The earth shuddered, then split. With a wet, organic sound, the earthen egg of the Womb Tomb unraveled, ejecting Lynder up and back onto the blackened stone floor. He stood up, briskly dusting off his robes with the air of a man who hadn't just been put in time-out by a teenage girl.
"Shall we?" he asked, pointing his hand at the boss gate, eager to put this embarrassment behind him.
They moved into the chamber, weapons drawn, anticipating another powerful monster. Instead, the vast room was silent. Not a single roar greeted them, nor was there a surge of killing intent.
"Dungeon break?" Roy whispered, eyes scanning the empty throne at the room's center. "Boss is gone."
"No, Captain, there is a presence here," FDR said, his optical sensors whirring as they tilted upward and backward. He pointed a finger toward the ceiling above the archway they had just walked through.
Clinging to the shadows of the upper masonry, trembling visibly, was a creature of eyes and fluid, a wicked and enormous variant of a Watai, similar to the one Eryndra had crushed many floors ago. Its tentacles were wrapped tight around its core, shaking. Clearly panicked, the Watai looked at Eryndra, then at Lynder, and frantically waved a tentacle toward the exit tunnel.
Go, the gesture seemed to plead. Just go.
Roy lowered his gun. "Well…that's a first."
They accepted the victory without question. There was no reason to argue with a surrender.
As the Fireside Ascent conveyed them through the 240s, the atmosphere transitioned from combat readiness to a peculiar, relaxed quiescence. The biomes passed swiftly, including crystal forests, submerged tunnels contained by glass barriers, and isolated islands suspended in a void. Yet, the team continued their progress, driven by sheer momentum.
Clearing his throat, Lynder broke the silence. "Roy… the link."
Rigidity seized Roy's frame instantly. "No way. You get hooked up to the main line, you turn into a void-crazed supervillain. Do you really want Eryndra to kill you this time?"
"I will not use the contract again," Lynder assured him with a steady voice. "Tormenta is quiet and I wish to… participate. Don't be afraid, I won't use any deeper void spells, I merely want to enjoy the descent."
Roy held his gaze for a long second, searching for any madness in the elf's eyes, but found only the tired eagerness of an old master wanting to feel young again.
"Fine," Roy sighed. "Rava, hook him up. But if he starts chanting in tongues, cut him off before he loses it."
Golden chains connected them as Rava complied, though he looked uneasy. True to his word, Lynder kept it peaceful, if you call annihilation swarms of monsters in concentrated hellfire peaceful. Blazing through ten floors, banter flowed easily between their spells until they hit Floor 250.
The colossal gate before them was made of bone-white stone that appeared to weep a dark, viscous fluid. As they drew near, Lynder halted, his knuckles white as he clenched his fists. His body shook, not exactly from fear, but from a volatile cocktail of terror, excitement, and a bitter, crushing disappointment.
"Lynder?" Roy asked while stepping closer to investigate. "What is it?"
Drifting out from inside the chamber came a sound, a low garbled humming. It was a twisted sing-song melody that grated against the ears like broken glass.
Ghostly qualities took Lynder's voice. "That dragon. It is the same one."
"Same one?" Roy said, nervous but equally as curious.
"From Floor 195," Lynder whispered. "A thousand years ago. The boss no one could clear. The reason my generation failed."
"Seriously?" Roy asked. "No one? Not even a hero or whatever?"
They stepped through the archway cautiously. The chamber was a nightmare landscape of twisted obsidian spires and pools of bubbling, acidic green sludge. In the center, curled around a pillar of jagged rock, was the dragon. Its scales were the color of bruised iron, and its eyes were clouded cataracts that wept black tears.
"Heroes were… different then," Lynder explained, his eyes never leaving the beast. "Nations hoarded them. Abused them. Used them as weapons of war against each other after the Immortal Family fell. Any hero with sense went into hiding or fled the continent to avoid a life of slavery. No champion would step forward to help clear a dungeon for a king who would chain them the moment the job was done."
The dragon swayed, an ugly melody spilling from its lips as it hummed and babbled. The sound was a bizarre mix of an infantile attempt at opera with sporadic beatboxing laced in in the most annoying way possible. Roy struggled to hold back his laughter.
"Feel free to laugh, I won't be offended," Lynder offered before he continued. "Only after the dungeon vanished did the Guilds form beyond scattered groups of mercenaries. We built power specifically to threaten nations into treating heroes and adventurers as people, not property. But back then… we were alone. And then I was alone."
Hoping to divert Lynder's attention from his sorrow, Roy promptly inquired, "Does it possess a name?"
"Hmm...no record of it existed before it appeared, and none exists now," Lynder said after a brief pause. His voice dropped, thick with memory. "After many long years of studying under my teacher… after years of obsession… I decided to name it myself. The Tortured Scale."
Lynder straightened, and the tremor in his hands ceased. "Rava," he instructed. "Sever the link."
"Guildmaster?" Rava asked, sounding confused about what was being requested.
"I will fight this alone," Lynder said. "This one's mine to see through."
Rava looked to Roy, who nodded, and the golden chain dissolved.
"Alright, old man," Roy said, leaning back against the rough stone wall with a crooked grin. "But if it kills you, we're definitely renaming that thing 'The Lynderslayer.'"
A sharp, genuine laugh burst from Lynder and echoed faintly in the cavernous space. "Now that's a motivation if ever I heard one."
Drawing a slow breath, he stepped out into the open. As the low, constant humming cut off at once, the dragon's enormous head swung toward him, neck creaking like old iron gates long rusted shut, until those clouded eyes settled on the lone elf standing before it.
"Do you remember me?" Lynder asked, voice soft, almost lost in the vast chamber.
