The shell-less Tortura moved at a single beck of cà rồng's hand.
They didn't run or charge.
They simply turned as one and began making their way toward the village with those long, warped limbs, like puppets that had forgotten they were ever alive.
Dominic reacted first.
He rushed to the tent flap and shouted toward the nearest Tortura lodge. "Wake up! Enemy!"
Alex was right beside him a heartbeat later, voice sharper, louder.
"Get up! Something's coming!"
Nothing. No answer. No movement.
Not even a rustle from within the tents.
At first Jake thought the Tortura were asleep through it.
Then the truth hit all of them at once.
The rules.
Do not answer the Croak Wood.
Do not answer the calls from outside.
The Tortura had held so firmly to their own rules that even now, hearing what sounded like panicked voices in the dark, they refused to respond. To them, that was how one survived the night. They had no way of knowing that this time, there really was an enemy coming for them.
"Shit," Joanne hissed.
"Can we force them awake?" Janet asked.
"No time," Dominic said.
Because cà rồng was already drifting closer. It floated over the advancing warped Tortura and came fully into view above the village firelight. And that was when Team Nemean understood how badly outmatched they were.
Alex's status flickered again.
Level: 82
Boss-class entity.
For one cold second, it felt like the air itself got heavier.
A boss. Not just a high-level monster. Not just some strange undead from Croak Wood. A boss that had most likely climbed up from a lower floor.
Dominic's hand tightened around Eyeless Heaven. Emma's face lost color. Even Alexei, who usually looked at danger the way some people looked at hard work, went grim and still.
Cà rồng slowly lowered itself until it hovered over the center path between the Tortura tents. Then, with insulting calm, it pulled its foot-thumbs out of its nostrils.
The gesture was so bizarre that under any other circumstance Jake might have laughed from sheer disbelief. He did not laugh now.
The thing smirked. Its bloodshot eyes swept over Team Nemean like they were children who had wandered into an adult war.
"Fellow human," it said, voice smooth and unpleasantly amused. "Your greed is too large for your own capability."
It looked around at the camp, then toward the heart of the Tortura village.
"Coming after one of the Nine Secrets at your level…"
Its smile widened around those huge tusks. "Suicidal."
Emma frowned. "Nine Secrets…"
Cà rồng continued as if giving a sermon.
"Still, perhaps this death will do you good. Learn your lesson now." It tilted its head. "And in your next life, perhaps your kind will know to kneel before mysteries they cannot bear."
Alex moved before it finished. She did not waste a word.
She bit into a Berserking Strawberry.
Power surged through her body so fast the others could feel it in the air around her. Psychic constructs snapped into being in a flash. Spear. Vajra. Two shields. Two bows. Dragon Slayer. Everything she could bring forth, she brought forth at once.
Then she attacked with all she had.
The spear shot first.
The bows loosed in tandem.
Dragon Slayer came crashing in from above while the vajra cut low and hard, aiming to trap movement, force an opening, force something.
Anything!
Cà rồng lifted one hand. And slapped the whole attack aside.
Just like that. Like someone brushing away flies.
Alex's constructs shattered and spun off course. One shield split in midair. The spear flew into a tent post. Dragon Slayer broke apart into psychic fragments before it could even land.
The scene was so effortless, so one-sided, that everyone else froze for the exact wrong reason.
Because now they knew. This was not a hard fight. This was death.
Cà rồng slowly raised its palm toward them.
No skill name appeared. No aura flared. Yet every instinct in Team Nemean screamed the same thing before the strike even fell.
Death.
Raw. Immediate. Final.
Dominic stepped forward on instinct, shield up. Alexei moved too. Joanne gathered lightning. Emma's blades trembled into being.
Nobody believed any of it would be enough.
Then something else moved. The tortoise statue at the center of the village began to gleam.
At first it was only a faint light crawling through the carved grooves of the old totem. Then the whole statue lit up from within, soft and bright and steady in a way that hurt the eyes after so much darkness and fear.
The raised hand of cà rồng paused.
Light rose from the statue. Not a beam. A shape.
A phantom slowly emerged from the carved turtle form, bright as moonlight and clean enough to make the whole camp feel briefly unreal. It was humanoid in outline, but its face held no features at all. Smooth. Blank. Like a mannequin given life by sacred fire.
The moment it appeared, cà rồng did not recoil.
It screamed with joy. Like a starving beast seeing a banquet. It huffed once through its nostrils. And from them poured thousands of tiny swords made of light.
They flooded out in streams so dense they looked like luminous swarms of insects. Then the swords arranged themselves in spinning circles. The circles stacked over one another at different distances and angles, forming layered rings of moving blades around the floating boss.
None of Team Nemean could make sense of the pattern. It was too alien, too technical, too deliberate. Like watching some impossible machine made of holy steel come together in midair.
Cà rồng spread its arms proudly. "So this is it!"
Its voice shook with hunger and delight. "Whatever Secret the Tortura have guarded…"
It grinned wide enough to show every monstrous tusk in its mouth. "It will be mine from today onward!"
