Chapter 22: A Mid-Boss

  At the end of the Warriors’ Labyrinth, the corridor stopped feeling like a corridor.

  The space opened into a wide, circular chamber, with a golden metal floor that looked polished with hatred. The walls weren’t walls; they were a ring of senseless columns, packed too close to hold anything up, too perfect to be real. And at the center—like the castle had been waiting for this scene since the very beginning—there he was.

  A Dinamo.

  But not the Dinamo.

  A copy brighter than the previous ones. Sharper. More “finished.” The armor wasn’t just golden: it had a hard, almost glass-like shine, as if the metal itself were alive. He carried a spear engraved with fine marks—lines and symbols that weren’t there for aesthetics. And an indigo shield, heavy and imposing, with edges too clean to have ever been used.

  The worst part was the face.

  That smile looked closer to the original than any other fake so far. It wasn’t a recycled smirk. It was a living representation of what it meant to be Dinamo—at least, part of it.

  Katherine stared without moving. Analyzing. On her wrist, her bracelet darkened slightly, her weapons shifting along with it. Around her, the group fell into formation by instinct: Baek up front, Caetano one step behind her, Hassan to the side, Irina and Freya slightly farther back, Romero holding his weapon at the ready, Rajiv at a hidden angle where he could do his job properly.

  The music that had accompanied them until now stopped—as if it were waiting for the right moment to return.

  And Yehiel, with his goats, watched the scene like it was a final exam nobody had warned him about.

  Beyond the boss, guards kept arriving. Mostly warriors, though there was also a handful of mages and archers.

  Copies of warriors, primarily. They poured out of side corridors in groups, without pause, like the castle was vomiting them out. The unsettling detail was that they no longer moved like before.

  Their technique was still clumsy. Their attacks were still obvious, telegraphed—“understandable” to an audience.

  But the speed?

  The speed was no longer a joke.

  The first group advanced and, for the first time since entering the castle, Katherine felt the margin of error shrink.

  A lot.

  Then the transmission got dirty with golden static.

  The camera appeared from above, spinning with unnecessary dramatics. And the commentator burst in like he owned the place.

  —Congratulations, dear humans and traitors! —the metallic voice boomed—. You have completed the Warriors’ Labyrinth! One of the castle’s four labyrinths, by the way. Don’t get too excited: you still have three chances to ruin everything.

  The camera tilted toward the boss, like it was presenting a celebrity.

  —To clear it, you must defeat the labyrinth’s boss— the orb paused theatrically— DINAMO, Warrior Edition! Limited-edition figures coming soon! With spear, shield, and that smile you all love to hate! Don’t hesitate to buy it at your nearest trusted store— I assure you it’ll be worth it.

  A sound of artificial “applause” leaked through the broadcast. It came from nowhere real. It was just the castle doing theater.

  —The rewards are magnificent if you succeed. Never doubt the generosity of our beloved leader. So entertain the audience and good luck! Ah, and a small tip: don’t die. Or at least, don’t do it too fast. I get bored easily, and you wouldn’t want to disappoint our viewers.

  The camera shut off as if it had never existed.

  And with that, the music resumed.

  Only now, it was more unhinged.

  And then something unexpected happened.

  The boss spoke.

  Something no copy had done until this moment.

  —Squad one, charge.

  The voice didn’t sound like a programmed echo. It wasn’t a script.

  It was command.

  An intentionally planned order.

  Twenty guards advanced with smiles on their faces. No fear. No doubt. Like dying was paperwork. Like the castle had removed even the concept of self-preservation from them.

  Baek stepped forward to receive the rush, like he’d done countless times since the start of the game. But this time, his eyes sharpened.

  Because they were already too fast.

  Katherine didn’t say anything out loud. She didn’t need to. Authorization had already been given.

  Baek stopped playing.

  He didn’t strike with a conventional physical slash, nor with the usual blend of aura and concept he’d rarely needed before. He shifted his approach instantly, like he’d been waiting for this moment since the beginning.

  —Haidong Gumdo: Tornado.

  The sword didn’t descend in the clean arc the group knew.

  The blade segmented.

  Its internal mechanism released the body of the sword into thin sections—blades connected by retractable wire. It wasn’t a “new” weapon.

  It was a plan.

  A method Baek had saved for when he needed to surprise the original.

  Because unlike the common copies, these guards’ shields triggered an alarm in him. They awakened his intuition—one forged through years of walking the path of a swordmaster. An intuition that whispered danger: those shields could stop a conventional cut. At least long enough to create a crack for error to slip in.

  The “tornado” wasn’t an imaginary whirlwind of cuts.

  It was a rain of flexible blades.

  The edges sliced through everything in their path. Made from the same miraculous, unbreakable material—after all, it was his sword—every defense became a joke.

