Roy checked the Allphone, tapping the screen and refreshing the diagnostic before looking up with a pitying expression.
"Still one hundred percent," Roy said casually. "My passive regeneration filled the tank before you even finished the sentence. You haven't made a dent."
Lynder froze as his smugness evaporated into sheer, frantic calculation, his eyes darting from the ring, to Roy, and finally settling on the empty air where his alimony payment had just vanished.
"Impossible," Lynder breathed, eyes wide with disbelief as he stared blankly into the air. "I poured an ocean through a straw, and the ocean didn't even ripple."
Tension coiled through his shoulders, traveling down his arms until his fists tightened and his knuckles turned bone-white. Desperation etched itself plainly across his face, deepening the lines around his eyes and darkening his expression.
"Fine," Lynder hissed, voice strained and bitter. "If the river refuses to drain, I'll break the dam completely. This place is secure enough to call something deeper from within the void."
He drove his foot against the dark floor, the impact echoing sharply through the chamber and rattling loose stones in distant corners. Instantly, the surrounding shadows stirred and rose, thickening into a restless mass of fluid darkness that churned and writhed in response.
Lynder's voice fell lower, each word of his chant grinding harshly against the air, heavy enough to resonate in the bones of everyone who heard it. The shadows answered eagerly, surging higher and stronger as he continued.
"I name the rage that has no light," Lynder intoned, the words twisting the air like heat haze.
"The hunger that remembers before form. Lord Tormenta, wound of the void... unseal me and let the depths hear this prayer..." He paused, eyes rolling back until only the whites showed. He leaned forward, whispering with the intensity of a dying man. "...help me pay this debt."
Roy took a step back. "Spooky," he muttered to Takara. "Shameless, but definitely spooky."
In Lynder's eyes, tiny, perfect pinpricks of void opened in the sclera, expanding like ink dropped in water. He turned toward the exit.
"Floor Two Hundred and Forty," he said. The voice wasn't entirely his anymore. It layered over itself, a chorus of echoes screaming from a deep well. "Next."
Floor 240 was a sprawling badlands of jagged rock and gray dust. A herd of drakes, each the size of a bull elephant, stamped across the plain, their armored hides reflecting the dull light of the dungeon.
A pillar of solidified shadow surged upward, hoisting Lynder high above the battlefield which dragged the screaming Roy up as well. Darkness streamed from his hands and pooled around his fingertips as the void ring ignited with pulsing, arcane light. His voice echoed with authority, every syllable resonating deep into the walls and floor of the dungeon.
"Ancient Arcane Void Magic: Hollowburst."
His fist closed, knuckles white and tense with exertion. At the heart of the drake herd, the alpha shuddered violently, its spine buckling inward as though yanked by invisible chains. Flesh and bone twisted and compressed, crumbling rapidly into a trembling singularity of raw matter. An instant later, a shockwave of silent, hungering emptiness erupted outward in a rippling, negative pulse.
"Concraze!" Lynder screamed, his voice shredding in raw ecstasy as the spell multiplied explosively, chaining through reality a hundred times within a single breath.
A frenetic maelstrom of implosive flashes erupted and reality itself blinked in and out of existence. Drakes ruptured violently, their bodies folded and unraveled, leaving echoes of empty air and shadowy smears behind. The ground itself cracked and splintered, fracturing under the relentless barrage as Lynder's power
Orden floated up beside Roy, clapping his small hands as a drake turned inside out. "Oh, delightful! Look at the squish!"
"I think I'm gonna be sick," Roy mumbled, clutching his stomach as Lynder banked sharply to avoid a flying ribcage.
"Room for one more on this battlefield?" Truman asked as he stepped up to the edge of the formation.
"No need to ask, let's go," Eryndra agreed, launching herself from the Fireside Ascent.
The next seven floors vanished without incident as they made their way through. Truman turned sectors into glass with nuclear fire. Eryndra dismantled boss monsters with her bare hands before they could finish their introductory roars. But above them all, Lynder reigned like a god of emptiness. He erased matter. He scrubbed floors clean of life.
Roy tumbled violently inside his Light Barrier, struggling to keep steady against the relentless shockwaves of Lynder's outburst. His stomach churned dangerously, the world spinning around him in sickening loops.
"Lynder!" Roy screamed desperately, bracing himself as another blast sent him careening against the barrier's shimmering wall. "We need a break! I'm about to swim in my own breakfast!"
Ahead of him, Lynder hovered in cold silence, suspended in the air, his back rigid and unmoving. Roy drifted helplessly behind, anchored only by Rava's fragile tether. Lynder's hand rose calmly, almost lazily, before black lightning ripped outward from his fingertips and tore through a cluster of stone golems, sending shattered rock and splintered limbs exploding outward.
"Lynder!" Roy shouted again, louder, voice edged with raw panic.