Silence hung for a long, empty moment while the dragon held his gaze. Then its jaws parted and the babbling song spilled out again, louder now, a jumbled, mocking torrent of sound that made it clear the creature neither recognized him nor cared.
Lynder's face fell. He looked closer, scanning the beast's flank. "Unscathed," he hissed. "The scar… I left a scar. It's gone." He looked back at Eryndra, his expression twisting into bitterness. "It's not him. Just a variant. Another copy."
"Maybe the original was the one on this floor to start with?" Roy suggested from a distance.
"Perhaps," Lynder spat. "If so, that brat Ardent got the satisfaction. A shame." He turned back to the beast. "Variant or not… I will have my due."
"Kick its ass, Lynder!" Takara cheered.
"Show it the finest death you can manage!" Truman yelled playfully.
Lynder offered a quick, appreciative, yet awkward, salute to the Presidroid over his shoulder.
JFK stepped forward. "Guildmaster, solo success is a long shot. Please allow me to help you."
Lynder completely ignored JFK, not even giving him the courtesy of a glance. He merely pushed off and began a slow, deliberate walk away.
"This creature has taken everything from me: a wife of centuries, my eldest son, and friends I had for nearly a millennium. All of them died at the hand of this babbling joke of a dragon. No one will deprive me of the chance to avenge their memory."
A torrent of shadows erupted beneath his feet, a geyser of pure, inky darkness that propelled Lynder skyward. For a fleeting, triumphant moment, he was a silhouette against the oppressive ceiling of the cavern, a master of the void. The raw power surged through him, an invigorating chill that promised swift victory.
He was less than a handful of seconds into the maneuver when the air around him became thick, with an unnatural, grinding pressure.
The Tortured Scale registered the aggressive action. It lay upon its pedestal, a thing of dull, pitted brass and fractured bone, seemingly uncaring, yet aware. A vibration, impossibly deep and resonant, began to emanate from its core. It emitted a solitary, profound, and discordant note, a sound that was felt in the very marrow of his bones. It was the anti-chord of all shadow, a fundamental sonic rejection of his craft.
The blast of noise caused the enclosed air of the chamber to violently resonate, turning the medium Lynder commanded against him. Instantly, violently, Lynder's shadows dissipated. The eruption of darkness supporting him vanished as if swallowed by a sudden, deafening silence. The intricate, powerful spell collapsed inward, leaving him suspended, a simple, falling man.
He plummeted, his momentum unstoppable, passing unimpeded and terrifyingly fast through the remnants of the dark medium he had been riding. The shock and disbelief were a physical blow, stealing his breath before the ground could. The stone floor rushed up to meet him with merciless speed, the impact a catastrophic jolt that reverberated through his entire skeletal structure. He hit the cold, hard flagstones far below with considerable, bone-jarring force, landing full-length—face first.
The air rushed out of his lungs in a wheezing, painful gasp, leaving him stunned and helpless, a crumpled, aching form lying beneath the silent, accusing presence of the Tortured Scale.
He groaned, rolling to his feet as the colossal dragon rose to its full, terrifying height. "Different dragon," Lynder muttered, spitting blood onto the scarred earth. "Same infuriating bullshit."
"Castration: Divine Spire of Ice and Stone," Lynder declared, raising both hands as raw mana coalesced, crackling around his palms.
"Aw, man, he missed a great chance! Fire would have made it rhyme," Roy whispered to Takara, a grin playing on his lips despite the dire situation.
"Shut up," she hissed, her gaze fixed on the escalating power. Then she paused, a thoughtful frown creasing her brow. "Actually… yeah. I agree..."
Above the dragon, the air cracked. Twin helixes of hyper-condensed rock and glacial ice formed, weaving around each other.
"Concraze," Lynder whispered.
The spell multiplied. The air filled with a forest of falling spires, a meteor storm of crushing weight raining down.
"That level of mana control is obscene," Truman noted, his sensors tracking the mana density. "He may not have been exaggerating. No one I have ever seen has half his skill, not even Master Evarran."
The massive dragon tilted its head and let out a warped, ear-splittingly discordant trill. Immediately, the towering spires, stripped of the arcane energy that maintained their form, instantly unraveled and shattered in mid-air, falling as a seemingly harmless rain of dark gravel and icy slush.
"Gravity and weight remain," Lynder said with a grin. "Don't be so simple, beast."
Though stripped of its arcane charge, the ice and stone retained every ounce of its crushing mass. Tons of jagged rock and blue-veined ice crashed down onto the dragon in a thunderous roar. The beast snapped one vast wing upward to shield itself, but the boulders tore straight through the leathery membrane, ripping ragged holes that wept dark blood onto the cavern floor.
When the dust and frost finally settled, the dragon gave its ruined wing a single, contemptuous shake. Rivulets of blood pattered down, yet the creature looked almost bored, as though the assault had been little more than an inconvenience.
Lynder could only stare, chest heaving. That single strike had drained him to the marrow. "Tougher than the last one," he whispered, the words scraping out raw.
He lifted a trembling hand and began tracing a glowing runic circle in the air, lines of pale fire hanging like frost in the chill dark. The dragon answered with a rapid, staccato burst of its mad song, sharp and mocking. The half-formed circle flickered, unraveled, and vanished as though it had never been.
From the creature's open maw, a sphere of perfect nothingness took shape, blacker than even Lynder's darkest shadows. It shot forward and struck Lynder square in the chest. The impact folded him in half, ribs creaking, breath exploding from his lungs as he was flung backward. He struck the far wall with a sickening crunch and slid to the stone in a heap.
Gasping, wheezing, he shoved himself up on shaking arms just as the dragon lunged, talons gouging furrows in the stone, jaws already parting for the killing strike.