  And the guards…

  The guards came apart.

  The defense was pierced like always, without resistance. The golden material split. Bodies were severed. The smiles remained until the very last instant, like a cruel punchline.

  All twenty turned to dust in seconds.

  Katherine didn’t relax.

  Not even a little.

  Because the boss was already adapting.

  Another surprise.

  —Squad two, —the copy ordered—. Drop the shields. Charge. Use feints. Attack from multiple angles. Avoid contact with that unknown material. Overwhelm him.

  Another twenty copies released their shields without protest. Their mobility increased. They split into groups, striking from different flanks.

  Baek barely turned his head, measuring the geometry of the threat.

  If he focused on one group, the other would kill him. A brutal situation—killing one exposed him to a strike from the other side.

  A pincer attack.

  Worse: there was no time to build a strategy.

  They were already on him.

  And then a voice cut in—cold, direct, no theater.

  —Hit the ones in front. Yael, destroy the ones surrounding him.

  It was Yehiel.

  He didn’t ask Katherine for permission. He didn’t apologize. From his perspective, if Dinamo learned something from the first clash, it made no sense to keep “holding back.”

  One of his goats stepped forward with steady hooves.

  Yael.

  The chain-goat who could control gravity.

  Existence warped under concentrated gravity.

  The warriors trying to circle Baek were crushed into the floor first. They tried to endure—surprisingly, considering their earlier peers—but it didn’t matter. Yael simply amplified the intensity to its peak, and then they vanished.

  It wasn’t an explosion.

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  It was an erasure.

  They turned into stains that crumbled into dust. No shields, no conceptual support, nothing left holding them together.

  Baek struck the front line with the same segmented movement and finished clearing what remained.

  Again, the boss showed no surprise.

  To him, it wasn’t waste.

  They were just cannon fodder—tools to learn his opponents’ capabilities.

  So he adjusted.

  —Squad three, —he said—. Keep shields for defense against ranged attacks. Strike from different flanks. Don’t allow breathing room. Avoid contact with the material. Rotate in turns. Squad four, standby. When squad three loses half, move in. Mages and archers: long-range support. Prevent their forces from regrouping and maximize their resource loss.

  Katherine watched all of it like she was looking at a real enemy.

  Because, in practical terms, it was.

  A commander who learns, who gives orders, who uses others like pieces, was more dangerous than a hundred suicidal copies.

  So you finally showed up. I was starting to lose my patience, she thought, without changing her expression.

  For an instant, she considered Caetano.

  It was the logical path.

  The simplest.

  The most efficient.

  She dismissed it.

  Still too soon.

  She clenched her teeth—not out of rage, but calculation. After all, this was a copy Dinamo had put more effort into.

  And then she issued her orders.

  Not out loud.

  Clean telepathy, direct as always.

  “—Baek, keep going with the guards.”

  “—Yehiel, you and your assistants cover him.”

  “—Hassan, you’re with me.”

  “—Irina, Freya, Romero: support and coverage.”

  “—Rajiv: assist whichever group needs it most.”

  “—Caetano, stay on standby.”

  The group responded without debate.

  Not with words.

  With movement.

  Baek surged forward to cut through the new squad before they could organize. The segmented technique whipped through the air again, but this time it wasn’t a clean massacre. The squads followed orders perfectly, becoming cockroaches that avoided his blade at all costs.

  Archers and mages fired from behind. Lethal attacks in the form of arrows—and the occasional spell—rained down on the group, forcing one of Yehiel’s companions to take the lead.

  It was the golden goat.

  Amalthea.

  She amplified her glow, nearly blinding. Her defense did the rest. None of the enemy attacks could pierce her, proving the indestructibility of her fur.

  The mages—aside from a brief attack—showed their greater danger by making their warriors even faster, and their archers even deadlier. Manifesting a strange enhancement ability.

  Irina raised a hand, creating a tide of cotton. Not with the intention of blocking the incoming assault—her ability wasn’t great at stopping piercing or cutting projectiles—but to obstruct the enemy’s vision.

  Freya smiled. Even though she was irritated that they’d interrupted her manicure right before she died at Dinamo’s hands, she understood her role perfectly. That’s why, unlike Irina, she did block the incoming attacks. After all, her ability was perfect for this kind of situation.

  Romero faced a crossroads and ended up doing a bit of both. On one hand, he used his ability to obstruct the enemies’ vision like Irina. On the other, like Freya, he helped divert the projectiles—encapsulating them to kill their inertia and bend their trajectory off course.

  Rajiv, at first, also wanted to provide help, but in the end he followed the enemy mages’ example and devoted himself to empowering his allies… in his own particular way.

  Each of them leaned into their strengths to support their comrades and allies.

