“What should we do?” Tez asked, and while she didn’t look overly perturbed, there was a hint of concern on her face.

“Well, first, we should alert the others,” I said; the answer seemed obvious to me.

Tez looked around, and while we had been made aware of something happening, it appeared as if, for the most part, few of the other adventurers had realized anything was amiss.

“Probably a good call.” She agreed, pointing at the obelisk overhead. “You try to figure that out. I’ll get the message across.”

“And how do you plan to-” I was interrupted by a bright column of fire blasted out from her as she funneled one hand over her upturned mouth. “-in hindsight, I don’t know why I bothered asking.”

Issue of alerting the rest of the party left in the relatively capable hands of Tez, I returned to the immediate problem. The black liquid continued seeping down the walls, completely unlike anything I’d seen before. Considering that we were currently locked in a dungeon slowly filling with strange black ooze, it was enough to guess that at the very least it probably wasn’t spa water. With the mystery liquid, well, a mystery, there was only one place to start.

When in doubt, mana.

My senses sharpened as I circulated mana through my body, before turning my senses past the physical and into the incorporeal world of mana. My sensory state enhanced, the world was revealed to me closer to what it really was, capable as I was of seeing an entire side of it that would ordinarily be invisible to the naked eye.

And what I saw alarmed me.

Far away, staring at the walls where the black ooze seeped down, there was no mana.

Not small trace amounts of mana or just some unknown mana.

There was literally none there. It was as if it had been sucked into the nether.

No. That shouldn’t be possible.

Mana was everywhere, it was in everything. From the smallest of rocks to the most insignificant amoeba. Mana was there, in them all.

But the ooze was like a flowing void, an emptiness that called to something wrong.

Well, if I wasn’t already certain about it not being spa water…

As for the platforms with the alter-looking structures, while I could sense the mana within, the workings were intricate and bizarre. Over time, I had come to think of myself as rather knowledgeable about the workings of mana, given, unlike ordinary adventurers, I was forced to take a much more nuanced approach, subtle variations and modulations of mana required to slowly build my sage rings, whereas for most it was as easy as drawing external mana into their core to refine it. Still, even for me, the way the mana seemed to flow and organize itself within the structures was utterly alien.

I’ll harken a guess that it’s almost like it’s the product of some research-obsessed Sage.

I frowned, the thought of this place being the former dwelling of a sage was all but irrefutable. Even if there was any doubt in my mind left, perhaps some sort of divine trick being played upon little ole me, it was swept away as I inspected the golden barriers around the obelisk floating overhead.

Unlike the mana within the alters, nothing appeared special about how it had been formed or worked. They were just simple barriers constructed of mana. That of course wasn’t the issue.

Well, I mean it was an issue, if the barrier wasn’t there in the first place then-

Well, you get the point.

-The real issue was the type of mana forming the barriers.

It was a hundred percent concentrated Sage mana.

My mouth was agape as I could only stare in awe. Seeing it was like comparing a single stone to an entire quarry.

And if it wasn’t already obvious, the entirety of the Sage mana I’d called upon in my entire life was the single stone, and the barrier was the quarry.

There was no getting through that, plain and simple. Even if we took the collective force of every single adventurer here, bled them of their mana, and stuffed in Tez, the adventurer with the highest attack potency out of us here, it would be like expecting to shatter an entire mountain with a single stick of dynamite.

“Rook?”

I felt a hand on my shoulder and pulled out of my awe-induced stupor; I turned to see Tez looking at me with concern.

“What’s wrong?”

Most of the adventurers had gathered toward the base of the platform, now fidgeting as they cast nervous glances towards the cave walls, which were spilling even more black ooze. At the rate it was flowing, it would take hours before it reached here, but just the fact that it was there and that our path out was blocked by a barrier of what I now understood as Sage mana, was enough to cast a cloud of anxiousness of the group.

“We can’t force our way out.” I pointed up toward the barrier of golden mana.

Tez squinted her eyes, and for a moment, I could feel a stab of probing intent from her, but it was gone in a flash.

“Sorry Rook. You’re going to have to explain. I don’t think anyone here has as acute of a sense for mana as you do.”

It was disheartening but not exactly surprising. For those whose growth came about from looking inward and refining mana from within, looking outward was oft an underappreciated skill.

“That gold barrier.”

“Yeah, what about it?”

“To make an analogy. Everyone here pooling our strength together would make a formidable spear, a spear that could penetrate most if not all shields.”

