Gwen could smell the ultraviolence the moment she teleported into the chamber. Foremost was the stink of Undeath, after which proceeded the unmistakable stench of ruptured bowels spilling from a torn black robe.

"Gogo?” She looked around for her Wyvern.

“He’s gone on ahead.” Schalk had taken up a position next to one of the entrances, overlooking the results of his Diviner's Scrying. “Lord Golos was muttering something about desecrators.”

Feeling her scalp crawl, Gwen reactivated her Gogo-VR. Presently, her twin vision showed the Wyvern walking over a mangled mess of coarsely ground meat. All about the princeling extended a Brutalist, Soviet-era habitat-block the size of a tennis court, in the midst of which she could see the levitation lifts.

“Did you run into any trouble?” she asked suspiciously.

The Wyvern grunted, wiping his feet on an unsoiled robe.

Gwen felt her throat constrict. There was something abstract in gazing at Golos' victims through borrowed eyes. The carnage was so distant— like she was the operator of some first-person murder game.

"Stay there, I'll be with you soon." Gwen cut the link.

A few more flashes of Conjuration later, the rest of the contestants filled the Teleportation Chamber.

"Good work." Schalk stood beside the portal’s mechanisms with an impressive-looking inscription-tool. “I will now disable the Circle. No one will be able to use it until they unravel the Arcane Lock. A feat which, though I don’t profess to be the premier Enchanter in Pretoria, should be time-consuming, to say the least.”

"And after that?" Yue glanced at the crumpled heaps by the wall, disappointed that Golos had hogged the action.

“To CCs and glory.” Lencho’s fingers sparked with electricity. Ever since Gwen had "lost" to his captain, the prideful Evoker had felt as though he was an oft-forgotten sidekick.

“Fret not, Lencho. I’ve got a good feeling about this,” Izette, Pretoria’s Diviner, painted a rosy picture for her teammate.

Gwen's eyes fell to Pretoria's Void Mage. Presently, Jean-Paul was whispering to his Familiar.

“Cali! Ariel!” she called her own to join the fray. She entertained summoning her Morden's Hounds but concluded that vertical levitation shafts made poor battlegrounds for magical dogs.

“EE EE!”
“Shaa shaa!”
The great white leech slithered from Jean-Paul to rub up against Caliban. Whatever the relationship their owners might have, the two Void Beasts had taken to one another like flesh-eating peas in an eldritch pod.

"Shaa!" Carapaces popped, tentacles writhed; unwitting observers stepped away. Ariel wanted to join, but Gwen held her Kirin back, producing a fistful of HDMs to placate its excitement.

Forming into their respective lines, the squads marched outside the teleportation chamber with their Abjurers leading the way. Discerningly, in place of guards and patrols, they discovered lightning-scorched walls and half-cooked bodies, all of which had met with sudden and fatal violence.

“How did you manage to tame a Thunder Wyvern?” Schalk enquired of Gwen, his expression almost worshipful. “What a magnificent Ally.”

“Lucky, I guess,” Gwen answered evasively. “I ran into Gogo on a mountain. We argued, my Uncle ploughed his sister, and then we made up.”

"... I would love to meet this Uncle." Schalk glanced at the armoured sorceress. "Truly, you're the most interesting person I've ever met."

"You're a pretty decent bloke yourself." Gwen gave the man her best smile, catching Jean-Paul looking meekly downwards.

"You two should get a room up in L-III, ” Yue interjected between them. “Schalk, what's the fastest way up to the foyer? I bet the PLA’s up to their necks about now.”

Turning a corner, the parties arrived at the Lower Ground's access chamber. In its present state, the severe room appeared as though a meteor had crash-landed in its midst, leaving no survivors.

Gwen nodded at her Wyvern as he scratched a crotch itch, stannding beside the lifts.

Golos nodded back.

Schalk inspected the Glyph inscriptions on the platforms' control plate.

_Whomp!_
Rongo thumped the Glyph. To no one's surprise, nothing triggered. "Bloody hell, it's shut."

“Anyone good with metal?” Schalk looked around.

"Lulu?" Gwen nominated her Sword Mage.

Lulan stepped up. The Sword Mage's fingers blurred, silently performing an invocation for Shape Metal. On cue, the stainless steel began to warp. A few inches later, her spell fizzled.

Lulan's face turned a deep scarlet.

“I meant cutting through it...” Schalk glanced at the Sword Mage, amused by her dismay. “Can for another try?”

“Sorry, Lulu, my mistake,” Gwen patted Lulan on the head. “Gogo, think you can best this feeble, human-made door?”

Golos snorted, positioning himself in front of the double-panel. With a sound of metal-on-metal, he dug his fingers into the pane, levering the portion where Lulan’s magic had warped the seamless metal.

“GRRAARRRRGH!” Golos howled, his body crackling with power. Visibly, a mountain of muscles bunched across his back, coming alive with Draconic essence.

_CRUNK—PANG!_

Something inside the panels snapped. Inch by inch, the door parted, pulling apart as the structural integrity of the gears and pistons failed.

“HA!” Golos kicked, sending the left-most panel flying off its sliding rail. With a dissonant clang, the pane launched into the interior of the levitation shaft. The resulting noise was no less than a gong announcing the Mages' arrival.

"No matter," Schalk stated with a straight face. "I am sure they're expecting us. Master Golos, may I humbly request that you also open ours?"

“Here's is where we part,” Gwen struck out a hand. “Schalk, Jean-Paul, everyone, good luck.”

The others joined in, exchanging handshakes.

“Come back alive.” Jean-Paul’s palm grew slimy the moment Gwen clasped his fingers. “Totsiens…”

“Take care, JP."

“Shaa! Shaa!” Caliban nudged Umzokwe.

The leech wiggled its segmented tail.

With final formalities performed, Pretoria formed into their marching order, with Schalk and Umzokwe leading, followed by Jean-Paul, Izette, Helia, and finally Lencho. With great solemnity, Fudan and Auckland watched as the basement shaft swallowed the Afrikaners.

“Shall we?” Yue stepped into the shaft, seamlessly transitioning from land to air. One by one, her teammates joined her.

“Take care and don’t be rash,” Gwen warned her friend. “It’s just a competition.”

“No worries, I’ll protect her.” Whetu's eyes encompassed the petite Fire Mage protectively, reminding Gwen of Jonas, Alesia's Cleric.

“Ha!” Yue grinned, her affable enthusiasm melting Gwen’s heart. “Tell ya what, let me give you a bit of advice in turn.”

Gwen perked up. It wasn’t every day that the mighty Yue dispensed wisdom.

“DO NOT pussy-foot around.” Yue's amber eyes grew severe, wiping the smirk from Gwen's sultry lips. “Fuck everything up. NoMs, Monsters, Necromancers, EVERYTHING— if not, you’ll be the one getting rat-fucked.”

“Bless!”

“Aid!”
“Mage Armour!”
“Protection from Elements!”
“True Strike!”
“Mind Link”
“Guardian of Faith!”

The Fudan five hovered in the dimly lit vertical tunnel. After Yue's team chose the middle route, they had opted for the rightmost shaft. Thankfully, unlike the claustrophobic corridors, the transmuted concrete was widened to accommodate cargo, measuring some six meters in diameter.

"Still warded." Lulan retracted a hand.

"Of course it is." Richard brushed a finger across the seamless surface. "Levitation shafts are central components of any base. In a Tower, there'd be mana dampeners lining the walls as well."

“How’s it looking up there?” Gwen inquired of her Diviner.

“Your friend has just broken into the ground floor,” Mayuree sucked in a breath of stale air. “There are A LOT of enemies.”

"And above us?"

“I am not sure,” Mayuree knitted her brows. “There are mana signatures all over, but I can't use Clairvoyance through warded concrete. I am not seeing much with Arcane Eye either.”

“Don't worry about it then,” Gwen acknowledged the limitations of mid-tier Divination. “Stick to our plan. We should proceed to L-III, then Purge downward from there. Is the tunnel clear?”

"I think so."

Richard gazed into the uncertain darkness. “Stay away from the walls. You never know.”

“Shaa!” Caliban concurred. Its spider legs skittering about the shaft’s surface, somehow managing to stick to the smooth concrete. Beside it, an invisible Ariel flittered through the air in its Kirin form.

“Good idea,” Fudan’s Captain took her Abjurer’s advice. “We’ll lead with Familiars. I’ll bring up the rear. Gogo, can you take the lead?”

Golos yawned. As a creature of Air and Lightning, levitation proved no obstacle.

"I am glad we see eye-to-eye. Alright, everyone, let's ascend."

With concurrent thrums, Fudan switched their Shen-teī armour to combat mode, offering their mana pool to the armour's batteries. This way, the suit not only provided better protection but took on the peculiar Elemental affinities of their wearers.

A dozen meters from their entryway, Fudan passed the ground floor. From behind the double doors, the rollicking sound of chaotic combat reverberated, shaking the tunnel and displacing the dust.

"I hope Yue and Whetu are doing alright," Gwen remarked as they passed the sealed doors. Compared to the rumbling entrance, L-I proved the quieter counterpart, followed by a silent L-II. If anything, seven-foot cement slabs were very good at sealing sound.

Near L-III, some fifty meters from the lower ground, Ariel reported that it had run up against the base of the levitation platform.

“Gogo,” Gwen called upon to her Wyvern again, appreciative of the way her brute served as a humanoid bulldozer. “Can you move the platform, please?”

Golos sighed, perhaps thinking that the sooner the Quest was done, the sooner he got back to his lair.

Ten meters from their target, the Wyvern paused.

“What’s wrong?” Gwen’s eyes scanned the sterile vicinity of their concrete tube. “Gogo?”

Her Wyvern dipped in the air, his mane suddenly bristling like the back of an agitated hog. Above it, the base of the levitation platform came alive with living shadows.

“Calamity!" Golos growled, his voice filling the levitation tube like a thunderclap. “It's an ambush!”

"That's an imperial fuck-load of Undead."

Yue pronounced her unadulterated opinion of the churning battle cascading from the alcove from which they had emerged. On every surface, Skeletons, Ghouls, Zombies and Ghasts of all sorts hung from wall to wall, floor to ceiling. There was Undead everywhere she looked: the service counters, the waiting rooms, the armoury, the barracks— no space was left unsullied.

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

In front of the PLA's Golem-lead beachhead, the Undead formed an undulating tide of glistening, roving, jostling bodies moving as one, surging so that they boiled and tumbled. And the smell! The Mages gagged. The foetid air was solid with the scent of reposed flesh.

Opposite the Mages, leading the invasion were the two Dusty-266s, already up to their waists in Zombies. With wide swings, they swatted away the cadavers with their buzzing sonic claws, their roaring, red-hot mana engines shaking the dust from the walls. Behind and beside the War Golems were the PLA Mage Flights, slinging spells and pushing forward with every element they could muster, cleaving the flanks with quicksilver flashes.

A Blade Barrier! Yue cooed with admiration.

Colonel Qin Qíao of 1st Force-Recon led the charge, maintaining the spell-made industrial harvester so that it reduced anything within range into mince-meat.

"Manaaki!" Opi activated her team's suite of Ta Moko enhancements, warding her companions against the dead. The group-wide buff was necessitated by the Negatively-aligned miasma, for the bone-chilling aura sapped the vigour from the living, polluting their minds with despair.

"Let's clear the casters first..." Yue gave her command. Bolstered by the Maori's craft, she suppressed her battle lust, using her fingers to mark the team's victims, one by one. "... before they realise we're the real threat."