  Meanwhile, Katherine and Hassan advanced toward the commander.

  The boss watched them approach with the same irritating smile Dinamo loved to wear—though his felt different.

  —Interesting —the copy said, raising the spear slightly—. So the queen moves too.

  Katherine didn’t respond.

  Not because she had nothing to say.

  But because speaking was wasted time.

  And the castle, as always, was counting.

  The commander understood instantly that he was the target.

  He didn’t retreat. He didn’t hesitate. He simply adjusted his stance as if he’d rehearsed that scenario a thousand times. The indigo spear and shield shifted into place with precision, and his smile didn’t vanish. It changed shape—more mocking, more sadistic.

  —Come, you insignificant little thing. You’ll regret crossing me.

  Katherine felt something was wrong, but it was too late to take her steps back. Now was the moment to plan.

  But first, she needed information.

  She opened the assault with a test: a blinding grenade. Not a conventional flashbang, but an improved version built on a conceptual principle. It didn’t “irritate” the senses.

  It nullified them.

  The concept was literal:

  blind.

  But it wasn’t alone.

  It carried a second concept layered on top.

  The device detonated without sound, as if the air itself had been cut.

  The commander took a step… and faltered.

  For the first time, his expression warped—just slightly.

  What is this? Am I blinded?

  The confusion wasn’t theatrical.

  It was real.

  His eyes were still open, but he couldn’t see. His ears still existed, but they returned nothing useful. And then he felt it—in his muscles, in his joints, in his breathing.

  The weight.

  —It’s not just that —he muttered, and his voice sounded strange, as if he were speaking from inside a tank—. The weight is increasing. What did you do, woman?!

  Katherine didn’t answer his demand. She’d chosen that combination for one simple reason: efficiency.

  If the commander was physically superior to her and Hassan—and every sign said he was—then fighting “clean” was handing him the advantage.

  And her weapons, on top of that, were made of the miraculous material.

  Which implied things she already suspected… but didn’t want to fully consider yet.

  Shooting him wouldn’t kill him. At best, it would distract him. And in general, distracting an intelligent enemy was only useful if that distraction opened a real window.

  So she made him vulnerable.

  First she deprived him of his senses.

  Then she forced him to carry a body that no longer obeyed like it used to.

  She wasn’t trying to harm him.

  She was trying to see what countermeasures he had.

  What a Dinamo copy would do in a situation like this.

  How it would defend itself to escape its current state.

  But nothing happened.

  Katherine knew almost immediately.

  The commander had no countermeasures.

  His reaction gave him away: a frontal attack.

  He didn’t try to restore his vision with a technique. He didn’t generate a pulse to scrub concepts away. He didn’t raise a defensive field. He didn’t call a squad to cover him.

  He did nothing.

  He simply attacked where he believed the danger was.

  He lifted his halberd and brought it down violently toward the position where he thought Hassan stood.

  The position was correct.

  Hassan moved on instinct, crossing his two curved swords to block—not to withstand, but to redirect. He tried to shove the blow to the side. With the commander’s superior strength, and with the added weight on top, blocking head-on was stupidity.

  Deflecting was the only option.

  His attempt was partially successful.

  The edge didn’t cleave through him cleanly, but the impact was far more brutal than he expected.

  The grip in his left arm gave out in a fraction of a moment.

  And with that failure, he lost the entire arm.

  Not in a bloody or ragged way—the miraculous material cut with cruel perfection, as if the body were nothing but a taut cord being snapped. Leaving no mark at all… except the absence of the arm.

  The wound was incurable.

  Not because healing didn’t exist—because the material literally destroyed any possibility of it.

  Hassan didn’t scream.

  He just stepped back, teeth clenched, jaw locked, as if he were holding in something worse than pain.

  When the halberd struck the ground, it split that section of the castle in two.

  It wasn’t a crater.

  It was a cut.

  A line that opened the golden metal as if it were paper. Any guard or copy caught in that path was erased from the map. A wound that would’ve gone down in the annals of history, if not for one thing—

  The castle began regenerating immediately—the structure sealing, the metal knitting itself back together—except in the exact zone where the blade had hit.

  There, the regeneration jammed.

  As had been said: impossible to recover.

  The commander knew he’d succeeded.

  He sensed it through the resistance that gave way, through the shift in the atmosphere, through the simple fact that the enemy body was no longer whole.

  But he missed what mattered.

  He didn’t realize his counterattack had been a mistake.

  One mistake followed by another.

  That decision—a monstrous, open swing without information, without fine control—was exactly what Katherine needed.

  Even if she hadn’t expected it.

  Katherine seized the window.

  She threw another device.

  This one designed to release foam.

