The boss had not taken the whole room yet.

The gray hair’s group, along with a handful of other Awakeneds desperate enough to stay near that thing, were keeping it occupied around the throne, forcing blades, spells, arrows, and bodies into its space whenever it moved. That ugly balance was the only reason the room had not already turned into a butcher’s floor. A short distance away, Neo and his group had their own problem.

The mounted Soul Beast came at them like two creatures welded into one hateful shape. The Night Walker beneath moved in violent bursts, claws scraping stone, long limbs carrying it over broken ground with nauseating speed.

Crouched over its back, the Vagabond used that motion perfectly, shield raised, spear snapping out whenever someone committed too early.

It was faster than the others they had fought below, stronger too, and much harder to pin because the lower half and the upper half kept threatening different angles.

Max met the first rush head-on.

The shield took the impact with a crash that shoved him back half a step. At the same time, the Vagabond’s spear flashed over the shield rim, forcing Marika to jerk sideways before it could punch through her throat.

Alice came in from the left with her axe, trying to take the Night Walker’s foreleg off at the joint, but the mounted thing twisted away from the heavier swing and the blade only bit into muscle. The creature hissed, ugly and furious, while Snot slipped in low and buried one dagger into the rider’s side before bouncing back out to avoid the shield that followed.

Neo watched one exchange and understood the pattern.

The Night Walker created the opening. The Vagabond punished after.

So he cut the pattern apart.

The mounted Soul Beast lunged again. Max caught the lower body with his shield and turned it off line just enough for Neo to come through the right side. Gravebite struck the spear shaft near the middle, knocking it wide before it could reach Marika.

A burst of flame followed from her hand and burst across the Vagabond’s chest, forcing the rider to recoil and lift the shield high instead of low. Snot used that. He came from underneath the raised arm and slashed across the elbow. Alice took the next opening and drove the axe into the Night Walker’s shoulder with enough force to make the entire hybrid dip.

Neo took the second.

He stepped in before the rider could recover, Beast Strength pouring through his arms now that saving Soul Essence had become a luxury he could no longer afford. Gravebite crashed into the Night Walker’s skull from the side, split one eye open, and carved down into the head beneath it. The lower body collapsed badly. The Vagabond tried to kick free from the dying mount and turn the fall into a counter.

Neo didn’t let it.

He drove forward and cut straight through the rider’s neck before the creature’s boots even left the Night Walker’s back. Both bodies slammed into the stone in a tangled heap of gray flesh, ragged cloth, and dark blood.

[Soul-Window]

[You have slain Mounted Hybrid - Vein Core.]

The Soul Core surfaced with a deeper glow than the others.

Neo moved for it.

Something slammed into his shoulder first.

He turned sharply, ready to cut, and found the gray-haired bastard brushing past him in the chaos. Not even an apology, enough contact to throw the line off for an instant.

And with that touch, Neo’s Soul Reader opened.

[Soul-Window]

Name: Leo Duplain

Age: 16

Soul Core: Vein

[2495/2500 Vein]

Class: False Shepherd

Rank: Mythic

[Description: A mythic class born from those who do not conquer through strength alone, but by twisting fear, confusion, and predatory instinct into order.]

Neo froze on that for a beat longer than he should have.

’Duplain... the gray-haired bastard was a Duplain... from the same family that killed the old man... what the fuck is a Duplain doing here! No... and what is that class? Mythic. Better than Legendary...’

The name hit first. The class struck harder. Before Neo could do anything with either, Leo’s group spread out.

The shift in the room came fast. The pressure around the boss changed, five more Awakeneds died because the gray-haired group had moved where they shouldn’t have, and in that brief chaos Neo saw something worse than the deaths themselves.

The boss’s face had changed.

The smiling face he remembered was gone. Its head turned at a grotesque angle, almost one hundred and twenty degrees, and when it faced the room again, sorrow had taken its place. A mournful face.

Something in the hall answered that change.

Barred doors built into the walls shuddered and opened all at once. Six of them. Stone groaned. Iron rose. From the dark beyond, Soul Beasts came pouring out again. Night Walkers. Spiders. Vagabonds. The room, already fraying, tore wider.

Awakeneds cursed and turned to meet the flood however they could. Leo’s group kept the boss occupied, or that was what it looked like from a distance. Neo grabbed the Soul Core from the hybrid and held onto it, but did not consume it yet. There was no room in the middle of that chaos to stop and take it in peace.

That was exactly when Leo made his real move.

His whole group regrouped in a clean line and sprinted toward the opened doors. One door each. Right before he crossed his own threshold, Leo turned and raised his voice over the room.

"Anyone who wants to survive, get through one of the doors."

The five of them entered without hesitation.