Tez frowned. “And that’s… a bad thing?”

“It is when you consider that the barrier there isn’t just some shield, it’s the entire damn fortress.”

“Oh.” Tez looked up again, understanding of the situation dawning upon her. “That is bad.”

“Yeah.”

From the corner of my eye, I saw several people splitting from the rest of the group, making their way up the platform to stand next to us.

“Iris. Fey. Gramm.” I nodded to the three.

“Zero.” Gramm gave me a curt nod.

“What’s the situation?” Iris questioned me. “I hope you’ve figured something out. Because unfortunately, we managed to turn up exactly nothing at the other alters.”

“Have any of you investigated the black ooze?” I returned her question with one of my own.

“I did.” Iris nodded, perhaps one of the few who had shown relative proficiency at sensing mana past the most basic level. “But I didn’t manage to sense anything off about it. Why?”

“That’s the problem.” I flicked a finger at her, then the wall. “It’s not that you didn’t sense anything off. You just didn’t sense anything in the first place.”

I saw her eyes widen a fraction, as she turned to look at one of the walls, the ooze having spread half a step out from the base of the cavern walls. Closing her eyes, I felt the familiar sensation of her probing intent, before opening her eyes a moment later.

“You’re right. That’s odd but shouldn’t be enough to pose an issue by itself.”

“Oh, c’mon, Iris,” Gramm spoke up, speaking what I’d been thinking. “You, I, and anyone here with half a brain know that an unknown black ooze seeping down the walls of a cave where we are trapped is probably going to be something as horrible as anything else we’ve seen.”

Glad I’m not the one who has to say it.

“Fine.” Iris nodded, not bothering to refute what the man said. “Then we need to get out before it becomes a problem. What about those gold barriers?”

“They’re made of mana.”

“Then Fey,” Iris turned to look at my fellow lancer. “Your kin magic should be able to dissolve them.”

“Maybe.” She shrugged. “Depending on how much mana there is, it can take a concentrated effort on my part to sustain the flame as it breaks it down.”

“Do it,” Iris said coldly before pointing to the original entrance into the cave.

“I’m not sure that’s going to do anything.” I cut in, unable to shake the feeling that her plan seemed too optimistic.

“It doesn’t matter. I’m going to take every avenue we have. Fey.”

Fey looked between us, head swiveling as she chewed on her lip. Ultimately, it came down to the simple fact that Iris was officially the party leader and, even more so, outranked me by a large margin. With a quick salute, she jogged off toward the entrance, where thankfully, none of the black liquid was currently oozing down.

This is a bad idea.

I wanted to voice it, but the fact was that I wasn’t the expedition leader. I wasn’t the one to call the shots. What was I to know? For my entire life, I’d only ever been a follower. I was hardly experienced enough to be voicing a direct argument against Iris.

Not like I have anything specific to bring up in the first place aside from a feeling.

“As for the rest of you.” Iris looked at the rest of the adventurers, taking charge. “We still have plenty of time until that ooze reaches this center area. Go back to investigating the alters. We need to figure our way out as soon as possible. I don’t want to see any of you lazing about.”

With a general murmur, the group dispersed, investigating anything of potential note.

The entire time, I couldn’t shake the unease.

This is wrong.

Why? I had nothing to base it on.

But.

But what if we were looking at this entire situation wrong? Treating this like some sort of puzzle.

What if it’s not?

I reached out, about to speak up, but I bit my tongue, holding back the words. If I couldn’t offer a better solution, my time would be better spent trying to figure a way out.

Anyway, she has a point. We’ve got plenty of time.

Looking back at it, that was the point of no return, a point which we crossed without ever realizing the extent of the consequences of our choices.

Spending another ten minutes staring at the golden orb surrounding the obelisk, I tried to crack the code, but the obelisk had nothing to make sense of, no specific mechanism I could determine.

All while the ooze drew closer.

Slowly.

Or so I thought.

Still examining the platform, I noticed the moment something changed, a single quick pulse of mana that radiated out from the central platform, the nearby alters resonating with it for several seconds until the mana pulse died down.

Well, that can’t be a good sign.

Snapping my attention away from the platform, I turned to face Iris who was in the process of examining the platform.

“Call them back.”

“Excuse me?” She seemed taken aback for a moment, surprised by my request.

“I said call them back, everyone. Like, right now.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Something just happened,” I informed her. “So call them back.”