Lynder's head snapped sharply around. Roy recoiled involuntarily at the sight. Where eyes once were, twin tunnels of emptiness bored infinitely inward, rimmed in shadow so absolute they seemed to drain the very air around them. The elf's skin was drained of color, stretched taut and sickly gray, pulsing visibly with veins of black mana that writhed like worms beneath his flesh.
"Lyn... der?" The name ground itself out of his throat, sounding like broken glass dragged over stone. "Ah... yes. That is... my name. Perhaps... a break is needed..."
But the hesitation lasted only a moment. Lynder turned back toward the golems, raising his hand once more. Magic surged violently from his fingertips, raw power tearing through the cavern in an arc of blinding force. The golems in its path vanished instantly, consumed by a blast of energy that left a smoking crater in the dungeon floor, glowing molten rock dripping down its edges.
"Mad mage!" Roy howled desperately, spinning helplessly within his Light Barrier. "We've got a mad mage here! Help!"
Eryndra was already moving. She stepped off the platform, landing effortlessly on the floating pillar of shadow beside Lynder. Her hand shot out with calculated precision, clamping down on his wrist mid-spell. The energy fizzled instantly, mana recoiling with a sharp, painful whine.
"Roy clearly has had enough," she said quietly, ice in her voice. "You're done."
Lynder turned slowly toward her, a hollow growl escaping his throat, a sound devoid of breath or humanity. "Surely... the Thunder Rider... can handle... such low-level combat... Let us... continue."
He jerked his arm back sharply and shadows surged to life between them. The darkness solidified instantly into grasping tendrils that snapped around Eryndra's waist, pulling desperately to free him from her grasp. But Eryndra stood rooted, unyielding, as the dark bindings strained, buckled, and cracked like brittle iron chains over her armor.
"I said..." Eryndra's voice was low, almost a whisper, as her fingers tightened further, "...stop."A wet, gritty creak followed the faint grind of bone on bone.
"No. More," Lynder spat, baring teeth stained with shadowy mana, his voice a raw, rasping snarl.
Eryndra twisted sharply, and Lynder's wrist snapped with a crisp crack of bone. His expression remained unchanged, dark holes of eyes fixed on hers, empty and utterly unfazed. His free hand surged upward to cast again, but she snatched it instantly, pinning it mid-motion.
"In regards to Roy…" The words slipped out on a hush, lighter than silk yet sharp as a hidden blade. "I never make suggestions. Stop your tantrum…or be torn in half."
"What can echo... in a void?" Lynder whispered through a blood-flecked grin. "Absence."
Darkness bloomed violently around Eryndra's head, collapsing inward with a guttural crunch, as if reality itself had been crushed and spat back out.
The vacuum's fading left Eryndra standing exactly as she had been. She gave a single shake of her head, clearing hair from her eyes, her gaze fixed steadily on him.
"Are you done, or do you want one more try?" she asked as she released her grip, voice flat, bored, empty of patience.
"Concraze!" Lynder screamed, spit flying, his face twisted in savage triumph.
The air ruptured, rapid-fire void detonations of Absence slammed into Eryndra one after another, each concussive pulse tore stone and air apart indiscriminately. Roy clutched his head, howling in pain. "MY PRECIOUS EARS!"
Dust enveloped the space, swirling and thick. Heavy, measured footsteps sounded calmly through the murk, white mist pouring steadily from Eryndra's vents, peeling back the haze until she once again loomed clearly into view. She halted her face inches from Lynder's, eyes locked on his, expression hollow. "Are you done?"
For the first time, a flicker of something akin to disturbance crossed Lynder's void-eaten face. He raised both broken hands, the ring glowing with a hateful light. "Castration: Absence!"
He slammed his palms together and hundreds of Absences concentrated over Eryndra. "Concraze!"
The floor disintegrated as the concentrated Absence echoed hundreds of times. Before Roy could even register the pain increase in his ears, the mile-wide floor of the dungeon, as well as several floors above and the floor below, simply stopped existing. The ceiling of the floor three levels above groaned and collapsed into the new crater. The shockwave hit the Fireside Ascent like a physical wall. JFK threw up a light barrier instantly, the defensive spell groaning under the pressure as the world outside turned to dust. Only the distant boss room, possibly anchored by the dungeon's core logic, survived on a lonely island of stone.
Eryndra's hand cut effortlessly through the swirling debris and seized Lynder by the face, her fingers sinking into his cheekbones until they yielded with an audible crack.
She lifted him off the ground, holding him at arm's length like a misbehaving cat.
"Rava!" Roy yelled over the wind. "Break the link! Cut the power!"
"I'm trying!" Rava shouted, veins bulging in his neck as he clawed at the golden chains. "Something is holding it open! It won't snap!"
Lynder's skull continued to creak under the pressure of Eryndra's increasingly forceful grip.
