The air was thick with the smell of burnt feathers, ozone, blood, and despair. The human formation was shattered. Zen was sobbing and clawing at his own face, lost in hallucinations. Ken and Silas were dead. Leo's blank eyes stared up from Tia's arms.

"We are being exterminated," Tia said, her voice hollow but cutting through the din of crackling fire and pained gasps. She gently laid Leo down and stood, her green hair plastered to her sweaty forehead. "We need to fall back now. We need to escape and report."

The arcanist, Tama, who had been tending to her own leg wound, looked up, her face pale. "Tia?"

"The Emergency Recall Beacon," Tia said, her words rapid and precise. "You have the secondary anchor crystal. We can get two, maybe three out if we overload it. But it needs ninety seconds to spool. A full, uninterrupted channel."

The Emergency Recall Beacon was a guild-locked artefact, a last-resort teleportation device keyed to a secure outpost. Using it required immense mana and precious time.

Tama's eyes widened in horror. "You want me to run? Leave everyone? I can't! We fight to the last!"

"Fight to the last and let this new horror go completely unreported?" Adel snapped, parrying a Void Bolt from Alice with a shower of sparks, her arm trembling with fatigue. "Just let whatever killed Resmond's girlfriend and now we... rot here until it finally comes to the surface?"

"I'm not leaving Resmond," Max growled, his shield scorched and dented, but still planted firmly between his knight and Adam's looming form.

"Resmond is lost!" Tia shouted, a rare crack of pure emotion in her voice. She pointed at their leader. Resmond was panting, his golden aura flickering like a dying candle, but his eyes were locked solely on Adam. He was muttering, "Just one more strike… just one more…" He was no longer commanding, he was a vengeful specter clinging to a corpse.

"He will get us all killed out of pride and grief," Tia stated coldly. "Max, your duty is to the mission now. To the Kingdom. Hold the line. Buy us ninety seconds. Get as many to the Beacon as you can. That is an order from your Vice-Guild Master."

The weight of the command, the sheer hopelessness of the math—ninety seconds against these monsters—settled on them. Derek fired another arrow, this time aiming for Lilith to keep her from flanking. "I'll cover the retreat path. Go."

Tama looked from Tia's resolute face to Resmond's broken one, to the bodies of her friends. Tears streamed down her face, but she gave a sharp, jerky nod. She fumbled in her component pouch, pulling out a small, intricate silver latticework sphere—the Beacon. She began chanting, pouring her mana into it. The sphere floated into the air, emitting a low, rising hum and a soft blue light.

Adam's Hunter's Tri-Sense immediately pinged the massive, gathering spatial mana. His galactic eyes snapped from the enraged Resmond to the glowing artefact.

'The artifact is probably either an attack type or an escape type and since I don't feel any killing intent it means they're trying to flee.'

"They're attempting an escape! Ignis, burn the caster! Lilith, sever the magic! Alice, keep the tanks occupied!" He broadcast the orders, his telepathy slicing through the lingering static of the now-forgotten disruption scroll. The harvest was not over. He would not let this concentrated essence, slip away.

Ignis, her fury focused, turned from the scorched frontline and unleashed a focused Sun Lance straight at the chanting Tama. Max roared, intercepting the beam with his shield. The holy metal glowed red-hot, and he screamed in pain as the heat conducted through, but he held.

Lilith's Umbral Silk, infused with void-energy, shot towards the humming Beacon, not to cut, but to entangle and smother the magical frequencies. Derek's arrows and a hastily-cast Arcane Barrier from Pix deflected the strands, but more kept coming.

Alice became a blur of shadows, harrying Adel and a now-stumbling Zen, preventing them from reinforcing the crumbling defensive circle forming around tama and Tia.

Resmond saw none of this. He saw only Adam, the source of all his pain. With a final, wordless scream that was more a sob of rage, he gathered the last dregs of his mana and charged, not with skill, but with pure, desperate hatred. "KILL!"

Adam met his charge not with a skill, but with contempt. He sidestepped the wild, telegraphed lunge and brought his tail down in a crushing blow on Resmond's back. There was a sickening crack of armor and bone. The Knight of Solaria collapsed to the ground, his sword clattering from his hand, his body broken, his vengeance spent before it began.

"Resmond!" Max cried out, but he couldn't move. He was the only thing holding back Ignis's fire from consuming Tama and the Beacon. The clock was ticking. Fifty seconds. The air around the artefact began to warp.

