The fortress was dying. The air trembled with the sounds of collapse—stone breaking, walls bowing inward, screams echoing through fractured corridors. Ash choked the upper halls, drifting like snowfall through flickering torchlight. Beneath it all, something deeper stirred. Not chaos. Execution.

A single scrape echoed like a blade drawn across steel. Claws against rock. Deliberate. Measured.

[Devourer Ant (Beast Captain) – Lvl 30]

It emerged from the dust and flame: a creature with four bladed limbs, each ending in a curved scythe nearly a meter long. Its black exoskeleton glistened with dried blood. From behind its jagged carapace, two red eyes burned like coals in a forge.

Erza Grimhart simply stared it down, without stepping back. No tremor touched her hands. No fear clouded her eyes. Her stance was low, deliberate, karambits reversed in each fist, sharp curves of steel that gleamed beneath the broken torchlight.

The air around them held still. Tense. That breath before the killing blow.

A silent moment stretched like pulled wire—charged, fragile. Then the creature roared and lunged.

Its first strike came like a guillotine, a vertical arc aimed to split her in half. Erza met it mid-swing, parrying with the edge of her left blade. The force sparked metal on metal, but she turned with it, redirecting the blow. The second blade cut toward her waist. She twisted, letting the steel pass inches from her skin.

She didn't fall back. She advanced. Each step was calculated—blades low, eyes tracking the arc of every limb, her form coiled like a spring.

Two more arms came down in a cross-formation, deadly and precise. Erza leapt onto a fallen column, sprang from its base, and flipped over the creature's head. She landed behind it, already moving. The ant spun with inhuman speed, its lower arms sweeping in a wide arc. She dropped to a slide beneath the swing, boots kicking up a trail of fine dust. Her body twisted mid-glide, shoulders low, as the blades screamed past overhead.

Her roll ended with a swift rise. She brought one karambit upward, carving a vertical line along the creature's ribs. Sparks. Screeching metal. The blade barely scratched the surface, but the monster reeled. It turned, jaws opening in fury.

She was gone. A fractured pillar took her behind it for cover. The Captain followed.

She vaulted up again, appearing above the creature's line of sight, and dropped hard. Her knee slammed into the back of its head. Both blades followed. A clean X carved downward. The monster managed to block, barely. But not without cost. One blade dug into its shoulder, cracking the shell and drawing blood like dark tar.

The ant retaliated, four arms crashing toward her. Erza caught two at the wrists. Used the momentum. Spun and flipped herself onto its back, stepped on its shoulder, and launched upward once more, this time landing atop a fractured pillar behind it. The creature looked around, hunting her. Its head turned in sharp jerks, red eyes scanning the ruin with growing frenzy. Dust clung to its carapace like a second skin.

She was already moving. From the top of the pillar, she vanished again, appearing behind the beast and carving deep into its back with pinpoint precision. The second strike caused it to stumble, and it ripped the nearest pillar free, hurling it at her in blind rage.

Erza moved before it hit. She sprinted sideways, weaving through crumbling debris, blades slicing in tight arcs. From the rubble, she launched herself again, one blade spinning through the air. The karambit found its mark, spinning end over end before embedding deep into the joint of one of its scythe arms with a dull, wet crunch. The creature let out a lower, more guttural sound this time. Pained. Desperate.

It swung hard, flinging her across the hall. She hit a wall, hard enough to crack the stone. The impact left her half-buried in dust.

The ant didn't stop. It charged, fast enough to shake the ground. She emerged from the cloud just as it closed in, driving a blade deep into the side of its thigh. The impact jolted the creature's balance, one leg buckling under the sudden rupture, its clawed foot scraping stone for support. Thick, black blood gushed out in pulses. Its movements faltered, just for a breath.

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Then it roared and kept coming.

She moved to dive away, but it was faster. One blade speared through her abdomen. Her body froze. Everything inside her went still. Her grip loosened. Another limb pierced her shoulder. A third rammed into her side. The fourth pinned her through the ribs, slamming her into the wall behind.

