Chapter 57 - Boiling Blood and Thin Air

The twenty azure ether needles fired by Dante's ring struck the underbelly of the Slag Serpent in the very tenth of a second the creature's trunk reared over the master girders. The impact of the magical tips pierced the elastic reddish scales with the dull crunch of industrial needles punching through raw leather.

The monster loosed a shrill hiss that set the lake sludge bubbling in short geysers, the ether poison sinking directly into lower Mana conduits and locking its crawling muscles in a spasmodic seizure.

[-85 HP to target.]

[Slow Effect applied to lower trunk.]

Maria didn't wait for the beast to drop its neck.

Lunging two strides along the scrap conveyor, the girl drove herself beneath the curve of the serpent's exposed abdomen.

Gripping the leather wrap of her forty-pound greatsword with both hands, she sank her knees hip-level and unleashed an upward cleave with the full momentum of thirty-three Strength.

The [Devastating Cleaver] skill channeled the blade's mass into a continuous wedge of shearing force.

The tempered steel ripped through the red meat of the creature's belly in a ten-foot gash.

SQUELCH-CRACK.

The dark, scalding blood of the serpent erupted from the open breach like mineral oil under boiler pressure, splattering across the plates of Maria's brigandine cuirass and running down her greaves to pool in the gravel.

The beast lost support in its neck from the searing agony of the wound.

[-190 HP to target.]

[Slag Serpent Health Points: 515/850.]

Yet a Lesser Tier Three monster at Level 28 does not die from a single blow to the abdomen.

The serpent tipped into blind, thrashing madness.

Abandoning calculated strikes with its tail or fangs, it hurled the full momentum of ten tons of iron and muscle laterally, rolling across the scrap heap of the central island to crush Maria against the overturned locomotive chassis.

The naval steel plating across the monster's spine slammed into the wreckage with the monumental roar of buckling plate.

Maria activated [Liquid Lead Stance] at the final millisecond, bracing her back against an iron girder to keep from being flattened by the ferrite mass.

Even so, the deceleration of ten tons of meat and steel slammed into the flank of her armor.

The riveted cuirass warped over her third right rib, driving the air from her lungs in a dry gasp.

[-32 HP to Maria.]

[Maria's Health Points: 100/160.]

From behind the overturned boiler, Nicole vaulted onto a steel plate, her repeating crossbow braced against her left shoulder.

The girl did not falter this time.

She worked the cocking lever with her right hand three times in rapid succession.

THWIP. THWIP. THWIP.

Three silver-tipped bolts of tempered steel whistled in a flat trajectory, burying themselves deep into the open abdominal wound, coring through internal organs with the surgical precision of someone who knew mining reptile anatomy inside out.

[-110 HP to target.]

[Severe Internal Bleeding applied.]

The serpent shrieked in agony, its iron maws gaping to vomit a torrent of acidic sludge toward Nicole.

Dante tracked the head's trajectory from his masonry ledge.

He knew that if the acid stream caught Nicole at that range, the lizard leather would dissolve in three seconds.

He did not cast a damaging bolt.

[Skill Activated: [Forced Transposition - Tier 1].]

[Mana Cost: 65 MP.]

[Dante's Current Reserve: 370/510.]

[Target Selected: Maria.]

The ether fold snapped shut in eight-tenths of a second.

Maria vanished from beneath the locomotive carcass and reappeared in mid-air six feet off the deck, hovering directly over the crown of the Slag Serpent's lowered head.

Maria needed no time to calculate her move.

The two hundred pounds of her body, bolstered by the forty-pound greatsword, dropped like a free-falling anvil onto the beast's skull.

Holding the hilt two-handed pointed straight down, she locked her elbows and drove the broad chisel tip directly into the serpent's right eye socket.

CRACK-THWACK.

The steel blade punched through the yellow cornea, shattered the ferrite cranial casing, and sank three feet into the creature's brain until the iron crossguard slammed flush against the scales of its brow.

The monster shuddered in a violent convulsion that shook the entire island of wreckage.

Its five-ton tail slapped the lake water one last time, hurling a six-foot wave of black sludge that drenched the cavern walls before the sixty-five-foot bulk lost all motor tension, collapsing dead across the iron debris.