Behind the solid wall of grasping corpses pushing back the PLA, a dozen human acolytes commanded the Undead. In waves, the Necromancers wove spells of empowerment, throwing up profane sorceries to wear down the PLA's spell-bound barriers. Such was the ebb and flow of all battles against the Undead, for the Mages would grow exhausted eventually, culminating in a retreat. After that, the Necromancers could choose pursuit, or if the victory was pyrrhic, they could re-raise their minions.

“I’ll keep the horde pinned with Rongo,” Timoti's conduits bloated with magma. “Whetu, stay with Yue and hunt the Necromancers.”

“Sweet-ass, bro,” Whetu was confident in his Pounamu Mage Armour. “Ready when you are, Cuz.”

Rongo needed no advice to begin his most powerful Evocation. As a Water Mage, his spells lacked in damage, but more than made up in flexibility. With one hand, the Evoker inscribed a Ta Moko-like mandala in the air, concurrently lighting up the tattoos enveloping his body. On his torso, the Whale Shark came alive as conduits overflowed with supercharged mana. With a mighty cry, the Water Mage called upon his Spirit. “He-Mango-Tohorā, come forth!”

Abruptly, the Mandala expanded to ten times its size, covering the space of a dozen meters. Behind Rongo, a brief impression of a Whale Shark manifested, filling up half the chamber.

“Parawhenua!” The beloved son of the sea unleashed the fury of his patron.

Before the Undead onslaught could build enough momentum, a streaming jet of whitewater erupted, tossing the Skeletons and Ghouls like children's toys. An unstoppable torrent, the jet blast travelled forward unimpeded for a dozen meters before petering out, transforming the region around Auckland's team into a miniature lake, dashing apart the Undead formation.

“Behind us! Infiltrators!” The Acolytes realised too late a new threat had struck. The howling sorcerer, Yue concluded, must be her first target, for he looked the oldest, and his robes were richly embroidered.

“Mi-Jeong! Stop them!” her future victim commanded a junior.

From the rotting throng, a Giant Skeleton and a three-meter Abomination broke free, wading through the water toward Auckland.

“Tuatara!” Timoti sensed that the time was ripe to summon this three-headed Lava Lizard, a spirit unique to his home region. “Magma Burst!”

From the shallows came exploding spikes of magma-drenched stone, instantly solidifying as they passed through the seawater. Two magma-spikes caught the skeleton, entangling its bones in hardening obsidian. Against the Abomination, the super-heated volcanic ejecta straight-away exploded, flaying the flesh from its stitched frame and spilling its worm-like innards.

But a Giant Skeleton wasn't so easily checked. With one hand, the monstrous Undead sling-shotted a club comprised of sharpened bone at Rongo.

_Crash!_

A timely shield from Whetu deflected the crushing blow.

Yue meanwhile, took advantage of the distraction to fly past Timoti and Rongo, stopping just within spell-range of the Necromancers pointing at her and shouting.

“Pounamu Protects!” Whetu preemptively materialised a honey-comb latticed barrier capable of withstanding all forms of exotic punishment. “DAMPENING FIELD!”

With Auckland’s level of Spellcraft, practical counter-spells were nigh-impossible. As such, Whetu opted for a double-edged solution— reducing their and their enemy’s elemental efficacy so that he could tank what remained. Of course, outside the spell's range, Yue's power remained unabated.

“Incoming!” Whetu felt his Astral Soul quake from the avalanche of Negatively-aligned assault consuming the abjuring vigour stowed in his Pounamu. Like spoiled oil, a fusillade of necrotic energies slid from Yue, cascading in sheets as Whetu renewed the serpent stone.

The Abjurer grunted, gleaming sweat flinging from his steaming back to enliven the throbbing Ta Moko. Warding against Necromancy was a hard slog. Without Faith Magic, there was no way to entirely prevent the sorcery from eating away at Yue’s life force.

Thankfully, the serpent stone fort needn't be held for long. A dozen rapid incantations later, it was Yue's turn.

“INVOCATION OF FIRE!” The pint-size Evoker burst into cobalt flames, lighting half the lobby as she assumed the likeness of a regal Ifrit. Tân-Cysgodol, her Nightmare, could just be seen flittering in and out of her ever-expanding cloak of fire.

“Tandy!" Yue's voice rang as a thunderclap. "Fuck’em up! CHAINED CONFLAGRATION!”

A brilliant blossom of near-invisible fire combusted near the senior acolyte, melting through the feeble shield put up by the self-taught Mage. As the air ignited, transforming into white-hot plasma, it was accompanied by more spontaneous fireballs, engulfing the Acolytes wholesale.

All around Auckland, the world burned.

One after another, chained explosions engendered. Though Alesia's apprentice left much to be desired in the realm of control, the power of Yue’s blast accommodated any and all enemies within its range of effect.

_—BANG!_
 _—BANG!_
 _—BANG!_

A third and fourth explosion rocked the ground floor, concordant shock-waves caught one another as bodies turned to sizzling mince.

After a fifth and final discharge, Yue stabbed herself with a mana-injector, grunting as the infused plasma reinvigorated her mana pool. Tân-Cysgodol faded from sight. Her cloak of flames, so blinding only a moment ago, slid from her shoulders, revealing a huffing sorceress wreathed with writhing Ta Moko.

Yue surveyed the scope of her work.

A dozen craters studded the foyer where the acolytes had stood their ground. The junior Necromancers were utterly stunned by the attack from behind. As per tradition, senior casters always stood near the back, meaning the best of them were now painting the walls, their blasted brains mingling with their beloved Ghouls.

The battle tide was turning. The Acolytes faltered.

“Good work!” Whetu shouted. “Let’s regroup!”

Without the Necromancers' battlefield control, Rongo’s one-man tsunami came rushing in, hissing as the seawater cooled the scorched stone.

“Fuck, I blew my load too soon.“ Yue eyed the remaining Necromancers and the other nine-tenths allotment of Undead still swarming over every surface. Taking down five acolytes was good, but she could have done better. “Should have waited for the cunts to clump— WHOA!“

“SHIELD!” Whetu raised a honey-comb barrier just in time to catch a Bone Lance, stopping the projectile a few inches from Yue’s bosoms. The Evoker shirked back, taking a few splinters across her warded dermis, leaving white scars where the necrotic energy caressed her skin.

The party looked to the ceiling.

A congealing pool of blood had silently engendered on the roof, beneath which now suspended an upside-down Necromancer.

The cruel face that regarded Auckland was graced by a head of ash-blonde hair, looking far younger than its proclaimed sixty-seven years. Standing just over six-feet, the man wore a stark white, skeletal armour resembling an exoskeleton.

Anton Yermolov! A name came to Auckland's collective mind.

"FOUR-HUNDRED-CCs!" Yue shouted. "Come here, ya bastard!"

“MAELSTROM!” Rongo howled, persisting in his finisher despite the immediate dangers facing Yue and Whetu. Together with the swirling sea draining into the Elemental Plane of Water, he could dispose of several hundred lesser Undead. Once ejected into the Plane itself, the corpses would become fish-feed for the numberless denizens of the Fathomless Sea.

“Quake!” Timoti simultaneously directed his seismic assault at the walls and the ceiling, peeling the Undead hanging there from every surface to aid in Rongo's efforts. Though the wards prevented the manifestation of his unique Para-Element, the jolting harvest of tumbling Undead was well worth the mana.

“TANDY! INVESTITURE OF FLAME” Yue burned the mana that had only a second ago entered her conduits. Excessive use of Investiture caused self-harm— but the Necromancer left her little choice.

“Arrogant Tower brats!” came a mocking snarl from their enemy. “Five little mice sneaking into our base? You’ll make excellent materials! Foetid Deluge!”

Acidic droplets of dark and eldritch blood began to fall from the ceiling. Where it landed on the Undead, it empowered them. Against the living, it sapped them of life.

At once, Auckland’s Abjurer conjured semi-transparent Pounamum shields for his companions.

“Yue!” Whetu sensed a yet more powerful surge of Negative Mana welling up inside the Necromancer’s body. With a word, he buttressed her wards. “Don’t fight him head-on, bro!”

“Protection from Evil!” Opi reached the Abjurer's side, simultaneously reinforcing a sacred Ta Moko to bolster Whetu's fortitude. “Go! Take a drain for her if you have to, we need her awake and alive!”

Whetu needed no coaxing. Like a human battering ram, he pushed through the pelting rain of corrosive serum, positioning himself above the Evoker.

“I'll fuck him up proper, don't you worry.” Yue winced when an earlier splatter bypassed her fire to corrode her skin, forming an instant, necrotic lesion. The agony was exquisite, but the pain helped to focus her mind as she called upon the ill-tempered Tandy. “Give me a minute!”

But a minute was an eternity when squaring off against a Magus, and a Necromancer at that.

“Fools!” Anton rebuked the young Mages and their arrogance. “Sanguine Mantle! Mass Terror!”

A wave of nausea washed over the Kiwis, reaching even the PLA Mages below. As much as the Chinese soldiers wanted to reach the Necromancer raining blood from a safe distance above, splitting from their well-practised battle-bulwark would make them fodder for the wave of Undead breaking upon their formation. Even Colonel Qíao, who had been splitting the Undead sea, knew the young Mages had to face the profane caster alone.

As a ruby-red bird of prey, the Necromancer approached.

“You’ll make an excellent Revenant, my girl.” The man’s face was barely visible behind his mask of bone. “And your Nightmare will nourish my Bone Spirit!”

For once, Yue had no retorts. Other than tracking her target’s trajectory, the Fire Mage paid the man no heed. With a singular focus, she exercised her Signature invocation, citing every Glyph and guiding every mote of mana into their proper place. Alesia's gift of Shadow Flare was her favourite spell outside Fireball. It was an incantation exchanged from the Deep Dwarves, whose control of Elemental Fire far exceeded mortal ken. The only drawback was that without Tân-Cysgodol, the unique flame could not be manifested.

Above her tiny body, Whetu’s expanding barrier of Pounamu grew threadbare. Behind that, a furious Anton approached, wreathed in blood and bone.

Gwen had never seen a Wraith before, but she knew a bloody Dementor when she saw one. And just like in the movies, the Wraiths' appearance was as Rowling had advertised.

"Holy shit..." she announced her dismay.

In a flash, a dozen or so cosplaying Nazgûls had them instantly surrounded. Unbidden, the temperature in the levitation tube fell by a dozen degrees, turning the Mages' breaths to mist.

“WEEEEEAAARRRGH—“
“WEEEEARRRGH—“

Goosebumps covered length of Gwen's limbs.

The keening of a Wraith was said to stifle a victim’s soul, paralysing even the stoutest and most fortified Mage. The bestiary proved accurate, for even with Eunae’s Bless and Aid, Fudan’s Mages seized, held prisoner by a primal terror.

“Gogo!” Gwen shook off the wailing, shocked but not stunned. “Defend us!”

“ROOAAARRRR!” Golos’s answer emerged in the form of white-hot lightning. As his Dragon breath flashed the tunnel, it caught not only the Wraiths but struck the bottom of the Levitation platform.

_CRACK—BANG!_ Came the sound of fulminating thunder, amplified by the enclosed space. Living lightning crawled along the walls, climbing down the exploding granite as bits and pieces flaked from around the team’s surroundings.

“Ariel!” Gwen added her firepower to the display. Even with Eunae as support, she had no desire to play victim to a Wraith’s soul-draining touch. “Elemental Sphere!”

