The cavern trembled with every collision. Dust sifted down from the high, unseen ceiling in long grey curtains, and the ancient stone buildings below shuddered hard enough to send loose tiles sliding from their broken roofs. Cracks spread through several of the floating platforms with sharp, dry snaps. The gemstone light flickered across the open space as shockwaves rolled outward, stirring the cold air into restless currents that carried the sharp scent of ozone and scorched darkness energy.
Lewis met the Eighth-stage puppet head-on and drove it back with three sharp, precise strikes. Lightning cracked along the length of his spear, forcing the construct to give ground step by step. The ease of those first exchanges lasted only heartbeats. The scout leader, the same Eighth-stage Gnome they had chased across the open field for days, joined the fight at once. Darkness elemental energy already swirled around both him and his puppet in thick, coiling ribbons.
The pressure doubled in an instant. In the space of a few breaths Lewis found himself fully on the defensive. The puppet lashed out with a thin string of pure darkness that snaked low across the stone toward his right leg. Lewis reacted the moment he saw it. Lightning flared around his boot as he kicked; the white-blue arc sliced through the string like a hot knife through butter, scattering black fragments into the air. He turned at once to meet the scout leader’s incoming strike and failed to see the severed darkness reform behind him. The string rose silently and coiled tight around his ankle with a sudden, icy grip.
The scout leader’s attack arrived in the same instant. Lewis tried to twist aside and felt the string lock his leg in place, yanking his balance off-center. His teeth clenched hard enough to ache. Both hands swept in a tight, desperate circle, and a dense shield of crackling lightning bloomed in front of him.
The darkness strike slammed into the shield with a deep, resonant boom that shook the platforms on either side. Cracks spider-webbed across the glowing surface almost at once, spreading outward in jagged white lines. Lewis’s expression tightened as the fractures widened faster than he could pour more energy into them. The attack did not stop. It pressed harder, grinding against the failing barrier.
A sharp bang split the air. The shield shattered outward in a burst of white-blue fragments. The residual force of the Gnome’s strike exploded through the space, swallowing everything in a thick cloud of smoke and dust.
The scout leader narrowed his eyes, peering into the haze. A figure shot out of the smoke a second later, moving fast and low. Lewis landed several meters away, boots scraping against stone, cold sweat already beading along his temples and sliding down the side of his neck. He had slipped free in the final fraction of a second before the shield collapsed completely. Even the weakened remnant of that attack would have left him injured. An early wound in a fight this one-sided was not something he could afford.
While Lewis fought for breathing room, Alice tore through the first three Seventh-stage puppets with brutal, efficient speed. Lightning wrapped her body in a living sheath and gave her acceleration that left sharp afterimages hanging in the cold air. Fire exploded from her fists in tight, controlled bursts, forcing the puppets backward in staggered, broken steps. More puppets closed in quickly, ten of them trying to swamp her from every angle.
The sight of this didn’t scare her. During the last journey with Grey and the others, she and Klaus had encountered the Misty Trench inside that strange small world. The experience had sharpened her ice abilities far beyond their previous limits, giving her a new technique she had been wanting to try.
She spread her arms wide.
Pale frost-smoke unfurled from her body in soft, luminous currents. It drifted outward in slow, glittering sheets, every particle catching the gemstone light until the space around her shimmered like a frozen lake under winter moonlight. Clean, sharp cold followed in its wake, so intense that the ancient stone underfoot frosted over in spreading white patterns. Within heartbeats a perfect circle a hundred meters across became a living veil of ice-smoke, beautiful, translucent, and lethal.
The puppets charged straight into it without hesitation. The moment the first construct crossed the boundary, frost began to crawl across its limbs in rapid white veins. This one was a Fire Elementalist. Hot air blasted from its nostrils as it melted the ice forming on its body, yet it still noticed a considerable decline in its movements which was turning sluggish and heavy. Flames erupted across its frame a second later, burning away the remaining frost in a hiss of steam, and it shot forward again at full force.
Alice felt every movement inside the zone as clearly as if the puppets were moving across her own skin. She registered the first one slowing, then the arrival of the others pushing through the cold, and finally the Fire Elementalist’s sudden, violent recovery. Lightning already danced along her arms in tight coils as she bolted sideways, sliding past the charging Fire Elementalist puppet rather than meeting it head-on. Speed and higher cultivation gave her the opening she needed. She drove a flame-wrapped fist straight into the head of the nearest puppet, the impact cracking bone and dark energy alike with a wet, sharp sound. Without pausing to watch it fall she spun, ice shards forming in the air around her in a glittering cloud and streaking toward two more puppets. Two thunderbolts followed an instant later, each one finding another head with surgical precision. The cracks of the impacts echoed off the distant cavern walls.
Five Seventh-stage puppets dropped in less than a second, their bodies hitting the stone platforms with heavy thuds.
The remaining puppets inside the frost zone finally reacted. They forced their way back out of the killing cold, limbs stiff, one of them losing an entire arm to a trailing ice shard before it cleared the boundary. Black energy leaked from the stump like smoke. The Fire Elementalist recovered behind Alice and unleashed a wide, roaring stream of flames that lit the nearby ruins in harsh orange. An ice wall rose to meet it, thick and clear, hissing and steaming violently on contact. A bolt of lightning fell from the high darkness above the cavern, drawn by Alice’s will, and smashed into the puppet with a deafening crack, driving it downward through the roof of one of the old buildings.
While Alice and Lewis held the stronger Gnomes, the rest of the squad fought for every breath. Sara’s array patterns never stopped spinning above her tablet, the glowing symbols flickering under the strain as she and the Dual Elementalist worked desperately at the sealed tunnel mouth. Earth elemental energy ground against whatever force had closed the passage, sending small tremors through the stone wall. The other eight formed a tight defensive ring around the pair, backs to the sealed exit. Most of the puppets reaching them were only Sixth-stage Sovereigns, with three Seventh-stage Sovereigns mixed in, yet the numbers still favored the enemy heavily. The humans blocked and countered as best they could, lightning, fire, and earth clashing against darkness in short, brutal exchanges. Every successful defense left them a step closer to being overwhelmed. Once the Gnomes joined their puppets, they would instantly overwhelm the humans.
They clung to one thin hope: if Sara could reopen the seal, they could escape into the tunnel and send the distress signal. Alice had already tried the signal earlier and found it completely useless inside the cavern; that was why she had given the duo the task of breaking the exit instead of anything else.
On the higher ledges the two Ninth-stage Gnomes watched the battle unfold with growing interest. Neither had expected the two human Eighth-stage fighters to display this level of strength. Lewis had forced their scout leader to enter the fight within moments and was still holding his ground. Alice had killed five puppets in a single breath and damaged several more while maintaining a domain that slowed everything inside it. Most above average Eighth-stage Sovereigns could never manage such a feat.
"Geniuses," the scarred Gnome murmured, eyes bright with sudden greed as he stared down at Alice’s frost-wrapped figure.
The second Ninth-stage turned his head slowly and pointed at Alice with one long finger. "The girl is mine."
"Impossible. She’s far more valuable than the boy."
"I’ll loan you the mine for two hundred years."
The scarred Gnome went completely still. He had tried to buy that particular mine for centuries and failed every time. Even short-term loans had been refused without discussion. The offer hung in the cold air for a single heartbeat while he weighed the captured value of the girl against the long-coveted prize. Dust continued to drift down from the ceiling. Below them the sounds of battle, cracking lightning, shattering ice, and the heavy impacts of bodies against stone, filled the cavern.
Then he nodded once, decision made.
"Keep the girl. The boy is still worth taking."
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