Neo saw the next cut coming an instant before it reached Marika.

Max had already fallen, but the boss had not given the room even a heartbeat to mourn him. One of the six blades was already arcing down toward the place where Marika still knelt, blood on her face, blood on her hands, Max’s blood soaking into her clothes while her mind lagged somewhere far behind the fight.

Neo did not think.

Beast Strength flooded into his legs so hard it felt like fire being driven through bone. He kicked off the floor and shot forward like something launched from a siege weapon, crossed the distance in a blur, and caught Marika around the waist just as the swords came down.

The boss carved through empty air.

Steel bit stone where she had been, splitting the floor open in black lines and sending fragments skidding across the chamber. Neo landed badly with Marika in his arms, one knee scraping through blood and dust, but he kept moving long enough to drag her out of the immediate kill zone before he let her drop onto the ground.

"Are you alright?"

Marika did not answer.

She was breathing. He could see that. Her body was still there, still upright enough to stay kneeling when he let go, but whatever part of her had been thinking clearly was gone. Her face had emptied out. Her mouth moved faintly. Nothing useful came from it.

The boss had already turned away from them and chosen fresh targets. One awakened screamed as three swords forced him backward. Another took a glancing cut across the ribs and stumbled into Byron’s people while the room tried and failed to keep up with the new pace.

Snot reached them first.

He crouched near Marika, glanced once at the blood all over her, and heard the broken sound leaving her mouth.

"No... no..."

He looked back toward the fight, jaw tight.

They did not have the luxury of stopping.

The boss had entered something far worse than before, and everyone left in that room knew it. Their numbers were collapsing. Every few breaths, someone died, bled out, or got thrown aside hard enough to stop counting as useful. The thing had already taken a terrible amount of damage, enough that this had to be its final phase, but that only made it nastier. A beast near death often stopped caring how much of itself it had to burn to kill what stood in front of it.

Neo looked down at Marika again and saw only dead weight where he needed a combatant.

He caught her by the collar and slapped her hard enough to snap her head to the side.

"Wake up. Max is dead. If you don’t pull yourself together, everyone here will follow him."

The blow cracked through the little corner of space they had stolen for themselves. Marika blinked and dragged in one ugly breath, as if her mind had been hauled back up from somewhere cold and deep. She lifted her face and found Neo above her, Snot at his side, both of them still standing while Max no longer was.

Neo let go of her and she dropped back to one knee.

"We cannot do this right now," he said. "If we fall apart here, we all die, and we won’t even be able to bury him properly."

There was no kindness in the words. No softness either. The room had gone past both.

Neo turned and launched himself back into the fight before she could answer.

Snot stayed one breath longer, caught Marika under one arm, and hauled her up with rough efficiency.

"You heard him," he muttered. "Cry later. Live first."

Marika’s face tightened. Something in her finally found purchase again. It was not peace. Only the brutal understanding that if she stayed on the floor, Max would have died for nothing.

Byron nearly got cut in half the moment Neo reentered.

The boss pressed him with a chain of strikes savage enough to make the air shriek around the blades. Byron barely got his weapon across in time for the first, ducked the second by less than a hair, and only survived the third because Neo crashed Gravebite into the fourth line of steel and knocked it just far enough away to spoil the sequence.

The impact jarred his whole frame.

He hit back anyway.

Gravebite rose into the creature’s side, met one of the six swords, and screamed against it. Iron against iron. Soul Essence burning. Beast Strength feeding force into his arms while the boss tried to drive him backward through the throne room floor.

Alice came in from the left.

The breakthrough had settled into her and left behind something colder. Her axe carved a brutal line across one forearm, bit deep, and forced the boss to twist its torso toward her instead of Neo. Snot used that turn to go low and bury one dagger into the back of the knee before springing away again.

Marika returned with fire a breath later.

The first cast came raw with grief and anger tangled together inside it, a violent flare that burst across the boss’s upper body and drew a shower of black blood against the throne steps.

"Good," Byron shouted. "Again! Don’t let it breathe!"

Easy to say.

The thing in front of them barely seemed human-shaped anymore whenever it moved. Six arms. Six swords. Fury wearing flesh. It ripped the room apart by degrees, each sequence of attacks forcing a guard open, driving someone off line, herding them into the next cut before they fully understood where the danger had shifted.

Neo kept meeting it anyway.

Gravebite no longer drained him. The divine relic held its shape so cheaply that the weapon felt like the one stable thing left in the room. Beast Strength was another story. Every burst cost him, every surge of force shaving Soul Essence away, but Vein Core let him withstand the burden and call on it again before the ache fully cleared.

The boss hit Byron high.

Neo spoiled the next strike low.

Alice smashed into the side with her axe and made one arm recoil.

Snot cut from underneath.

Marika’s flames licked over the opening.

For a narrow stretch, the pressure eased by the smallest margin.

That was when Alice shouted.

A fierce cry torn from deep in the chest that ran through the whole room like steel pulled across taut wire. The effect hit at once. Neo felt the difference in his limbs before his mind shaped it into words. The weight of exhaustion lightened. His blood ran hotter. Even the drag in his poisoned leg seemed to ease beneath the surge.

Snot glanced at her between one dodge and the next.

"What did you do?"

Alice did not stop moving.

Her voice came low as always, almost swallowed by the fight. "Something new. I unlocked it when I reached Vein. Valkyries’ Call. It’s a small buff."

Small or not, the room answered it.

The survivors straightened. Byron’s face hardened with fresh intent. Marika’s next cast came cleaner. Snot moved faster. Neo felt Beast Strength bite and give back more in the same breath.

Byron shouted over the clash.

"This is our moment! Pressure him!"

The morale in the room rose. The difficulty did not care.

The boss remained monstrously fast, monstrously strong, and far ahead of everyone there in raw killing power. Even so, the surge Alice gave them bought something precious. Not safety. Not victory. A better edge on the exchange.

Neo used it.

He drove forward with Gravebite, kept his body low, and let his attention narrow until the rest of the room became noise around the boss’s six arms. He had been fighting it for too long not to feel something under the chaos. The pattern had been there, buried inside the fury, inside the impossible pressure and the shifting lines of steel. He just had not had enough room in his head to catch it.

Now he did.

One strike.

Another from a different angle.

A third forcing the retreat.

A fourth already waiting where the retreat ended.

A fifth to punish the dodge.

A sixth to reclaim the center.

The sequence repeated in different timings, different arms, different lines, but the count held.

Neo’s whole body tightened as the answer finally clicked into place.

’That’s it!’

He ripped Gravebite free from the last clash and shouted over the entire room.

"I found its pattern!"

Byron was near enough to hear him.

His head snapped toward Neo, surprise widening across his face even while the boss’s swords kept moving between them.

It was time to turn this fight around.