The Aberrant seemed to regain any confidence it had lost. It swept itself in a dancing circle, creating a blast of arcane energy that knocked back every one of the delvers that were lunging at it; while they staggered, off-kilter, it lunged itself at one of them and slammed him into the ground. There was a shout, half panicked and half determined, trying to fend off the blow — but arcane energy plunged into his chest and he screamed.

React, you idiot! Misa roared the words at herself. She'd been frozen, still off-balance from what had happened to the soldiers when she tried to save them. Before she could do anything, though, another one of the delvers did; he switched out his blades for a flail, and brought the weapon swinging directly into the creature's center mass.

For all that it seemed impenetrable, it was still light, its body mass nothing more than a collection of mana. The force of the strike sent it flying and crashing into a nearby wall. But that was hardly enough — the laws of physics seemed to bend around the creature; how did it exert so much force, if it had almost no mass behind it? Even now, it was getting up like nothing had happened...

"We need to retreat!" The captain called. The Aberrant seemed dazed, but mostly unharmed; if the blunt force had done some sort of damage to it, it wasn't obvious. "We can't damage it! Back towards the main hall, now! We need to see if we can get back in contact with the research team!"

Normally, the research team would give them an analysis of the enemy and a strategy — but they'd been cut off.

And the Aberrant did not want them to retreat.

Misa saw what it was planning to do a second before it acted, and this time, she reacted.

She'd reserve her skill for when it was necessary; along with the extra damage she'd taken from the thing's screams, she was down to about 70% of her health. She could take six more hits with [To Fall Yet Hold the Line], and a few more with [Every Last Drop] and her mana; for the most part that was better than tanking the hits herself, because any hits this monster dealt would no doubt wipe out all her remaining health, given their level difference.

But the monster was light, and she could use that.

She swung her mace directly into the Aberrant's leg as it sailed over her head, the monster apparently planning to collapse the exit before they could escape. Forward momentum turned into torque, and the monster was sent flipping over backwards into the upper edge of the doorway.

When it wasn't actively applying force, it seemed to be vulnerable to having forces applied to it. Useful to know, but only good for keeping it knocked back, perhaps. The captain was already moving, launching himself toward the Aberrant before it could recover. "I'll keep the bastard occupied!"

Then he kicked the monster, hard. He'd evidently figured the same thing.

It slammed into the opposite wall of the cavern and screeched.

Misa winced. The sound alone was enough to chunk her health again, but it didn't help that the soldiers didn't move to retreat quite as quickly as they should have.

"He's telling you to retreat, so go!" Misa roared, and the shout was enough to startle the other delvers into moving. They weren't completely used to their bodies yet, she could see — without flesh and muscle, their bodies were just a lot lighter than they usually were. That discrepancy kept throwing them off.

What Misa was wondering was why none of them seemed to have any skills for the situation. They seemed to be all physical combat fighters, but surely that wasn't a good setup for a delve team?

There was no time for that, though. The Aberrant could see them retreating, and while the captain was slowing it down, he couldn't stop everything it did. It blew past him in a sudden, flickering movement, charging straight at the retreating team; two of them tried to block it, but they were tossed aside like they were made of paper, and it slammed into a third —

Nope, Misa thought. Fuck that.

She didn't have a lot of health left. But she didn't need a lot of her health.

She blocked.

It screeched at her, loud and painful, and that one she didn't block since the damage it did was minimal; the skeletons that had been tossed to the side scrambled back to their feet. They looked like they wanted to help —

"Fucking go!" Misa yelled, right as the Aberrant tried to spear her with an arcane blade; she didn't react in time, momentarily distracted, but right before the blade would have pierced her the captain body-checked the Aberrant out of the way.

"Listen to your own advice, miss," he said, and then seemed surprised. "Huh. Well, what do ya know. I'm usually more out of breath after that."

"Are you going to be okay?" Misa asked, her voice steely. The captain chuckled, even while the Aberrant circled them from farther away, still grinning that manic grin.

"We're about to find out, I s'ppose," he said, perhaps a little more cheerily than he should have, given the circumstances.

"What's your name?" Misa asked, because it felt wrong to just run without knowing the name of this person, and she wasn't sure she wanted to run at all.

"Name's Harold," the captain said easily, but his eyes were sharp, and tracing the Aberrant's movements. It was twitching sporadically, like it was about to attack.

Just as it darted forward with incredible speed, Harold reached back and pressed a hand to her shoulder—

—And suddenly she found herself in the corridor outside the room, among the other delvers; they visibly started at her appearance, bones rattling.

He'd figured her out, then. But what kind of skill was that?

"We need to get backup," one of the now-skeletons told her, and she nodded, a little hesitantly. She wasn't the only one, either; they all had some experience with dungeons, and while it was necessary to retreat sometimes, dungeons never liked it when they did.

