The air screamed as her whip cracked.

  Her whip struck five Sumpwardens in rapid succession.

  They flew back like debris, skidded and collided against each other. Like the brainless creatures they were, those that had been hurled backward immediately resumed crawling, dragging fractured frames forward. Ones behind them simply clambered over the others’ twisted limbs. The mass compressed, stacked, flowed again towards Anabeth.

  They were coming back.

  Anabeth stopped. Then she reversed, whipping multiple targets at once.

  Five Sumpwardens collapsed where they crawled, and the rest got punched backward once more. Bone parted along stress lines the first strike had already mapped. Vertebrae separated. Anchor joints disintegrated.

  I watched, stunned, as more Sumpwardens were batted aside like poorly thrown tools, only to be erased on the return sweep. They couldn’t close the distance. They couldn’t even threaten her space. Her DEX advantage was absolute; she occupied the only timing window that mattered. I wasn’t sure why she needed to spin in a semicircle, though… That seemed excessively draining.

  Ceralis helpfully overlaid her silhouette.

  Self-Induction. Right. Made sense she’d have a skill with this name.

  After half a minute, more than ten Sumpwardens lay destroyed. None had come close enough to touch her.

  She beamed at me as she spun again. “My lord! Are you satisfied with this technique?”

  I did not answer.

  She waited a beat, then added, “I wouldn’t mind you replicating it on me!”

  Then she slew another Sumpwarden.

  I watched her dispatch ten more without a single one ever touching her.

  Her movements stayed precise, but the tempo changed. The whip still sang, but the intervals between strikes stretched. Sweat darkened her collar and traced a line down her temple. Her breathing grew audible.

  She was starting to tire, but there were only ten Sumpwardens left now.

  There was nothing left for me to do…

  Oh wait.

  I remembered the skill I wanted to learn: Lightning Chain Residue.

  The core step I was stuck at earlier required unmoving targets: Practice short strike chains against unmoving targets (wood, stone, training dummies), maintaining consistent timing between blows to prevent charge collapse.

  Then I stared at the Compression Anchor Node. It was unmoving. It couldn’t attack. There weren’t any Sumpwardens around it. Seemed like the perfect training target…

  I drew my weapon and pressed the edge flat against the stone underfoot. The aether coursed through me and bled into the blade. One spark; two sparks.

  Done.

  I stepped into range and struck.

  The blade kissed the node and slid off.

  Again.

  Again.

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  Again.

  The damage was pathetic. But at least they were consistently pathetic.

  I tried to channel aether through my weapon. A spark of lightning formed, skittering along the blade’s edge instead of jumping free.

  Second strike.

  Third strike.

  I grinned. I only needed roughly thirty to forty more strikes to dispatch this node!

  A loud bang resounded behind me.

  I turned.

  Where one of the auxiliary nodes had been, there was now a crater. Fragments of engraved rock were still tumbling, dust hanging in the air. The boulder that had done it lay embedded nearby.

  Anabeth stood beyond it, grinning wide and proud. “My lord! Should I destroy all the rest now or wait for you to finish sharpening your sword first?”

  I looked down at the weapon. Sharpening—that was what my valorous knightly swordform looked like to her.

  I exhaled. “Finish the job.” I’d come to the realization that tactics were irrelevant when you were overpowered.

  Ah, right. I’d had so little to do during this combat that my stationary passive activated for the first time. Then I realized… I could’ve just stood out of the way and regained AP this entire time. I winced at my own oversight. That would’ve looked unknightly, but it wasn’t like Anabeth was watching.

  I did not want to move toward the next passage. If this had been the second chamber, then everything deeper would scale past my tolerances in ways that no amount of optimism or dignified posturing would correct.

  Anabeth, of course, had collected every single drop and loaded them into my pannier, and the straps had gotten somewhat biting now.

  I needed one more skull fragment… I could, without effort, instruct Anabeth to proceed alone. She would do so cheerfully. However, a knight delegates because it is wise, not because he is incapable. There was a difference between command and dependence, and to cross it now, when retreat was an option, would be to accept a victory that was not mine.

  Saint Merin would not approve of this shameful convenience.

  We could always return the next day. There was no shame in retreat.

  “Anabeth,” I said carefully, “how many chambers like this do you estimate remain?”

  She hummed. “Oh, dozens, my lord. Possibly more, if the ossuary predates the regional collapse.”

  I nodded, once. “Excellent. Then we will not be proceeding.”

  She blinked. “But my lord, we are so close to something truly remarkable! The structural density alone suggests—”

  “—suggests that continuing would result in outcomes so disproportionate and inelegant that they would reflect poorly on the architecture itself,” I finished. “Or worse: negligible gains accompanied by catastrophic repair costs.”

  I adjusted the pannier again. It sagged.

  “There is also,” I added, “the matter of encumbrance.”

  Anabeth looked at the pannier, then brightened. “I can carry them for you!”

  “No,” I said instantly.

  She looked wounded.

  “We will withdraw from the dungeon this instant, and this is final,” I continued.

  Anabeth clasped her hands behind her back and leaned forward. “My lord, I understand your decision, truly! However!”

  Nothing that followed this could ever be sane.

  “There is,” she continued, “one item of personal significance that, according to my estimation, may manifest in the very next chamber.”

  How would she know that? She had demonstrated no particular familiarity with ossuary reward tables nor did she identify the optimal destruction sequence for the conglomerate.

  “On what basis do you make this claim?” I asked.

  She rocked on her heels. “Intuition?”

  “What is it that you desire so much that you dare petition your lord at the edge of his declared withdrawal because of... intuition?”

  “Oh! I would never dare go against your will, my lord. That would be unthinkable.” She waved her hands quickly. “That is why I am pleading.”

  I waited.

  “From what I’ve gathered, the next chamber isn’t even the mid-boss chamber yet! And there is,” she said, “a very cute skull-shaped earring that sometimes drops from tertiary ossuary clusters.” She lifted a finger and pointed at her left ear where the boulder earring hung from. “It would go perfectly with this one, don’t you think?”

  I resisted the urge to squeeze my forehead.

  I fought because of survival. She fought because of aesthetics.

  “One more chamber,” I said, weariness settling into every syllable. “Then we withdraw. You will not petition any longer.”

  “Understood, my lord!” she said brightly. “I shall retrieve the earring swiftly.”

  I turned toward the passage, adjusted the pannier, and felt the straps bite deeper.

  Saint Merin, forgive me.