Snot let out a rough laugh and dropped flat onto his back where he stood, arms spread against the cracked stone.
"We did it..." he muttered, staring up at nothing. "We actually did it."
Max lowered his shield a second later and let it slip from his hand with a dull, heavy sound. He sat down where he was, one arm resting over his knee, head dipping slightly as he dragged in air like it had weight.
"...That thing was strong as ," he said, voice rough.
Around them, the last fragnts of bone shifted and collapsed into stillness.
Only after that did they start moving again, gathering Soul Cores from the bodies scattered across the ruin.
By the ti it was over, both groups had pulled back from the center of the chamber and dropped among broken stone and blackened bone, taking the first real breath the fight had allowed them since it began. The air still carried heat from Marika’s flas, but the oppressive weight that had filled the buried section was gone now. The Breach felt hollow in a different way, as if killing the Lich had torn out whatever held the place together.
Snot dropped down onto a slab of fractured masonry and wiped blood from the side of his face with the back of his wrist. "Good thing you arrived when you did. That fight with the Lich was getting ugly. We already lost one..."
Vivienne stood a short distance away with her sword lowered, calm now in a way that made the earlier violence feel even sharper in mory. "You wouldn’t have lasted much longer in that state," she said. "We didn’t want to interfere, but we had to."
Marika exhaled and leaned back against a broken pillar. "Thanks for doing it. It could’ve ended much worse for us. We’re still beginners."
The others kept talking, but Neo only listened with part of his attention.
His sword was already gone, desummoned back into his soul. He sat with one arm resting over his knee, looking down at the faint window only he could see.
[Soul-Window]
New information had appeared beneath the class he had taken from Nep.
[Soul Relic acquired: Hollow Saint Vestnts — Epic Rank]
[Type: Soul Armor]
[High affinity with soul essence circulation and spell stability.]
[Increases spell control.]
[Increases resistance against spiritual interference.]
[Best suited for mage-type classes.]
Neo kept looking at it a mont longer.
A relic too.
Useful.
’I’ll decide what to do with it later.’
"Hey, Neo. We’re leaving soon. You there?"
He looked up.
Snot was watching him from across the stone.
"I’m here."
Snot nodded once and lifted a small collection of Soul Cores in his hand, the yellowed spheres dull under the ruined light. "I was talking about splitting the Soul Cores between the five of us. We gave the Lich’s Soul Core to Vivienne’s group. They saved our lives."
Neo felt the irritation at once.
A Lich’s Soul Core could have held sothing strong.
Snot tossed him his share. "This is yours. With Nep out of the equation, each of us gets 142 Soul Cores."
Neo caught them and felt his hand tighten for half a second, so of them spelled out of his hands.
That was more than he had expected.
Without a word, he began consuming them on the spot.
One after another, the yellowed spheres dissolved on contact, each breaking into that sa cold current as it entered him.
[Soul-Window]
[ 142 Souls]
[391/1000 Ember]
Better.
Snot pushed himself back to his feet first. "Alright. Ti to go. Let’s move."
No one argued.
They rose and made their way toward the jagged opening that had ford deeper in the ruin after the Lich died. The passage out looked unstable, all broken edges and fractured light, but it held long enough for both groups to cross.
The mont they erged from the Breach, the outside world hit them in full.
Lights. Voices. Caras.
There were more of them than Neo expected, all waiting beyond the secured periter, all turning the mont Vivienne stepped out. Microphones lifted. Questions started at once. Her group shifted around her with the ease of people who had seen this kind of thing before.
Vivienne handled it without hesitation. She answered the first question with the sa direct calm she had shown inside the Breach, but even while speaking, her gaze swept once across the people coming out behind her.
Searching.
Then her eyes found Snot.
"The white-haired one from your group," she said in a lower voice between questions, calm enough that only those nearest could hear. "Where is he?"
Snot blinked, more caught off guard by that than by the caras.
He turned at once, looking past Max, past Marika, past the others coming out behind them.
Neo was no longer there.
He had vanished from the scene before the attention could settle on him.
For the first ti since stepping out, sothing small shifted in Vivienne’s expression.
One of the reporters pushed another question at her, and the mont passed. Vivienne answered without missing the rhythm, though the brief look she gave the crowd afterward was sharper than before.
Neo was already inside a dark car parked farther down the road, the city lights sliding across the window in passing reflections.
Richards sat in the front seat.
Neo leaned back against the seat in silence, the last heat of the Breach still clinging to his clothes, while the car pulled away from the caras and the noise behind them.
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