Chapter 64 Breach II

Forty student signals plus one proctor relay blinked on Mina’s console in a tight cluster, with eleven meters of rock standing between that group and the camp.

Damien counted his remaining prepared positions, which came to four, since the northern stair funnel had already eaten the first one.

’Four moves against forty-one people, damn, the math was tight yesterday and it has gotten insulting since breakfast.’

The second breach mouth beside the medical tents was the closest thing to a door, and everything wrong on this shelf came through it.

"Bram, sound the bell pattern twice and put every relay charm holder on the low shelf under Isolde’s water," he said, already climbing toward the tents.

"That leaves the medical line open and the proctors will scream about their equipment," Bram answered, running the opposite direction while shouting the order.

"Let them scream at me tonight, since equipment does not have a mother waiting in Averill," Damien replied.

Iron Veil went up across the tent gap as a flat disc of hardened mana, and two warped hounds hit it hard enough to crack the surface.

The barrier held four seconds, which was three more than he needed, and Flicker put him through the gap before the fourth second ended.

[Debt: 96 → 154]

Inside the second mouth, the rift had built a corridor out of raw stone that no survey team ever mapped, sloping down toward the heart.

Forty-one students were somewhere along it, penned between the ordinary horde behind them and the Correction hounds that had come up through the floor.

’Second prepared position, the rope cache squad nine has been carrying since yesterday, and now everybody finds out why.’

Squad nine’s climbing line came down the corridor wall in a coil that two medics had been complaining about since departure.

"Anchor at the ledge and feed it down, then take everyone through the split in the wall rather than the open floor," Damien called up the slope.

That split appeared on no survey chart in Averill, though it turned up in Chapter 611 of a NovelPhoenix nobody else here would ever read.

Students started moving through it in threes while the horde behind them found the corridor’s mouth and poured in with a noise like tearing canvas.

Damien put himself in that mouth, and the Blood Ledger began doing the only job it had ever been good at.

Blocks fed the counter, grazes filled it faster, and the hound that opened his shoulder donated more in one bite than the entire morning before.

[Debt: 154 → 388]

[Interest: ×1.2 per exchange]

’The counter climbs while I hold the door, yeah, and every one of these bastards is donating to a fund they will not enjoy.’

Vivienne came down the corridor from the eastern side with her twin blades and four Ashe security men, cutting a path through a collapsing section of wall.

"The eastern corridor is closing at the roof and my detachment lost two men holding it open," she said, breathing hard through her teeth.

"Then stop holding it and bring them here, since the split in this wall goes all the way up to the ridge path," Damien answered.

"Tch, you keep producing routes that no survey team in this country ever recorded," she replied, killing a warped hound that came in low.

"I keep producing routes that nobody bothered to walk, which is less impressive and more embarrassing for the surveyors," Damien said.

Mina’s second folding barrier snapped open behind the students, three braced panels sealing the corridor against the ordinary horde with a sound like a slammed vault.

"Hey, that was my last barrier and every tripwire is seeded, so anything past this point has to be killed rather than blocked," she called.

"Killing has always been cheaper than blocking on a bad day," Damien replied, cutting a hound off her barrier frame before it could test the seam.

Isolde reached the corridor mouth with her fan open, a needle-fed mist already spreading across the floor around ankle height.

"The dose slows the ordinary hounds by half and it does nothing whatsoever to the seamed ones," she said, sweeping the fan in a low arc.

"Half is enough, since the seamed ones are the only thing I actually need to kill personally," Damien answered.

Thirty-one students made it through the split, nine remained on the wrong side, their proctor held the rear, the corridor floor had started to breathe.

[Correction pressure: rising]

[New hazard generated: 1]

The floor split along a black-gold seam, and something came out of it that was not shaped like a hound at all.

’Third prepared position, the medical cache we dropped in the split yesterday, now getting spent on ten kids plus one bad decision.’

Damien invoked Stay of Execution on the way in, the skill performed its one trick, which was making a terrible idea survivable for eleven seconds.

[Stay of Execution active]

[Deferred: 1,180 damage]

[Timer: 11 seconds]

The seamed thing hit him twice inside four seconds, though neither wound arrived, since both were now sitting in a queue stamped with his name.

Verdict punched through the anomaly core on the fifth second, the black-gold light drained out of the beast while it was still trying to stand.

[Warped Correction beast defeated]

[Experience: +411,000]

[System Points: +2,100]

’Redline for eleven seconds, shit, fourth time today, and my body will be sending an invoice later.’

Nine students went through the split with two medics dragging the slowest, the rear proctor followed, the corridor behind them finally collapsed on nothing at all.

Then Damien looked up the slope and understood that the day had not finished being clever.

Lucas Arden was on the corridor’s upper ledge with the same eleven unhurt students, the rock under them had opened a perfect stair toward the heart.

Vivienne was on that ledge too, having gone up it to pull a first-year off the edge thirty seconds earlier.

Nothing built that stair and nobody cut it, though it existed now, angled down toward the worst chamber on the shelf with the expedition’s safest people standing along its top.

’His luck built a road, damn it, the siphon needs a rescue and it is arranging the crowd for the photograph.’

"Everybody off that ledge right now and come down through the split," Damien shouted, his voice reaching them exactly as the stone began to tilt.

Twelve people slid toward the heart on a slope that had been level ground four seconds earlier, and Lucas caught two of them by the wrists.

Seen from Pike’s ridge, or through any of the helmet cameras pointed down the shelf, the whole thing looked like a miracle in progress.

Seen from twenty meters away, it was a feeding trough with a golden boy standing inside it holding hands.

Vivienne stopped her own slide by driving her long blade through the stone and pinning herself against the tilt with both feet braced.

"I have three students on my line and no anchor above me," she called down, her voice steady in a way that cost her visibly.

"Hold that line for nine seconds and keep your eyes off the chamber underneath you," Damien answered, taking the split’s wall at a dead run.

Flicker crossed twenty meters in two blinks, the second one landing him under her feet on the tilted stone.

He drove Verdict through the slab beside her blade, took the weight of three students on the crossguard, and let the Blood Ledger count what the strain cost him.

[Debt: 388 → 602]

’Six hundred held and climbing, yeah, this ends with either the biggest number I have ever printed or a very short obituary.’

The students came up over the lip in ones and twos with Lucas’s eleven among them, every last body alive, thoroughly filmed.

The shelf shook again, then three different disasters started at the same moment in places he could not reach together.

Mina’s tripwires went off behind her barrier while the heart below began drawing air like a lung, the second breach mouth started closing with Damien caught between them.

[Death Flag detected: Corridor collapse - Fatality 88%]

[Death Flag detected: Heart draw - Fatality 94%]

[Death Flag detected: Correction convergence - Fatality 91%]

[Three flags active. Survive.]

’Three at once, okay, so the shelf finally decided to stop pretending this was an accident.’

Mina’s console showed the batch numbers climbing while she screamed at him to move, he read them anyway, since a man should know his balance.

[Level: 520 → 545]

[Accumulated breach combat EXP: 13,300,000]

[System Points: 6,500 → 14,200]

[Accumulated breach combat SP: 7,700]

[Divergence: 33%]

[Ascension Board: 17]

[Debt held: 602]

Damien handed the last student up to Vivienne, turned toward the chamber breathing beneath them, and started down the stair that fate had built for somebody else.