Chapter 90 – The Beast’s Void.

The ice barrier shattered with a sharp crack when Diana concentrated mana into her palm and shoved the structure forward.

The frozen blocks crashed onto the floor of the Iron Throne Chamber in a shower of white stones.

From the gap in the fissure, Seraphina was the first to act: she snapped open the silver grimoire and unleashed two crystal wolves that darted across the floor in opposite directions, lunging straight at the two Resonator Archmages hovering on the flanks. Aurelia-Elysia planted her staff at the crypt's entrance, projecting a luminous barrier to cover their emergence.

Diana activated Arcane Teleportation.

She vanished from the ground and reappeared ten meters up, near the iron rafters of the chamber ceiling, drawing the focus of the Steel Titan's sensors.

The five-meter boss raised its kinetic hammer toward the ceiling, swiveling its metal torso to deliver the strike at Diana in midair.

The opening on the ground was made.

Rhea did not waste a millisecond.

Without the weight of gravity pinning her steps at the start of the dash, the wolf girl sprinted along the shadow of the eastern wall with the Dragon Daggers drawn. She slipped beneath the arc of the boss's hammer and reached the Gravitational Guardian in the rear.

Rhea leaped over the floating core of gears, crossing both daggers against the machine's central power cable.

CRACK!

The dark blades severed the runic metal. The Gravitational Guardian vented black smoke and plummeted to the floor, deactivating the crushing weight field across the entire room.

The plan seemed to have worked.

But the monsters' reaction did not follow the script.

***

The two Resonator Archmages, assaulted by Seraphina's wolves, did not try to flee. They detonated their own quartz scepters in a burst of gray static that shattered both crystal summons within seconds.

And the Steel Titan did not finish its swing against Diana on the ceiling.

The automaton sensed the destruction of the core at its rear and snapped through a one-hundred-and-eighty-degree rotation with the speed of a compressed iron spring. The two-ton hammer, charged with a piercing shockwave, swept down in a blind and devastating low arc right along the floor, exactly where Rhea had just landed.

Rhea tried to use Phantom Step.

But the hammer's kinetic shockwave traveled through the air faster than the shadow leap.

The edge of the shockwave struck Rhea's left flank full on.

The snap of tearing dragon leather was followed by the muffled crunch of bones cracking in the girl's chest. The impact hurled Rhea against the base of a granite column with brutal force.

Rhea's health bar plummeted in a red flash: from 270 to a mere 12 HP.

The wolf girl fell onto the gravel, vomiting a mouthful of blood, her left arm hanging limp and her amber eyes losing focus as her body entered immediate traumatic shock.

The Titan took a heavy stride toward her, raising the two-ton hammer to crush the fallen girl's body against the stone.

***

Diana saw the scene from high on the ceiling.

The world around the Commander seemed to stop. There was no cost calculation, no financial risk analysis, no logic of retreat.

Diana dumped one hundred points of mana into a single surge of Arcane Teleportation.

She reappeared on the chamber floor right over Rhea's bloodied body, at the precise second the Titan's hammer was coming down to crush the wolf girl's skull.

Diana had no time to pull Rhea and run.

She twisted her body, turned her back to the hammer, and wrapped herself around Rhea against her chest, using the Dragon Chestplate to take the hit.

BOOOOOOOM!

The rim of the two-ton hammer struck the dragon scales across Diana's back.

The armor's metal groaned under the pressure, and the kinetic shockwave shot through the plating, crushing the breath from Diana's lungs and forcing hot blood up her throat.

Diana's health bar fell from 550 to 380 HP.

Diana drove her boots into the rock, enduring the tearing pain in her back without falling. She used the very momentum of the hammer's blow to pivot on her heels.

With her left hand, Diana grabbed Rhea's collar.

With all the physical Strength of her Archdemon body, Diana hurled the wolf girl's light frame through the air in a straight line, throwing Rhea across the wall's fissure straight into the arms of Aurelia-Elysia and Seraphina.

“CATCH HER!” Diana screamed, her voice coming out tasting of blood.

The very second Rhea's body cleared the gap, Diana thrust her open right hand toward the crypt entrance.

TRIPLE ARCANE ICE LANCE!

Three colossal spikes of solid ice erupted from the rock, sealing the wall opening from the outside with a four-meter-thick rampart of pure ice.

From the other side of the ice, Aurelia and Seraphina screamed Diana's name, but the sound was muffled by the impenetrable wall.

Diana had locked all four of her companions safely inside the crypt.

***

Diana wiped the blood from her chin with the back of her gloved hand and slowly turned toward the center of the chamber.

The temple's two main granite doors were locked by the boss's magical chains. The rear fissure had been sealed with ice so that Kael, Aurelia, Seraphina, and Rhea could not be reached by shrapnel.

There was no exit. There was no tactical retreat.

In the center of the room, the Level 40 Steel Titan dragged its hammer across the granite, throwing orange sparks over the stone.

On the flanks, the two Resonator Archmages floated with reformed scepters in hand, channeling spells of lightning and static at their fingertips.

Diana stood alone in the middle of the arena, with three hundred and eighty health points remaining and her chestplate smoking from the hammer strike.

The obsidian horns on Diana's head flared with bright golden light.

The two gold rings at the center of her vertical pupils began spinning at maximum speed, and the Commander of Greed tightened her grip on the black steel dagger in her right hand.

She spat a streak of blood onto the stone floor, meeting the Level 40 monster's green-fire eyes with a smile that carried not an ounce of fear.

Retreat was canceled. It was kill or be killed.