[-405 HP to target (Critical Brain Damage).]

[Slag Serpent Health Points: 0/850.]

[Target Eliminated: Armored Slag Serpent (Level 28).]

Silence dropped over the Expansion Reservoir like a heavy iron plate.

The interface flared with bold golden lettering illuminating the cavern's gloom.

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[Experience Distribution by Participation:]

[Maria: +1,450 EXP (Level 22 Reached!).]

[Dante Miller: +1,100 EXP (Level 21 Reached!).]

[Nicole: +850 EXP.]

[Available Loot:]

[1x Concentrated Ferrite Core (Tier 3).]

[120 kg Salvageable Naval Steel Scales.]

[2x Pure Acid Venom Glands.]

Maria wrenched the greatsword from the monster's skull with a sharp heave of both arms, sitting back onto the locomotive plating, breathing hard, face smeared in black oil and hot blood.

She glanced at her silver screen, watching her level gauge roll over to twenty-two.

"Dead..." She spat a mouthful of gray grit onto the deck, wiping her torn sleeve across her sweaty brow. "That bastard gave me a harder time than the foundry colossus."

Dante descended from the masonry platform with brisk strides, stepping across the scrap footing to reach the central island.

His brass ring sat dark, chalk case secured at his hip, breathing evenly as he surveyed the felled carcass.

Yet before he could speak on harvesting the ferrite core, a ragged, wheezing sound rose from behind the overturned boiler.

It was a fast, frantic rasp that sounded nothing like a wounded beast.

Dante and Maria turned at the same time.

Nicole sat huddled in the black sludge along the shore, back braced against the plating of a ruptured pipe.

The girl had dropped her mechanical crossbow onto the gravel.

Both her gloved hands were clawing frantically at the collar of her scaled coat, tugging the fabric apart as though the leather were strangling her windpipe.

Her face was stark white, like fresh plaster.

Her four amber eyes, pupils dilated into jagged vertical slits, stared wildly without focusing on any single point in the cavern, her chest heaving in shallow, rapid gasps that whistled on every intake.

She was hyperventilating.

Her hands trembled so violently her knuckles clattered against the brass buttons of her coat in a frantic metallic rattle.

"Nicole?" Dante took two cautious paces toward her, narrowing the gap with care.

The girl did not answer.

She did not seem to hear his voice. Her mouth opened in quick spasms, fighting for air that refused to reach her lungs, small tremors rippling down her legs to the tips of her mud-caked boots.

"The ceiling..." she managed to force out between teeth chattering in sudden cold. "The iron... won't go in... the air... won't come..."

Maria dropped from the serpent's carcass with a heavy thud, splashing mud over the gravel.

The six-foot-three vanguard dropped her greatsword onto the stones without ceremony, letting forty pounds of steel clatter down, and strode straight to where Nicole was huddled.

She asked no clinical questions, and she didn't look to Dante's interface.

She recognized this state.

She had watched her own mother suffer this exact panic attack on the kitchen floor back in the shantytown, after three sleepless days sewing hems under threat of termination from the plant foreman. She knew that when a body locked in absolute terror, gentle words and logical explanations were useless.

Maria dropped to her knees in the black sludge before Nicole.

She clamped both heavy hands onto the girl's shoulders, gripping with enough firmness for Nicole to feel the solid presence of bone and flesh, without straining the joints.

"Look at me, girl," Maria commanded, her deep voice cutting clean through Nicole's whistling panic.

Nicole continued gasping in short spasms, her head thrashing sideways as if searching for an invisible exit along the granite walls.

"Look at me, damn it!" Maria shook her shoulders with a firm jolt. "Look at my face!"

Nicole's amber eyes finally locked onto Maria's grease-streaked face.

"The snake is dead," Maria said slowly, enunciating every syllable with absolute clarity. "The floor didn't cave. The stone ceiling is right where it belongs, and nobody is sticking a laboratory needle in you. You're in one piece."

Dante approached with quiet steps, drawing his clean water canteen from his pack alongside a scrap of dry cotton cloth.

