[Quest Ongoing: Leave No Work Unfinished]

Objective: Survive the vaultwing batlings for 5 minutes

Reward: +250 EXP (x2 Dungeon Core Bonus)

+5 Stealth Mastery Points (x2 Dungeon Core Bonus)

Time Remaining: 2 minutes, 54 seconds

Fabrisse turned the corner, activating hisAetheric Veil: Echofoldonce more. The pair of batlings that had been following him heard the sounds just a few seconds later, and dove into the path that branched out right after the corner Fabrisse’d just hidden into.

It’d worked, for now. Just as he’d intended.

Fabrisse heaved a heavy sigh, staring down at his hand. Even with Lorvan’s Concord of the Fifth Line reducing his FP usage by half, he still had to conserve energy by not activating Echofold only when he needed to delay his footsteps. Yet, theLiminal Presence DriftandAuditory Dissipation Field, skills that silence his movements, had to be activated all the time.

The moment the cavern ahead dipped and narrowed, Fabrisse stopped. He staggered two steps farther on momentum alone, then slid down the tunnel wall and collapsed onto the crystal-veined stone.

He cancelled all spells.

[FP: 7/45]

[Warning: FP below 30% again. Same penalties applied.]

He bent forward, palms on the floor, and heaved. His heartbeat hammered in his ears.

Two minutes, fifty-four seconds,the timer had said.This isn’t right.

Vaultwing batlings were minions; subordinate constructs. They should dissolve the moment their anchor died, which meant Noctyn hadn’t yet perished.

And fights like this didn’t last five minutes.

Maybe Severa had failed. Maybe they’d all died down there, and he was the only one surviving.

A sound reached him. The bats were close enough that the echoes weren’t returning anymore. Vaultwings didn’t hunt by volume. They hunted byshape, by time delay and how long it took their own calls to come back warped and fractured by stone.

And right now, the tunnel geometry was doing something dangerous.

This stretch was too straight. Stone corridors were mirrors to bats.

He switchedLiminal Presence Driftactive once more. It blurred his existence into ontological noise and broke temporal coherence.

The vaultwings swung into the straightaway, sweeping for consistency.

The first wave of echoes struck Fabrisse, but he knew the signal would come back wrong. Where his chest should have returned a clean curve, the Presence Drift fractured the reflection. The bats banked; one clipped a crystal vein and shrieked, which sent all the rest into distortion. To them, the tunnel had grown a knot. He was safe for now.

He felt the temptation then, the instinctive reach forEchofold. A false trail, a delayed footstep echo spiraling away down the tunnel.

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No.

Straight corridors were death for that.

Delayed sound still carried direction. In a geometry this clean, Echofold would give the bats two positions and let them solve the line between.

Fabrisse waited until the vaultwings spaced out as they used their echolocation to rebuild the tunnel in chunks. If his knowledge about how echolocation works applied, this should do the trick.

He pushed off the wall and slid forward in a low, controlled burst, boots skimming stone rather than striking it. Presence Drift stayed active just long enough to smear his outline as he crossed the remaining distance, then he cut it abruptly as the tunnel ended in a fractured break.

Then he saw a gap.

He folded into it without thinking and activatedAuditory Dissipation Field.

In theory, to echolocation, he would cease to emit.

The vaultwings surged past. None of them slowed. They dashed past him unknowingly.

He held his breath until the last of them were gone, then waited way longer than necessary.

Ten heartbeats. Then ten more.

Only when the tunnel settled into true quiet did Fabrisse ease himself free of the gap. He did it centimeter by centimeter, testing the floor for any weird vibration. There wasn’t any.

I’m safe.

He took one step outside—

Something hit him from the side with the force of a thrown slab. The world spun as he was driven off his feet and slammed into the stone.

The vaultwing was on him before he could roll.

Its weight pinned his shoulders, claws scraping for purchase as its wings beat in frantic, soundless bursts. Fabrisse grabbed at it reflexively and tried to sink his fingers into its coarse membrane.

It was heavier than it looked.What can I do?Then he remembered sounds could damage the creature’s hearing.I’ll deal with the swarm later.

He tried to scream.

Nothing came out.

Auditory Dissipation Field swallowed the sound at the root, turning his panic into useless air scraping his throat.

The thing pressed closer, and a ring of narrow, hooked mouthparts rotated forward from its mouth. They brushed the air in front of Fabrisse’s face, close enough that he felt the disturbance on his skin.

The hooks hovered there, trembling minutely. He shook. It was deciding where on his face it’d tear apart.

It was over.

A line of light tore through the vaultwing. When his vision came to be, he saw a lance punching straight through the creature’s thorax and out the other side in a hiss of cauterized air.

It missed Fabrisse’s face by inches.

The bat dropped dead on top of him. Blood spilled across his chest and neck, soaking into his collar, pooling against his throat.

“Oh—ew—no, no, no—”

He shoved at it with shaking hands, panic surging too fast to organize. The corpse slid off him, and Fabrisse scrambled backward on elbows and heels until his spine hit the wall.

His breath came in short, silent bursts.

Blood was everywhere.

Then he saw the light still fading from the wound.

And the hand that had made it.

Liene stood there, shoulders heaving, blood smeared across her face and down the front of her robes. It wasn’t all hers—most of it wasn’t—but she looked like she’d waded through something terrible to get here. Her blond hair had come loose, plastered to her cheeks and mouth in sticky strands, clinging where blood and sweat had turned it heavy and unmanageable.

Their eyes met.

“Liene?” Fabrisse croaked. His voice came out muffled, swallowed by the Auditory Dissipation Field. “H-how are you—”

She crossed the distance in two steps and dropped to her knees, wrapping her arms around him and pulling him in so hard his ribs protested. His face pressed into her shoulder; her hands clenched in his blood-slick clothes like she was afraid he’d disappear if she let go.

“I’m so sorry,” she whispered, voice breaking. “I’m so sorry, Fabri. This is all my fault.”

“Liene—” He tried to pull back and failed.

Oh yeah. He was weaker than a girl.

She sniffled. “It’s okay. I’m here now. I’ve got you.”

For one dangerous second, he almost let himself stop. And somewhere deeper in the tunnels, echoes began to re-form.

“Thank you,” he said, forcing the words out through the field. “But—we need to move. The swarm is coming back.”

She stiffened immediately, instinct overriding emotion. Her grip loosened just enough for him to breathe.

They pulled apart, both streaked red and shaking.

Why she was here—howshe’d gotten into the dungeon at all—would have to wait.

But the implication landed anyway: Others could get in.

Which meant help was coming.

Liene wiped blood from her eyes, stood on unsteady legs, and nodded once.

“Come on,” she said. “This way.”

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by lotustale.com