I angled myself toward the strongest cluster of familiar echoes, the place where multiple presences overlapped, tangled together in conflict and revelation.

Toward them.

As I walked, the corridor adjusted, reshaping itself to guide me forward. The faint sounds of combat drifted through the stone—metal striking metal, explosions of energy, reality itself groaning under stress.

They're close.

My fingers curled reflexively.

This time, I wouldn't arrive late.

This time, I wouldn't be the weakest one in the room, well, I never was, but still.

The path brightened ahead, the air thickening as it transitioned back into the heart of the cave's domain. I felt the boundary press against me, testing, measuring.

It yielded.

I stepped through without slowing.

Whatever waited on the other side—monsters, illusions, broken reflections of the people I cared about—it didn't matter.

I was done being shaped by trials.

Now it was my turn to carve a way forward.

And I was going to find my companions.

Companions were never just bodies moving alongside you. They were echoes that lingered long after footsteps faded, weights that settled into the soul whether you welcomed them or not. I'd learned that the hard way.

Alone, strength was clean—sharp, uncomplicated. With others, it became messy. It bent under expectation, cracked under fear, and reforged itself in moments you never saw coming.

Every companion carried a contradiction.

They were anchors and accelerants both.

One moment they dragged you back from the edge, fingers digging into your collar as you leaned too far into ruin.

The next, they were the reason you stepped closer to it, because if they were going to stand there unflinching, you refused to be the one who hesitated. Courage was contagious like that. So was doubt.

I'd seen it in their eyes before battles—how resolve never looked like confidence up close. It looked like quiet choices made again and again, despite shaking hands and unspoken terror. Companions didn't erase fear.

They gave it somewhere to exist without becoming everything. They split the weight of dread into smaller, survivable pieces, even as they added their own burdens to the pile.

I didn't hesitate.

The moment my foot left the pathway and met the raw stone of the cave again, I let dualflow surge.

Not explode—surge.

There was a difference now. Before, power had been something I unleashed, something violent and uncontrolled, like ripping open a dam and hoping the flood didn't drown me along with everything else. Now it moved the way blood did. The way breath did. Natural. Continuous. Mine.

Murky green energy wrapped around my core, then braided itself with my death affinity. It didn't clash. It didn't resist. Death accepted dualflow the way a blade accepts a hand around its hilt.

I clenched my fist.

The cave felt it.

I stepped forward and drove my fist into the wall.

There was no dramatic wind-up. No shout. No flourish.

Just impact.

The stone didn't crack—it vanished. A circular section of the wall, easily ten meters across, imploded inward and then disintegrated, pulverized into black dust that never even had time to fall. The edges of the hole glowed faintly green, death mana eating away at the remnants like corrosion.

I stared at the opening for half a second, assessing structural integrity, energy feedback, and reaction speed.

Nothing collapsed. No counterattack came. No guardian emerged.

"Good," I muttered.

This wasn't overconfidence.

I had already done the math.

The cave fed on trials, on mental strain, on pushing people to their limits through illusion and circumstance. It didn't house apex predators beyond its purpose. Anything above Mercury rank would destabilize the environment too much. The cost-benefit didn't make sense.

Which meant brute force, applied intelligently, was now an option.

I moved.

Not running.

Not rushing.

I advanced like a siege engine.

Every few dozen meters, I stopped, closed my eyes for a fraction of a second, and expanded my senses. Dualflow sharpened everything. I could feel distortions in space where trials overlapped, pockets of intense emotion burned into the stone, and residual mana signatures clinging to the walls like fingerprints.

Kent's energy flared somewhere to my right—chaotic, elastic, with that unmistakable reckless rhythm of his.

Nora was deeper.

Farther down.

Her presence was like gravity itself, pulling at everything nearby whether it wanted to or not.

Others flickered in and out of perception.

I chose a direction and punched again.

Another wall died.

This one resisted for a fraction of a second longer. I felt it try to reinforce itself, to reassert structure. I adjusted mid-strike, feeding more death-aligned dualflow into my knuckles, and the resistance evaporated.

Stone screamed.

Dust billowed.

Beyond it lay another chamber, twisted and half-formed, like the cave had been in the middle of reshaping it when I interrupted.

I walked straight through.

