Chapter 38: What the Ghost Brought Back

The floor didn't give out—it vanished.

The blue Gate Key turned a violent, bleeding crimson, and the dungeon screamed. Obsidian walls fractured into dust. The ceiling buckled, dropping multi-ton boulders into a swirling spatial void opening beneath their boots.

Adrian Vance slammed both palms onto the disintegrating stone. As Team Blaze's high-tier grand strategist and arcane barrier master, Adrian was always the quiet, terrifying anchor of the squad. Where others relied on brute force, he treated every battle as a living mathematical puzzle, weaving complex runes in real-time to alter the tide of combat.

He didn't waste breath shouting. A brilliant emerald array flared beneath them, expanding overhead like an inverted umbrella to catch the first wave of falling mountain. The sheer structural weight of the collapsing dungeon pressed into his barrier, and blood immediately welled from his nose under the strain.

Rift collapse.

Lucien's head snapped toward the exit. "Distortion's jamming the waypoint! The portal's sealed!"

Mei didn't panic. Her pulse stayed ice-cold. She read the geometric decay in Adrian's array in two milliseconds: The left anchor point is failing.

"Shane!" Mei didn't need to explain.

"On it!" Shane lunged, jamming his shield base straight into the bedrock beside Adrian's boot. His crimson aura exploded upward, taking the brunt of the kinetic force as another avalanche smashed against the barrier.

Mei drove her dagger into the floor, channeling the Warden's leftover light-mana straight toward Lucien. "Use it!"

Lucien caught the raw energy, a sharp, feral grin breaking across his face. "Brilliant."

He inverted his hex. A lance of blinding white light punched through the distorted portal, ripping a narrow breach through the warped space.

"Three seconds!" Adrian grunted, his whole body trembling as veins stood out on his neck, his emerald runes burning white-hot to keep the mountain off their heads.

"Go!" Mei barked.

Shane grabbed Adrian by the collar, dragging the exhausted strategist toward the breach. Lucien dived through right behind them as obsidian pulverized the ground at his heels.

Mei turned to go—and froze.

Joshua was holding the rear guard. A massive slab sheared off the roof directly above his head.

Too late.

Mei didn't weigh the odds. She didn't calculate if he was worth the risk. She sprinted, launching her body across the slick stone.

She slammed into Joshua a fraction of a second before impact. Multi-ton stone pulverized the air where he had stood. They hit the floor hard, rolling toward the closing breach. Mid-roll, Joshua wrapped his arm around her waist, twisting his body to take the worst of the jagged shrapnel against his back.

They tumbled headfirst through the breach just as the portal collapsed into a pinprick of nothingness.

They hit the sunlit grass hard, tumbling across dirt and roots before skidding to a halt.

Silence slammed into the forest. The Gate was gone.

Mei pushed herself up. Joshua lay beneath her, panting heavily, his arm still locked around her waist. His eyes met hers, a breathless, incredulous laugh escaping his lips. "You tackled me."

"You were in the way of a rock."

"You saved me, Mei."

Her palm rested over his chest, feeling the frantic, hammering pulse beneath his armor. She yanked her hand back. "I protected an asset."

Shane let out a boisterous laugh from the grass five feet away, lying flat on his back, covered in soot. "Right. An asset. Sure, assassin."

Lucien brushed ash off his coat, his eyes gleaming as he noted the blue Gate Key glowing in Mei's pouch. Adrian sat up slowly, wiping blood from his lip, giving her a quiet nod of absolute respect. His strategic gamble had paid off, and his barrier had bought them the exact fraction of a second they needed.

Mei stood, extending a hand to Joshua. He took it, letting her pull him upright.

They were bruised, bleeding, and filthy. But all five of them were breathing.

In her past life, survival meant running away. Today, she had run toward the strike.

Mei reached into her pouch, her fingers curling tight around the cold metal of the Gate Key. Her eyes locked onto the road leading back to the central city, her blades catching the afternoon sun.

"Get some rest," Mei said, her voice dropping into a razor-thin, lethal edge. "Then we deal with Fei."

Joshua's expression hardened. Shane pushed off the ground, shield at the ready. Lucien's smirk vanished into pure malice. Adrian stood at her flank, already running silent calculations for their next engagement.

Mei didn't step forward alone. She started walking, feeling the heavy, lethal presence of four men falling into formation behind her.

"She thinks she left a ghost in that seal," Mei whispered into the wind. "Let's show her what the ghost brought back."