My eyes snapped open.
Mother's hands were on my face, her voice echoing softly in my ears,"Ye-Jun. Wake up. You're not there anymore. Come back."
I stood up.
The centaur had done something. Something cruel. Pulled our regrets out and made us live them.
My four arms trembled with rage as I stood. I lunged myself in the air, daggers I'd formed from my old wooden sword. As I was about to strike them with it.
I felt heat. A radiant glow coming from centaur. I shot my webs and changed my directions, far from the centaur.
"What the hell…" I muttered.
The Centaur was changing.
Molten metal dripped off its frame like boiling sweat. Its black armor curled away in slagged strips, exposing skin—if you could call it that—that looked like lava given muscle.
"Webs won't work on that..." I whispered, watching one strand of mine melt mid-air.
"Yeah, no shit, genius," said Boom Boom, the ego shotgun slung in Hyun-tae's hands.
"Then keep your distance!" Mother barked, voice strained. "I'll cast slowness again—"
"He's charging!" Hyun-tae shouted.
The centaur screeched, a molten roar that felt like it flayed our eardrums. He reared up and pounded toward Hyun-tae like a meteor.
"Boom Boom!" Hyun-tae called.
"I GOT THIS, TAE-BOY!" the shotgun bellowed with a manic cackle. "Let's send this barbecue back to hell!"
Hyun-tae cocked the shotgun. "Don't need to tell me twice."
Shells boomed into the air. The buckshot struck his forelegs—cracks burst like shattering glass along his knee joints. One leg gave out. He stumbled.
The rounds hit. Hard.
It screeched in fury, stumbling.
"NOW!" I shouted.
I swung my tail.
Four daggers transformed back to a wooden sword, gleamed in my tail. I launched a barrage of webs—not at the centaur directly, but at the broken leg, striking it deep.
Mother didn't waste the opening. Her scythe blazed in purple curse-light. "Senseless!" she screamed, followed by, "Slowness!" And then—
"False Healing!" Her hand glowed and pulsed across Hyun-tae and me like a flash of warmth before a storm.
The centaur screamed in confusion. Its movements dulled.
Then he started shaking. Cracks along his body deepened. Lava sprayed from his shoulder joints. His form... it was unstable now. Like he was about to die.
And that's when things got worse.
A sudden pillar of molten rock burst from the ground behind him—no, not a trap.
A summon.
The centaur bellowed again and cloned a smaller, feral centaur made entirely of liquid fire.
"Oh, come on—!" I barely leapt back as it pounced on me.
Its hooves skidded across the stone as it charged. It moved erratically, limbs bending wrong, like it wasn't stable. But it was fast.
"New plan!" I shouted. "Hyun-tae, cover fire!"
"Boom Boom, let's roast the mini-demon!"
"YEEEHAA! DOUBLE BARREL, DOUBLE FUN!*
" BOOM—BOOM! One shot missed, the second hit the clone's spine, splashing fire outward. But it kept moving.
It was about to slash my flank, Mother came forward.
She spun, scythe glowing, and slashed in an arc so clean it cleaved the clone in half. It dissolved into sparks.
We looked up.
The real centaur was already mid-leap, coming down at us.
Too late to dodge.
So I charged toward it instead.
I climbed up his front leg like a blur, daggers scraping across molten skin. I screamed as the heat burned my arms—but I held on, stabbing each limb into his muscle.
He reared again, throwing me off.
I landed in a roll.
"NOW!" I shouted.
"Boom Boom, give me the goods!"
"Eat hot steel, lava-face!" BOOM BOOM bellowed. Hyun-tae fired again—two shells, both connecting to the chest.
The centaur crashed down—legs fractured, rearing in agony.
"Jun!"
Mother's voice was the last sound before her body blurred like a ghost through the heatwaves. Her scythe gleamed in mid-air like the moon.
She carved the blade into the centaur's neck—clean, decisive, final.
The monster paused.
Then exploded.
Lava and flame burst in a brilliant, hellish bloom.
I acted without thinking—my tail fired a web at Mother, yanking her sideways. Another to Hyun-tae, who stumbled just as the fire erupted.
I threw myself over them, bark-skin enveloping us in a layered dome of protective wood.
BOOM.
Silence followed.
My chest heaved. All of us—scorched, exhausted—stared at the smoldering crater.
Boom Boom coughed. "So... is he dead now? Or do I need to get the flamethrower too?*"
I let out a breath, collapsing backward.
"Yeah," I murmured, gripping the dirt. "He's dead."
Mother fell to one knee, scythe dissolving. "Not bad, Jun."
Hyun-tae gave me a thumbs-up, then winced. "Remind me never to fight a living volcano again."
We sat in the silence of steam and ash.
For now, we had won.