“I can understand your concerns,” Iris rubbed at her chin, her expression that of someone trying to patiently explain something to a child. “But just because you felt a shift doesn’t mean we should suddenly panic. We need to keep a level head here.”

“Damnit, just call them back!” I shouted at her, the outburst of anger shocking even me.

Tez, who was busy investigating something at the bottom of the platform, heard us, her head swiveling between myself and Iris first with surprise, then concern.

“Watch yourself, Zero.” Iris’s voice had gone cold, with a steely edge to it. “I appreciate your concern, but I am the expedition leader here, and it is my responsibility to keep everyone here as safe as feasibly possible. I will not devolve to panicking at every little thing and endangering us all, but perhaps I should expect that from one as… inexperienced as you.”

“Just listen to me and call them back, would you?” I could feel a heat climbing through me, a growing resentment toward how she seemed so ready to disregard me. “But if you-”

For a moment I felt as if the world were slowly trudging through a pool of honey, my instincts alerting me to something even before my mind had even processed it. Halfway across the cavern, directly above an adventurer who was currently poking around the hard stone at the base of one of the platforms, a single droplet of inky black ooze fell from the ceiling. I saw it all as if I were nothing more than an outside viewer watching the scene play out in slow motion.

No.

Unassuming and unthreatening, it was just a single droplet.

But like a dying star falling through the heavens, it was a herald of darkness.

The droplet landed upon his shoulder, and for several seconds the man didn’t react, until without thinking about it, he reached to scratch at his shoulder before pulling his hand away, his reaction a reflection of surprise, the same surprise one would make at finding their hand in pain after touching a pan they hadn’t realized was hot.

No.

His finger, which had touched the black droplet, was stripped to the bone before his very eyes, the speed at which it happened outpacing the man’s own reaction by a beat. The ooze having stripped his flesh away, thickened and swelled, before even the bone of his finger dissolved.

No. Please no.

The man grasped at his hand, as it was consumed by the ooze. Reacting as any would, he tried to fling the fluid off. It splattered upon the ground, several steps away from him, before it surged forward at him, like a swarming hive of ants rather than an inanimate drop of liquid.

Latching onto him, the man screamed, his final death throes before pandemonium broke out. The ooze which we had all assumed to be a slow-moving, likely dangerous, but still ordinary liquid, began surging forward all at once, droplets raining from above as the ooze started gushing from the walls.

We were wrong.

I raised my gaze upward, sword pulled free in the vain hope I could defend myself from the showering black rain, but above us, where we stood upon the platform, not a single droplet of black ooze fell.

“Run!” I shouted, bellowing at the top of my lungs. “To the center!”

But it was too late, we had been lulled into a false sense of security, and we would pay for it. My yelled warning fell upon deaf ears, like a warning of a fire to those already trapped within the burning hell. Within the first few moments of the ooze surging forward, we lost twenty of the expedition members as the ooze rained down or, in some cases, surged forward, a living slime that would lash out tentacles formed of the same black ooze, pulling desperately thrashing adventurers unfortunate enough to be too close into itself.

Perhaps the only good news was not every adventurer was taken entirely off guard. Some, albeit horrifyingly few, were running toward us, fending off the black ooze with fire, forming stone shields, or using blasts of freezing wind to momentarily stop the ooze in its tracks. Those who made it to us clambered upon the platform like sailors desperately climbing aboard a raft after being capsized at sea.

C’mon, c’mon!

I scanned the faces, watching more and more pile on, but we’d already lost so many in that first instant. Other than Tez, Iris, and Gramm, who had all already been on or near the center platform with me, there had been depressingly few close enough to reach us, the black ooze having already surged forward with such sudden speed that it had spread across almost the entirety of the ground.

Everyone who could have made it had already.

Well, almost everyone.

Two figures were sprinting toward us as fast as they could, covering for each other as the ooze lashed out at them.

Elsmere and Fey. Perhaps the only two I had any sort of familiarity with outside of Tez or Iris. They were frantically racing ahead; while the ooze had no mana for Fey’s flame to consume, it, at the very least, seemed to distract the ooze, which appeared to have a mind of its own. Meanwhile, Elsmere took a more direct approach to hold it back, a quick stomp on the ground and a muttered word slamming waves of stone toward any of the black liquid as it neared them.

They were close.

But they weren’t going to make it; I could see the ooze had already circled around, preparing to cut them off from reaching the platform.

