The cavern trembled under the weight of the battle. Dust poured from the high ceiling in long grey sheets, and the ancient buildings below cracked further with every shockwave. Loose stones and broken tiles rained down into the darkness beneath the floating platforms. The gemstone light flickered wildly as wave after wave of elemental force ripped through the open space.
The scarred Ninth-stage Gnome dropped from his ledge without another word. Darkness exploded around him as he fell, and a Ninth stage puppet appeared beside him as he approached. The second Ninth-stage followed a fraction later, his own controlled puppet moving in perfect rhythm with his descent. Their combined auras slammed downward like a physical weight, making the air itself feel heavier and colder.
Alice felt the change the instant it happened. The frost zone around her trembled and thinned at the edges. She snapped her head up just as the scarred Gnome landed on a broken rooftop two hundred meters away, the puppet standing on the other side.
Seeing the two Ninth stage Sovereign Gnomes making a move, Alice’s expression turned serious and she called out to Lewis. She also used the opportunity to observe the situation of Sara and the others.
Lewis didn’t need Alice’s reminder, when the two Ninth-stage auras crashed down, his lightning armor flickered violently under the sudden pressure. He barely managed to throw himself backward before a spear of pure darkness punched through the air where his chest had been, the tip of the spear gouging a long scar into the stone platform.
The rest of the human squad felt the new weight as well, with the two Ninth stage Sovereign Gnomes aiming for Alice and Lewis, only the scout leader and a few of the Seventh stage Sovereign Gnomes stayed with them, the other Gnomes joined their companions against the humans. The eight fighters protecting Sara and the Dual Elementalist staggered. In that single moment of disrupted balance, two of the Sixth-stage puppets broke through their line. One drove a jagged bone blade into a young man’s thigh, twisting it as he fell. The other raked a darkness-wrapped claw across a woman’s ribs, tearing cloth and flesh. Both injured humans cried out but forced themselves to stay upright, unleashing desperate bursts of lightning and fire to drive the attackers back a few steps.
Sara’s hands never stopped moving across the cracked surface of her tablet. Array patterns spun faster and brighter, almost frantic, the light from them reflecting in her wide eyes. The Dual Elementalist poured everything he had left into the sealed tunnel mouth. Stone groaned and split, small fragments flying outward, but the barrier still held. Sweat ran down both their faces in continuous streams, mixing with the dust that coated everyone’s skin.
Alice was only able to watch them for a short time before she was interrupted.
The scarred Gnome raised one hand. His Ninth stage Sovereign puppet charged at Alice at full speed. At the same time he flicked his fingers, and thin black threads shot toward Alice from three separate directions, moving faster than ordinary eyes could follow. She spun, frost-smoke flaring outward in a sudden dense wave to slow the threads, and answered with a dense spear of lightning that punched straight through the chest of the nearest dead man. The darkness animating the corpse shattered with a wet, tearing sound. The body collapsed, but the other two closed the remaining distance without slowing.
Alice met the first with a flame-covered fist. The impact staggered the dead man, black energy leaking from the crushed shoulder joint like smoke. Before she could follow up, the second one was already on her left side. She twisted hard, ice forming along her forearm in a thick plate just in time to block a downward slash that would have severed the limb. The force of the blocked strike still drove her back three full steps across the frost-covered stone, her boots scraping loudly.
Above her the scarred Gnome smiled, the expression thin and cold.
"You indeed are amazing for an Eighth stage Sovereign."
He stepped off the rooftop. Darkness gathered around his right hand and formed a long, jagged blade that seemed to drink the surrounding light. He swung it in a wide, lazy arc. The blade extended far beyond its apparent length, becoming a wave of cutting force that carved through the air toward Alice with a high, screaming sound.
She dropped flat against the stone. The wave passed over her so close that she felt the unnatural cold of it against the back of her neck and the tips of her hair. The moment her body hit the ground she rolled and came up firing. Three ice spears and two lightning bolts left her hands in the same breath, streaking toward the scarred Gnome. He swatted the ice aside with his free hand, the spears shattering into harmless shards, and let the lightning crack against a hastily raised wall of pure darkness. The wall cracked deeply but held.
On the far side of the cavern Lewis was losing ground with every exchange.
The second Ninth-stage Gnome had joined the scout leader without speaking a single word. Between the two living Gnomes and the two puppets under their control, Lewis was forced into pure, grinding defense. Lightning armor still covered his body, but every block sent fresh shocks of pain up his arms and into his shoulders. A clawed hand from one of the dead men raked across his side, tearing through the armor with a sound like ripping cloth and leaving three long, burning lines of blood that immediately soaked his clothes. He answered with a point-blank thunderclap that blew the corpse backward several meters, but the second Ninth-stage was already there, moving with calm, merciless precision.
A palm of condensed darkness struck Lewis square in the chest.
The impact launched him across the open space like a broken doll. He slammed into the wall of an old building hard enough to crack the ancient stone in a spiderweb pattern. Blood filled his mouth and spilled over his lips. He forced himself up on shaking arms, lightning flaring weakly and unevenly around his body, just in time to see both Ninth-stage Gnomes and their controlled puppets advancing on him together, unhurried.
Across the field the rest of the squad was breaking apart.
One of the younger men went down under three Sixth-stage puppets. His screams rose high and sharp before cutting off abruptly when a blade of darkness punched cleanly through his throat. Another woman lost her left arm at the elbow to a sweeping horizontal attack; the severed limb spun away into the darkness below the platforms. She stayed standing only because the fighter beside her grabbed her remaining arm and dragged her backward while raising a desperate, crumbling lightning wall. Sara’s tablet cracked fully under the strain of her arrays, a long fracture running down the center. The Dual Elementalist’s earth energy finally punched a small hole in the sealed tunnel, no bigger than a closed fist. Cold outside air whistled through the opening, carrying the faint scent of the open field above, but it was nowhere near large enough.
Alice saw the hole appear. Hope flared in her chest for half a second, then the scarred Gnome’s darkness blade came down again, larger and heavier than before. She met it with everything she had left: the frost zone contracting tight around her body for last-ditch defense, lightning and fire exploding upward in a single combined blast that lit the entire cavern in blinding white and deep black. The collision created a shockwave that flattened several of the weaker puppets and cracked two more of the floating platforms, sending large chunks of stone tumbling into the darkness below.
When the light cleared, Alice was on one knee. Blood ran freely from the corner of her mouth and from a new cut along her hairline. The scarred Gnome stood ten meters away, one arm hanging at a slightly wrong angle, dark energy leaking from the shoulder, but he was still smiling.
"You’re coming with me," he said, voice calm.
Behind her, Lewis’s lightning armor shattered completely under another coordinated assault from the second Ninth-stage and the scout leader. He dropped to both knees, barely able to keep his spear raised. The second Ninth-stage Gnome lifted one hand, darkness already gathering in a dense, swirling mass for the finishing strike.
Sara’s desperate voice cut through the chaos.
"Almost... just a little more!"
The Dual Elementalist roared, the sound tearing from his throat, and poured the absolute last of his strength into the seal. The fist-sized hole widened with a violent, grinding crack, becoming large enough for a person to squeeze through sideways. Outside air rushed in more strongly. The distant light of the tunnel beyond became clearly visible, a thin promise of escape.
For one heartbeat the entire remaining human squad looked toward that opening.
Then the two Ninth-stage Gnomes moved at the same time.
Darkness flooded the cavern like a rising tide, swallowing light, sound, and hope in a single overwhelming wave.
"How could you not invite us?"
A playful voice resounded in the underground cave.
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