Compounding bolts of hysterical electricity filled the tunnel, forcing Mayuree and the rest to activate their shields and Richard to retrieve Lea. Even Lulan, who had taken a hack at a Wraith to see what would happen, was forced to withdraw behind Richard’s water sphere.

“Ha!” Golos’ laughter cut through the cacophony. “They’ve perished!”

“They’ve hidden themselves in the walls!” Came Mayuree’s Mind Linked interjection, clear as crystal despite the non-OSHA compliant decibels assailing their ears.

“You're shitting me,” Gwen cursed. _The fucking walls were warded against spells, but not against ghosts?_

_CRUNK!_ A sizeable chunk of metal fell from the “ceiling”. As always, Golos' full-strength breath knew not the meaning of subtlety.

The levitation disk groaned as though an enormous Zombie.

All around the contestants, shattered concrete and loose steel broke free from the ozone-filled gloom directly above the contestants. When their vision returned, what they saw was a tittering Levitation platform on the verge of imminent structural failure.

“Shit!” Gwen banished the Wraiths from her mind for the moment. “Gogo, don’t let that thing fall on us!”

Golos disliked being commanded over being coaxed, but the circumstances hardly allowed for negotiations. With a fulminating growl, the Thunder Wyvern grew into its magnificent self, anchoring its claws on the tunnel’s walls. Then, with a mighty flap that drove the students back, the Planar Ally heaved with its muscular neck, tilting the platform so that it grew inverted.

The levitation Mandala held on for a moment more— then failed.

As one, the contestants retreated.

The disk was only a dozen meters above them. Nonetheless, with its weight, the momentum was enough to rake arm-deep gouges into the cement walls.

“Lea! Jet Blast!” Richard corrected the chaotic tumble of the wobbling levitation platform as it fell, ensuring a perpendicular descended past Fudan’s Mages. When the tiled surface came within half a meter of them, Gwen felt a thrill like no other.

“!”

Her spine tingled. She activated a shield but suddenly realised it wasn’t danger from the falling disc that had triggered her Divination senses. “Shit! Get—”

“— Eunae! AWAY FROM THE WALLS!” Mayuree’s warning came earlier, but still, it was too late.

“AEEEEEE!” Eunae screamed. She had been so fearful of being crushed that she was almost melding into the tunnel's sides. It had been a reflexive but poorly thought-out strategy, for consequently, she had no time to manifest her Shield of Faith against the Wraiths still hiding in the walls.

Instantly, the Cleric’s face grew deathly pale. The vital forces within her body gave way as Negative Energy hungrily consumed her life-force.

Beside her, the Mind Linked Mayuree groaned.

“Eunnie!” Gwen cursed. “FUCK! Lightning Bolt!”

Ariel’s bolt warped until it wrapped around Eunae, severing the Wraith’s limb and driving its presence from her body. Had Fudan lacked Gwen as a Lightning sorceress, that would have been it for Eunae.

“Shaa!” Caliban caught the falling healer with a pair of tentacles, reading Gwen's desperation, likewise frustrated that it couldn’t consume incorporeal foes.

A Dimension Door later, Gwen stood atop Caliban, holding Eunae in her arms. The girl wasn’t wounded, at least not anywhere she could see. The infamous Draining Touch, however, had no doubt afflicted Eunae in unimaginable ways, shutting down the girl’s physiological functions. Had she been even a little slower, Gwen shivered. Eunae would have teleported back to Dalian.

“Here.” Richard materialised a Restoration injector.

“Ariel! Keep watch!”

“I’ll help.” Mayuree materialised a Wand of Lightning. The item was illicit, but the CC loss was minimal compared to being bogged down by spirits playing hide and seek through the bloody walls.

With a hiss, the injector's precious cargo left the tube, filling the Cleric’s body with a new lease on life.

Eunae gasped, her fingers clutching Gwen’s shoulders, her armoured gloves scratching the ceramic plates.

“Eunnie, are you alright?” Gwen’s voice grew soft. She felt a pang of remorse.

“I—I thought I was going to die.” Eunae’s doe-like eyes were wide and misty with moisture. “Gwen, it was horrible! It grasped my heart! I could feel—”

“Shhh— you're safe now. It's gone.” Gwen hugged the girl back when Eunae crushed herself against her chest, refusing to part from her lightning-clad vice-captain. Empathising with the Cleric's unease, she wondered if she should have learned Calm Mind from Petra. “Maybe you should heal yourself a bit.”

“I-I want to go—“ The Korean expatriate suddenly bit her tongue. The girl’s pained expression made Gwen wince. Eunae had finally regained enough awareness to realise that this was the IIUC and that folks back home would be watching her performance. Had those words left her mouth, her main family would be very displeased indeed.

“Eunnie, I need you to stay strong for us,” Gwen whispered beside the healer's ear. “You'll be safe. Maybe not unscathed, but all of us are going to come out of this just fine.”

Eunae’s expression softened. In her arms, the healer’s limbs relaxed. “I hope so. Thank you, Sunbae-nim.”

The honorific made Gwen's lips curl.

“Eunnie… you’re older than me.” She snickered, bringing a moment of mirth to calm the shivering Cleric's uncertain mind. “But sure— Sunbae-nim is here for you."

Eunae’s complexion turned the colour of pickled beetroot.

"That’s all well and good." Richard pointed at the mechanism holding the double doors accessing L-III. “But how about we get out of the tunnels and find the Necro controlling these Wraiths?"


"GOGO!"

Golos smashed the stainless steel doors with a resounding CLANG. In his Wyvern-form, it was far easier to brute-force the mechanism until the whole structure failed.

The aftermath, as the party had well-anticipated from the groaning, was a room full of Zombies. As the heaving mass pressed in toward the hovering Mages, what should have been a fatal crash of frenzied teeth instead free-fell into the four-storey shaft.

"What a devious ambush," Gwen drily observed as the creatures continued to cascade, enacting the 1991 PC classic, Lemmings. "They look strong, some of these even have grafts."

"Those Wraiths are still around…" Eunae shivered as the thumps echoed from below. At some point, enough bodies would collate to cushion the rest— after which the accumulated Negative Energy would likely re-raise the inanimate corpses.

While the Zombies euthanised themselves, Mayuree sent forth her Arcane Eye. The chamber directly connected to the Levitation lifts was a central block that led off in three directions, likely to different suites servicing the upper echelon of the base. Within its chambers, Fudan's CCs reclused himself behind his minions, lamenting the cheating presence of a Thunder Wyvern.

"I see a heavily glyphed door," Mayuree soon relayed the Eye's vision through their Mind Link. "The ward barricading the war theatre is at least tier 6. It doesn't look like Imperial Magic either. If this isn't Anton Yermolov, then it has to be Diego Valentino."

"Finally." Lulan exhaled, incanting a self-buff that turned her skin a shade darker. "Vice-Captain, please forgive my incompetence."

"Lulu, don't worry about the Wraiths," Richard discounted the Sword Mage's self-loathing. "I am sure this Necromancer will take a sword to the gut as well as any regular Joe."

"Let's hope so." Lulan glanced at her hovering iron sword. "I'll train harder."

"Why don't you imbue the swords with ego?" To their surprise, it was Golos who interjected. "You Taoists hunt Spirits for a living, don't you?"

Lulan looked to Golos, then to Gwen, embarrassed by her ignorance.

"Gogo, what's an Ego Sword?" Gwen asked in her Sword Mage's stead.

"When I was young drake." The Wyvern's rough-hewn face recounted. "We had visitors from the Sects. Their Masters could imbue their swords with their will— meaning they could strike down incorporeal creatures. In my memory, hunting ghosts and demons was the whole purpose of the Sects, is it not?"

"I've never heard of such a spell, Master Golos," Lulan apologised. "I don't think our Clan possesses the skill anymore."

"Father's feathers, you Humans are so fragile..." Compassion from a Wyvern wasn't something that Gwen had thought the creature capable of possessing. "You should visit my sister, she knows the old Sword Arts. That's why father invited those old scrawny mortals— to tutor Ayxin. I am fairly sure Ryxi has a few scrolls in his library as well."

"I shall endeavour to." Lulan bowed toward the Wyvern. "Thank you, wise one."

"Hee hee—" Golos's horns weaved through the air, apparently pleased with Lulan's patronage.

Gwen meanwhile, was seeing a whole new side of Golos.
Her rooster-brained Wyvern, dispensing wisdom?

Why... pigs might fly—

"GRRRAAAR!" A Zombie, one of the final few, suddenly made a leap, clearing the space between the room and the Mages hovering in the chute.

Her invocation was near-complete when a maced tail swatted her assailant mid-leap. A blink later, it erupted like a pustule, painting Gwen from head to shoulder.

"Whoa— I was wondering if the Zombies had a herder." Richard winced at his vice-captain's dripping face. "And there he goes."

Gwen wiped bits of Ghast from her lips and her hair. "Thanks, Gogo."

"Don't mention it."

"S-sorry." Lulan looked as if she wanted to crawl into a hole. "I was distracted."

"Don't tax yourselves, females, not in my presence," Golos' bone-throbbing voice hummed. A flash followed, engendering a nude giant struggling into a pair of jeans.

"You should have ordered self-fitting slacks," Gwen drily observed as Golos wrestled with his mace. The other girls stood as stoic as statues, wondering how much of the Lumen-cast had to be edited.

Now that they were alone, the party could deduce that the mindless Wraiths had been set as guards. Indeed, in hindsight, had the students arrived on the Levitation platform, they would have been incapacitated or panicked by the ghostly sentries— and then eaten alive by the swarm. Even should they survive the Wraith ambush, the possibility of fighting both an incorporeal and a physical horde was slim, more so when sans Golos.

Away from the levitation lifts, the corridor was as Mayuree had advertised: cramped, claustrophobic and beyond perfect for incorporeal ambushes.

Despite being the top floor, the Russian architects who had conceived of Shimenzi were entirely enthralled by concrete. Out of both form and function, or possibly because of the ease of running mana conduits, Fudan's Mages were effectively encased in a visually sterile tomb.

As far as their eyes could see, the brutalist facade of the base's interior was uniform. Each corridor's interconnected pathways shared a similar starkness, homogenous but for the embedded "III".

"Lea, stay with Eunae," Richard assured their healer. Eunae nodded obediently, still traumatised by Caliban's writhing, dual-tone tentacles.

"Shaa! Shaa— Shaa!" Caliban hummed a dirge of oblivion as it shimmied down the concrete path.

Plink! As expected, it triggered an unseen Glyph.

A blast of jagged bone peppered Gwen's fiendish spider.

"Shaa?" Caliban cared not. It regenerated its limbs and continued.

A dozen meters down, Caliban stepping into yet another exotic trigger.

An inundation of Negative Energy flooded over Caliban's spidery body.

"Shaa!" The cold shower was pleasing to Gwen's Void beast.

As before, Caliban had no shit to give.

"I could do that," Golos grunted.

"Save your strength." Gwen chuckled. "There's a lot of traps. I want our MVP well rested for the Necromancer."

Plink! Caliban triggered another Glyph.

Above the team, the lumen globes flickered. A split-second later, the light died.

"Wall of Water!" Richard wasted no time in creating a barrier around the party.

"ROOAAAR!" Golos delivered a Lightning-breath against the floor, arcing electricity all over, jolting Richard so that he half-leapt into the air.

"Bloody hell!" Gwen's pupils were the first to adjust to the abrupt incandescence. Quickly, she filled the darkness with a pair of Dancing Lights. "Dick, are you alright?"