Without thinking about it, I lunged forward, ready to race out to them, when a hand grasped me.

“No.”

I turned back, only to see Gramm holding my wrist tight.

“Why?”

“We can’t afford to lose more capable people than we have.”

“I can reach them!” I yelled, tugging at my arm.

“You’re going to get yourself killed, kid!” The man didn’t yell, but his voice shook me, nonetheless.

I was about to tug free once more when another voice cut in.

“Let him.”

It was Iris, her arms folded over her chest, expression neutral, a mask of indifference to hide her emotions.

Gramm looked between us before finally releasing me, giving me a quick push.

“Then go! And don’t die kid!”

I could see the genuine worry in his eyes, but I didn’t have time to focus on it. Instantly I was drawing upon the heat of the sage mana within my foundation ring.

“Flow,” I whispered, my body tingling and light as a ghost. In a single breath, I managed to reach them. Surprise on their faces as I appeared to pop into existence before their very eyes, there was no time to explain as I grabbed them, hauling them over my shoulders as if they were weightless.

There!

I dashed back, slowed only slightly from their combined weight.

We had made it, the platform was right in front of me, all I had to do was-

“Watch out!”

Fast as I was with the power of the sage ring, I couldn’t simply ignore physics. Momentum was still momentum, and mine was carrying me straight toward the clutches of a wave of black tendrils that had appeared before us like a net.

Damnit. Where did those come from?

I’d somehow failed to notice them, snaking their way around from the other side of the platform, a worrying amount of plotting that the ooze was clearly capable.

Sorry, mom.

I closed my eyes, waiting for the embrace of what was sure to be a painful death, but it never came.

What I felt instead, was something shoving at my back as I was thrust out of the way of the black tendrils, my momentum redirected as I slammed down upon the platform with Elsmere and Fey.

No, that’s not right.

Next to me on the platform, there was only one body.

Still coursing with sage mana, I was on my feet instantly, face to face with what had transpired.

Fey was still out there; she had shoved with all her might from my shoulder, pushing me out of the way of the black ooze.

And in doing so, she had taken my place. For one single moment that felt as if stretched into eternity, I saw an expression of regret cloud her face.

And then she was gone, the ooze swallowing her whole.

“Fey!” I screamed.

There was no point.

She was gone.

The ooze dispersed, covering the cavern floor covered in an even layer of the ankle-deep mire.

Stunned, I looked back at everyone on the platform.

Tez. Iris. Gramm. Elsmere. Ess and Thoron from Tez’s party. The wiry-looking vice-captain of Shangsattva. A few who I still hadn’t taken the time to learn the names of.

That was it. We had lost everyone else. From old man Ronin to Fey, the first person outside of those I’d already known to show me any companionship.

Gone. In the blink of an eye, their lives have been extinguished, just like that.

“You’ve got to be fucking with me.”

Even from within the depths of malaise, it was impossible not to hear Gramm, his voice laden with despair. I slowly looked up, from where I’d been staring into my hands, looking to see what it was that caused the sudden outburst of despair.

“This was doomed from the damn start, wasn’t it?” He was laughing, a slow, painful laugh of someone watching their demise form before their eyes.

The ooze had begun to bubble until moments later, a hand emerged, pulling itself free.

Fey?

No. I corrected myself, casting aside the naïve hope. The hand clearly belonged to something that wasn’t human, made entirely of what looked like solidified ooze.

It’s not pulling itself free from the ooze. I realized a second later. It is the ooze.

It continued growing, drawing the remaining black liquid in on itself until the floor was no longer covered by the mire of liquid death.

What remained was what appeared to be a humanoid-looking thing, completely smooth and devoid of any features whatsoever.

“Hollow.” I heard whispered, looking back to see some of the remaining group looking out, their eyes filled with the same despair as Gramm.

“What’s a Hollow?” I asked, unable to help myself.

“The End,” Gramm spoke, dread in his eyes. “That’s what it is.”

“Uhm.” As chilling as a statement as it was, coming from one of the highest-ranking gold adventurers, it hadn’t actually explained anything.

“It’s not something adventurers like us can deal with.” It was Elsmere who spoke up. “Several years ago, there was a quest issued. It was an extermination, not of a den of devilish monsters or such, but the removal of a single creature if you could even call it that. The nizeium party Godsend was sent to deal with it. Of the six of them, only two returned.”

I stared at the black figure, standing entirely still; something told me it was watching us just as we were watching it.

