"Elara!" Jacob shouted.
The elf vanished under the sludge. The spell fizzled. She emerged a second later and coughed violently. She was covered in black slime. She tried to raise her staff, but the miasma was in her lungs. She retched and fell to her knees as her eyes rolled back.
"She is down!" Tamsin yelled. "The mage is down!"
"I can't hold it!" Grimmand yelled. The Behemoth slammed its head into the dwarf again. With his strength halved by the miasma, Grimmand could not brace. He was launched backward and splashed into a deep pool of muck.
The Boss turned its gaze to Carlos.
Carlos stood alone in the mud. His armor was holding, but his body was failing. The miasma swirled around him and choked off his air.
"Jacob!" Carlos wheezed without looking back. "Run! Get Tamsin and get out!"
Jacob stood on a dry patch of land near the entrance. He watched the disaster unfolding. The math was simple. Without Elara to clear the air, the tanks were debuffed to uselessness. Without the tanks, the Boss would trample them.
He looked at his Distortion Bag. He looked at the mithril tool in his belt.
Run?
No. That was not efficient.
Jacob dropped his bag. He did not run away. He ran toward the mud.
Jacob slid on his knees through the sludge. He did not aim for the beast. He aimed for the elf.
He stopped beside Elara. She was convulsing in the mud. Black slime coated her lips and blocked her airway. Her hands were clamped around her staff with a death grip. The crystal at the top flickered weakly with a dying yellow light. It was trying to release the spell, but her mind could not complete the pattern while she was suffocating.
She is the filter, Jacob thought frantically. The machine is jammed.
He did not have healing magic. He did not know the words to the prayer. But he understood flow. He understood plumbing. And right now, Elara was a clogged pipe full of potential energy that had nowhere to go.
"Sorry," Jacob whispered.
He jammed the tip of his mithril tool against the dark wood of the staff.
He did not try to learn the spell. He did not try to act as a mage. He acted as an engineer. He visualized the mana trapped inside the wood. It was a swirling, chaotic knot that was waiting for a verbal command that would never come.
Jacob closed his eyes. He pushed his dense, blue mana into the staff. He etched a new logic gate directly over the existing enchantment. He overrode the safety protocols. He bypassed the verbal trigger. He carved a single, brutal command into the mana field of the weapon.
[Logic: Open Valve]
[Output: Maximum]
Click.
The staff did not ask for permission. It did not wait for the chant. It dumped its entire mana reserve in a single microsecond.
WOOM.
There was no sound of thunder. There was only light.
A sphere of blinding, white-hot radiance exploded from the crystal. It was not the gentle cleansing light of a controlled spell. It was a flashbang. It expanded outward in a shockwave of pure holiness.
The black miasma did not just dissipate. It was incinerated.
The fog hissed and vanished as the light scoured the air clean. The wave of mud that had buried Elara was blasted back by the sheer pressure of the mana discharge.
"GAAH!"
The Swamp Behemoth screamed. It was a sound of pure agony. The creature was accustomed to the dark, murky swamp. The sudden, violent flash of solar energy seared its sensitive eyes. It thrashed blindly and stumbled sideways into a tree.
Carlos fell to his knees as the miasma vanished. He gasped, sucking in clean, sweet air. The debuff icon in his vision shattered.
[Status Effect Removed: Necrotic Rot]
Strength flooded back into his limbs. The leaden weight in his chest vanished.
"Grimmand!" Carlos roared. He did not waste time questioning the miracle. He used it. "Legs!"
Grimmand pulled himself out of the muck. He spat a mouthful of black slime and grinned. His teeth looked white and feral against the filth.
"I am going to turn this lizard into luggage!"
The dwarf charged. He did not bother with defense. The beast was blind and flailing. Grimmand activated Mithril Weave to harden his skin and slid under the creature's belly.
He swung his axe upward with every ounce of his restored strength.
SCHLICK.
The blade bit deep into the softer scales of the underbelly. Black blood sprayed over the dwarf, but he kept chopping. He hacked at the tendons of the rear legs like he was felling a tree.
The Behemoth roared and tried to stomp, but its rear right leg collapsed. The tendon was severed.
"Heads up!" Tamsin yelled.
The rogue dropped from the branches of a dead tree above them. He landed squarely on the creature's back. He scrambled up the spine to avoid the thrashing tail and reached the base of the skull.
"This is for the smell!" Tamsin shouted.
He drove his daggers into the gap between the head plate and the neck. He activated Critical Eye. He found the spinal cord. He pushed the blades in till the hilt and twisted.
The Behemoth stiffened. It let out one last, gurgling breath. Then it slammed into the mud with a splash that sent a wave across the entire arena.
The silence that followed was heavy.
Carlos leaned against his sword. He wiped slime from his visor. He looked over to the dry patch of land where Elara was coughing up the last of the black bile.
Jacob was sitting next to her. He held her staff. The wood was smoking slightly, and the crystal at the tip was cracked down the middle.
"You," Carlos breathed. He walked over, his metal boots heavy in the mud. "What did you do?"
Jacob looked up. He looked terrified. He held out the smoking staff.
"I broke it," Jacob said fast. "I am sorry. I just . . . I tried to force the light out. I think I burned out the core."
Elara wiped her mouth with a trembling hand. She looked at the cracked crystal. Then she looked at the dead boss. Then she looked at the boy, who looked like he expected a scolding.
She started to laugh. It was a wet, raspy sound, but it was genuine.
"You broke my staff," she wheezed. "And you saved our lives. Kid, that was a twenty-gold crystal. And I would have paid a thousand for it to go off when it did."
She reached out and patted his head, leaving a smear of mud in his hair.
"Good job," she whispered.
Combat Insight Triggered
Analysis: External mana forced through a passive conduit.
Improvisation level: Extreme.
Result: Boss neutralized. Party survival confirmed.
Note: Asset demonstrates ability to override magical safety protocols. Danger level upgraded.
Carlos dismissed the notification. He knelt down in the mud next to Jacob. He didn't check the boy for injuries. He checked the boy's eyes.
"You ran into the danger," Carlos said quietly. "I told you to run away."
"That would have been inefficient," Jacob said, his voice small. "If you died, I would die anyway. I just . . . opened the valve."
Carlos stared at him for a long moment. Then he sighed and rested his forehead against his gauntlet.
"Opened the valve," Carlos muttered. "Right . . . Remind me never to let you fix my plumbing."
He stood up and offered a hand to Elara.
"Up," Carlos ordered gently. "Let's loot this thing and get out of the mud. I think we are done for the day."
Tamsin waved from atop the carcass. He was holding something that glowed with a sickly, powerful green light.
"Uh, guys?" Tamsin called out. "You might want to see this drop. I don't think this is on the standard loot table."