"I am shocked!" Richard wheezed, slapping his chest plate. "Shocked at how well my Shen-teī MK-Custom from Sinomach held up against Dragon-breath!"

"..." The rest of the party groaned with second-hand embarrassment.

"Jesus, Dick..." Gwen felt an ache in her chest. Just how desperate was Richard for crystals? As for Golos, she couldn't believe the bloody Wyvern had wasted a breath within ten-seconds of her sagely advice.

"There! Got one." Golos pointed to a wisp of dark smog hanging about the floor. "Desecrator coward! He should be fighting us head-on!"

"Ariel could have taken care of that." Gwen sighed.

"And what, risk your females?" Golos grunted, grinning at Lulan and the girls. "Have you no shame, Calamity? What if Lulu gets hurt?"

Lulu? A shiver prickled the nape of Gwen's neck, awkwardly, she looked to Lulan, then to Eunae and Mayuree. As one, the girls returned her inspecting gaze with awkward and ambivalent expressions.

"Just..." Gwen paused her party. Whatever Golos' intention, the Wyvern had hit the Glyph on the head. "You know what. Gogo is right. I've been lax. Let me fix this—"

Her finger wove through the air.

"Morden's Hound Pack!"
"Morden's Blood Hound!"

Eight Draconic-deerhounds plus one Alpha materialised beside the team. To summon all her dogs took a toll, but their circumstances called for nothing less.

"Ariel, stay above us and set a defensive perimeter, I want a dog protecting each of us. Astro, stay just ahead of the party. Cali, keep going."

"Shaa!"
"EE EE!"
"Woof! Woof!"
"Arrrroooooo!"

Soon, the newly reformed and starkly lit party began the arduous process of clearing the passage to the central auditorium.

"Wonderful!" Gwen surveyed her team of lightning-charged glow-lamps. Together, the pack was enough to banish all shadow from the team's vicinity. "Let's huff and puff and blow down that door!"

"INVESTITURE OF FLAME!" Yue fought back the taste of iron on her tongue, swallowing the exquisite agony rending her conduits. Although her flame-clad cloak flared out like the feathers of a blue-black peacock, it was clear that the continuous combat had taken its toll.

"Come on, fucker! I can do this all day!" Her vim, however, remained inextinguishable.

All around Auckland's Mages, a stink of scorched flesh immersed the expanse of Shimenzi's foyer, with liquified fat dripping fire and suffocating the air with Elemental Ash.

Not far, holding a smoking stump half-cauterised with boiled blood, knelt Anton Yermolov, a master of Necromancy, a Magus-tier Ritualist.

"Undeath to Living!" the man howled, and not for the first time either. As before, the stump on his arm and his half-melted face remained insensible to his profane efforts.

"HOW?!" the man keened, near-insensible from the anguish. "You're just a Fire Mage!"

"The fuck would I tell you?" the cobalt-clad Evoker mocked the man's despair. In actuality, she WAS the source of the Necromancer's dismay. Tandy wasn't just a regular old Nightmare, it was a mutated Sprite whose flames wove Elemental Ash into its heat. Why else had Gunther paid a city's ransom for the privilege of acquiring it for his wife?

Below the exhausted duo, Rongo and Timoti were near-OoM and at their alchemical limits. Yet, the Undead swarm persisted— Even now, at least half remained to besiege both the IIUC Mages and the PLA's battleline.

"Ready to die?" Yue's taunts appeared to enliven her flames.

"Brat, I don't fear death," Yermolov retorted, his lips black with bloody spittle, curtesy of the failed regeneration. "I welcome it."

Yue snorted.

"Tandy!" she called for her Nightmare. "We're finishing this!"

The Necromancer growled, his mutilated face twisting with misery. "Diego will reave your souls and turn you all into Wraiths! See you in the unlife, Tower Bas—"

"SHADOW FLARE!" Auckland's Evoker completed her invocation before Yermolov could finish his rebuke. Instantly, a near-invisible fire swallowed her victim, incinerating all resistance, eating through the man's buffs.

"Another one bites the dust," Yue recalled a jingle Gwen had once invoked. Within her conduits, the euphoric expenditure of power dimmed. In its fiery aftermath, a bone-throbbing agony enveloped her tiny body. At once, the veins on her extremities grew grotesquely engorged, erupting into bruised flesh. When she opened her mouth to swear, a blood-strew mist splattered her chest. Were it not for Yue's Dogskin Ta Moko, her Contingency Ring would have pinged.

"Yue!" Whetu double-checked his Pounamu shield, thinking that she had suffered an attack. He wanted to scoop the girl up in his arms, but he too was exhausted, not to mention Timoti and Rongo were still fighting. "Opi! Yue needs help!"

"Whakaoranga Ngawari!" their Ta Moko inscriber caught the girl in their Abjurer's stead. With worshipful words, she activated the latent healing powers stowed in the Ta Moko she had inscribed on Yue' chest, stifling the internal bleeding.

As for Yermolov, all that remained were Ash-strewn flames— that and a Storage Ring Opi caught in one hand.

"Are the Undead stopping?" Yue groaned in her Enchanter's arms. "Are we winning?"

Unfortunately, even Auckland could see that the Undead weren't perturbed by the heat-death of Anton. If anything, their frenzy had gained a supernatural focus.

"We'll win, eventually." Amidst her platitude, Opi stabbed the Evoker with a Healing Potion. Yue moaned in turn, but for one at their alchemical limits, there wasn't much the panacea could do.

"But I think someone else is controlling them." Opi frowned at the unending battle. Even now, Whetu was warding them against bone-shrapnel and femur-arrows. "Whetu, let's close ranks!"

Thanks to Anton, the big man looked as though he'd lost about twenty kilos. Where he had been a veritable giant before entering Shimenzi, deflated muscles and slackened skin now hung from his massive frame. As he had promised, not a single one of the Ritualist's killing spells had gotten past Auckland's Abjurer, one way or another.

"He-Mango-Tohorā! Return them to Tangaroa's embrace!" Below the clustered trio, Auckland's Water Evoker weaved the raging torrents. This time, the magically-induced tsunami finally crashed over the remaining Acolytes. With the mass of water finally in place, Rongo called for a great cleansing. "Maelstrom!"

With gradual urgency, a magically induced bathtub vortex engendered, sucking the Undead into the Elemental Plane of Water.

"Lava Spike!" Though exhausted, Timoti continued to deliver his molten payloads. Whenever a larger than life Undead construct managed to stem the tide and hold their ground, he would dislodge them with a burst of magma.

When the waters finally ebbed, all that remained was the throaty roaring of the Dusty-266s crashing amidst a sea of skittering, chattering, Undead bodies.

"Fall back!" Opi commanded. Of the party, she alone retained her health and her mana. "Gather up! We're going to join up with the PLA!"

With a resounding crash, the party— or more correctly Gwen's menagerie— poured into the auditorium.

The endless array of traps leading from the lifts to the theatre had been exhausting. Were it not for their born masochist, Caliban, the party would have had to contend with Necrotic toxins, exploding bone-splinters, howling Wraiths and even a host of flesh-eating beetles.

There had even been a close call— a Spine Spear that manifested from behind the party. Had Mayuree not pushed Eunae down, and had Lulan not parried the three-meter lance with her Iron Sword, somebody would have reawakened in a triage bed.

But at long last, they had arrived.

_BUNG! BUNG! BUNG!_

A triple-set of Essence-infused Flashbangs rocked the theatre's interior.

"Woof! WOOF!"
"Woof! Woof! GRRRR!"

The tunnel swelled with hoots and howls as Gwen's creatures streamed through the door, accompanied by Ariel and Caliban, re-clad in refreshed Invisibility.

Beyond the double-door was the war theatre, the nerve centre of Shimenzi.

Within, a hundred screens had displayed a panopticon array of images from inside the base, illuminating the otherwise ambient chamber with flickering projections. Now, they fell about in pieces, shattered by Gwen's Signature stun spell.

Quickly, her party spread through the dark chamber.

Thus far, everything had gone according to plan. First, Fudan swept the theatre with disabling-spells, then, they had entered hounds and Familiars-first to avoid additional arcane pitfalls. After that, the Mages flew in, ready to counter whatever foes the hidden Necromancer would throw at them.

If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.

"I see him!" Mayuree marked the clump of Negative Energy through their shared Mind Link.

In front of the wall of fissured screens, appearing as though a spider perched on a web, stood a man in the simple black garb of a priest. His attire was clean, humble, and unadorned, as one would expect to see on a pastor. On the first impression, the Necromancer known as Diego Valentino appeared amiable and ancient, a sad man whose body had been eaten alive by his craft.

A spot of movement attracted Gwen's eyes. On a surviving Lumen-screen, she caught sight of Pretoria fighting what appeared to be an enormous Bone Golem.

"Welcome, students of the IIUC." The man's voice was barely a croak, spoken as though by an invalid on his hospice bed. "My name is Father Diego Valentino, formerly of the Ordo Praedicatorum."

With a thought, Gwen's lightning dogs surrounded the man from every angle.

In the illumination cast by her hounds, the man in the priestly garb grew somehow sanctified.

"Gwen Song," Gwen announced herself. She stepped toward the central dais, her courage bolstered by the man and women beside her. Silently, she ordered her Familiar to take to the ceiling. "By order of the People's Liberation Army, we are to take you, dead or alive."

"Alive would be preferable." Diego Valentino choked out a broken smile. "Undeath is better, but I'll not rebuff your offer."

Gwen felt the man's milky eyes crawl across her armour. She wasn't sure if the man could see, but to say he made her skin crawl would be a gross understatement.

As insurance, she raised a hand in warning. In anticipation, her team half-held spells upon their lips, each ready to play their part.

In the half-lit gloom of the broken lumen-screens, the venerable Necromancer audibly exhaled, then tittered from the dais. "My child, what do you suppose will happen to me?"

"That's not for me to say." Gwen tried her best to keep her voice calm. For reasons unknown, her pitch had risen an octave. "Keep your hands up. And also, I am not your child."

"Ah— but we're all God's children..." The Necromancer obediently raised both hands, then stepped off the dais with a painful grunt. In the light of Gwen's dogs and the lumen screens, his ancient hump was well hunched. Even his scarred and wrinkled face was entirely pale and bloodless, with sallow cheeks that draped across what once had been youthful cheekbones.

Step by step, the man shuffled closer.

"STOP!" Gwen's shrill voice pierced the gloom. She willed her dogs forward. "Don't come any closer!"

"Why?" The man's measured pace continued with the tick-tock of a metronome. "Can I not take a good gander at my capturers? My eyes... they're not what they used to be."

"HALT! Astro!"

Her leading deerhound leapt. It landed a few meters from the Necromancer, then let loose a growl that was enough to send a mortal man to his knees.

"Draconic... dogs?" Diego's milky orbs were two pools of cloudy azure, piercing into her soul. "And a Wyvern too."

Unbidden, the Necromancer continued his approach. When the man passed the growling Astro, Gwen came to the realisation that she may be leagues out of her depth.

When was the last time a college course taught how to negotiate with a terrorist? Despite having lived two lifetimes, she had never learned how to apprehend a monster with the blood of a thousand men on his hands.

"Richard," she thought aloud through the party's Mind Link. "What do I do?"
"Cut off his arms legs?" Richard answered with his usual pragmatism.
"Good idea. I'll do it," Lulan concurred.
"He's an old man!" Eunae verbalised her horror.
"Don't be fooled, Eunnie," Richard advised. "He's an old Necromancer."

"Well?" The Fatherly Necromaner kept his hands well-exposed. "What's the matter? Is my surrender insufficiently compelling?"