“It’s all but impervious to magic. It doesn’t tire. It can replenish itself on the absorption of anything with any mana. I don’t even know how to hurt it, much less kill it.”

This is looking worse by the second.

“Maybe it won’t attack?” I questioned hopefully; the Hollow had still yet to move.

So, of course, that was when the Hollow began to approach us.

Something about its movements was wrong. While it had taken a form like that of a human, the Hollow was no human, it had no musculature, it was simply trying to imitate how a human would move, alien to our understanding and physiology.

“We’re going to die.” Gramm laughed a heavy bellowing sound. The despair from before was gone, his eyes now set with a steady weight, an unfaltering resolve. “This isn’t a dungeon. No, we tread too deep, entered a place not meant for man. We entered damnation itself.”

Well, no. I mentally corrected the man. But I guess when you’re going to die, it’s all semantics, isn’t it?

“If this thing is impervious to magic, I guess we got no choice but to do this the old-fashioned way.” Gramm hoisted his massive shield before pulling on a mace latched to his side. “No magic. Just regular steel and metal.”

“If that’s the case,” Tez wasted no time, speaking up. “Then give me your mana.”

Gramm eyed her for a moment, before shrugging. “If nizeium adventurers can barely nick this thing with their magic, then it makes sense the only one here who has any shot at it would be you.”

“Wait.” I cut in. “Doesn’t it need to be fire mana?” I questioned Tez, but she shrugged.

“Yes. But, given the situation…. Well, you’ve got to surpass your limits sometime or another, right?”

Got to surpass your limits… Fuck it, why not?

Gramm and several adventurers began to make their way down the platform, hoisting what weapons they had on them. Gramm stopped, looking back as he noticed I had yet to move a muscle.

“You getting cold feet? Considering your style of magic, you’re the best suited her for fighting it straight on.”

“Maybe.” I sighed, before tilting my head. “But, I think I may have a way out of here for us.”

Gramm stared at me for a second, before it was his turn to shake his head, a snort of exhausted acceptance escaping his nose. “Leave it to the wunderkind. I’ll reckon you’re probably going to tell me you need some time now?”

“Sorry.” I apologized.

“Hah. Well, at the very least we can tell ourselves we won’t die pointlessly.” Raising a hand in the air, I felt mana begin to pulsate from him, the rest of the group heading out with him following his lead.

“Scarlet. Here’s the mana you wanted.”

Stepping forward, Tez gave a quick nod, readying herself before she opened her mouth, inhaling. The mana which had been expelled from the group was instantly drawn toward her as if she were some sort of wind vortex, and from within her, I swore I could hear the rhythmic pulse of her heart beating like a war drum.

“Damn, that’s something else.” An instant later, her expression changed, replaced with a look of pure pain as she collapsed, thrashing, and grasping at her neck like she was choking.

“Tez!?” I kneeled at her side, meaning to help her, but she managed to thrust her hand in front of my face before choking out some words.

“Don’t.” She was clearly in agony, but I could see the steel in her eyes. “Let…me…do…this!”

Damnit.

I stood up, looking away from her toward the sphere of golden light around the obelisk

Damnit!

If only I was stronger. If only I was smarter.

If only I were more.

Now wasn’t the time to be reflecting on my shortcomings. I had a job only I could pull off, it was time to act. If we wanted to escape, we needed to get past the barrier, but it would be impossible to disrupt such dense mana, especially given no one here could harness Sage mana in the first place.

No one except for me that is.

Time to surpass those limits, Rook.

What I was about to do, was probably going to kill me, but I had no choice. As I had done hundreds of times in the past, I reached out to the mana around me, but I wasn’t looking for just any mana.

I went straight for the Sage mana.

I opened myself fully to the mana, mentally clawing it toward me, but it was unlike any mana I’d experienced before, it was as if it had a will of its own, defying me as if I lacked the authority with which to command it forward.

Gods damn it, if that’s how you want to play this, then that’s how we’ll play!

I stopped for a second, taking in a breath before reaching out once more, the divine wrap covering my arm vanishing. I was reaching out not through myself, but through the rings upon my arm, a conduit to bind us together.

If you only want to move for a sage, move for me then, damn it!

If the Sage of Wisdom had really been the one to put the barrier here in the first place, they had made sure others couldn’t easily tear it apart. What they hadn’t considered, was that it would be another sage attempting to disrupt the barrier.