"She has respiratory alkalosis from hyperventilation," Dante explained in an undertone to Maria, keeping his distance so as not to crowd the girl's space. "She drew oxygen too fast, and the carbon dioxide in her blood plummeted. Her brain thinks she's suffocating when her lungs are actually mechanically overventilated."

He passed the folded cloth to Maria.

"Have her breathe into the cloth," Dante instructed. "It will balance her blood gases in two minutes."

Maria took the cloth with her left hand, keeping her right clamped onto Nicole's shoulder.

She cupped the cotton over the girl's nose and mouth, forming a loose pocket with her palm to allow the air to recirculate.

"Breathe into this, Nicole," Maria ordered, her tone dropping into a steady, measured rhythm like someone holding a heavy load on an incline. "Slow breath through the nose. Hold it a second. Out through the mouth. There's no hurry here. We already killed the beast."

Nicole tried to shove Maria's hand away at first, defensive instinct bringing chitin talons nudging from beneath her gloves.

Yet Maria didn't budge. She held her grip firm, supportive, bracing Nicole's trembling torso against her own knees in the black mud.

Slowly, as warm air rich in carbon dioxide flooded back into the girl's lungs, the shrill wheeze in Nicole's throat began to soften.

The desperate gasps spaced out.

Her slender chest beneath the black-scaled coat settled into a deeper rhythm, and the rigid tension locking her arm muscles began to release by degrees.

The tremors in her legs stopped after five minutes of disciplined breathing.

Nicole shut all four amber eyes for ten unbroken seconds, resting her sweaty forehead against Maria's wrapped forearm, drawing in clean air filtering through the vanguard's fingers.

Maria gently pulled the cloth away from her face, handing over the canteen Dante had placed by her knee.

"Drink," Maria said, her tone regaining its customary rough edge. "Small sips. Don't swallow too fast or you'll vomit."

Nicole took the canteen in both hands. Her fingers still trembled slightly against the cold metal, but she brought the spout to her lips and took three long drafts of clean water.

She wiped her mouth with the sleeve of her coat, staring down at her mud-caked boots.

Shame washed over her pale features like a bitter shadow.

"That was... pathetic," Nicole muttered, her voice raspy and low, unable to lift her eyes to meet theirs. "A trench huntress... falling apart like that after the monster is already dead on the floor."

"Pathetic is pretending you aren't terrified of getting crushed by five tons of iron," Maria countered on the spot, rising from the sludge with a clean pop of her knees.

She scooped the forty-pound greatsword off the ground, wiped excess grease off the flat against her pant leg, and sheathed the steel into its back harness with a sharp buckle click.

"You took a twenty-five-foot fall onto scrap and nearly had your pelvis sheared in two by a ferrite tail," Maria went on, looking down at the girl. "Anyone's gut would turn over after an impact like that. Get off the ground, we have a vault to crack and twelve thousand scrip to collect from the quartermaster."

Dante stepped forward, offering his right hand to help Nicole to her feet.

Nicole looked at Dante's outstretched palm for two full seconds before taking his fingers.

Her grip was cold, yet the natural strength of her Level 22 huntress frame had returned to her arms. She stood up firmly, adjusting her thigh holster and dusting mud from her coat with quick slaps of her hands.

Her breathing had leveled out completely.

She looked at the colossal serpent carcass sprawled across the center of the scrap island, then turned toward the back of the cavern, where the Fourth Division's lead blast door remained intact beneath the blue light of Dante's ring.

"Thank you," Nicole said softly, looking straight into Maria's eyes for the first time since their descent into the breach.

Maria merely shrugged, turning toward the vault door with heavy strides through the mud.

"Save the thanks for the after-action report, girl," Maria tossed over her shoulder. "Now let's go grab that brass lockbox you were so desperate for before the blood scent draws another crawler out of the drains."

Dante drew his boning knife from his pack, approaching the serpent's skull to begin carving out the ferrite core that would secure their level progression.

The battle in the Expansion Reservoir had concluded, the Tier Three horror had fallen to their steel and spellcraft, and the lead blast door guarding the secrets of this buried empire lay finally within their reach.