The dust settled, and the ringing in the air slowly faded. Reo stood over the fallen skin-walker, gingerly pressing his fingers against the side of his bruised jaw, and grinned through a grimace.
"Ouch," he muttered, wincing as the sting registered fully. The creature had definitely delivered one hell of a parting gift to his cheek, and it hurt like absolute hell.
"What about the others?" Reo asked, glancing around the ruined room.
"They're fine," Luke replied smoothly, sparing a quick glance at his palm-rune where the cluster of green dots and Azula's signal remained steady and intact. "Let's get going. And take the creature's body with us. We don't want any stray patrols figuring out that outsiders have been here."
With the threat neutralized, Luke and Reo hauled the heavy, lifeless carcass down the stairs and out into the desolate street.
Waiting for them outside, Azula was calmly wiping a streak of dark ichor off her blade with a cloth. It was immediately clear her sector had fared even better; their skin-walker hadn't been granted the dignity of leaving behind an intact corpse. A few paces away, Maya, Lyra, and Silvia were chatting casually by the cracked pavement. At a mental nudge from Luke, Ingis obediently shifted forms, stepping forward to haul the second skin-walker's heavy body with effortless, unnatural strength.
Luke dropped the first corpse onto the pavement, rolling it over so its back faced the sky for a quick inspection.
"Looks like this skin-walker is of a higher breed than the ones we encountered back at the gate," Luke noted, his fingers tracing the smooth, unblemished skin of its neck. "Noticeable absence of the vulnerable circulation vein the first one had. This breed doesn't have an obvious anatomical weak point."
He stood up, brushing his hands off. The tactical conclusion was simple: when they inevitably encountered another breed like this, standard precision strikes wouldn't cut it. They would have to rely on overwhelming brute force, coordinated traps, or sheer, ruthless cunning to break them down.
"Ingis," Luke gestured briefly.
The towering knight stepped forward, bringing her colossal greatsword down in a clean, sweeping arc. A torrent of roaring, superheated flames erupted from the blade, instantly consuming both corpses until nothing was left but a pile of sterile ash.
### The Corrupted Bloom
Without wasting another moment, the strike team pressed onward, marching through the labyrinthine, silent streets for several grueling hours without a single break.
Eventually, the decaying residential blocks parted, opening up into a sprawling, desolate expanse that had once been a magnificent garden.
It was a haunting sight. Now utterly destroyed and choked by time, it was the first patch of actual vegetation they had stumbled upon since entering the city—and the moment Luke laid eyes on it, a deep part of him wished he never had.
The stone interlocks and paved pathways were completely overrun by thick, thorny vines and aggressive, creeping mosses. At the dead center of the garden stood a dried-up fountain, out of which towered a giant, spiraling mass of thick, woody vines. Crowded menacingly at the very top like a horrific floral head was a gargantuan, razor-toothed Venus flytrap.
The team initially kept their distance, paying the structure no heed as they walked past it. The mass of foliage didn't stir, leading them to assume it was entirely dormant—who knew how long things down here could survive without sunlight anyway?
That assumption shattered the second a faint, dry snap of a twig echoed across the courtyard.
"Guys!" Lyra yelled.
*SNAP.*
In a fraction of a second, dozens of thick, thorn-laden vines shot out from the central mass like organic whips, lashing straight toward them with blinding speed.
*How utterly ironic, fighting a vine monster when I'm a vine-wielder myself,* Silvia thought grimly, twisting her body to narrowly dodge a spiked lash that gouged the stone where she had stood a heartbeat before.
Maya reacted instantly, catching an incoming vine with her bare hands and flooding it with a violent, cracking surge of golden electricity that scorched the wood black.
Azula vanished into a flicker of shadow, reappearing to sever a trio of attacking tendrils, while Ingis swung her greatsword in a wide, devastating arc, raining lethal cleaves down upon the mass.
Luke calmly side-stepped a lunging vine, his eyes locked onto the central core. "Reo! With me!"
"On it!"
Reo vanished into thin air, reappearing a second later directly beside the base of the fountain. With a flash of his daggers, he left a deep, devastating gnash across the writhing mass of vines.
Drawing upon his momentum, Luke leaped high into the air, coming face-to-face with the snapping, tooth-lined maw at the top. He drove his steel sword straight into the center of the creature's floral head and instantly triggered a burst of fire.
The plant shrieked, thrashing wildly to shake him off, but Luke held fast, his boots locked onto the spiraling stem.
"Fire Heart!" Luke commanded.
The powerful bond skill he shared with Ingis flared to life in his chest. In an instant, his entire body erupted into brilliant, roaring flames, fusing seamlessly with the blazing sword. The fire didn't just burn—it spread with a terrifying, predatory intelligence of its own, racing down the wooden tendrils and devouring the massive vine-monster whole from the inside out.
*THUD.*
With a deafening crash, the burning, giant mass collapsed backward, hitting the stone courtyard and shattering into smoking cinders.
Luke pulled his sword free, landing lightly on his feet as he deactivated *Fire Heart*. He knelt down, prying a glowing, unblemished core out of the charred remains.
He held it up to the dim light. "It isn't corrupted," he murmured, his brow furrowing deeply.
Every single beast, mimic, and entity they had encountered down here so far completely lacked the telltale dark taint of true corruption. Which meant one terrifying thing: *they retained their cognitive faculties. They could reason, strategize, and think.*
If that was the case, it meant the reason why they hadn't been caught off guard or overwhelmed by skin-walkers or guardians yet was terrifying. The skin walkers weren't hiding because they hadn't detected the intruders.
They were waiting.
*Waiting for what?* Luke thought, a cold shiver running down his spine.
He looked up. Across the silent, sprawling expanse of the dead city, the jagged, towering silhouette of the distant castle suddenly felt less like a destination—and much more like a trap.