Or perhaps that was always the point. That only another sage could possibly undo it.

Two wisps of golden-looking threads suddenly split off from the golden barrier before winding their way through the air between us, drawn to the two rings upon my right arm.

I looked over my shoulder, just in time to see the battle between Gramm and those who had accompanied him against the Hollow.

Two charged it with short swords, attempting to hack at it, but the Hollow swept an arm out through them, its hand passing through their midsection and erasing whatever it passed through, the two former adventurers following over, split through the waist.

A third yelled out a guttural war cry before stabbing forward with a medium-length spear. The Hollow never bothered to avoid the strike, eerily devoid of any idle movements of normal living creatures. It remained just as still as the tip of the spear slammed into its chest, or what approximated a human chest. The Hollow remained unscathed, but the same couldn’t be said for the spear, which shattered from tip to shaft. The adventurer stared down at her hands, bloodied from the splinter of the wooden shaft of the weapon as if she were shocked, all the while the Hollow reached out toward her with its erasing grasp.

She would have died then and there had Gramm not intervened. Charging in front of the girl, he slammed his massive tower shield down, blocking the Hollow. Unlike with her spear, when the Hollow touched his shield it did not instantly shatter, though I heard what sounded like straining metal, cracks spider-webbing throughout the shield.

The Hollow stopped; and if not for its alien appearance, one would have almost interpreted the reaction as confusion, surprised that something hadn’t instantly fallen apart when it was touched.

The reason, I was certain, was because Gramm’s shield wasn’t just any metal; it was made of the same stuff as my swords, mana-tempered silver. If there was anything that could hold the fiend back, it was that.

As much as I may have wanted to continue to observe the fight, my attention was yanked away.

I was sinking, drowning, unable to make out up from down, lost at the bottom of a dark ocean to which I must have been transported.

No. That can’t be it.

I wasn’t drowning, and I hadn’t been transported.

What’s going on?

I forced myself to clear my mind, my sense of outward perception returning to normal. When the mana from the barrier had begun to flow, it went to the place of least resistance.

Me.

There was so much, too much. Overwhelmed, I collapsed as the golden threads of light snaked around the sage rings covering my right arm, glowing even more brightly as the flow of sage mana only increased.

I’m going to die.

I was on fire, exploding with mana. I was mana. Everything and nothing all at once.

And this was just a taste. A single fish when there was an entire sea left.

But I couldn’t let go.

They were all counting on me.

I slowly pressed my hands to the ground before mustering the strength to push myself up, each twitch of my muscle fibers feeling like it required an exaggerated effort of will.

“Not….yet…” I groaned, standing up, hands raised toward the golden orb of light blocking our only possible way out.

I needed an outlet. Anything to help reduce the strain I had found myself under.

“Flow,” I whispered, and instantly my senses exploded outward, sensing everything at once.

Using flow to vent the excess mana was like using a bucket to bail water out of a boat; the mana expenditure drops in an ocean.

I needed a better outlet.

“Null,” I whispered after only a moment of hesitation. The heat from the sage mana rushing into me was so great that I couldn’t feel the usual cold embrace of Null. I was pouring as much mana out of me as possible, and still, it just wasn’t enough. Even Null couldn’t hold back the raw volume of mana spilling into me.

Something. There must be a better way!

It took only a moment of thought to realize that there was, in fact, one final option available. A third metaphysical foundation I’d carved into myself some time ago, the site of where I was meant to form my third ring. I’d since discovered the process needed to complete it was too complex and too mana intensive for me to have done anything past form the very basic foundation for the third sage ring, and so for months now, absolutely no progress had been made.

I still didn’t have the finesse needed for the delicate mana operations required of building the third ring, but what I did have at this moment was sheer volume of mana to work with. I began slamming mana together within the foundation of the ring, a mess of random mana collisions. Even if the process lacked the detailed understanding required to ensure much of a success rate, with so much force to the mana colliding and so many mana collisions occurring, to my mind’s eye, it was as if I were witnessing the ring forming in hyper-speed.

Faster... Faster!

I didn’t need to take in all the mana of the barrier; for that I was sure. All I needed to do was disrupt it enough that the mana would break down upon itself, like destroying the supports that kept a house structurally sound and watching it fall apart under its own weight.

But to do that, I needed to draw out a hell of a lot more mana than I still had.

More!

I looked back to see how the battle was going.