Gwen wanted to return a quip but found herself lost for words. Between an opponent whose motives she couldn't untangle and one who would fight her to the death, she preferred the latter.

Why would the Necromancer give himself up?
Didn't he know what awaited him in Tianlanqiao?
How could she accept his surrender but then demand his arms and legs?

Would it gain or lose CCs for her team?

To play it safe, her mind turned to Mayuree.

"Mia, what say you?"

"I can't tell," their Diviner proffered the limitations of her diluted bloodline. "The threads of fate are too tangled. Anything could happen."

Gwen shifted her thoughts to Golos.
If the Necromancer reneged on his offer, Gogo could break an arm or two... or a spine... or a neck.

"Gogo," she intoned, feeling guilty that her princeling was made to fetch. "Can you—"

She needn't have imposed, for as the old man walked within strike-range of Golos, her Wyvern's nostrils flared. Before she could react, a fulminating surge of outrage swelled within her creature.

"CALAMITY!" Golos' voice filled the auditorium. "STEP AWAY! That's no MABLIK! His stench exceeds even those desecrated souls!"

Gwen took a double-take. In Draconic, Mablik meant mortal.

In the next moment, her incensed Wyvern transformed. His twenty-meter body blocked the entrance to the chamber, his expansive girth battering away Fudan's Mages, sending them skittering into upturned chairs and tables.

"KAEGRO! Return to dust!" Golos's jaws cracked with fulminating electricity. "ROARRRRR!"

It was her Wyvern's final breath, and he gave it his all. A line of vivid lightning struck the priest where he stood, swallowing the man wholesale.

"Gwen!" Richard's voice came through the Mind Link.

On reflex, Gwen triggered the latent energies empowering Ariel.

"Ball Lightning!"
"EE EE!"

A dozen spheres pursued the priest.

"Panzerschreck!" Lulan launched all five blades at once, taking full advantage of Mayuree's pre-buffed True Strike. Even among the hysterical electricity, they saw the blades connect.

The spells converged. Fulminating lightning, iron blades and a thrashing Wyvern annihilated the dais, cracking the concrete and vaporising the screens. In the aftermath of their assault, the auditorium shook, its base quaking like mad. A cloud of dust billowed out from the epicentre, obscuring all vision, swallowing the constants whole.

Surely, Gwen narrowed her eyes to ward against the dust and the heat. Nothing could have survived that.

"Is he dead?" Gwen turned to Mayuree.

"I don't sense—" Mayuree focused her Detect Magic. "His body's gone! I think—"

_DONG!_

Came a resounding peal.

A spine-chilling wave of enervating energy soundlessly permeated the walls, pervading the auditorium in the form of an invisible shockwave. Glyphs long inscribed, marked by blood and bone, ignited with ghostly fire, vivifying a buried Mandala a decade in the making.

"NO—" A violent dizziness silenced Gwen's better faculties. From her mouth came a half-strangled utterance, after which all sound ceased.

Without warning, her Astral Body dimmed. Deep within the recess of her subconscious, the metaphysical manifestation she had internalised in the Cognisance Chamber winked out.

_DONG!_

Again, Fudan's Mages heard the peal of a grand church bell.

Her deerhounds flickered, then died— un-summoning themselves as the connection between Master and monster untethered. Ariel, as well, unable to anchor itself via her Astral Body, forcibly returned to its pocket dimension.

_DONG!_

Gwen attempted to call Golos, but her lips had grown insensible.

"WEAAAAAARRRRAH—!"

A deluge of ghostly keening abruptly filled the theatre, setting her teeth to chatter like mad. Like an inverted bog, two dozen Wraiths mounted her Wyvern, grasping at Golos' thrashing body, launching themselves so that they ignited against the Wyvern's lightning-wreathed scales.

"CALAMITY!" Her drake squirmed, thrashing wildly. The Wyvern weaved its head back and forth in a desperate attempt to crush the unseen Necromancer yet again. "FLEE!"

_WHOMP!_ Golos' anarchic defence against the incorporeal beings sent her tumbling into a set of anchored chairs. With a clattering thunk, her armour compressed, absorbing all impact.

From the floor, she watched with fascinated horror as Golos' tail rammed into her likewise insensible party. Her friends tumbled through the air. Were it not for their Shen-Teī armour, the consequence would have been unimaginable.

_GO HOME!_ Her mind positively shrieked. _GOGO! CANCEL THE ALLY SUMMON!_

Desperately, she tried to reach out, to utter an invocation, to channel her mana.

"WEAAAAAARRRRAH—" More Wraiths appeared, swarming her Wyvern, polluting his demi-divine body. In the flickering light, Golos looked as though he was being smothered by a single sheet of midnight chiffon.

_CRACK-WHOOMP!_

A bolt of lightning vivified her Wyvern's trashing bulk, blinding them all. When finally Gwen's eyes re-focused, her Ally had returned to its natural home.

_FUCK!_ Gwen screamed internally. _What the fuck just happened?_ Why isn't the Necromancer dead? What was that spell? Could she have prevented it? Why couldn't she use spells? Was this the anti-magic they used in Tiaolanqiao? IF the Necromancer had an invocation to incapacitate them all, why all the effort? Why was the man surrendering if he could—

A shadow caught her eye.
Her stomach revolted.

A surviving Wraith was fast approaching Eunae.
Across from Gwen, her healer's eyes were wild with terror, staring at Gwen but also straight through her.

"SHAA!" A remaining Empathic Link tingled.

_CALIBAN!_ Gwen exalted. Caliban had survived the tolling of the bell! She didn't know why nor how, but her heart filled with sudden gladness.

Her immediate command was to send Caliban down to rescue Eunae.

Caliban's reply was to remain still and stoic.

Gwen baulked; at once confused and horrified. By the time her rioting thoughts caught up, her healer's youthful mien had deflated, her chubby cheeks fading to grey.

_NO! NO! NO!_ Gwen felt as though a flensing knife was being twisted through her diaphragm. _BASTARD! BASTARD!_ She called out over and over in her mind. _CALI! CALI CALI!_ She wanted to send out Caliban, to transform him just so that she could say that something was done, that she tried. _EUNNIE! HOLD ON!_

In the Wraith's embrace, Euane's eyes grew dull with resignation.
A familiar burst of silvery Conjuration engendered.
Then Fudan's Cleric was gone.

Suddenly, terror turned to relief, then with equal abruptness, relief turned to frustration.
Why hadn't Caliban obeyed her command?

Her answer came in the form of a collating, ghostly body standing where their Cleric had been. As it formed, the horrified members of Fudan's crew saw that the Eunae-fed Wraith now regenerated into the guise of a man.

Diego Valentino.

Her frustration now turned to cold rationality.

A trap.

It had all been a trap.

The ambush at the lifts was a trap.
The traps along the way were a part of it too.
Even the old man's act— all of it was a trap.

It was all a manoeuvre by Diego Valentino to make them think that their target was weak, that he needed underhanded methods to survive. It had all being a ploy to draw them—

_Into range?_
No, Gwen discerned.
_Into the room._
There was something in the chamber.

How could she have been so stupid and blind? Look at those lumen-screens! The man had been watching them since their ascent! Since their first spell! The whole time, they were dancing in the palm of his hand! They should have nuked the fucker from orbit! Or at least from the fucking tunnels!

_And Eunae!_
Her soul ached.
She felt like such a hypocrite, boasting that she would protect Eunae to her face, playing the Sunbaenim.

And as for the competition itself.
Their mindset had been wrong from the beginning.
The whole while she had thought the IIUC a competition, that she was here to vanquish Necromancers. They had joked about CCs!

This wasn't a competition. This was real life.
She was here to take the lives of living, breathing, free-thinking beings. They accrued CCs, but the actuality was that their foes were fighting for their lives. And when a man is in defence of their continued existence, what means were taboo?

With a heart in revolt, Gwen watched as Diego Valentino's re-constructed body descended. The Soul Flayer was as white as a newborn babe, yet fully grown and in the prime of life.

"I should thank you all," the newly risen Necromancer declared, filling the theatre with his vibrant voice. "Without your intervention, I would have never had the courage to complete the rite."

Diego Valentino wondered if he should thank the Maker of Man for his good fortune.

Unlike the fool Ritualist, he knew well that there would be no reinforcements from Shenyang. If anything, Diego scoffed, Shenyang may already be knee-deep in the living.

He knew this because he was the Master of Shimenzi, a region he had been given to tinker at his leisure and thereby his to defend. Such was the stratagem the deathless ones in Pyongyang deployed, for the same buffer-tactic had precedence in history— be it the Ming's use of Khitanic Demi-humans. Or the Russian Empire's alliance with the Cossak Centaurs.

Shimenzi was but one of the many cushions between China and the well-cemented Necropolis of Pyongyang. For researchers like Diego, it was a region of great autonomy.

And now came the cost of that autonomy.

As his Astral Soul collated, mote by mote, he was beset by unfathomable anguish. SOUL KNELL was a rite unique to the Cabal of Kane, first of his name. In Diego's misguided youth, he had hunted his colleagues, until one day, through its Master, he came to know love for the Craft.

In Undeath, all sins were reposed.
In Undeath, all beings were equal.
Be it Man, Elf, Dwarf, Orc, Centaur or Faye— all who practised the Craft escaped the tyranny of karma.
Became free agents of their individual wills.

And so it was that in his hour of despair, Diego Valentino exercised an apex invocation unique to his Craft. In offering his Astral Soul, in shedding his physical body, he would be born again, just as the holy Tomes had told of the Nazarene.

For Diego, his crisis was also his baptism.
Though the holy rites of the Cabal taught the ritual to each of its high-ranking elders, few were the ones who succeeded in regaining their body. More often than not, their Soul was blown to pieces by the Astral winds before their flesh reconstructed itself, ending decades of dedication to the Craft.

And yet, here and against all the odds; set against a hundred Mage-souls collected over two decades, bolstered by the heart-blood from a thousand sycophants, he had succeeded.

All that was left was to survive Shimenzi, a comparatively trivial task.

Luckily, the very same adversaries who had him cornered would now provide him with additional leverage.

Such hap, Diego grinned, feeling his lips move.

With a flutter of his long lashes, Diego opened his eyes.
Slowly, with articulated care, he stretched his reformed fingers.
He felt magnificent.
His vision was no longer clouded.
His back no longer ached.
His limbs, long and lithe, sang with grace.

"I should thank you all," Diego announced, delighted by his sonorous voice. "Without your intervention, I would have never had the courage to complete the rite."

One by one, he regarded the remaining members of the team that had breached his sanctum.

First, he was glad the Wyvern was gone. That one, he dared not slay. To kill a creature so choked full of Draconic Essence was trouble personified, and Diego was far too knowledgable to attract the ire of a High Dragon Patriarch.

Then there was the stone-faced Water Mage, a Conjurer with a most curious Undine as his spirit. The young man had not panicked, even when his Astral Soul was banished from his body, a quality that Diego admired.

The Sword Mage, conversely, was clearly a mad dog. Even with her limbs made insensible, the lass looked as though she wanted to tear his throat out with her teeth.

The Diviner was a disappointment. Compared to the Abjurer and the Sword Mage, she appeared nothing special, barely a nourishing meal.

And finally, there was his grand prize. A living, breathing Void Sorceress! One who could also utilise Lightning. He had never heard of such a thing. What a bargaining chip she would make!

Gingerly, delighted by the suppleness of his new feet, he approached the worthless Diviner.

