The Leshiy were monsters that tested the limits of any group. Against a high-quality brown bear, trained for combat, the fight could be balanced: these bears were living walls, capable of fighting side by side with their masters, their brute strength rivaling that of giants far stronger than the Leshiy themselves.
But Andrei didn't have that advantage. Laika granted him transformation, yes — but it was neither complete nor powerful enough to face a Leshiy head-on, while the reinforcement magic built into Andrei could barely withstand the attacks of that colossus.
A high-quality polar bear, on the other hand, could turn the tide on its own. When its specializations manifested in destructive ice magic, they were seen as the very definition of divine luck.
But Kira, Daria's companion, was far too small for close combat. Her blessing lay in another gift — as rare as ice magic, but ineffective in battle: healing magic. As rare as Pavel's plasma.
No polar bear possessed Laika's healing ability. As a deviant, yes — she was unique in that regard. But even so, it was not enough to rival what an adult polar bear could do in terms of strength and combat.
It was in battle that Laika's deficiency became most evident.
Kuzma, in turn, was even more limited: a black bear. Strong, resilient, but with no transformation gifts, no magical tricks — only flesh and discipline. Ekaterina perhaps had the most dangerous of companions: a blue bear, powerful, but old. Old enough that its species, known as "glass cannons," made it even more unstable. The older it got, the more powerful — but also the greater the chance it would break under its own strength.
On paper, the group looked fragile, almost pathetic. It was no wonder many called them cowards and weaklings. But what Nikolai and Svetlana saw left them speechless.
They didn't fight like ordinary warriors weaker than most. They fought like a silent machine, each part of the body complementing the other.
Andrei took on the role of punching bag, drawing the Leshiy's fury with constant provocations. His body was torn, cut, crushed — and still he stood, kept alive by the tireless healing of Daria and Kira, who stitched his wounds with magic like one mending a torn cloak in the middle of the battlefield.
Meanwhile, Laika instinctively attacked the monster's knees and feet, biting at its mobility. The Leshiy roared, enraged, stomping the ground with its feet of stone and moss, but it never managed to hit her. While Kuzma tried to sever the tendons with all his strength.
Ekaterina, however, was the piece that turned chaos into tactics. She didn't cast complex spells, nor lightning bolts or blazing walls. Her magic was simple — almost trivial, in the eyes of a novice. But she used it with absolute mastery: blinding the Leshiy for crucial seconds; creating false sounds of invisible enemies to divert its attention; weaving sound illusions that made the monster lose focus just when Andrei was staggering.
It was like watching an invisible loom being woven in the middle of battle: each thread a distraction, each knot an opportunity.
And Nikolai, seeing that, finally understood: they were called weak for having little power, but it was precisely that scarcity that made them strong.
They learned to do much with almost nothing, adapting and evolving — placing blind trust in the partner beside them, each one fulfilling their role with maximum efficiency, united by a single goal: to kill the enemy.
Nothing felt wasted. No movement was exaggerated.
There, the fight was polished by experience, not shaped by brute strength — something surprising and even beautiful to witness.
The battle resembled a dance, where the group led the creature, little by little, to its own death.
The Leshiy staggered. Its knees gave in under the persistent blows. Ekaterina's illusions confused it, the wounds opened by Kuzma and Laika multiplied, and Andrei's stubborn resistance kept the monster tired and drained.
Kuzma raised his voice, filled with a certainty that seemed impossible in that suffocating scenario:
"The creature is going to fall! Get back!"
The ground shook with the Leshiy's roar, a sound that seemed to come from within the stone itself. The shadows stirred, and for an instant, Svetlana felt pure terror: the sensation that, even as it fell, that monster could drag them down with it.
The group, in perfect sync, finally brought the Leshiy down. The creature, however, did not fall defeated. Trembling, gasping, its eyes blinded by Ekaterina's magic, it finally drove its claws into the ground like one clinging to life. The terror etched in its movements caused something even worse to happen: it activated one of its most feared spells, beyond petrification.
"Damn it!"
shouted Ekaterina, her voice cut by fear.
"He's going to conjure a weapon!"
Adult Leshiy were extremely feared, because when cornered, they were among the few creatures capable of giving practical form to their own magic. Unlike irrational beasts, they had awareness: they adapted their power to the need. And when trapped, they sought salvation in the terrain.
