The moment the two lower swords sank into the stone, the whole boss room trembled.

Neo’s grip tightened around Gravebite. For half a heartbeat, nothing happened. The surviving Awakeneds kept moving, kept attacking, kept trying to force the boss back with arrows, spells, shields, and steel.

Then the floor answered.

Dark green lines burst out from the impact points beneath the throne and raced across the stone in every direction, thin at first, then thickening into a low wave of poison that skimmed over the ground with terrifying speed.

Neo understood it instantly.

"Jump!" he shouted.

His whole group reacted at once. Max pushed off hard with the shield raised. Alice lifted with her axe already in hand. Snot cursed and sprang into the air. Marika jumped a fraction later, flames still circling one hand. Neo moved with them, but he had been closer to the boss than the others.

The wave passed beneath them like a living stain.

It could not be blocked. One awakened tried. He planted his feet, dropped behind his shield, and the poison ran under it anyway, covering his legs in a sick green shimmer. He screamed so loudly it cut through the whole room, dropped the shield, and collapsed before anyone could drag him away.

Another woman did not understand what she was seeing until it had already reached her. She tried to hop back instead of jumping properly, got caught from the knees down, and hit the stone hard enough to crack her jaw. By the time she rolled over, black fluid was already spilling from her mouth.

"Off the floor!" Byron roared. "If it comes again, jump!"

Neo landed bad.

The edge of the wave had licked over his boot before he cleared it and poison bit into the side of his calf with a cold, vicious sting. His leg almost failed under him the instant he came down.

[Soul-Window]

[High Poison Resistance is taking effect.]

[Movement speed reduced by 5% temporarily.]

Neo clicked his tongue and forced weight onto it anyway.

It hurt. Worse than hurt. The muscle felt wrong now, like the venom had turned part of it stiff and heavy, but it was not enough to cripple him. If he had not gained poison resistance from the Stoneweb Spider, that one touch might have ended far differently.

"Neo!" Snot shouted from his left. "You got hit?"

"I’m fine."

That was a lie, but one he could afford for now.

The extra Soul Beasts from the six doors had already been dealt with. Their corpses littered the edges of the room in heaps of broken shell, gray flesh, and torn cloth. What remained now was only the boss, the throne, and the survivors still trying to keep themselves alive in front of something that had just shown them the floor itself could kill.

There were fewer of them than before. Far fewer.

And the boss did not waste the confusion.

One of the six swords flashed and opened an awakened from shoulder to hip before he even managed to turn. Another cut struck a spear aside and carved through the chest behind it. Fire burst toward the boss’s side from Marika and lightning cracked across its upper body from one of Byron’s people, but the thing moved through both without losing the center of the room.

"Spread!" Byron shouted. "Don’t bunch up near the throne!"

Max drove forward and caught a descending strike on his shield. The sound boomed through the chamber and the impact sent him sliding across blood-slick stone. Alice hit the opening it created with a brutal swing of her axe, forcing the boss to shift one arm higher than it wanted. Snot slid in low and cut toward the back of the knee with both daggers.

Neo entered through the gap they made.

Beast Strength surged through him at once.

He felt the cost in the same instant, Soul Essence draining as the power flooded his arms, but this was what it was for. Gravebite came up in a hard diagonal line and slammed into one of the boss’s swords, knocking it off course just enough for Marika’s next stream of flame to hit cleanly across the ribs.

Black blood sprayed the floor.

"Again!" Byron roared. "Hit it again!"

Arrows came in from the right. One stuck in the boss’s side. Another shattered on impact. An awakened with lightning running over both hands slammed a bolt into the creature’s shoulder and managed to wrench one arm wide. Max pressed forward. Alice followed. Neo hit the same side once more with Beast Strength still burning through him.

The boss answered all of them in the same exchange.

One sword hammered Max back. Another came for Alice’s neck and forced her to break her swing early. Two more slashed toward the rear, not at the fighters in front, but at Marika.

Neo noticed that.

He moved faster than the poisoned leg wanted him to, cut one of the blades off line, and felt the drag in his calf punish him for it. Not enough to miss. Enough to remind him the poison was still there.

"Shit," Marika hissed, taking two quick steps back.

"It’s watching the backline," Snot snapped. "It’s not just swinging anymore."

Neo agreed, though he said nothing.

Something had changed in the boss beyond the poison wave. He could feel it in the way it linked its attacks, in how quickly it punished anyone who lagged behind the room’s rhythm, in how often its attention shifted toward the ranged fighters.

Byron’s group clearly felt the same. One of them loosed another arrow at the face while another cast from farther back, but the boss cut through the pressure without ever fully letting go of Marika’s side of the room.

That made Max plant himself harder.

"Stay behind me!" he barked.

Marika answered with fire.

Alice answered with steel.

Snot answered with two flashing blades and a running string of curses every time one of the six swords came too close to his head. Neo said nothing at all. He only kept entering, striking, shifting, and spending Soul Essence whenever Beast Strength would buy a real opening.

Gravebite remained easy in his hand.

That part mattered.

The divine relic, still wearing the shape of his old weapon, barely cost him anything to maintain. It was Beast Strength that ate through his reserves, not the blade. That let him fight the way he needed to now, calling power when the exchange mattered and letting the weapon stay with him without a second thought.

One awakened from Byron’s side mistimed a retreat and got opened from the ribs to the stomach. Another took a glancing cut across the thigh and collapsed because the leg no longer answered him properly. Fire burst across the floor. A lightning strike snapped over the throne. Max blocked again. Alice split another opening out of the boss’s flank. Neo came through it and struck hard enough to make one of the lower swords deviate before it completed its path.

The next few breaths were all violence.

Steel. Fire. Lightning. Blood. Shouts cutting across the room from every angle.

"Left!"

"Move!"

"Don’t stop!"

"Heal him if you can!"

"I’m out, I’m out!"

Neo heard all of it and used none of it. He only watched the boss.

He watched how the six swords moved in linked patterns. He watched how every exchange ended with the creature reclaiming the center. He watched how it kept redirecting its attention toward whoever did the most damage from range.

Marika noticed it too.

"It keeps picking me," she snapped between breaths.

"Then stop standing still!" Even the quiet Alice shot back.

"I’m casting!"

"Do it faster!"

That might have almost been funny in another room.

The boss drew inward. It simply chose to stop for a single beat, all six arms lowering by a fraction while black blood ran in thin trails over the stone beneath it.

Neo felt the change before anyone spoke.

The face.

Until that point, sorrow had ruled it, twisted, wrong and empty, but still recognizably mournful. That expression began to peel away as the head tilted to one side.

The whole room seemed to tighten around the throne.

Sadness vanished and instead rage replaced it.

Snot’s voice came out tighter than usual.

"Ah... that one looks worse."

Neo stared at the boss and understood the same thing.

The final phase had just begun.