"I must borrow some of your health, my child," he intoned, studying the others. "Worry not, you shall soon return to safety."

Without the need for somatics, Diego activated Drain Life, an ability now innate to his blessed new form.

Spontaneously, the Diviner's brow turned the hue of lilies.

He gave her a flick across the forehead.

A burst of silvery Conjuration enveloped the unconscious seeress.

"There... aren't I generous?" Diego was in a good mood. "Now there are only three of you. A far more manageable larder, don't you think?"

With great amusement, he noted that Gwen Song— the girl who had called herself their leader, appeared as though she could gnaw through a mithril collar. Her beautiful eyes were orbs of glowering rage. Such was the fury in her trembling body that her face turned scarlet, fuelled by an undercurrent of resentment mighty enough to ignite mountains.

"Child, just what are you?"

The girl's murderous glares were delightful. From the aura of her nascent soul, Diego, an expert in the reading of souls, knew her to be different from the rest.

Indeed, the girl was unique, and not just for her talent.

First, the lass' Astral presence was enormous, warping more space than even Diego himself. Just the same, her aura radiated the same scintillating rainbow as the Wyvern, only purer, more vibrant and with such saturation that Diego had initially doubted her mortality.

Was she a scion then of a Draconic-Clan? He hypothesised. If so, there was no transmuting her into a minion. As per the Wyvern, Diego desired no trouble from lizards whose grudges outlasted the longest-living Lich.

"Can you speak?" Diego wondered out loud. "Well, not yet, I guess. You can't even move a finger until the resonance passes."

He continued to inspect his prized hostage, noting the uniqueness of her armour.

"So, Gwen Song of the IIUC. Who are your parents? What is your Master's name? Tell me, and I shall leave you unscathed. Your voice should have returned. Don't hide from me, child. I know you better than you think."

Diego Valentino approached for a closer look, flanked by Wraiths on either side.

Finally, the girl opened her lips to speak.
He liked the way she squeezed the sound through gritted teeth.
It was pride, Diego recognised the look.
Pride was good.
Pride was the hallmark of the Dragon-kind.

"C— "

"Yes?"

"Ca—"

"What is it, child?" Diego came closer. Up close, he noted that the girl's comeliness was exquisite. Someone somewhere, he felt more confident than ever, would pay a king's ransom to get her back in one piece.

Considering her age, the payee would likely be a spouse, or even better, an influential set of in-laws.

"There's no need to look at me like that. I didn't kill your Wyvern, or your Healer, or your Diviner. You are all my prisoners until the term of my freedom is negotiated. Worry not, the other survivors will join you soon. Even now, my Dread Wraiths descend below to subdue your companions."

"Ca—"

The girl's lips moved.

"CALIBAN!"

With a sigh, Diego raised a wall of bone with the flick of a finger, so confident in his new form that incantations needn't even part his lips. From behind, the girl's Void fiend, the very one that was missing in action and which Diego had first assumed banished with the Kirin, ran tentacle-first into a jagged bone-barrier.

"SHAA!" The creature frenzied, skittering against the concrete. The fiend's insane limbs cut and jabbed at his barrier with such barbarity that Diego had to concentrate his mana where the assault was the fiercest.

"NETHER SCYTHE!"

Diego called upon yet another of his many spells. This one conjured a rip through space and time, jarring the fragile folds of the Material Plane.

"SHAA!" The girl's creature raged for a moment more before it fell limp, all life siphoned from its spell-hewn corpse. The beast shuddered when its carapace split in twain, spilling forth an inordinate volume of goo-smothered stuff.

"A curious thing," Diego exalted in his mastery. "I would have loved to study it. For now, as you have tested my patience— URK—!"

A pair of slender hands, their gloved plating ripped and torn, assaulted the bone-barrier protecting Diego's upper torso. As they smashed through the closely criss-crossing thorns, the lacerating bone-splinters flensed the girl's extremities, stripping away the fabric, mangling her wrists and forearms.

To Diego's utter astonishment, the girl's fingers did not shrink in agony, but instead wrapped around his neck.

"Futile—" he choked out a feeble cry, feeling such disappointment that he couldn't enslave the girl's soul as punishment for her impertinence. The girl's grip was firm; possessed of more strength than any mortal girl should possess, but Diego wasn't fazed.

Without words nor gestures, he activated a healthy dose of Drain Life, one that would keep the girl pliant for the duration of his negotiation with the PLA.

Viridescent vitality spontaneously flooded his conduits.

"JESUS!" Diego's eyes rolled to the back of his skull. What came through the girl's hands wasn't vitality, but rapture. It had been only a trickle, a taste, but already he had ascended into Seventh Heaven. Every pore on his body opened as though panting for air, every sinew felt renewed, every muscle was crammed full of vim and vigour. Even the apparatus between his legs, a thing he had long since forsaken for its senselessness, grew suddenly engorged. "C-CHRIST ALMIGHTY!"

Diego Valentino shuddered, his digits curled. Here in Shimenzi, in the most unlikely of places and most unusual company, he was emptying of one life and filling with something greater, grander and older than any Essence he had ever tasted.

"W—GHrrrk—" Diego tried to speak, though the girl's fingers remained an iron vice crushing his windpipes.

Through the misty vision of his dilating eyes, he caught sight of her emerald-amber orbs and her pinpoint pupils, depthless like the Void.

_Thralls!_ He commanded his spectral minions. _STOP HER!_

"CALIBAN!" The girl's voice was a roaring gale filling every recess of his ecstasy addled mind. "CONSUME!"

Caliban rose from the dead, as girthy as the grandest Naga it had fought in Burma.

At Gwen's behest, its rejuvenated carapace split, enveloping the Essence-gorged Necromancer, Bone Barrier and all. A split second later, Caliban's lips closed with a sickening crunch, pushing away Gwen's mangled hands before sliding its prey deep into its gullet.

"SHAA! SHAA!" Caliban sang, its innards boiling with turbulence.

"Caliban! Return!" Gwen commanded her Familiar, paranoid that her beast might regurgitate its once-risen victim. Only in her banished Pocket Dimension was she confident that there existed no possibility of the Necromancer resurrecting again.

Across the aisle, Richard nodded imperceptibly. A few chairs away, Lulan's eyes spoke of triumph.

And all around them, the Wraiths recoiled. At first, the soul-bound creatures appeared confused by the disappearance of their Master. Then, whatever the Undead equivalent of cathartic release from existential slavery dawned, gently fading as the Negative Energy decayed.

Very quietly, the trio sat in the now-empty auditorium.

"I couldn't save Eunae," Gwen's voice drifted across like that of a spectre. "Mia. as well."

If her companions could speak, they would.

But they knew that for now at least, there would be no solace for their vice-captain's pyrrhic victory.

"..." Richard made a move to speak.

"What is it, Dick?" Gwen wanted to stand, but she was too drained to even crawl over to her cousin.

Richard's blinking grew desperate.

"I know, I am sorry," she apologised. "I'll beg on my knees for their forgiveness. I was a terrible leader. I overestimated myself and underestimated our foe. I walked us into a trap."

Richard's agony only grew in intensity.

"I know. Golos as well." Gwen choked, her voice full of sorrow.

Richard was blinking so hard his eyes watered.

"I know you blame me, but—"

"Y-yOU A-ATE Him!" Richard finally squeezed out his warning.

Gwen paused. Her eyes widened. She had finally unravelled Richard's charade.

As if on cue, her breath quickened.
With every passing second, the sensation in her abdomen grew in intensity.

Together with her abducted Almudj's Essence, there was also an unfathomable volume of undigested vitality spilling over from Caliban. What she had anticipated as a smidgen of a man inundated by Negative corrosion was now proving himself the better part of a dozen Nephres.

"Oh— NO NO NO—" her eyes grew misty. Already, her cheeks were vermilion. She had to fire off a Void Bolt, or TWO, or A DOZEN. She had to do something.

But how could she?
Right now, she couldn't even access her Astral Body.

Right now— all she could do was curl into a ball, hug her knees, cover her face, and hope to God the IIUC could edit out the next fifteen minutes.


“Izette, left tunnel!”

“CLEAR!”

As one, Pretoria reversed course.

With Izette’s Mind Link active, the party's flight resembled that of Dusk-wing Cormorants flocking as one, keeping the distance between each team member uniform and one another’s field of vision uninterrupted.

_CRASH!_

Ahead, rampaging through the intermittent darkness cast by the flickering lights, was the infamous Bone Golem, a monstrous being crafted by the Grafter Sung Min-Seo. Constructed like a centaur, its upper body was multi-limbed, each possessing articulated digits wielding necrotic magic.

Bouncing from wall to wall, the creature came, throwing motes of consumptive fire at the contestants while simultaneously flinging globs of necrotic contagion.

“Diamond Barrier!” Schalk intoned, his semi-transparent eyes darting from one surface to the next, mentally mapping out anchor points for his partition-making Conjuration.

Abruptly, where the Bone Golem placed the weight of its many-legs, a diamond barrier burst from the concrete. The monster countered with supernatural agility, evading the scintillating shards, rebounding from the floor to the rightmost wall.

A second barrier erupted, snagging a front hoof. A third quickly followed, knee-capping its forelimbs, sending the six-meter bone-train to derail against Shimenzi's immovable interior.

“Conjoin Crystal!” Schalk invoked one of a dozen secondary effects attending to his base invocation.

Instantly, the crystalline partitions proliferated. Schalk's first creation caught the Golem’s hindquarter, the second its thorax, and the third encased its upright torso. With a bone-aching creak, the Golem stopped in its tracks, stunned by the sudden loss of momentum. When it recovered a second later, its dozen limbs raking the smooth concrete, it became wholly immobilised.

"Uiteindelik!" Lencho spat. "I can't believe we kited that thing for two levels!"

Besides the Lightning Evoker-Transmuter, Jean-Paul's fingers mapped out arcane gestures.

“Umzokwe,” the Conjurer called upon his hidden Familiar to furnish him with the vitality necessary for his magic. “Consumptive Orb!”

In between the trapped Bone Golem’s ribcage, a pinpoint of Void manifested, growing to the size of a grapefruit. Where it touched the monster’s sculpted innards, a fissure of rapidly reproducing cracks engendered, its stowed mana consumed by the swirling micro-nebula. Fed on the magical energies contained within the Negatively-aligned construct, the sphere grew to the size of a melon before its unstable core went catastrophic.

The claustrophobic passageway suddenly filled with the thrilling shriek of sucking air. The contestant's ears popped, parallelled with a soundless burst of Void matter, peppering the Golem's insides.

“That resistance is something else.” Schalk knitted his brow when the hole-riddled Bone Golem reared its horse-skull once more, its undying essence appearing as twin points of purple fire lighting up its sockets. “Lencho, Heila, your turn.”

“With pleasure.” Lencho rose a little into the air. “Ball Lightning!”

Heila, meanwhile, held her blessed rosaries and prayed. Weaving strands of Faith into her benevolent healing magic, she directed her targeted restoration toward the Bone Golem’s chest and shoulders, where the damage was most significant.

“O Lord, Great Redeemer,
crownest us with kindness and tender mercies.
We petition Thee,
that Thou hast heard our prayer,
— HEAL!”

A burst of gentle light accompanied Lencho’s hysterical electric discharge. The lightning devastated whatever elemental resistances had been built into the Golem, after which Heila's magic permeated its profane body, unravelling the repose brought by Necromancy.

“That's enough!” Schalk stopped Jean-Paul before he could utter another spell. “Save your strength, Mister Bekker, this one has fought its last.”

On cue, the Bone Golem crumbled.

