Nico jumped over fifty yards, propelled by the energy of his modified kinetic-burst formation on his shoes. In the middle of the air, a notification appeared.

[Auto-Scan: magical trap appearing at highlighted location]

Five tiles of the stone floor glowed light blue. He twisted his body, and could feel Measure working overtime to calculate how to avoid the traps without killing himself. Apparently, that meant tucking his chin down toward his left armpit, and hucking his legs over his shoulders.

Nico crashed on his side, the side of his torso smashing into the stone floor. Pain lanced up on his body, but he didn’t even bother taking the time to groan. Lungs on fire, he rolled up on his feet, and panted hot, heavy breaths.

His heads up display flashed opaque, revealing his green stamina bar was less than twenty five percent. Now that Vera wasn’t around to constantly buff his stamina with her spells, he tired out like any normal unathletic guy his age.

A black scythe of energy sliced the air next to where Nico landed. Fire exploded upward behind Nico, which looked eerily similar to the fire pillars summoned through Gallahad’s fire formation. He caught a glimpse of the grey knight hulking down the wide stone hall in a leisurely jaunt, inexorable and confident in its own power.

Nico scrambled away, and ran again instead of burst-jumping. His knees ached from executing twenty eight burst-jumps in the past seventeen minutes and forty six seconds. Every part of his body ached. It felt like he ran two marathons.

His body couldn’t endure more burst-jumps, at least not within such a limited amount of time. Even with Measure calculating perfect trajectories for him, his depleted stamina meant his body couldn’t keep up with the ideal movement.

Note to self, get a damn gym membership.

He ran down the unfamiliar hall as fast as he could. Auto-Scan revealed how far the grey knight was behind him without having to look over his shoulder. Somehow, even with Nico’s burst-jumps, the sentinel of the treasure room gained on him.

Worse yet, he could feel the speed at which Measure calculated everything slowing down. That made sense. The body, mind, soul, and magic were linked. It was why emotions and memories powered Nico’s spells before his twenty-first birthday. His body felt like a computer running on a low battery.

The harsh whisper-scream of the grey knight’s voice filled the hall. “Cease your flight.”

Nico gathered enough breath to yell over his shoulder, “Uh, no thanks!”

A notification appeared.

[Auto-Scan: Lesser ghouls of the Grey Dead ahead.]

An arrow appeared in his vision, with a number representing how far he was from them. The number dwindled quickly.

Eight pairs of bright red eyes flashed in stony walls of the hall. Slow, misshapen homunculi stepped out of the walls as if the stone was made of air.

Nico felt magic frizzle the atmosphere behind him. Shit. He didn’t want to burst-jump again.

The ghouls guarded a corner of the hall, which banked left. Going back was obviously not an option. Nico injected a little MP into his shoes, and burst-jumped over the ghouls, floated far above their taloned grasps, and landed sideways on the stone wall. He burst-jumped again before physics pulled him down into the loving, tender arms of the flesh-tearing ghouls beneath him.

His second-burst jump was given an extra boost as the grey knight's now-familiar black energy missile thing exploded into the ghouls, adding to the distance of his jump. Nico landed on the balls of his feet, slapped the ground like he had done several times before, and rolled over his shoulder like in all those parkour Youtube videos he saw.

Unfortunately, he didn’t have the physical stamina or capability of those parkour experts, and tumbled awkwardly from the insane momentum of the burst-jump.

A notification appeared.

[Auto-Scan: Lesser ghouls destroyed.]

Nico ran again. Jesus friggin Christ. The death knight’s attack exploded lesser ghouls into oblivion in the time it took to blink. If that magic even so much as grazed him, there wouldn’t even be a body for anyone to autopsy.

“Cease,” the grey knight commanded.

Nico didn’t have the breath to even reply. Apparently, running for his life did a number on his lungs.

Worse yet, he didn’t have a single spell that could actually hurt the death knight. It was at least a warlock-class in magical power, which meant it could easily cast level two or level three spells continuously.

His stamina bar was depleting, and it was only because of Measure working overtime to make sure his body was moving efficiently that he wasn’t draining it faster. He couldn’t do this much longer. On top of that, he didn’t know where the hell he was going.

Chris’ map only showed a portion of the hallways. Nico incorporated that knowledge into his own Map, but it didn’t do much good when he was running into completely new areas. Shouldn’t Chris’ map have shown these extra hallways? It didn’t make any sense. He was missing something.

Questions of doubt wriggled into his fatigue-addled brain. Was it even worth finding the killer? If it was who he thought it was, then how was Nico of all people going to bring them in? How did so many random things occur on the same day? What were even the chances of that? Ever since the day began, all he’d been doing was running. Even now he was running. Why?

Then it hit him. He was an idiot.

Nico halted, took a deep breath and turned around.

The voice of the grey knight echoed, “Do you cease, holder?”

Nico gasped for another breath and winced, tired as hell. He nodded, “I hope so.”

He fished his pocket for the silver key which fell out of Chris’ sack, and lifted it in the air. The grey knight froze in its tracks, its gaze still as a frozen pond.

Nico let out a sigh of relief. He threw the damn key at the knight, turned tail, and ran away again. The grey knight obviously wanted the key for some reason, but Nico didn’t want to wait and find out if that would placate it enough to not kill him.

To his surprise, he heard the knight’s voice echo once more, cold and sharp as steel in a warm belly. “Cease.”

It bent down to pick up the key.

Nico half screamed, half shouted in exasperation. “Come on!”

A notification appeared.

[Measure: possibility of current hallway connecting back to treasure room due to patterns of hallways so far is 86%.]

Nico stared at the message, while jogging down the hall. Finally, some good news. Four minutes, twenty seven seconds, and two knee-surgery-inducing burst-jumps later, he was back in front of the treasure room where his new friends portaled away.

He burst-jumped one more time into its wide open entrance, felt an unfamiliar buzz of raw power rush through him, and collided head first into a pile of gold. His body was too exhausted for Measure to correct his posture and weight mid-air to control his landing. Nico always wondered what it would feel like to dive into a pile of money.

It hurt. It hurt a lot.

He willed away several warning notifications from his Auto-Scan. His stamina wavered at four percent. The edges of his vision dimmed.

He tried shaking off the exhaustion, but couldn’t. His hand fished for his final black marker, but even that was too tiring. Dammit. He needed to draw some kind of formula to protect him from the grey knight. The grey knight was still on his ass. He had to do something to block it from coming.

And yet…

At the entrance of the treasure room was a glowing turquoise wall, luminescent and translucent. A magical barrier? Nico didn’t erect that, and he was certain none of his friends made it either, let alone had time to make one inside the treasure room. That must have been the uncomfortable wave of power he felt when he burst-jumped into the room.

The edges of his vision grew increasingly blurry.

Beneath the magic barrier were hazes of power, signs of spell formations drawn in invisible ink. Nico could see traces of it now with his modified version of Gallahad’s mind formation on his eyelids. Something about the pattern of the formation-hazes seemed familiar to him. Either that, or he was going completely nuts before he passed out.

He blinked. At least, he intended to blink by closing his eyes. He didn’t have the energy to open them back up again. Before the exhaustion took him to the relief of sleep, he heard the voices of a young russian, then a gruff middle aged man.

“Is, Nico, da?

“Well, well, well. Mr. Kanazawa, you sure are full of surprises.”

Every hair on Nico’s body stood erect, and he screamed for his body to wake up. It did not listen. He did not want to sleep. Not now. Not when he found the killer.

But sleep ignored his desire, and plucked him away like dark wings.