The monster roared in desperation and tore from the volcanic ground a colossal staff, shaped from charred stone and hardened moss. The sound was brutal: rocks grinding, roots twisting, energy vibrating like restrained thunder.
Kneeling, the Leshiy brandished the improvised weapon from side to side, sweeping the air in a wild storm. The staff crushed stones, sent shards flying — and each swing was a death sentence if it struck anyone.
"Line formation!"
ordered Kuzma, his voice deep like an alarm bell.
Immediately, everyone ran behind Andrei. The warrior, already bloodied and bruised, raised his shield like a living wall, stepping back little by little to protect the others. Each impact of the staff against the ground made the earth tremble beneath his feet, but he didn't retreat more than necessary.
When they finally realized the creature remained on its knees, trying to recover, it became clear that the swinging of the staff was only to create a protective circle.
Kuzma couldn't let it recover. Sweating cold, he began circling the creature. From his clothes, he pulled small daggers, throwing them at the Leshiy's vulnerable points: the eyes, the joints, the tense muscles. They weren't lethal strikes, but irritating cuts — like stings, which confused and diverted the monster's attention.
Svetlana tried to take deep breaths, but fear overwhelmed her. The strikes passed within centimeters of Kuzma's head — so close that the air cut by the staff seemed to rip space around him. Still, he didn't back down.
Ekaterina kept her hands raised, manipulating false sounds that echoed around. The Leshiy, blinded by magic and in panic, swung the weapon in the wrong direction, wasting strength on imaginary enemies while struggling to maintain accelerated regeneration.
Daria, steady, channeled magic into Andrei — stitching up his open wounds and filling his muscles with vigor. She took advantage of the moment when the creature was stationary to at least make her tank presentable for a possible second round.
Andrei felt the weight of age on his back. The Leshiy's strength destabilized him, and he no longer felt capable of stopping the staff. His feelings were mixed — torn between the urge to flee and the will to protect those he loved with all his strength.
The ground cracked. The air stank of burnt stone and rotting moss. The staff swept violently, but the group held formation.
And then, when the Leshiy raised the weapon for a downward blow, Kuzma roared:
"Advance… NOW!"
They launched forward as one, hoping to turn terror into victory before the world collapsed on them.
Andrei charged with the fury of someone who had nothing left to lose. He dodged to the side, barely escaping the creature's staff by inches, while his club swung upward with full force toward the Leshiy's elbow. The impact made the monster's arm bend at an impossible angle, followed by a dry snap — and a scream even louder, wild and human at the same time.
Kuzma didn't waste the moment: he ran along the flank and drove his sword deep into the creature's guts, twisting the blade as if trying to tear something from inside it.
Even Daria — always restrained — drew a small sword and stabbed it into the wound already opened by her brother, trying to turn each cut into a new, irreparable injury.
Ekaterina, at last, cast a blunt damage spell: she formed a massive ice stalactite above the creature's head — and released it without hesitation.
It was a desperate advance — all of them giving it their all. Only Nikolai hesitated. His heart pounded, eyes fixed on the monstrosity that still thrashed.
Something was wrong. He could feel it — like the chill that comes before thunder — that the creature wouldn't die without his intervention.
Instinctively, he pulled his bow. He channeled magic until he felt drained from within — as if every drop of his soul were being pulled through the bowstring. The arrow fired in a flash, piercing through the Leshiy's shoulder. The impact nearly tore off its arm, leaving a hole gushing black blood and shredded moss.
Nikolai staggered, dizzy. Even so, he didn't stop. He drew his xiphos, the cold metal heavy in his trembling hand. He looked at Ashen.
"Come on, my friend. Let's prove our worth."
They advanced.
The arm was already hanging in pieces. Laika — Andrei's bear — took advantage of the opening to tear it apart, ripping the tendons that still held it in place. The Leshiy roared, kneeling, dragging the staff like a condemned soul.
This was the chance.
Nikolai leapt. An awkward leap, but full of fury. He landed right before the monstrous mouth. Teeth like sharp stones snapped at him, but all the creature found was steel: his metal leg. The sound of breaking teeth echoed, followed by another piercing scream — a howl that seemed to carry pain and hatred in equal measure.