_SNAP!_

The bottom half of the Golem broke from the rest. Like a prehensile lizard’s tail possessed of a mind of its own, it fled into the distance, skittering on half-a-dozen limbs.

“Pufft! Hahaha…” Lencho snorted. “Lekker werk, Kaptein.”

Schalk made a face.

What more could he say? He wasn’t used to fighting the Undead. South African had problems with NoMs in the cities, Grootslang in the mountains, Inkanyamba in the rivers, Kongamato in the skies, but it didn’t— Goddank— have an overt infestation of Undead.

“Group up.”

Pretoria's captain re-organised the team's marching order.

“Izetta, offer our Grafter parley. If she returns your Message, try to pinpoint where she’s hiding.”

“Goed.” Their Diviner concentrated, a soft halo of Divination soon suffused the blonde caster, evidence of her high-tier proficiency.

Meanwhile, the rest of the party meditated.

“… The Necromancer says we’ll pay for her Golem and that your bones will be the centrepiece of her new work.”

Schalk's lips grew cruel. “Damned fanatics.”

“No prisoners then?” Lencho shrugged. “Jean-Paul, got the room for dessert?”

“Umzokwe is quite bottomless.” Jean-Paul smiled sheepishly. Before the mission, Lencho had been all spikes and bristles, making Jean-Paul uncomfortable. Now that he had proven himself, the quick-loving Lightning Mage professed himself his “broer”, making the Void Mage doubly embarrassed.

“Ag! Let’s go!” Lencho slapped Jean-Paul on the back. “I want to see your wurm werk! It’s still keen, ja?”

"Ja." What more could he say? Jean-Paul sighed.

The party retraced its footsteps, returning to the shaft that led down to B-III. Earlier, they had kited not one, but TWO Bone Golems. One was the specimen they had just annihilated, and the other was a humanoid variant akin to a Skeleton Knight, a creature specialising in CQB.

Schalk’s Party did not possess a CQB Mage like Fudan, but they did have Umzokwe. When the bone-blade wielding necrotic maniac had filleted the great leech, Jean-Paul’s creature retaliated by smothering the Golem with corrosive, Void-tinged blood. Thus immobilised, the party wore out its resistance with consecutive blasts of lightning and Positive Energy.

“Where is the Grafter now?”

“Close to the Mandala Core.” Izette manipulated the Arcane Eye she had conveniently left behind.

“Minions?”

“Zombies and Ghouls, a few hundred at most. Two Abominations. One hulk. One Golem tail.”

“Good. Status report?”

“Half-full,” Lencho declared.
“I am good,” Jean-Paul returned sheepishly.
“We’re both fine,” Izette spoke for her utilitarian partner.

“Alchemical limits?”
“Two potions under.”
"We're at one each," the girls replied.
“I am… fine,” Jean-Paul muttered in a low voice. “But Umzokwe could use a refill.”

“That's easy, I see at least four targets in B-III,” Izette confirmed, her blue eyes looking straight through her team members at some distant vision. “We'll be neutralising them as a top priority. The herd loses focus once the casters perish.”

“Good.” Schalk digested the information filtering through Izette’s Mind Link. “We’ll take Formation B. Lencho, you take the General-tier constructs, I’ll push us through with Breaching Wall. Jean-Paul, you’re on Acolytes. Heila, can we count on you for a wide-area Psalm to fatigue the minions?”

The healer made the sign of the Lord.

“Very good.” Schalk stepped into the shaft. “Izette, take us in!"

“Fill us with your cleansing love, O Lord—

berate your wayward flock.
Do not cast away these lost lambs,
let not the gaze of your Holy Spirit stray…”

Heila's soul-soothing voice pealed across the tunnels of Shimenzi's basement, permeating the enclosed chambers before the party even emerged.

“ _GLORIA Patri, et Filio, et Spiritui Sancto…_ ” Her sweet benediction grew in fervour and intensity as the party neared their destination, filling every syllable with divine power. “ _…Sicut erat in principio, et nunc, et semper, et in saecula saeculorum… Amen!”_

The polluted air visibly hummed, thrumming with radiance.

At the shaft’s base, the frenzied Zombies ceased their groans, their movement growing languished as the psalter's verses soothed their soulless, animated anguish.

“Impundulu!” Lencho’s youthful howl broke the serenity of the moment. Before the spell had even engendered, a rip-roaring fulmination shook the interior of the Mandala Core's chamber. “TEMPEST RUSH!”

At once, the immediate entry to B-III lit with circlets of hysterical electricity. As Lencho passed, the rings scatter-shotted into the Zombie Horde, intermittently conjoining lines of arching lightning, sending vivid lashes of pure plasma into Pretoria’s foes.

“ERAARRRRGH!” Expelled a room-shaking roar from a four-meter Stitched Horror, a bloated Abomination sutured from the remains of a hundred corpses. With ground-shaking stomps, the monster battered away the allies in its path, charging toward Pretoria.

“Breaching Wall!” Schalk scattered their closest foes with an explosive Shatter from his Diamond Barrier, launching half-a-dozen groaning bodies flying into the air. As the Abomination picked up speed, he gestured at the Abomination.

_KRINK!_

A sound of shattering glass accompanied the proliferation of Chalk’s diamond-tough manifestations. A lance-like wedge emerged, thrusting forward so that it caught the horror in the gut, directly impaling the beast before breaking off in its brittle midst.

“Wooaaarrrgh—“ The creature stumbled. With a three-meter menhir caught in its innards, its cumbersome form struggled to maintain the momentum without toppling over.

“Chain Lightning!” Lencho utilised the gargantuan creature as an anchor point so that his thunderbolts could tether the twin hulks approaching from behind.

Seeing their creature taking a beating, the Acolytes desperately wove their magic.

“Empower Undead!”
“Frenzy!”
From a safe distance, the Acolytes threw down their creature buffs, knowing full well that if Sung's monsters perished, so would they.

“Heads DOWN!” Schalk communed through their Link Mind. “Take cover!"

Pretoria's captain gathered the latent mana embedded in all of his crystalline constructs. It was a valuable second-stage effect made possible by his mid-tier Enchantment. The process involved injecting his crystal with double-charged mana, then releasing the stowed pressure in one go, overloading the instability with a jolt from his Astral Body.

“Woerrrgh?” As the crystal in its gut rapidly expanded, the Abomination staggered from the spikes erupting from his skull,

_Krink—BAM!_

Schalk warded his team against the shower of skin, blood and bone. As with most monsters, the insides of creatures lacked the same toughness as their exteriors, more so for constructed monstrosities like the Stitched Horror.

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

The resultant discharge of diamond fragments covered almost a quarter of the room, opening an eye in the roving storm of swarming Undead.

“Ar-Aaarrrgh! Help—!” followed the cry of a distracted Acolyte. In the earth-splitting aftermath of the crystalline detonation, no one saw the invisible leech slithering unseen among the Undead. With a slurp, Jean-Paul's Familiar had distended its three-pronged lip, then swallowed its victim— wand, robe, boots and all.

“Black Arrow!” the closest two Necromancers responded with spells capable of withering the stoutest foe.

_Thunk—Thunk!_

The great white leech burped.
It now wore a peevish expression of pure hunger.

With the Black Arrows still humming half-stuck inside its body, Umzokwe returned the favour with a _SPLURK,_ flinging two globs of Void-tinged saliva straight back at its assailants.

Reflexively, the Acolytes erected their barriers of bone. Unfortunately for the pair, someone had been lying in wait.

“Usurp!” came a foretelling invocation from Pretoria's Void Mage.
A ball of swirling darkness about the size of a tennis ball, materialised between the two Acolytes, crackling with unstable energy.

The closest rib-shield abruptly crumpled.

“No—!” The first Acolyte took a glob of spit to the teeth, instantly melting half his face. The second held onto his diminishing barrier by immediately pumping his vitality into the bone structure.

“Consumptive Orb!” Jean-Paul released the stolen mana from the Acolytes. Usually, Usurp wasn’t particularly effective against the standard array of Primary Elementalists common to Spellcraft. Luckily, in a place where every foe freely wielded Negative Energy, Mevrou Bekker’s theoretical magic worked wonders.

Soundlessly, the collated sphere of purloined power erupted, a vivid contrast to the raw force of Schalk’s mineral blast. The radius of the lightless, combusting ball was barely two meters, but it was enough to splatter Jean-Paul’s unsuspecting foe.

The Acolyte fell, alive but incapacitated by the two dozen trypophobic orifices now oozing on his back, his limbs and a part of his skull. Umzokwe slithered close, not one to waste food.

Pretoria’s staggered assault continued unabated, each wave of Lightning, Void, Mineral or Positive Energy bisected the next, leaving neither the Zombies Horde nor the surviving Acolytes room for breath.

“Deus det nobis suam pacem—“

When finally the spell-rotation again reached Heila, she wove the Faith from her relic into the True Silver she now held in one hand. It would be her last spell, beyond that, she was obliged to retain her reserves for contingency healing.

“— Cloud Kill!”

The rod glowed golden, as did Pretoria’s surroundings.

“Garrroaw!”
“Murrrragh!”
“Kaaarrrgh!”

The Undead melted away as though fresh-fallen snow under the noontime sun. The combination of transmuted True Silver with the distinct metaphysical attributes of reality-warping Faith was palpable. Like a cleansing wave, the tidal flood of Positive Energy unanchored the Undead from the material world, dissipating the compelled obedience possessing their shambling forms.

“TEMPEST RUSH!”
“Breaching Shield!”
“Void Burst!”

Not even the Hulks were immune when submerged in the warm glow of Heila’s blessing.

Inch by Inch, grid by grid, over charred bodies and crystalised corpses, Pretoria approached the Mandala Core. It was a contest, one to see if their mana held out, or if enough Undead remained to overwhelm them.

“Grrrngh?”
"Murrrgh...?"

Unseen but palpable, the atmosphere shifted.

The Zombies who had been so focused on their unceasing advancement grew suddenly lax and disorientated, as though the will driving their actions had been sapped.

“Something’s happened upstairs,” Izette remarked, scanning their surroundings with Detect Magic. “Remember I said there was an oppressive eye watching us? It’s gone!”

“Perhaps our competitors are successful in their suite,” Schalk said, eyeing their objective. He didn't mind his competitor's success. A confused Horde was a boon. What it also meant was that at the base of the cubic Mandala Core, the haggard Korean woman cloaked in olive-green was now without protection.

“Should we question her?” Lencho asked of his Captain, flexing his fingers.

“No need.” Schalk’s expression was unreadable. “Jean-Paul?”

The Void Mage’s answer arrived in the form of Umzokwe, now twice the girth as it slithered toward the Grafter.

“Tower Bastards!” the woman known as Sung Min-Seo screeched, her voice piercing their ears. Around her waist was wrapped her Bone Golem, now acting as her armour. “I won’t be meeting the eminent one alone! Dimension Door—”

“Dispel—“
“USURP!” Jean-Paul proved the faster caster. Unlike the studied nuance of Dispel Magic, Usurp was a brutal tug-of-war of wills.

A mote of spell-siphoning Void engendered beside the suicidal Grafter, stealing just enough of her vitality and mana to disrupt her spell’s successful formation.

In awe, disdain and indignity, Sung Min-Seo glared at her assailants. As the feedback of Negative Energy exceeded her conduit's warded state, her eyes bled, her skin ruptured, and her bones rapidly grew into splintered spikes. It was too late to recant her final spell— her Bone Golem trembled.

