was an environment built for teaching assassins how to use cover and line-of-sight.

"Watch the corners," Felix said, panning the lantern beam across the obstacles.

At the far end of the hall, four figures stood motionless among the decayed sparring posts.

They looked like training dummies built from heavy oak and articulated with banded iron, each holding a dulled practice blade. But as the amber light swept across them, a faint, cold blue light flickered to life inside their segmented wooden chests.

The joints of the four constructs clicked sharply in the quiet room.

Then they moved.

They scattered with terrifying speed. Two vaulted smoothly over a low stone wall, vanishing into the maze of partitions, while the other two flanked wide, using the rusted weapon racks for cover as they advanced.

Arthur triggered Eagle Eye, straining to track their fast, erratic movements through the gloom. "Not ordinary dummies," he warned, drawing a broadhead arrow.

He tracked the first construct as it broke cover on the right, aiming dead center for its iron-banded chest. He loosed.

The arrow crossed the hall and buried itself deep into the construct’s oak sternum with a loud thwack.

The construct didn’t even break its stride. It snapped the wooden shaft off with its free hand and kept coming.

"Fuck. Go for the joints!" Arthur shouted, sidestepping quickly to open a new firing lane.

Felix caught the first construct on the face of Aegis Bulwark. The heavy iron practice blade dented the steel rim and forced Felix to take a heavy step back to absorb the impact.

"They hit hard!" Felix shouted, bracing his shoulder and shoving the machine back to keep it from stepping around his guard.

Emily stepped directly into the path of the second construct. She dropped her center of gravity and drove a savage right hook into its midsection.

Her Titan Knuckles smashed through the banded iron ribs and splintered the aged oak beneath. The construct staggered, then whipped its weapon arm around toward her head.

A warm pulse of mana washed over the party. Chloe stood back toward the corridor, her hands glowing with the soft green light of Minor Haste.

The magic caught Emily mid-dodge, giving her a sudden burst of speed. She slipped under the construct’s blade, grabbed its extended iron wrist, and brought her elbow down squarely on the elbow hinge. The iron joint snapped backward with a shriek of tearing metal.

Before she could finish it, a third construct dropped from a raised wooden walkway directly behind Felix’s blind spot.

"Flank!" Arthur shouted.

Emily abandoned her crippled target, spun, and intercepted the third construct before its blade could reach Felix’s back. The construct Emily had crippled staggered after her, its ruined weapon arm hanging uselessly.

Arthur drew another arrow, searching for the fourth construct. It was using the stone pillars in the center of the hall to stay completely out of his line of sight. Every time Arthur raised his bow, the machine ducked back into cover. It was designed to fight archers, and it was doing it perfectly.

Arthur let out a breath and lowered his aim slightly.

He poured a surge of pale mana into the shaft and triggered Mirage Shot.

He aimed just past the right edge of the pillar and released, triggering Mirage Shot at the same moment. A false arrow screamed toward the left side. The construct darted right to avoid it, straight into the path of Arthur’s real shot.

The broadhead slammed into the exposed iron hinge of the construct’s knee, shattering the rusted joint. The machine collapsed forward.

[Skill Proficiency Increased] [Eagle Eye: Lv.9 → Lv.10]

A brief pulse of blue light flared in Arthur’s peripheral vision.

The change was instantaneous. The chaotic, dusty shadows of the training hall snapped into sharper focus. Arthur could make out the rust eating through the constructs’ iron joints and the narrow gaps between their armor plates, even while they moved.

Arthur formed another pair of arrows with Mana Quiver.

He fired twice in rapid succession. The first shaft blew out the rusted shoulder hinge of the construct pressing Felix. The second shattered the third construct’s ankle joint, dropping it to one knee.

Felix stepped in smoothly, bringing the heavy boss of Aegis Bulwark down on his crippled target’s chest, caving in the iron bands and extinguishing the blue light inside its core.

Emily crushed the kneeling construct’s skull casing with a brutal punch. The crippled machine came at her from behind, but she turned in time, caught it by the throat, and drove her knee into its damaged chest before slamming it against the wall. The blue light inside flickered out.

Arthur approached the fourth construct, which was still trying to drag itself upright beside the pillar. He drove the Necrotic Dagger into the blue-lit core inside its damaged chest.

The light went out, and the machine collapsed.

The training hall fell completely silent.

Felix leaned on his shield, his chest heaving as he looked down at the pile of splintered oak and bent iron at his feet.

"Magical training dummies," Felix said, looking over at Arthur. "You couldn’t have warned us they knew how to flank?"

"I knew there were constructs down here," Arthur admitted, lowering his bow. "Didn’t know they’d be this good."

Emily stood over the construct she had crushed, peeling a long splinter of oak out of the leather joint of her gauntlet. "If we could drag one of these back to the academy, Vale would probably pay us for it. It fights better than half the vanguard class."

"I am not dragging petrified wood up a cliff," Chloe said firmly. She lowered her hands, the green glow of her spell fading as she checked the hall for any other movement. "Nobody’s bleeding?"

"Just bruised," Felix said.

Arthur walked past the broken constructs toward a raised stone dais near the back wall, where the training instructors would have overseen the floor. Set into the masonry beneath the platform was an iron lockbox.

Emily stepped up beside him, raised her right fist, and smashed the rusted padlock off the box in one clean hit.

Arthur pulled the lid back.

Inside sat a layer of silver bars, a velvet pouch heavy with uncut dark garnets, and a wrapped leather roll.

"We split the rest," Arthur said, pushing the open box toward them on the stone. He unrolled the leather.

Inside sat a single throwing knife. It was forged from matte black steel, its leaf-shaped blade completely untouched by rust or age. Arthur picked it up, testing the edge against a splinter of fallen oak. The blade sliced cleanly through the dense wood.

Felix looked at the knife, then at the silver bars. "What the hell am I going to do with a throwing knife?"

Emily reached into the box and scooped up the heavy velvet pouch of garnets. "We’ll take the hazard pay."

Arthur grinned, sliding the black blade into the spare sheath at his belt. It was exactly the kind of quiet, lethal backup weapon a Phantom Sniper needed.

He picked up Whisperwind again. They left the ruined training hall behind, following the corridor deeper into the bluff.

Beyond the practice area, the rough stone gave way to polished black walls. Old bronze braziers lined the passage, their bowls filled with dust.

Arthur slowed when the corridor ended at a pair of bronze doors carved with hooded figures.

He recognized them. In the game, those doors led to the final guardian.