Max held his ground, his shield melting under Ignis's relentless Sun Lance. He didn't cry out again, he just planted his feet and pushed, buying precious seconds with his own scorching flesh. A Void Bolt from Alice, aimed at a gap in his defense, finally slipped through, punching into his side. The massive shield-bearer grunted, his knees buckling, but he did not fall until the count in his head reached eighty.

Adel, a lightning storm in human form, threw herself at Lilith to prevent the silk from reaching the Beacon. She severed strand after strand, but a near-invisible thread wrapped around her ankle. With a psychic yank, Lilith pulled her off balance, and a follow-up Mind Spike from the shadows shattered Adel's concentration. She fell, and a volley of Pressurized Spines from Adam pinned her to the ground.

Derek fired his last arrow, aiming for Adam's eye, forcing the serpent to flinch. "JEFF, NOW!" The rogue lunged, not with knives, but with a handful of explosive charges, diving under Adam's belly. The concussive blast rattled the serpent but did little more than scorch his under-scales. Adam's tail came down, and Jeff was gone.

Glock the dwarf roared a curse in his native tongue and emptied his entire crossbow-arm magazine into Lilith's position, shattering her fungal cover and forcing her to retreat. Pix, weeping, poured the last of her mana into a Chain Lightning that arced between Adam, Ignis, and Alice, causing them to convulse briefly. It was their last coordinated spell.

Through it all, the hum of the Emergency Recall Beacon grew higher, the spatial distortion around Tia and Tama thickening into a swirling vortex of blue light. Tia held the primary crystal, her eyes screwed shut in concentration, tears cutting through the grime on her cheeks. Tama lay slumped beside her, mana-drained and unconscious, but her hands still glued to the artefact, her life force fueling the escape.

Eighty-five seconds.

Adam, enraged by the resilience and the escaping prize, decided to end it. He ignored the remaining defenders. He drew breath, and the air itself seemed to scream as he prepared a point-blank Stormrend aimed directly at the Beacon's core.

A broken figure moved.

Resmond's body was shattered. He couldn't stand. But he could crawl. Dragging himself through the dirt and blood of his comrades, he left a smeared trail behind him. His eyes were no longer fixed on Adam; they were fixed on the Beacon, on Tia, on the last hope of his mission. With a final, guttural scream that was more air than voice, he used the last of his life not to attack, but to launch himself.

He threw his broken body into the path of the Stormrend.

The vortex of cutting force and lightning met the Knight of Solaria. There was no glorious defense. His body was ravaged, torn, and flung aside like a broken doll. But he had changed the angle by a fraction. The Stormrend sheared past the Beacon, gouging a deep canyon in the cavern floor instead of disrupting the spell.

Ninety seconds.

The world flashed an impossible, electric blue. With a sound like a shattering crystal, Tia and Tama vanished. The Emergency Recall Beacon fell to the ground, its silver lattice blackened and cracked, its purpose spent.

Silence descended, broken only by the crackle of dying flames and Ignis's heavy panting.

Adam stared at the spot where the two humans had disappeared. Fury, cold and sharp, washed over him. They had gotten away. Precious experience, potential souls, and knowledge of his existence had escaped. His great wings flexed in agitation.

Then, a wet, rasping sound drew his attention.

Resmond's body lay in a heap near the new fissure. He was a ruin; limbs bent at wrong angles, his golden armor now dull and rent, his lifeblood pooling beneath him. Yet, his chest still hitched with shallow, agonizing breaths. He wasn't dead.

As Adam and his companions watched, something else moved in the pooled blood. From the deeper shadows of the fissure Adam had created, drawn by the scent of fresh, potent blood and dying life force, they came. They were Grave-Serpent Parasites, pale, worm-like creatures with needle-fanged maws and bodies that pulsed with a sickly green light. They were scavengers, normally fearful, but the opportunity was too great.

They swarmed over Resmond's broken form, burrowing into his wounds, slipping into his mouth and nostrils. His body convulsed, a silent scream on his lips.

[ Alert: Unique Status Affliction Detected on Hostile Entity. ]

[ Parasitic Symbiosis in Progress: Grave-Serpent Parasites integrating with high-quality, mana-saturated host. ]

[ Entity Designation Updated: Resmond -> Corpse-Knight Amalgam (Forming). ]

Resmond's remaining eye snapped open. It was no longer human blue. It glowed with the same sickly gray as the parasites. His body began to jerk and twist, bones cracking and re-knitting in wrong ways, held together by the wriggling, burrowing creatures. A horrifying, gurgling growl emanated from his throat, a sound of madness, pain, and insatiable new hunger.

Adam watched, his own fury momentarily displaced by morbid fascination. The human hadn't just died. The dungeon, ever-adapting, had reclaimed him.

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