The stairs to the final floor were different.
No more rough stone. No more red veins pulsing through the walls. The staircase was smooth, almost polished, carved from a piece of black obsidian that reflected faint purple light from somewhere above.
The air changed too.
It was cold and damp, carrying a smell that made Renna gag the moment they passed the halfway mark. She pulled her shirt over her nose and tried to breathe through her mouth.
"What is that?" she choked. "It smells like something died in a sewer and then got set on fire."
"Necrotic Abyssal residue," Emric said, wrinkling his nose. "Something undead is up there."
"Everything is so worse with you, Emric," Renna muttered.
Lyra tightened her grip on her spear as they continued upward.
"An undead Abyssal at the top of an S-Class Spire. That’s going to be something big."
Holden didn’t answer.
His 10,000x senses were already reaching ahead, scanning the space above them. He could feel a massive presence waiting at the top of the tower.
Rank 3 energy.
Strong.
Stronger than the Warlord.
Stronger than the Golem.
Whatever was waiting for them wasn’t something they could afford to underestimate.
Holden kept climbing.
The staircase finally ended at an open platform.
There was no ceiling.
The top floor of the S-Class Spire was completely exposed to the sky. Dark storm clouds churned overhead, flashes of purple lightning crawling across their undersides. Rain fell in thick sheets, pooling across the black stone before running off the edges into the void below.
The platform was circular, roughly eighty feet across.
And in the center, coiled around a pile of ancient bones, was the Wyrm.
It looked like the skeleton of a dragon, but everything about it was wrong. Its bones were black instead of white, stained by years of necrotic energy, and its skull was enormous, easily the size of a carriage. Faint purple light burned inside its empty eye sockets, while its jaw was lined with teeth made of condensed dark energy, each one nearly as long as a sword.
Inside its ribcage, something pulsed.
A fist-sized sphere of purple light.
Its heart.
The Bone-Wyrm was Rank 3, 5-Star.
And it was looking directly at them.
Click.
Click.
Click.
The sound came from its jaw, a horrible grinding noise like dry bones rubbing together inside an empty skull. It wasn’t a roar or a hiss. Somehow, that clicking sounded worse than either.
"It sees us," Lyra said.
The Wyrm uncoiled.
It moved fast.
Far too fast for something made of bones.
Its skeletal body surged forward, ribs rattling as its tail whipped behind it. Its jaw opened, and purple light gathered at the back of its throat, growing brighter and denser with every second.
"Shields!" Emric shouted.
He planted his feet and slammed his shield into the ground.
Lyra was already moving. She thrust her spear forward, releasing a massive wall of frost that formed behind Emric’s shield like a second layer of defense.
The Wyrm breathed.
A wave of dark, acidic fire erupted from its jaws.
It wasn’t normal fire. The thick, viscous stream glowed purple and carried the stench of burning rot as it crashed into Emric’s shield and Lyra’s frost barrier.
CRACK!
The frost wall held for two seconds before the acid ate through it.
The shield took the brunt of the blast. Emric’s boots scraped backward across the stone as the force pushed him away, his arms shaking while the blue runes across his shield flickered wildly.
"Structural integrity at forty percent!" he shouted through gritted teeth. "The acid is corroding the defensive runes! I can’t hold this for more than eight seconds!"
The Wyrm kept breathing.
The dark fire poured over Emric’s shield, slowly eating through it. Lyra tried to reinforce the frost barrier, but every layer she created was destroyed almost instantly.
Holden’s earpiece crackled.
"Holden!"
Maeve’s voice was sharp and fast.
"I’m reading the Wyrm’s energy signature from the external sensors. The bones are just a shell. The core in its chest is the only thing keeping it together. Destroy that, and the whole thing falls apart!"
"Copy."
Holden glanced at the Wyrm, then at Lyra.
He reached over and touched her shoulder.
"Keep it focused on you. Buy me thirty seconds."
Lyra looked at him.
"Thirty seconds against that thing?"
Her eyes were wide, but her voice remained steady.
"Fine. Don’t be late."
Holden pulled the Void Mantle from his inventory and swung it over his shoulders.
He vanished.
One second he was standing there.
The next, he was gone.
No energy. No presence. Nothing.
The Wyrm’s empty eye sockets flickered. Its clicking changed, becoming faster and more erratic. It could tell something had disappeared, but it couldn’t find what.
Lyra gave it something else to focus on.
"Frost Lance!"
A spear of solid ice, nearly the size of a tree trunk, shot toward the Wyrm and slammed into its skull.
The ice shattered on impact. It barely scratched the creature, but its head snapped toward Lyra with an angry series of clicks.
"Over here, you overgrown skeleton!"
