Chapter 65: Special Request

The helicopter rode rough over the city, passing over the streets in a noisy arc.

Ava sat with her legs pressed together and the bag opened on her lap. She turned the unstable bird between her gloved fingers like a toy. The green light still flickered weakly in its ruined sockets and every few seconds the whole body shuddered and shed another film of black dust onto her palms.

Across from her, a third-year guy with a jacket half zipped to his chest watched with open distaste. "Ava, Why is that thing still moving?"

"Special request," Ava said brightly. "Granted."

He stared for a second, then exhaled through his nose as understanding landed. "The necromancer"

She nodded.

"He’s getting popular fast for a restricted first-year." The guy’s mouth twisted. "Devil-class noise and all that. Now you’re carrying his garbage art project into a deployment. Like it’s a souvenir."

Ava tilted the bird and its lopsided wing flopped. "I like rare patterns. He has one."

"You shouldn’t be staying close to him." He said it in a flat tone. "Obvious reasons. The heat sticks. Stay away before the heat sticks."

Ava’s yellow eyes flicked up, amused. "Jealous?"

"Of a first-year Necromancer?"

"Yeah, him." She leaned forward over the rotor noise with a sharp smile. "He has lovely eyes. Better than yours. His green really pops, y’know?"

The guy rolled his eyes and looked away toward the window.

On Ava’s other side, the second teammate sat with a calmness that suggested that she didn’t care about what they were talking about. She had white hair that had gone blue at the tip and wore regulation suit thatr covered from her throat all the way to her fingertips in gloves. The vents were ticking softly as it handled the cold bleeding off her skin and frost fell on the bench edge near her boot and vanished under the suit’s correction cycle.

"Frosty~" Ava said, singsong. "What do you think of the birdy?"

"Drew." The girl’s voice was even and uninterested. "Get that carcass away from me."

"Oh, come on. Don’t be like that—"

The bird convulsed once, hard enough for her to notice as the green light blew out. What remained in Ava’s hands lost cohesion and collapsed into a dry sheep of ash and fused feather fragments, gone before she could finish the joke.

Ava stared at her empty palms. "...Hey. It hasn’t even been three hours."

"You electrocuted it into charcoal and handed it to a first-year because you had a ’request’" the guy said. "You had it coming."

"He said three hours." Ava brushed ash off her legs feeling genuinely offended. "He overestimated Rude."

The guy facepalmmed. "You don’t get to blame him."

"I fucking do!"

Frosty’s suit clicked as another frost flake was sucked back from the air. "If you’re finished mourning poultry, the dungeon is below us."

The helicopter banked. Through the open side hatch the city resolved came into view. They looked out, and saw a dungeon mouth that should not have been there — a vertical tear right there in the middle of the street with edges shimmering with light that flickered on and off.

Civilians were long gone, and they saw MCA barriers in a wide ring.

A ground controller’s signal cut across their headsets:

[third year team cleared for entry. Suppress and clear, A-rank signature confirmed inside.]

Ava clipped in, stood, and grinned like the afternoon had finally become interesting.

"Try to keep up," she told them as she jumped down first first.

***

Inside was and wet—ruptured concrete corridors, debri falling from the ceiling and a stench that would make anybody vomit.

They moved quietly: Ava forward, the guy by the left and Frosty moving behind so the corridor didn’t turn into a skating rink under uncontrolled output.

The A-rank hit them at the first wide junction.

It came low and fast from a collapsed underpass mouth: a beast with a body built for demolishing buildings and a jaw that opened far past it’s chest, plates of keratin moved along a throat made for clamping shut on whatever fit and they all braced when the beast’s eyes met theirs.

"Swallow." The guy said.

But before he could reach for his weapon, Ava dashed forward. "Mine," she said, already moving.

Lightning snapped from her hands in a a wide arc that forced the beast’s first charge off course. It hit wall, rebounded with a shriek that shook loose rocks from the ceiling, and lunged again.

Ava didn’t retreat. She stepped inside the second rush, drove a compressed bolt into the hinge of the oversized jaw, and blasted the beast high as she laughed.

Lightning leaked from the edges of her eyes as she launced herself upwards.

**BOOM**

The Swallow tumbled to the ground. Before it could reset, she poured a full burst through the open maw and out the spine.

The corridor went still, and the air started smelling like something was burnt.

The Swallow’s, jaws still parted as smoke lifted from scorched insides. The back was burnt, so burnt that Frosty could see it’s slowly stopping heart.

Ava shook out her fingers as the churned insides fell to the ground with a wet thud. She clenched her fists as the sparks died at the tips, and looked back over her shoulder. "Don’t be mad I took the kill, Frosty."

Frosty looked at the corpse with the same looked she might give wet cardboard. "I’m not. If you take it, I don’t have to spend output."

"You lazy bitch. You’re the strongest and you still let me do all the work."

Frosty’s eyebrows twitched. "You rushed the beast before I could do anything."

"Still could’ve helped though."

Ava let out a short laugh as the guy moved up to tag the kill and sweep the Aetherite pulsing in the ground.

They finished gathering Aetherite and Ava shot up as she got excited just by thinking about going back.

"Alright! Monster. Check. Aetherite. Check. Let’s go."

The guy looked at her. "I hope you’re not thinking of going back to where I think you’re going."

She turned to him with a smile that told him he had already lost. "Who knows~?"

***

Ethan ran Bef through strings of commanda until the east grounds lane was a dark groove.

No Ava on the boundary line. No classroom bag of electrocuted birds. Just command work: Bef on ground works, Blood Raven on high circles, short Death Link bursts, and dual stack holds until his temples pulsed.

After the gym blocks, pure undead training felt almost clean — a different kind of feeling paid from a full Death Energy pool instead of failing lungs.

His legs still carried a soresnes from his session that morning. He cut one Raven dive early when his legs shook from residual soreness, breathed to steady himself, and kept going.

Productive stubbornness.... The kind that stacked numbers without needing spectators.

Lila had classes that afternoon. Nora had gone to chase mineral texts, and the campus noise stayed distant enough to ignore.

He dismissed both undead into Storage when the patterns started repeating without teaching him anything new, drank water, and checked the system to track his gains.

```

[EXP: 493 / 700]

[Death Energy: 612/700]

```

It was climbing...

Body work and command work we’re both feeding the same bar and he noticed that his Death Energy was no longer draining as fast as it did before.

He took one more short core set on the dirt because Merrick’s voice had infected his decision-making, then headed back to the dorm before he was too sore to move.

***

Back at the dorm, Lila claimed his bed without negotiation as she always did. Ethan showered the dust off, lay down on legs that hurt but in the improved way, and let the day settle: cancelled observation, Lila’s absence, and Ava gone on a sector pull.

Amidst all these, his EXP was still moving....

He was on the edge of sleep when the system bloomed hard enough to push green light right through his eyelids...

```

[Ding!]

[New Objective Unlocked]

[Host is required to clear a dungeon.]

```

Ethan stared at the text in the dark.

He blinked a few times, then stared again.

"Okay, that’s new..."