Especially when retreating from a challenge room. There would almost certainly be a trap, in fact, but they were all on the lookout for it; as long as they were careful they'd probably be able to work around it.

That thought was, perhaps, foolishly optimistic.

Misa only barely caught the glimmer of a trap activating in the corridor ahead of them, along with a flicker of a familiar laugh. It gave her just enough time to respond. The others were reacting, too, but they didn't seem to have skills they could do it with — they just sort of gathered in front of her, as if they could protect her from the flames of concentrated night that were spewing forward from the opposing wall.

Misa did the only thing she could do — she blocked it with [To Fall Yet Hold the Line]. She slammed a glowing mace into the ground, and a shimmering shield appeared in front of all of them, blocking the flames.

One of the soldiers tried destroying the trap, dashing forward and slamming his flail into it, but it took barely a scratch of health as damage, and he quickly retreated back into the range of the block.

"The fire's filled the corridor ahead, too," he told them. He sounded worried. "And that fire does a lot of damage."

Misa wasn't paying much attention. She gritted her teeth. There was a problem here, and the problem was how the skill worked with sustained attacks. She'd tested it before, but the results had been rather useless. It was as likely to tick multiple times during a sustained attack as it was to only tick once. There was some metric by which it operated, but she hadn't figured it out.

And the secondary problem was that she couldn't move while she was doing it.

"I can't hold this for long," Misa said grimly once she saw her health tick down twice. "Run back. I dunno if you heard that laugh, but this trap should have stopped by now; it's the fucking guy with the crossbow again. Whoever that is."

The soldiers tried to help, using a variety of skills to try to smash apart the traps, but they just had so much health, and they kept having to run back into the range of the block to have the time to heal and recover —

33% left.

"Go back," she said. She knew her team — they would be on the way. Not a single one of them would give up on her if she just vanished, and they were exactly the types of fuckers that would find a way into the dungeon, rules be damned. They'd find a way to help the soldiers, too.

Her job now was to keep them alive. She'd done this same thing a very long time ago, though it was more battle-fraught than just this. This was what she did. She protected. It didn't matter who.

"I'm not going to see anyone die on my watch," she said, her voice firm. "Go back. Backup will be coming."

"But you—" A delver protested, but her health hit zero, and the block flickered out—

Activation conditions for the bonus room have been met.

Transporting: Misa, level 42, [Fallen Guardian]

The village of J'rokksur will soon be besieged by monsters following a dungeon break. The defenders of the village cannot stand up to such a siege by themselves. Help the villagers mount their final defense, or die trying.

There was a long, long pause.

Misa didn't read the entire message. Her eyes focused on a name she hadn't seen for far too long.

The world faded away around her, and another world faded in. One that was too familiar to her; one that she'd lost before, except now it was standing proud and strong; the village she had failed to defend, once upon a time.

She'd almost suspected it, given what the dungeon had called this room. But it hadn't seemed possible, and the mere idea of it had seemed so cruel... She'd heard of it before, dungeons that replicated events from the past. Dungeons that required you to take on historical events. They were one of the few ways Platinum adventurers were able to uncover new aspects of their broken history.

But this?

What were her choices, here? To fail and fall one final time? Or to succeed, and be forced to endure a vision of what had never been?

She stared at her old village. She could hear the sound of children laughing, could smell her favorite stew cooking in the communal pot. She heard the sound of her own mother, loudly complaining about the quality of the fish she'd been given.

The fact that she'd been so close to death her health had hit zero meant almost nothing to her. Not in front of this... this mockery of what she had lost.

Misa fell to her knees and wept.

Derivan had been a fraction of a second too late. Vex and Sev were behind him, screaming something — but he didn't quite catch the words. He was too busy staring at the scene in front of him, a dim horror flickering in his soul.

Misa had been there. Not strictly visible, around the bend of the corridor, but he knew the sound of her voice, the glow of her skills. He knew what it looked like when that skill failed.

He'd seen the dark flames blazing in front of him and known something was wrong, but even pouring on all the speed he could, he just didn't have the stats. His blades slammed into the weak stone that was emitting the flames just a second too late, and whatever health they had didn't matter, because health didn't matter for him. They shattered, and the flames guttered out.

Vex had tried to cast a spell. Sev had just tried to heal. But range and line of sight were factors, and neither of them had quite been able to destroy the trap or heal their friend in time.

It took them a moment to actually read and understand the messages that appeared, announced for all of them: the activation of the bonus room, and the transportation of one Misa into an old, painful memory.

But they did, and a grim determination settled in their souls.

"We're not letting her do that alone," Sev said.

"No," Vex and Derivan both agreed.