Renna loosed a storm-arrow.
Twang!
The arrow struck the Wyrm’s ribs and cracked apart.
The creature turned toward her.
Its jaw opened.
The dark fire shifted away from Emric and swung toward Renna.
Renna’s eyes widened.
"Wait, why me?!"
She dove behind a stone pillar just as the stream of acid fire swept across the platform. The pillar melted almost instantly, black stone collapsing into glowing slag.
"Okay, that was too close!" Renna shouted from behind what remained of the pillar. "Way too close! I felt that on my skin and it was not a good feeling!"
Holden was already moving.
Completely invisible beneath the Void Mantle, he sprinted toward the edge of the platform and looked up.
The Spire wall rose beside him, its rough stone surface stretching toward the open sky.
He activated Gale-Step and ran up the wall, each step launching him higher. Rain streamed past him as purple lightning flashed overhead, and within seconds he was climbing far above the platform.
Fifty feet.
Sixty.
Seventy.
Holden stopped.
He was directly above the Wyrm now.
Below him, the skeletal dragon rampaged across the platform, snapping at Lyra and Renna while Emric struggled to reposition his battered shield. It had no idea where Holden had gone. Its empty eye sockets scanned the ground, the shadows between the pillars, and the edges of the platform.
It never thought to look up.
Holden stood against the vertical wall and looked down.
The Wyrm’s ribcage was spread wide below him.
Inside it, the purple core pulsed like a diseased heartbeat.
Holden reached up and pulled off the Void Mantle.
For one brief second, the Wyrm felt something appear above it.
Its empty eye sockets snapped upward.
Too late.
Holden activated Hellfire Cleave.
The Solar-Forged Sword erupted with white-hot light, turning the rainy darkness around him into a flash of noon.
He didn’t swing horizontally.
He swung down.
Holden dropped from the wall, blade leading the way as he descended toward the Wyrm.
The sword struck its spine.
And didn’t stop.
The white-hot edge sliced through black bone, tearing through the spine and ribcage before reaching the purple core.
The blade struck it dead center.
The core didn’t shatter.
It vaporized.
The purple light disappeared instantly.
The Wyrm froze.
Click...
Click...
The light in its eye sockets flickered once.
Then went out.
The dark energy holding the bones together began to fade. One after another, the massive bones lost their unnatural glow, and the entire skeletal body collapsed.
Bones crashed across the platform, scattering in every direction.
The skull rolled across the wet stone and came to a stop near Emric’s feet.
The ribs collapsed inward.
The tail twitched once.
Then went still.
The dark fire in the Wyrm’s throat sputtered and disappeared.
[Ding!]
[Abyssal Bone-Wyrm (Rank 3, 5-Star) Defeated!]
[+20,000 KP]
[2x KP Booster Applied!]
[+40,000 KP!]
[S-Class Spire Cleared!]
[Bonus KP: +5,000!]
The rain kept falling.
And in the center of the platform, a brilliant platinum glow appeared where the Wyrm’s core had been.
A Platinum Chest.
Holden dropped the final few feet and landed lightly on the platform. He walked over to the chest and touched it.
It vanished into his inventory.
Then something caught his eye.
Half-buried beneath the bone dust was a small metal plate.
Holden crouched and picked it up.
It was rectangular, made of dark metal, with a royal seal stamped into its surface.
He turned it over once.
There were no words.
Just the seal.
Holden’s expression changed slightly.
He tucked the plate into his jacket.
"Is it dead?" Renna called from behind the remains of the melted pillar. "Please tell me it’s dead. I can’t hear the clicking anymore, and I really need it to be dead."
"It’s dead," Emric said.
He finally lowered his shield. His arms were trembling from the sustained blocking, and the front of the shield was badly pitted and scarred from the acid.
Renna slowly stepped out from behind the pillar and looked at the scattered bones.
"So that’s it? We actually cleared an S-Class Spire?"
"Looks like it," Holden said.
Lyra walked over to them, her silver hair plastered against her face by the rain. She looked at the Wyrm’s remains, then at Holden.
"You ran up the wall."
"I did."
"And dropped onto it from seventy feet in the air."
"More of a controlled descent."
Lyra stared at him for a moment before shaking her head, a small smile appearing despite herself.
Renna pointed at Holden.
"That’s not a normal sentence, by the way."
Holden ignored her and looked over the scattered remains of the Rank 3 Wyrm.
He wiped the last traces of monster blood from his blade before dismissing it.
"Looks like you needed some heartburn medication."
Nobody laughed.
Renna groaned.
"That was terrible."
Holden smiled.
"Still worked."
The rain continued to fall around them as the remains of the S-Class Spire slowly began to fade.
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