With the opening, Nikolai drove the sword straight into one of the monster's eyes. The Leshiy dropped the staff, bringing a hand to it, trying to crush him like an insect.
"Don't let it grab the boy!"
shouted Kuzma.
Andrei, bloodied, roared with insane strength and charged at the creature, shoving it to the side. The massive body collapsed, shaking the ground.
Kuzma, his bear, and Ashen threw themselves at the Leshiy's face, biting and tearing without mercy. Ekaterina, afraid of attracting more monsters, cast absolute silence over the creature's screams, muffling the carnage and denying it the right to cry out in pain. All that remained was the wet, visceral sound of flesh being torn and bones crushed.
Svetlana stepped back, horrified. Black blood spurted in jets, covering weapons, cloaks, even the eyes of those closest. The beast still thrashed, but each blow, each bite, each stab dragged it deeper into the abyss of death. Until the body stopped resisting, leaving only the weak, ragged breathing of something that no longer seemed alive.
Panting, Kuzma pulled the large axe from his ring, which he had handed to Svetlana minutes earlier, and gave it to Andrei.
"Finish it."
Andrei climbed onto the deformed body. The Leshiy moaned — hoarse, almost human sounds. It chilled Nikolai's blood. The cries were so similar to a person's… it made his back shiver. It was the first bipedal creature he had killed, and the resemblance gnawed at him from within.
He couldn't watch as Andrei raised the axe. The impact echoed. The blade didn't split the skull, but it sank deep, cracking the bone and burying itself in the head. The body shuddered, then fell still.
The terror of the second floor was dead.
The silence was broken only by the group's ragged breathing.
"I can't believe it…"
murmured Daria, her voice hoarse, eyes brimming with tears.
"We killed…"
Kuzma raised his face, covered in black blood, and added in a nearly incredulous whisper:
"We did it."
Kuzma was the first to act, even amid the exhausted group. Wasting no time, he asked Svetlana for his ring and opened it, dumping on the ground all the metal they had extracted with such effort. The shards and fragments fell like discarded stones.
Everyone knew what that meant.
A Leshiy's body was worth more than any load of raw metal. Its flesh could be distilled into extremely rare recovery potions; its bones turned into high-value hilts and gauntlets; even its thick, flexible hide was used for durable bags — like the one Daria carried on her shoulder.
Dumping raw metal would be wasteful for any group… but leaving the corpse behind would be an unforgivable crime.
Svetlana watched in silence as the metal was discarded. For a moment, she seemed resigned. But as she looked at the two rings filled to the brim in her pouch — the result of the previous extraction — a flicker of satisfaction crossed her tired face. Kuzma had given much more than she expected by offering his own ring. And everyone knew: a Leshiy was far too valuable to waste. Especially one that size.
Without further delay, they hurried. They collected the body with a kind of ritual urgency, moving quickly through the maze of stone and moss. Black blood still dripped along the ground, marking the trail like an invitation to danger. Each step felt like a challenge against fate.
But fate, for the second time, seemed to favor the group. Until they reached the first floor, no enemies intercepted them. Only a few small bands of Upyr appeared afterward, and they were taken down with almost automatic efficiency — nothing more than annoying shadows in the face of the colossal victory they had achieved.
When they finally crossed the gates of Svarog, the tension unraveled like a snapped thread.
"Finally… we're safe,"
murmured Andrei, but the phrase echoed like a collective sigh.
Everyone was exhausted. Dirty, covered in blood and moss, drained to the bone. Nikolai felt his head throb, as if it might explode at any moment. His body screamed in pain, his muscles seemed to burn from the inside, and he knew he had gone far beyond his limit. He was still stumbling on his leg, deformed by the adult Leshiy's bite, but even that didn't seem to affect him.
Kuzma gave no speeches. He simply dismissed the group with a curt order:
"Rest. We meet only at dinner."
Nikolai climbed the steps like an automaton, Ashen at his side. He wanted a bath. He wanted to wash off the blood, the sweat, the metallic smell embedded in his skin. But when he touched the coarse mattress, his body gave in. He fell face down and passed out before he could even take a deep breath.
At that moment, sleeping like the dead, Nikolai still didn't know: he had passed through his first true hell. And survived.