"Eryndra, stop!" Roy panicked. "Don't crush his head! He clearly isn't right in it!"
"If he refuses to calm down," Eryndra said, squeezing harder, "what else can I do but hurt him?"
A shadow briefly covered Lynder, and Orden descended to land quietly atop the ancient elf's head. He tilted his body forward, stretching his neck until his upside-down face was peering directly into Lynder's empty eye sockets.
"Making contracts with mortals?!" Orden chirped, his voice holding the terrifying weight of a primordial decree. "I'm telling Dad!"
The void tendrils thrashing around Lynder fell briefly still. He retched, straining uselessly against Eryndra's grip, before the tendrils gradually resumed their restless twisting.
"Why are you always so grabby? Let up a bit so he can speak, Eryndra," Roy ordered.
"If he tries to run," Eryndra said pleasantly, loosening her grip by a fraction of a millimeter, "I will take his face as a prize."
With a wheeze, Lynder forced out a single word. "Ali…mony."
"I think I know what happened," JFK declared, stepping closer to examine the magical connection. "The incantation created a binding contract. The entity is unable to let go until the stipulated condition is met. His will is essentially mortgaged to this debt."
Rubbing his face, Roy sighed, annoyed at the suspended elf before him. "So, this is my fault? Because of that bet?" He yelled into the emptiness, "Fine! I'll pay it! I will cover his existing alimony. But, just the current debt, not any future payments!"
Lynder's legs kicked feebly. "Pro...mise?"
"Yes! I promise! Just stop blowing up everything!"
The void essence peeled away in thin, fading ribbons, dissolving rapidly into empty air as Lynder's body slackened abruptly. Color flooded swiftly back into his eyes as the unnatural darkness retreated, leaving his gaze bright and disturbingly clear. The oppressive aura scattered like mist before sunlight, replaced instantly by a jarring sense of normality.
The sudden cheer pierced the tense silence, oddly bright and unsettlingly normal. "Woo-hoo!" he cheered, enthusiasm bizarrely ordinary despite the broken wrist dangling limply at his side. "I'm free!"
Suspicion crept into the silence following Lynder's cheer, thickening the air until Roy finally spoke. "That recovery seemed a little... fast."
Hanging loosely from Eryndra's grip, Lynder tilted his head in an amiable half-shrug, an easy smile returning to his battered face. "I regained control the moment the Orden boy spoke," he admitted lightly, almost conversationally. "But I saw an opportunity to… 'secure the bag', is that the correct Otherrealm slang? And as they say, a deal is a deal!"
Roy pressed his lips together, fighting back a reluctant smile. "Even with a dirty dealer?"
A wide, shameless grin spread across Lynder's battered face as he gave an eager nod of confirmation then abruptly froze as his eyes widened with horror. "Absolu... wait..." he began slowly, voice trembling theatrically. "What about... the child support..."
"As you said, old man, 'A deal is a deal'!" Roy taunted, arms crossed smugly over his chest. "And the deal was alimony only!"
"Nooooo!" Lynder wailed, his body suddenly rigid with melodramatic tension. "Wait... I feel the urge returning!" He jerked around, void mana sputtering harmlessly from his fingertips in a pathetic, unconvincing display. "Grrr... argh... chi...ld...suppoooort! It demands... more gold!"
Roy rolled his eyes so hard he nearly saw the inside of his skull. "Eryndra," he deadpanned, voice edged with dry seriousness. "Looks like he's too far gone. Quick, pull off his head."
"O-oh look!" Lynder shouted immediately, instantly dropping the act. He relaxed completely, his limbs dangling loosely. "I recovered again! A miracle!"
"That's what I thought," Eryndra said flatly, releasing her grip without warning.
Lynder plummeted thirty feet from the stone island, robes fluttering uselessly around him before hitting the stone floor below in a dusty heap. He sat up slowly, wincing as he tended to his fractured wrist, and shot Eryndra an indignant glare.
"Eryndra," Roy scolded lightly, giving her a pointed stare. "Could you maybe avoid dropping the elderly wizard on his head next time?"
"Lady Eryndra, you possess sufficient strength to shatter void magic with your face," Lynder commented, slowly knitting his bones back together with a healing rune. "An individual of your considerable power should serve as a world-saving hero, rather than acting as a guardian for one capable of initiating global catastrophe on his own."
Eryndra merely shrugged, brushing her hands clean. "No, thank you."
"Link severed," Rava gasped, collapsing as the golden chains finally dissolved.
"Andri," Roy said, pointing at the Guildmaster.
"On it," Andri said. She slapped the ground.
"Wait, I alrea—" Lynder began.
The earth swallowed him whole and the Womb Tomb sealed over his head with a decisive thud, leaving the rest of the party alone in the silence on the one remaining island of stone.