The face of rage changed the room before the boss even moved again.

Sadness had made it unsettling. Rage made it lethal. The six swords no longer circled its body with that grim, distant rhythm from before. Now they came down with purpose, one strike herding, the next punishing, another already waiting where the retreat ended. The whole chamber tightened around it, and the surviving Awakeneds felt it quickly.

The first to die went in too late.

He tried to stab through the side after Byron’s lightning clipped one of the boss’s shoulders, but the opening had already closed. A sword took him through the throat and pinned him to the stone long enough for the body to jerk once before falling. The second barely lasted longer. She loosed an arrow from the rear, saw the boss turn, and froze where she stood. One of the lower blades crossed the room and opened her from the waist upward in a red-black burst that stained the floor near the throne. 𝘧𝘳𝘦ℯ𝓌𝘦𝒷𝘯𝑜𝑣𝘦𝓁.𝒸𝘰𝓂

"Keep moving!" Byron shouted. "If you stop, you die!"

That order came too late for the third. He had already stopped to drag the poisoned wounded man from before, still thinking the fight had room for mercy. The boss reached them in a blink. One cut broke the helper in half. The wounded one got trampled a breath later under the scramble of bodies trying to get away.

Neo went in with Beast Strength already burning through him and felt the difference immediately. Vein Core let him keep up far better than before, but the boss had crossed into something else entirely. Gravebite smashed into one descending sword, and the impact still ran through his whole frame hard enough to rattle his teeth. Max stepped in beside him and absorbed the follow-up on the shield, boots grinding over blood-slick stone while Alice came from the other side and buried the axe into the boss’s forearm.

Snot slipped in low.

Marika sent flame over their shoulders.

Neo caught a narrow opening and cut into the ribs with Beast Strength behind it. Black blood spilled, but the boss answered with two upper swords that came at Marika almost together.

"Back!" Max barked.

Marika twisted away from the first. Neo spoiled the line of the second. Snot’s dagger bit into one wrist before the six arms reset and started again.

The fourth death came from that next series. One of Byron’s men thought he could block and was wrong. The first sword battered his guard aside. The second hit his chest. The third came through while he was already falling and left nothing for a healer to save.

The fifth died screaming.

He had been fighting near the outer edge with a spear and decent footwork, staying alive by instinct and luck more than skill. The boss turned toward him only once. That was enough. Two swords cut low, one high, and by the time the scream properly tore free, his body had already come apart in pieces too large and too human for the room to ignore.

Five more gone.

The chamber felt smaller after that.

Neo, Snot, Alice, and Max carried the front because no one else could. Byron and what remained of his group hammered the boss with whatever they still had left, lightning, fire, arrows, wind, but the center of the room belonged to those four and to the thing trying to butcher them.

Alice changed in the middle of that pressure.

Neo noticed it when her next swing came shorter than the others had, cleaner through the shoulder, and hard enough to drive one of the boss’s arms wide instead of merely colliding with it. Soul Essence started running off her in a denser current, rough at first, gathering into something deeper. Her footing faltered after that. The axe remained in her hands, though her focus had already gone somewhere past the room.

Snot saw it right after Neo did.

"Neo!" he shouted. "Alice is breaking through!"

The timing could not have been worse.

Alice froze where she stood.

Her body locked with the axe still in her hands, shoulders tense, breath caught halfway, Soul Essence thickening around her in visible pulses. Strength was rising inside her, but none of it could be used yet. In that state she was little more than a target, rooted in place while the fight kept moving around her.

Neo stepped in front of her without wasting a breath. Snot slid to the other side. Max cursed, shoved the shield forward, and held the center while Marika threw fire over his shoulder to stop the boss from simply crushing all four of them together.

The boss pushed anyway.

One sword hammered at Max. Another cut for Alice through the space above Neo’s shoulder. Neo met it with Beast Strength flooding both arms, knocked it high, and felt Soul Essence drain hard for the effort. A third came from below toward Snot’s side. He twisted under it, one dagger scraping sparks off the blade while the other buried into the joint of the wrist behind it.

"Faster, Alice," Snot hissed through his teeth. "Do your thing faster."

Alice gave no answer.

She could not. The process had hold of her now in the same ugly way it had taken hold of Neo before, and of Snot earlier. Soul pressure thickened around her. The axe stayed in her grip, but the rest of her remained completely still, one bad exchange away from getting cut apart if Neo and Snot failed to hold.

The boss shifted toward Marika with chilling precision.

It had already started choosing the room’s most dangerous targets.

Marika saw it too late. She changed position, but the cast had rooted her just long enough for the next sequence to come at her instead of at Max.

Alice opened her eyes in the same breath.

The change in her was obvious now. The axe came up smoother. Her stance looked denser, more complete, like the breakthrough had carved away wasted motion and left behind only what a fight could use. She reached the exchange with one heavy swing and broke the angle that would have taken Neo’s shoulder off.

Too late to save the room.

Soon enough to keep them breathing.

"There you are," Snot muttered.

The boss did not care.

It was already going for Marika.

A cut hit low, shattered stone, and tore her footing out from under her. She crashed onto her back with the flame in one hand dying at once. The next strike came immediately, descending with the kind of speed that left no room for doubt.

Neo saw it.

He was not close enough.

Snot wasn’t either.

Alice had just broken through and was half a step wrong for the line.

Max made it first.

He threw himself between Marika and the sword with the shield raised and his whole body behind it. The impact burst through the room like a struck bell. The shield broke. The blade kept going.

Blood sprayed over Marika’s clothes.

Max stayed upright somehow, though Neo could already see death in the shape of him. The boss drew back for the next motion, but the room itself seemed to hesitate around what it had done. Max looked down at Marika, one hand still trying to hold a shield that no longer existed, and forced the words out through blood.

"Told you... I’d protect you."

Neo reached him just as his knees gave.

’You shouldn’t have done that.’

Max fell sideways. Marika stayed on the floor behind him, blood on her face, hands empty, body unmoving in a way that made the whole room more dangerous than it had been a breath earlier.

They had lost the wall.

Marika had stopped moving.

The boss was already lifting its swords again.