Victor moved first as they entered the temple.

The blade master pressed himself against a pillar, dark eyes scanning the corridor ahead. No enemies visible. No signatures within immediate range. The carved walls spiraled inward, leading deeper into the structure, and the mana concentration increased with every step.

Grey followed three meters behind.

Lyra took the rear.

Her green eyes swept the corridor with an intensity.

They moved in silence.

Corner to corner. Pillar to pillar. The temple’s interior was a maze of twisted hallways and chambers, each one more grotesque than the last. Carvings on the walls depicted things that made Victor’s jaw tighten—figures screaming, bodies merging, shapes that might have been human transforming into something else entirely.

The mana grew thicker.

It pressed against their senses like a physical weight—Like standing next to a river that had been dammed for centuries and was finally overflowing.

Grey paused at an intersection.

His head tilted slightly. After a moment, he pointed down the left corridor and held up three fingers.

Three signatures.

They moved.

The corridor opened into a chamber that stole the breath from Victor’s lungs.

It was vast—maybe a hundred meters across, ceiling lost in darkness above. The walls were covered in pipes.

Not normal pipes. These were organic. Flesh-colored, pulsing faintly, connected to the walls by tendrils that burrowed into stone like roots in soil. They ran in every direction, converging toward the center of the chamber where—

Victor’s hand moved to his blade.

Hundreds of thousands of people.

They were arranged in concentric circles around the chamber’s center, lying on raised platforms, connected to the pipes by smaller tendrils that burrowed into their bodies. Men. Women. Children. Elves. Beast-kin. Dozens of species, all of them in the same state—alive, technically, but drained. Their skin was papery, their bodies skeletal, their eyes open and empty.

Vitality.

The pipes were draining their vitality. Every drop of life force, pulled from their bodies and channeled toward—

The cocoon.

It sat at the center of the chamber, suspended above the floor by the convergence of every pipe at a height of three meters tall like membrane stretched over something that shouldn’t exist. And inside—

Something moved.

Lyra made a sound.

Just a small, sharp intake of breath that Victor had never heard from her before. Her green eyes were fixed on the cocoon, and her expression—

Pale.

Lyra’s face was pale.

Two men stood between them and the cocoon.

One was human. Middle-aged appearance, sharp features, silver hair pulled back from a face that wore a permanent smile. Lightning flickered between his fingers—subtle, contained, the kind of casual elemental manipulation that spoke of decades of mastery.

The other was younger. Maybe late twenties. Dark hair, darker eyes, a face that might have been handsome if it wasn’t for the emptiness behind his expression. Dark energy coiled around his hands. Something that made Victor’s instincts scream warnings.

"You’re trying to awaken a high demon."

Lyra’s voice cracked through the chamber like a whip.

The silver-haired man turned. His smile widened.

"Looks like we have a few guests, Josh."

The dark-haired man—Josh—tilted his head. "I don’t mind a few warm-up before this guy wakes up."

Lyra moved as she teleported—one moment at the chamber’s entrance, the next directly in front of Josh, fist cocked back, mana erupting from her body like a volcano. The punch carried everything she had, concentrated into a single point, aimed directly at his face.

CLANG!

A shield of lightning materialized between Josh’s raised palm and Lyra’s fist. The impact sent shockwaves rippling through the chamber, cracking the stone floor, making the pipes shudder and pulse with increased urgency.

Josh’s other hand came up.

Lightning bolt.

It screamed toward Lyra at point-blank range—no time to dodge, no time to block, just raw elemental destruction aimed directly at her torso.

Lyra’s body absorbed it.

The lightning vanished into her skin like water into sand, the energy disappearing without a trace, her absorption ability working exactly as intended. Her fist was already moving again, more mana pouring into the strike, pushing harder against the lightning shield.

Josh slid back by half a meter.

"It’s an honor to meet the great Lady Lyra of the Guardians." His smile never wavered. "But I’m sorry." A slight bow of his head, almost apologetic. "I can’t be your opponent. That ability of yours is quite tricky and annoying."

He turned his head.

"Dean. She’s all yours. I’ll take care of the other two."

Dean moved.

Victor intercepted.

His blade flashed—a single strike, aimed at Dean’s neck, the kind of killing blow that had ended hundreds of fights before this one. Blade Intent radiated from the weapon, sharpening the edge beyond physical limits, turning steel into something that could cut concepts.

Dean raised one hand.

Lightning erupted from his palm as a wall of crackling energy met Victor’s blade mid-swing. The impact sent sparks showering across the chamber, and Victor felt his arms go numb from the feedback.

Dean didn’t stop.

He flowed around Victor’s paralyzed guard like water around a stone, dark energy gathering in his palm, and continued toward Lyra.

Lyra met him.

Her fist crashed against his open palm.

The contact lasted less than a second.

Then Lyra jumped backward.

Her eyes were wide. Not with fear—Lyra didn’t feel fear—but with something close to it. Her fist—

The mana around her fist was decaying.

Dark energy crawled up her forearm like a living thing, eating through her reinforcement, dissolving her elemental energy, spreading toward her elbow with hungry deliberation. She shook it off, flinging the corruption away, but the damage was done. Her skin where the contact had occurred was pale, almost gray, the vitality drained from that patch of flesh.

Dean looked at his own hand as he flexed his fingers.

"Looks like it works."

His smirk was cold.with a satisfied expression.

Lyra’s expression darkened.

Her absorption ability was her greatest strength. It made her nearly immune to elemental attacks, gave her sustained combat endurance, made fighting her a war of attrition that almost no one could win.

This dark energy didn’t play by those rules.

She couldn’t absorb it. Couldn’t negate it. Couldn’t do anything except get out of its way.

"Victor!" Her voice cracked through the chamber. "Remove my complete seal. Now."

Victor’s head snapped toward her.

He was engaged with Josh—both of them moving through the chamber in a blur of lightning and steel, Grey fighting alongside him, three combatants creating a storm of destruction that shook the pipes and made the cocoon pulse faster. There was no room for—

"Grey." Victor’s voice was tight. "Go help her out."

"I don’t need help!" Lyra’s shout was almost a scream. "Remove the fucking seal!"

Victor’s expression tightened.

His hand went to his chest—to a small token hanging from a chain beneath his uniform, something he’d been carrying for as long as Lyra had known him. A seal token. The old man’s work.

He broke it.

SNAP.

Lyra’s aura exploded.

Mana Heart Rank 7—Rank 8—Peak Rank 9—

The pressure in the chamber shifted. The pipes shuddered. The cocoon pulsed faster. Even Josh paused in his assault on Victor and Grey, turning to watch with something that might have been interest.

Dean stood his ground.

His dark energy coiled around both hands now, ready, waiting, the smirk still fixed on his face.

"Do you think that’s going to make any difference?"