To say it wasn’t going well, would be an understatement. Of those who had confronted the Hollow, the only one who remained standing was Gramm, the rest had been killed in the short time my senses had been overwhelmed by the sage mana.

Well, ‘standing’ was subjective in this sense. Gramm’s shield had finally failed, shattered into a million pieces, his mace faring no better. The once proud man was missing an arm, and there was a hole through his chest as if someone had punched through him. Kneeling on the ground, his arms hanging uselessly at his side, the Hollow loomed over him, something about its alien demeanor reminding me of a haughty victor reveling over the fallen form of a foe.

“No.” I croaked, but it didn’t matter what I wanted. The world was an uncaring and callous place.

The Hollow reached out, grabbing Gramm’s face from the front, black ooze enveloping his head. It wasn’t until several seconds later that the Hollow released the man.

Gramm was dead.

Head missing, his body slumped, falling face forward-

That is if he still had a face.

-before his killer.

Gramm dead, of those that remained there was only myself, Tez, Iris, Elsmere, and three others, those who stayed back for whatever reason. The Hollow, no longer distracted by the annoying flies that my fellow adventurers may as well have been, began to glide toward us once more.

Damnit.

I needed more time. More anything.

If I could even just get Tez out.

I looked to where she had fallen, but Tez was no longer on the ground.

Tez?

There, walking down the steps, was Tez, absolutely radiating with power, so much so that she was sweating.

The Hollow stopped, apparently curious as to what the lone woman would manage to do, not even carrying any sort of weapon or instrument with which to harm it.

Not that any of our weapons had done it any harm anyways.

The two stood silently facing each other until the Hollow tilted its smooth head at her, almost mockingly similar to the etiquette of a human duelist. The motion, the familiarity of it from such an alien being, set Tez off, hot winds whipping away from her as she snapped.

“Fuck. You.” She yelled out before raising her hand in front of her mouth in the shape of a funnel. Exhaling like she was trying to blow the Hollow away, a bar of white-hot dragon fire lanced out from between her funneled hands, slamming directly into the Hollow.

Either the Hollow hadn’t expected such power, or it was overconfident because the impact of the liquid-like fire sent it hurtling backward, smashing into the furthest wall with a crash of shattering rock.

Tez collapsed.

Again.

Unable to withstand the force of her own magic, she was lying on the ground, motionless, her eyes rolled back. Elsmere seeing her collapse, ran down the stairs, grabbing Tez from where she had fallen before dragging her back up the platform. All the while, I continued drawing in as much of the mana as possible.

As if testament to the heat of her fire; the stone beneath the path of the flame had melted just from being in its vicinity, as if the sun itself had graced the land.

Please. Please tell me that was enough.

Perhaps a Hollow was a creature that could even threaten nizeium adventurers, but what Tez had hit it with was concentrated dragon fire, magic that belonged to beings far beyond any of us here.

C’mon. C’mon! She’s a gods damn dragon!

I watched, waiting for the dust to settle, but when it finally did, the pit of my stomach dropped out of me.

If a dragon was anything that defied ordinary rules of magic and mana, then Tez wasn’t the only dragon here; so was the Hollow.

So leave it to a Dragon to survive the full power attack from another Dragon.

From the crater created by the impact of its body against the far wall, the Hollow pulled itself free. Her attack hadn’t been without effect, its smooth black body now blemished by pockets of bubbled black ooze like hot tar in the sun.

It didn’t matter if it was hurt.

Hurt wasn’t good enough, as if to add insult to injury, a pressure crashed down upon us, as the Hollow once more made its way toward us.

Some things are universally understood, no matter how alien an existence may be.

Which is to say, there was no missing that the Hollow was pissed.

I looked away from it, down at Tez, who was wholly unconscious, before looking to the unsure faces of the last few remaining adventurers and finally toward Iris’s mask of stone that she called a face.

Damnit.

I hadn’t brought the barrier down in time, but there would be no point in continuing if the Hollow killed the rest of where we stood. Even Iris, as strong as she was, would be helpless before it, her magic would be useless against something with such innate resistance to magic, and with just her dagger, she may as well try to fight a mountain.

Meaning there was only one person left who could conceivably hope of doing anything against it.

Me.

“Keep Tez safe. If this doesn’t work, maybe you can keep away long enough for her to recover.” I said, my spine straightening as I stood tall.

Then, all while trying to not think about how stupid of an idea this was, I made my way down the raised platform to face the deadliest creature of my life.