A nearby awakened girl, already half-broken by fear, heard that and lunged through the sixth.

The bars slammed shut.

All six doors sealed.

And just like that, the monsters stopped coming out.

The room on the other side was somewhere else entirely.

Leo felt the passage as a steep drop, more like being thrown down a chute than walking through a doorway, and landed on smooth stone in a chamber that had nothing in common with the boss floor above. One by one, the others arrived. His four companions. The girl last, scrambling up in panic and confusion.

"Where am I?" she asked. "What is this place?"

Leo smiled. "In a safe zone. You’re alive, hooray."

The girl sagged where she stood, one hand pressed to her chest. "Thank God. I thought I was going to die."

Leo laughed softly. "Of course you were. This is a safe room we found a while ago. Nothing gets in, nothing gets out, not until the boss room is empty. So relax. Once that happens, we’ll go back out and finish the tower ourselves."

The girl straightened at once. "What do you mean the boss room has to be empty?"

Leo’s smile thinned. "I mean exactly that. Once everyone dies, we leave this room, start the tower from below again, and kill the boss ourselves."

"That’s insane." Her face drained. "That’s wrong. Thirty people will die in there if you don’t help them. You were the ones holding the boss back."

"Tch. You really don’t get it." Leo tilted his head slightly. "Do you know how many Soul Cores they’ll leave behind when they die? But fine, I can see you’re useless."

He snapped his fingers.

One of his people summoned spiked gauntlets. He brought both hands together in a gesture almost playful, like cymbals meeting in the air.

The girl’s head burst apart.

The body dropped before she understood what had happened.

Leo clicked his tongue.

"And I was thinking of letting her live a little longer. Maybe even playing with her first." He let that go and glanced toward the others. "Well, I suppose this is a good time to reach Heart Core while the rest struggle with that thing." A quiet laugh escaped him. "Poor bastards. They had no idea any of this existed."

He rolled one shoulder and smiled.

"I’m going to push to Heart. Cover my back. Not that I think I’ll need it in here."

Back in the boss room, Neo finally consumed the Soul Core.

[Soul-Window]

[You have consumed the Soul Core of Mounted Hybrid - Vein Core.]

[+4 Souls] [1000/1000 Ember]

[The required 1000 Souls have been reached. Your Soul Core will advance automatically to Vein. Endure it.]

Pain hit at once.

It was not the same as taking in an ordinary Soul Core. This came from deeper, like a spike driven straight through the center of him. Neo’s whole body locked. Gravebite nearly slipped from his hand before Max moved in front of him and took the next impact on his shield.

"Neo!"

Snot heard the difference in that shout and turned immediately. Marika threw flame toward a Night Walker rushing from the side. Alice stepped in near Neo’s left and split a Vagabond open before it reached him. They had no idea what was happening inside him, only that something had started, and that they had to keep him alive through it.

Byron and his people were doing the same on the other side of the room. Even without a true combat class, Byron kept moving, forcing order where he could, barking commands, driving people back into lines whenever panic tried to scatter them. The boss was taking hits from every direction. Fire. Lightning. Arrows. Spears. Swords. Anything people still had left to throw at it.

With Leo’s group and the dead removed from the count, around twenty people remained in the room.

Twenty against that thing.

Neo felt the change in his soul before he understood it.

The pain kept ripping through him, sharp enough to make his teeth lock, but inside that agony something was being refined.Cleansed. The pressure inside him rose and rose until it felt like his whole being would crack under it, only for the next breath to come lighter than before. Stronger too. Not by a small margin. The difference was immediate.

His body felt denser and cleaner at once, as though old weight had been burned away and replaced with something purer. His limbs held more force. His frame felt quicker. The whole world around him seemed half a fraction easier to move through.

It felt like becoming more himself by surviving something violent enough to erase a weaker version.

Neo opened his eyes.

[Soul-Window]

Name: Neo

Age: 16

Soul Core: Vein

[0/2500]

Primary Class: Soul Reaver

Rank: Divine

The pain was gone. Soul Essence moved through him with far more force than before. His limbs felt lighter. His breathing steadier. Even the weight of Gravebite in his hand had changed.

At last.

Neo lifted his head.

The boss was still at the center of the room, surrounded by blood, broken stone, and the last Awakeneds still trying to bring it down. Fire flashed past its body. Lightning cracked. Steel rang against steel. The throne loomed behind it like a black wound carved into the chamber.

Then the thing stopped.

Not because it had been forced to but because it chose to. Two of its six arms rose slowly.

The swords in those hands turned downward.

And with one heavy motion, it drove both blades into the floor beneath it.

The whole room shuddered.

Neo’s grip tightened around Gravebite.

’What did it just do...?’