  Not ordinary physical foam, but foam loaded with a concept:

  immobilize.

  And layered on top of that, another concept:

  weight.

  Again.

  The commander, still blind, felt something touch him. He tried to pull away, to escape, to reposition. Too late he understood his situation was precarious.

  Far too late did he understand he was dead.

  In that distraction, Katherine appeared above him. Not floating with dramatic flair, but placing herself with surgical precision at the one point where defense didn’t matter.

  She aligned herself over his head.

  And fired.

  The impact didn’t sound like a bullet.

  It sounded like a closure.

  The commander fell—and with him, that smile that mimicked the original far too well went out.

  His “life” ended without ceremony.

  Nothing trembled in Katherine.

  She stopped looking at the commander for a moment.

  There was no time to contemplate.

  For now, she had to dispose of the rest.

  Finishing off the stragglers turned out simple—too simple for her liking. Without the leader, the copies lost every trace of coordination and fell back into their prior state: mindless soldiers, no reading of the field, no capacity to adapt. Just stupid charges and repeated attacks.

  Even if their speed and strength were still there.

  Baek split them out of habit. Yehiel let his assistants handle the rest. The group barely had to move.

  When the last one fell, the silence felt strange—as if the castle didn’t know what to do with a fight that short.

  Katherine stared at the dust where the commander’s lifeless body had been.

  She couldn’t believe it had been that easy.

  Or that her opponent had been so incompetent.

  Or that his subordinates had been so useless.

  It didn’t fit.

  The broadcast returned with a brief hiss, and the commentator appeared, ready to turn the scene into spectacle.

  —Excellent, excellent! —he began, euphoric—. Congratulations on completing the Warriors’ Labyrinth! Corresponding rewards, of course! The audience is—!

  A screen surged into existence midair like a slab of black glass cutting the scene in half. The commentator’s voice died instantly, muted without ceremony.

  Behind the screen was Dinamo.

  He was still seated on his throne.

  But he no longer looked distracted.

  His eyes were locked onto Katherine. His posture—for the first time in a long while—didn’t carry that arrogant laziness.

  He was focused.

  And for an instant, the expression that formed on his face looked like something else.

  Gratitude?

  A strange spark of something incomprehensible surfaced in his features—something only she, among everyone present, could notice.

  —Thank you, Katherine —he said.

  The way he pronounced her name sounded clean. No games. No obvious double intent. No playing around.

  —You made me open my eyes. Without you, it would’ve taken me a while to understand what was wrong. What I was missing.

  Katherine didn’t speak. She didn’t blink.

  She just listened.

  Dinamo continued, a playful smile returning far too fast, as if he didn’t want to hold that serious tone any longer than necessary.

  —You can keep all the rewards from this labyrinth. You’re also invited to complete the other three, but knowing you… you’re not interested.

  He leaned back slightly on the throne, never taking his eyes off her.

  —No matter what happens in the castle, I’m going to send all the rewards from this castle—and from any game you participate in—to the central dome so you have them. You truly helped me, and you deserve a reward. I hope this reciprocal bond lasts quite a while longer.

  The transmission cut.

  The screen vanished as if it had never been there.

  The commentator returned instantly, like an actor resuming a play after someone stepped on his throat.

  —Ahem! As I was saying! The Warriors’ Labyrinth rewards are— the halberd and shield are, without a doubt, the main jewels, but there are others you shouldn’t underestimate…

  To Katherine, the voice was just noise.

  Background music.

  Her mind was still trapped in the fight with the counterfeit—and in Dinamo’s gratitude.

  She’d known something was wrong from the beginning.

  From the exact second the commander took the grenade head-on without bothering to raise a defense.

  A crude mistake. Incompatible with a “finished” boss. Incompatible with someone who, by design, was supposed to be there to stall a team like hers.

  The frontal attack afterward only confirmed it.

  It wasn’t unusual for Dinamo to use counterfeits to learn. Most carried a fragment of his mind—sometimes without memories, sometimes without experience, sometimes without skill. An incomplete simulation, but useful. A way to see how he himself would react in situations his “current self” still couldn’t face.

  After all, challengers to a god were rare.

  But this…

  This had been different.

  He hadn’t even bothered giving personality to the most basic copies. They were hollow shells. Cannon fodder at best.

  Everything had felt wrong.

  And the gratitude—

  The gratitude was the final confirmation that something was happening to him.

  Katherine kept thinking while the commentator finished his rant, invited them to keep exploring the castle, promised rewards, glory, spectacle.

  She didn’t care.

  Eoin had already completed the map up to the throne room, and they’d already lost too much time. If they stayed, with each power increase the weaker counterfeits would eventually reach the level of a commander.

  They couldn’t allow that.

  They had to reach the throne.

  And end the game.