With each strike, my understanding deepened.

Dualflow wasn't just more power. It was authority.

When wrapped in death affinity, it didn't merely destroy matter—it erased intent. The cave's attempts to adapt, to respond, to punish me, all dissolved before they could fully manifest.

This wasn't arrogance. This was execution.

I wasn't fighting blindly. I was carving corridors based on probability, on resonance, on the echoes of my companions' struggles etched into the cave's fabric.

Another punch.

Another hole.

This time, something came through the dust.

A creature lunged from the darkness—a malformed thing of crystal and bone, Mercury rank at best, all jagged limbs and screaming mana channels. It moved fast enough that a weaker version of me would've had trouble reacting.

I didn't slow down.

I stepped into its reach and punched through its head.

The impact didn't spray gore. The creature's skull caved inward, then collapsed into itself, death mana devouring the core before it could even register pain. The rest of the body followed, unraveling into lifeless shards that clattered uselessly to the ground.

I didn't look back.

As I walked, the cave began to change around me.

Not subtly.

The walls thickened. The crystal formations grew denser, their glow harsher, like the environment was bracing itself. The air grew heavier, pressure building as if the cave itself was bearing down on me.

I welcomed it.

"Come on," I whispered. "You've tried breaking my mind. Now try stopping my body."

I slammed my fist into the floor.

The ground ruptured, splitting open in a jagged line that raced forward like lightning, tearing through layers of stone and crystal until it punched into a lower chamber. Heat rushed upward, carrying with it the metallic tang of blood and ozone.

Kent.

I dropped through the opening without hesitation.

I landed hard, boots cracking the floor, and immediately rolled to the side as a dozen projectiles streaked past where my head had been a second earlier. Blades. Arrows. Fragments of condensed energy.

I caught one out of the air.

My fingers closed around it, death affinity flaring, and the projectile dissolved into inert dust.

"Kent!" I shouted.

The barrage stopped.

From the far end of the chamber, I saw him—bloodied, breathing hard, standing amid a storm of suspended weapons that looked moments away from resuming their assault. His eyes widened when he saw me.

"Sebastian?" he croaked. "Holy shit, you look—"

I waved a hand.

The entire field of weapons collapsed, falling harmlessly to the ground as my dualflow washed over the area like a tide.

"We'll talk later," I said. "Can you move?"

He laughed, shaky and disbelieving. "Yeah. Yeah, I think I can."

"Good."

I turned and punched through the far wall before the cave could recover.

"This way."

We moved fast after that.

With Kent following, I increased the pace, tearing through chambers, bypassing labyrinthine paths the cave tried to force us into. When resistance appeared, it died. When illusions manifested, they shattered under the weight of my presence alone.

At one point, a full Mercury rank guardian formed—a towering amalgamation of crystal and mana, easily the size of a small building. It roared, shaking the cavern.

I punched it once.

The shockwave ripped it apart from the inside out, scattering fragments across half the chamber.

Kent stared.

"Remind me," he said weakly, "to never piss you off."

I didn't answer.

We found Nora next.

She stood in the middle of a ruined arena, breathing steadily, her rapier dripping with condensed starlight as the remnants of her reflection dissolved into glass at her feet. She turned when she sensed us, eyes sharp, then widened slightly.

"You made it," she said.

"So did you," I replied.

No hugs.

No wasted words.

Just understanding.

One by one, we gathered the others.

Annalise emerged from a chamber of unraveling illusions, eyes already cold and calculating again.

Xavier stumbled from his trial moments later, pale but standing, his expression dark and conflicted.

Lillith. Page. Liam. Each of them bore the marks of their trials, some visible, some buried far deeper.

The cave trembled as we regrouped.

It knew.

I stood at the center of the group and placed my hand against the nearest wall.

"Listen carefully," I said, voice calm, steady. "The cave can't stop us anymore. It can slow us down. It can hurt us. But it can't contain us."

I drew back my fist, death-wrapped dualflow coiling tight.

"So we're leaving."

I punched.

The wall ceased to exist.

Beyond it, I felt open space. Freedom. The edge of the cave's domain tearing apart under the weight of my will.

This wasn't a trial anymore.

This was an escape.

And I was going to tear a path through anything that stood in the way.

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