Her knees hit the ground. Her hands trembled. She tried to breathe. Blood dripped freely now, pooling beneath her. The creature stepped forward, slow and final. It raised one arm, positioned the blade, then brought it down. The air split with a shriek as the blade fell, trailing a haze of heat and force. The strike split her face cleanly, from brow to jaw.

Erza Grimhart collapsed, unmoving. Her body slid from the wall and hit the stone floor in silence. Limbs sprawled unnaturally. Blood spread slowly beneath her like a blooming flower, still and undisturbed. Dead.

The monster staggered, its breath ragged, every movement clumsy with exhaustion. Blood dripped from the tips of its scythe-like limbs, spattering the broken stone beneath it. It turned down the corridor, expecting freedom. A path forward. Then it froze. A flicker of hesitation passed through its stance, antennae twitching in response to some unseen signal.

She was there—framed between the columns. Still. Alive. Erza Grimhart stood waiting, unharmed, unbothered. A slight smile played on her lips as she studied the karambit in her hand, still wet with ant blood.

"There's no death more delicious than this," she murmured, as if speaking only to herself. "When the enemy thinks it's won... and then you drive the blade in deep—right where it hurts—and rub the truth in its face."

The Beast Captain reached for its throat. That's when it felt it. The cut. Not a memory. Not a trick. A real wound—present and active. Spreading. A silent incision carving deeper by the second, slicing through nerves and muscle like a whisper of inevitability.

It opened its mouth to scream, but the sound came out hoarse. Shattered. Then the creature surged forward, roaring, every limb flailing.

"I'm done playing," Erza said, and snapped her fingers.

The world stilled. Just for a moment. Then—movement.

Dozens of shimmering threads, once invisible, lit up in the open air—each one glowing like braided ruby, delicate yet heavy with purpose. They stretched across the battlefield—anchored between columns, broken beams, shattered walls. Each one glistened red, stained with blood.

They moved as if alive. In a breathless storm, the air fractured. A thousand precise cuts ignited across the monster's body. Its right arm severed in three clean slices. The left was torn free and spun midair before crashing to the ground. Both legs came off at the knees. Its torso opened, gaping and wet, like a split carcass. The jaw cracked. The skull hesitated... then slid loose from the neck.

The Beast Captain collapsed in silence, each segment of its once-mighty frame hitting stone with a wet, final thud. Its severed limbs twitched reflexively, no longer guided by purpose.—its body diced into perfect, symmetrical pieces. A grotesque arrangement of meat on stone.

Then, one by one, the parts fell.

[You have slain a Devourer Ant (Beast Captain) – Lvl 30]

*Your class [Porcelain Assassin] has reached Level 39! (Class Bonus Points Acquired)*

For a moment, nothing moved—except the threads. They trembled faintly in the aftermath, still humming with motion. Bloodied silk quivering in the air. Erza raised her hand again. A second snap. The threads recoiled, retreating toward her like satisfied serpents slithering home. One by one, they vanished into nothing.

"I wish I could've thanked Marshall for the entertainment he gave me tonight..." she said softly, walking across the corpse-strewn floor.

There, in the center of it all, lay a body. Her body. Erza stared down at the perfect replica. Its skin had already begun to fracture—tiny white lines crawling across the surface like hairline cracks in porcelain. And then, with a sigh of wind, the duplicate crumbled. No blood. No scream. Just dust. The last fragments drifted away like snow caught in a windless void—silent, weightless, absolute.

"My lovely little doll... So lifelike, so fragile. But what is fragility, if not the illusion of control in someone else's hands?" Erza whispered, watching the last fragments disappear.

Tonight had been a feast. Of blood, yes—but more than that. Of experience. Of sensation. Of art. Whether ant or Renegade, they were all the same in the end.

Footsteps echoed from the far corridor. Slow, deliberate. Like a curtain rising for the next act of a performance only she could direct. Erza didn't move. Like a spider in her web, she smiled—waiting for the next thread to twitch.

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