_BA-BAM!_

The Golem exploded, showering the entrance to the Mandala Core with blood and bone.

Schalk winced as his barrier grew polluted with a stirfry of entrails.
What was left of Umzokwe was barely a stump. More aptly, what remained was a quarter of a quivering creature, happily wiggling beside blasted, pockmarked concrete.

“Corpse Explosion...” Jean-Paul winced as the feedback from Umzokwe rolled over his pallid body, setting his teeth to chatter. “It's true what they say. To be a Necromancer, one needs first to be cruel to oneself.”

“Wel gedaan!" Schalk walked over the Necromancer’s blasted corpse, plodding over shredded flesh as he materialised his Evard’s Many Layered Toolbox. Finally, the Mandala Core was open to Pretoria's unique expertise. “Lencho, Jean-Paul, set up a perimeter. I am not sure what Auckland or Fudan has done, but we’re going to be the ones to finish the first leg of the competition.”

Colonel Qin Qíao oversaw the cleanup.

By mid-morning, the battle was over.
The living had triumphed over the dead.

Anton Yermolov had been reduced to cinders by Auckland.

Sung Min-Seo painted the ceiling.

And presumably, Diego Valentino had been existentially erased from the world— or so the shaken sorceress from Fudan had declared.

Qíao tapped his data slate.

That their home team had run into the most powerful of the three Necromancers trapped in Shimenzi, and that the Soul Flayer was at the tier of a high-tier Magus wasn’t something Qíao would have like to see.

But— a pyrrhic triumph, especially one without death, was laudable.

“How’s our sorceress doing now?”

“Resting in her Portable Habitat.” The commander's aid gulped. "She said... Miss Song said she needed a hot shower."

Colonel Qin Qíao frowned. With such attachments to creature comforts, it was little wonder the team suffered against such a foe. The exact details of the girl’s encounter had yet to be made clear, but Qíao suspected inexperience, a lack of conviction, and egocentric grandstanding had all played a part. He had seen it happen too often to these next-generation Mages reared on Western Spellcraft and fed on bottomless pits of crystals. The perfumed youth of today, in the Colonel's humble opinion, was nothing like the young men and women who survived Mao’s Purge, then the Beast Tide, then the Undead Front.

“Send over some supplies.” Qíao withheld the desire for discipline. These weren’t his students, and whatever their fault, they DID swallow the bitter pill in the PLA's stead. “How are our men?”

“Six-dead, ten maimed, Sir! One Golem needs extensive repairs.” The Lieutenant snapped to attention now that the conversation had steered back to military business. “Sir... We lost Major Hong, Sir.”

Qíao's fingers flexed and unflexed. “Cao… his son just turned six. This is why you never boast about your kids before a mission.”

“Sir?”

“Recover their bodies and raise a flag in their honour.”

“Yessir.”

Colonel Qíao swept his eyes over the control room at B-III.

“…And get our Enchanters to go over the Mandala again. Change the Key Glyph. Pretoria might resent London, but they're still a part of the Mageocracy.”

By mid-morning, a portable Divination Tower had been set up.
Now that the lesser Undead were cleansed from the interior by rotating Purge teams, the Enchanters could redirect the Mandala’s energies into the filter systems, re-igniting decade-old mana engines that worked to exchange the foetid liquid below with that of freshwater from the Elemental Plane.

It was over the churning whitewater that Gwen sat alone atop the steep rise overlooking the brown gorge. Thanks to their efforts, the renewed earth would once again grow hospitable to life.

Her mind was gravid with words, ones she’d mulled over for hours, first in the shower, then on the couch, then again when she woke, sick with unease. She had prepared them for Eunae and Mayuree, though more so for Eunae— the girl she had promised, then failed, to protect.

Ding!

As assured, the portable Divination Tower had been made available for her convenience.

“Gwen,” Walken’s voice came through like a thorn of ice.

“Eric...” The pit of her stomach dropped. She hadn't expected Walken to call in the girls' stead.

“First things first.” Ger Instructor’s voice was ice. “Mayuree is safe and sound. She says she’ll be back to normal in a week or so. She's looking forward to reuniting with you in Dalian.”

“Oh, thank God—“

“Eunae Lee, not so much.”

Gwen's relief evaporated. “Is she…?”

“Oh, she’s alive,” Walken intoned emotionlessly. “But she won’t be of use— no, it's not her health.”

“Then what’s the problem?”

“She says she can’t cast spells. Can’t contact her Deer Spirit.”

“What? How?” An ailment came to her mind. PTSD.

“It’s not entirely your fault.” Walken’s voice took on a hint of sympathy. “A Proctor had been paid off by the Lee family to keep an eye on Eunae. When she returned to Dalian jittering with madness, the man must have blabbed. Not long after the healers transferred your Cleric from Triage to the Ward, she received a Long-Range Message from her extended family…”

“Oh…”

“I think we can both imagine the conversation…”

“They told her to quit? Shit.”

“Just the opposite.” Walken’s annoyance was palpable. “The attending physician informed me that the Lees told Eunae to push on and that her life, for what it is worth, isn’t nearly as important as the family’s reputation. They would rather have Eunae die as a martyr than 'quit' as a shameful failure.”

“Bastards!”

“To be expected, I suppose. The Chaebol are a prideful lot. You can talk to Eunae later. For now, she’s saying that she’s been wounded by the Soul Flayer and that she can’t conjure her Spirit. Personally, I think its an illness of the mind, her Astral Body is likely refusing to manifest due to her subconscious reluctance.” As her instructor continued to speak, his tone took on a steely edge. “Whatever, what's done is done— NOW, let’s talk about your performance.”

Gwen fought the urge to hang up. Shame, pride, and regret made a curious cocktail in her aching abdomen.

“Alright.” She hugged her knees against her bosoms. “Eric, I know I screwed up.”

“I am not faulting anything you did under duress.” Walken's objection surprised her. “I saw the raw footage. Under the circumstances, you performed under par but fair. My real concern is that you’ve got a PROBLEM ignoring my advice. Recall what we discussed! ALWAYS put yourself first, then others! Let me ask you something— why didn’t you choose the Ground Floor?”

"The Ground Floor?" Gwen grew confused. "Yue said—“

“THERE! Who cares what 'YUE' has to say?!” Walken’s retort cracked like a whip. “During the planning stage, after your forced entry, FUDAN should have picked the GROUND FLOOR! YOU had the closest connection to the PLA! Colonel Qíao served with your Uncle! YOU possess an overlarge mana pool and ultra-wide AoEs! Maelstrom! Cloud Kill! Ariel and Barbanginy! YOU have Caliban for the Acolytes! Do you realise how easily YOU could have minimised risk and maximised Fudan's CC output?”

“Eric—“ Gwen felt as though caught in a storm.

“Why didn’t you act to maximise outcome?! Why did you not act in your team’s BEST interests? You gave away a clear advantage! YOU risked Mayuree AND Eunae! For what? What did you gain? This is a God-damned contest on the international stage! Auckland and Pretoria are NOT your chums! That you’re not blasting each other in the back is already the greatest courtesy!”

Gwen bit her lip so hard she could taste iron. Walken was wrong. If she didn’t take the upper level, then Yue would have fought the Soul Flayer. Could Auckland have survived like she did? Could Pretoria? How dare Walken demand that she should live while Yue could die for all he cared! The bastard hadn’t changed at all! It was the case with her Master all over again!

“Gwen, listen well. I don’t fault what's happened in the war theatre. There was little anyone could have done there,” Walken's critique continued. “But by GOD, Gwen, ofttimes, you’re so devious that I am in awe. Then again, sometimes I wonder if you’re spell-touched in the head! What the hell were you thinking, girl? We’ve gone over this in the Bestiary— Don’t fight enemies you can’t defeat without Faith Magic! You’re an Omni-Mage, a fledging at that, you are not all-powerful! That Richard as well, always enabling your appetites, I'd like to have a word with him!”

“I had Gogo with me, so I’d thought…”

“A lot of good that did, eh? Where's Golos now?”

“Home? I hope—”

“Fudan will likely lose this round.”

A Wyvern caught Gwen's tongue.

Walken’s analysis struck her pride like a physical blow. “That's right. Your deference to your friend, your meekness when desiring approval from others, has lost Fudan the chance to advance.”

“But Tei and the others—“

“—would have barely made it past Burma without you.”

“Oh, come off it, Eric, that’s not true.”

Walken scoffed. “Replace you with Auckland’s Captain, or Pretoria’s Captain, or even the Captains from Tokyo or Jiaotong, and your team would have perished in Amazonia. If everyone but Richard and Tei became Tide fodder, I would not be surprised.”

Gwen nibbled her lips again. Walken's pontification was backed by cold rationality.

“Now that you've taken us here... let me be perfectly frank. In the B-Teams, neither Fudan nor Auckland can come close to Pretoria. Even if Tei is equivalent to Alizea, their Ooze Mage, Pretoria also possesses Ella, a defender many times Anita's superior. As for Rene or Jiro— Mariete Zietsman, Pretoria's tier 6 Lightning Mage with a Behir Sprite is incomparably their better. Even with Petra helping Tei, the overall gap in Spellcraft knowledge remains astounding.”

Her chest grew sore.

What her instructor had counted on was for Fudan's A-Team to work another "Gwen" miracle.

Of course, that dream now flew out the window.

So they would lose because she wasn’t selfish enough? Because she wasn’t willing to stomp on her fellow contestants’ faces?

“I sense your elucidation. Let me impart another lesson. When you acquire a Flight of your own, or a township, or dare I say it, a Tower, will you still put your feelings first? Or will you think of what is best for your men, your people, your Faction?"

"Your problem, Gwen, is prioritisation.”

Walken allowed the moment to sink in.

“And now you face a dilemma.” Her instructor's tone softened. “I want you to think very carefully. Will you risk Richard and Lulan on blind forays into Shenyang’s dungeon-like alleyways, its skyscrapers and its sewers, WITHOUT a Diviner? Without means to ward away disease, debilitation and life-drain? Are you ruthless enough, wanton enough, to do that?"

"No," Gwen confessed.

“And THAT is why Fudan will lose this round.” Walken’s prediction repressed her bleeding heart. “Because you wanted to play nice. Because you listened to a friend, rather than rebuking a competitor. Because in the aftermath, you’re incapable of risking your friends' lives to gamble for victory. Because of that, your team’s career, their individual ambitions— ends here..."

"... And so... are you sorry now? Do you understand?"

Braced against her knees, Gwen realised her legs were covered with goosebumps. Was she sorry? She was. Walken's advice was pure platinum. Fudan's path away from victory had already been set the moment she ignorantly failed to pursue the natural advantages they possessed. In hindsight, hadn't Yue laid out why she chose the Ground Floor? Hadn't Schalk explained why he was suited to the Basement? It had felt so natural to heed their opinions that she had neglected her own team.

Likewise, now that her head had cooled; even if Auckland had taken the upper floors, would Yue have failed? If Pretoria was coerced to fight Diego, would they be helplessly encircled by Wraiths?

“I am sorry, Eric,” her prideful retort emerged as a morose apology. Her voice choked, finding no excuses to hide behind. “I disappointed you.”

“For what it's worth, I accept your apology.” Her Instructor likewise grew reserved. “But I don’t think Eunae will. And it’s not to me that you should be apologising, but your teammates who you let down.”

“Alright, Eric. I get it.”

Walken cleared his throat. There was a pause, as though her instructor had been waiting for this moment all along.

“But all's not lost."

"Eric?"

"Gwen... For the IIUC. Shall we go out with a bang?”