Rethan was already halfway there when he saw Dorian's and Lysand's auras suddenly thicken,not in the controlled way that meant they were layering a spell, but in a dangerous, desperate surge. They weren't shaping mana anymore.
They were draining it.
And in that instant, Rethan understood the fight had just slipped past the point where anyone could pretend they were in control.
"Don't burn all your mana!" he shouted, throat searing from heat and yelling,already knowing the warning came too late.
The spell detonated anyway.
It wasn't a single beam or a focused strike. It was a massive, intertwined manifestation,two different orders of magic forced into one trajectory. The air between the mages and the boss collapsed as if an invisible weight slammed down on it, then exploded into a wave of fire and compressed heat that scythed through the chamber. Floor stone tore free. Melted pillars shattered. Everything in its path was erased into a vacant, charred corridor.
The boss was still hunched, roaring from the earlier damage, but even like that it reacted on instinct. Those enormous arms snapped up in a crude, brutal guard right as the wave hit full-force...
...and the impact shook the entire chamber as if something had punched it from the inside.
The beast went down.
For half a heartbeat, there was silence. Not calm,just absence. The air rang like struck metal, pressure still pushing against Rethan's skull. Dust drifted down in glowing sheets, and his ears screamed with a dull whine that told him the blast had shaken more than stone. This was the moment fights usually ended. It didn't.
It crashed into the floor with a body-shattering weight, cracking the arena and kicking up a cloud of glowing dust. Its howl filled the space as a low vibration that pressed into the ribs and made teeth clench on reflex.
Dorian and Lysand didn't stay standing.
They dropped to one knee almost in sync. Their hands trembled. Their breaths came short and uneven. The auras around them nearly snuffed out,a clear sign they'd dumped practically everything they had.
Caelan stood a few meters away, stared at the fallen boss, and grinned wide. From his perspective it was simple: the beast was down, screaming, and victory had finally opened its mouth.
Rethan slowed,then stopped mid-step.
Something was wrong.
He wasn't looking at the boss on the ground.
He was looking at the floor beneath Dorian and Lysand.
Light bloomed under their feet. Cracks in the stone aligned into a pattern that was too familiar, sealing into a perfect geometric circle,exactly like the one that had swallowed the archers earlier. Only this time it formed almost instantly, as if the dungeon had stopped needing time to "prepare" that kind of attack.
"Move!" Rethan screamed,already seeing in their faces that they didn't have the strength for even one clean step.
The circle ignited.
Rethan lunged without thinking, muscles protesting, lungs nearly refusing to cooperate. He hit Dorian from the side, slamming shoulder into him, grabbed Lysand by the belt, and shoved both of them out of the zone,
,just as it exploded upward into a vertical pillar of fire so hot he felt it bite his back before he could even roll away.
He didn't look behind him. Still down on one knee, voice shredded, he barked at them:
"Get to the far end of the chamber,now,while you can still move!"
Only then did he look at the boss.
The beast was rising,slow, unsteady. Where its arms had been were only ragged, incandescent stumps, lava-stone shedding off in chunks. It struggled for balance, its motions heavy and poorly coordinated.
"Without arms, it can't throw the fire streams anymore," Rethan said out loud, more to himself than anyone else, brain running the math in real time. "That attack needs stable projection and direction,mana routing through the arm. That's gone."
His eyes flicked to the floor again,where the fire-circles had appeared before, how far they were from the core, and from the boss itself.
"It's got the circles left," he added. "And it's limited. They only appear within a dozen meters or so of its position,any farther and it can't reach."
Dorian spat blood as he forced himself upright.
"Don't order us around, ordinary man," he snarled. "We can still fight."
Rethan snapped his head toward him. There was no patience left in his eyes. No urge to explain.
"If you want to die, be my guest," he said coldly. "But don't tell me you can do anything when you've emptied your mana and you can barely stand."
For a heartbeat, both mages stared at him, furious, too proud to admit it,yet aware enough to know he was right. Their hands still shook. Their focus wavered. The world was spinning behind their eyes.
They huffed in unison, looked away, and began backing deeper into the chamber,slow, reluctant.
Rethan turned back toward the boss, knowing that from this moment on, everything depended on how he and Caelan finished it.
The boss moved faster than Rethan expected.
Even without arms, it could run,heavy, uneven, but driven by something sharper than animal fury. It wasn't blind rage.
It was irritation. The raw offense of something having its "property" taken.
And its direction was clear.
It charged straight at the retreating mages, like they were the only problem left to erase.
Rethan didn't try to body-block it or get under its feet,he wasn't suicidal. Instead, he triggered his ring again. A familiar, unpleasant tingling crawled through his hand,the sensation that always came when the mechanism was being forced too often, too fast.
Two daggers appeared again, identical to the last pair. Matte and Heavy, Made for one brutal use.
He threw them on the run, never pausing,because stopping at this speed, with this exhaustion, meant losing rhythm. The explosions on the beast's body were more nuisance than threat: shallow detonations that blew off outer armor, left scorched marks and fine cracks...
...but didn't slow it enough to feel safe.
The beast turned its head.
Not toward the mages.
Toward Rethan.
And at the exact same time, a fire circle flared under Rethan's boots.
Rethan sprang sideways, almost stumbling on the uneven floor. Heat licked his calf and the side of his thigh, leaving a painful burn that immediately began to throb.
He didn't slow.
He couldn't.
He knew one second of hesitation meant the next circle would catch him clean.
"Caelan!" he roared, twisting his head just enough to confirm the mage was still there. "Wait for the moment and aim for the knees,tendons,where the exoskeleton doesn't fully cover!"
He kept running, lungs on fire, leg screaming, throwing more daggers,each one arriving from the ring with a slight delay that hadn't been there before.
A warning. The artifact wasn't infinite either. Every pull cost more concentration. More energy. More time.
"Wait for the opening... I'll keep it busy!" he shouted again, less like a promise and more like a statement of fact.
The boss focused on him completely now, tracking his movement like a thorn lodged under its skin. Circles ignited beneath him in irregular bursts, forcing constant changes: arcing sprints, sudden pivots, broken tempo. Each maneuver added another scorch, another singe, another layer of fatigue that began to blur the edges of his precision.
Caelan stood off to the side, visibly irritated. His pride hated waiting.
But this time he didn't fire immediately.
He watched. Measured. Followed the beast's stride and timing. Counted something in his head that only a mage would care about.
Finally, he decided now was the moment.
The spell snapped out,fast and low, exactly where Rethan had indicated.
The boss didn't even glance at him.
Still locked on Rethan, it slammed a massive leg into the floor.
A lava-stone barrier surged up,thick, uneven, pulsing with heat,directly along the spell's line, swallowing most of the attack. The remaining energy spilled off to the sides, doing nothing that mattered.
The boss never stopped moving.
And then,almost in the same breath,
A fire circle bloomed beneath Caelan's feet.
Caelan looked down.
And for the first time, the confidence on his face cracked into something raw and unprocessed,pure fear,as he felt the familiar, rising surge of fiery mana building under him.