The bright phantom said nothing. It simply continued rising from the tortoise statue, slow and silent and terrible in its stillness.
Then, at last, it lifted its smooth, featureless face. But the bright phantom did not look at cà rồng first. It turned slowly. Then stepped toward Séline.
For one strange second, nobody understood what it was doing. Not Dominic. Not Alex. Not even Séline herself. The featureless thing stopped in front of her, lowered its head, and waited.
Just waited. As if asking.
Séline stared at it, still tense from the sheer terror of cà rồng's arrival. Her hands were half raised, her body ready to move, but her mind had not caught up. She looked once toward Dominic, once toward Camille, then back at the phantom.
"What does it want from me?" she asked, voice tight.
No one answered. Because no one knew.
The phantom remained bowed. Waiting.
Cà rồng's grin widened further, if that was even possible. Its bloodshot eyes glittered with hunger.
"Take it," it said, almost purring. "Yes. Go on. Let me see."
That alone made Séline want to refuse. But she could feel it now. The phantom was not forcing itself on her. It was asking for permission. A choice. And with cà rồng hovering above them all like a blade over their necks, there was only one answer she could live with.
Reluctantly, slowly, Séline gave a single nod.
The phantom moved at once. Its body came apart into a blanket of pale light and flowed into her.
Séline gasped. Every muscle in her body went rigid. Light passed through her skin, her limbs, her chest, and then buried itself deeper, like something ancient had opened a door inside her and stepped through. Her eyes snapped shut. Then opened again.
Camille sucked in a breath. There was a character in Séline's pupils now.
Not a symbol that stayed still. A shifting one. An ever-changing mark that felt older than language and sharper than steel. The moment Séline saw it reflected in the edge of one floating sword, understanding struck her all at once.
Dǒu. The fighting secret of the Nine.
It wasn't explained to her. She had just known it. Like the power had not whispered a lesson into her ear, but instead dropped a whole body of instinct into her bones.
She knew what she was borrowing. And the second she knew, her hand flicked out.
The thousands of tiny swords of light surrounding cà rồng were still spinning in those layered circles, stacked one over another in a formation Team Nemean could not even begin to understand.
Séline copied it instantly. No chant. No struggle. No trial and error.
A second formation bloomed around her, perfect down to the smallest angle. Rings of light swords spun into being with the same layered precision, the same impossible balance of offense and control. The camp was filled with two mirrored halos of deadly blades, one around cà rồng and one around Séline.
Jake forgot himself long enough to curse softly. Joanne just stared. Even Alex's eyes widened.
Cà rồng looked like it might cry from joy.
"Yes," it breathed. "Yes!"
Its whole body shivered in delight. It moved the next second, launching itself straight at Séline with no more pretense. It did not hesitate. It did not test the waters. It went all in at once, certain that this was the moment it had wanted. If Séline had borrowed the secret of fighting, then it would simply beat her down with superior experience and take that secret for itself.
At least, that was what it thought. The first exchange shattered that idea.
Cà rồng's swords came in from three angles, layered with its own close-range rush. The formation was dense enough to turn most fighters into meat.
Séline moved through it like she had seen it a thousand times. Because dǒu showed her every weakness, every gap, every transition between one motion and the next. The secret did not just let her copy the technique. It let her understand it.
Cà rồng's offense spread before her like a solved puzzle. Where its force peaked. Where its control dipped. Which sword was real pressure and which was a feint. Where its floating body overcommitted by half a beat.
She slipped past the first strike. Redirected the second. Turned a whole outer ring of blades aside with a tiny shift in formation that forced cà rồng to open its flank. And her own swords answered.
Cà rồng jerked back so fast its hovering posture almost broke. For the first time, true shock flashed across its face. What it felt was simple: It was fighting a more experienced version of itself.
Cà rồng rushed again, this time harder, furious and excited in equal parts. It changed the order of its formations. Reversed the spin. Sent light swords low first and then high, trying to bury Séline in angles.
It did not matter. Dǒu kept feeding her answers.
Not in words. In certainty. And in motion.
Her body moved with a grace she did not own, her hands shaping formations that should have taken years to master. Every time cà rồng tried to overwhelm her with skill, the secret peeled the attack open and handed her its guts.
Then it got worse. For cà rồng, anyway. Because once Séline fully grasped the logic behind the sword formation, her mind leaped one step further than its creator had.
She saw not only how to defend against it. Not only how to counter it. She saw how to take it.
Her fingers curled. The light swords around cà rồng shuddered.
For one stunned moment, even Team Nemean did not understand what they were seeing. Then half of cà rồng's own blades turned on it.
Its scream tore through the camp.
Séline did not stop there. With dǒu guiding her, she controlled both formations at once, her own and its stolen one, weaving them together into a cross-pattern of spinning death that trapped cà rồng in the middle.
Swords punched through its shoulders. Its side. Its thigh.
Then two long blades drove through its torso from opposite angles, pinning it in midair for one sick heartbeat like a grotesque trophy. It looked like a pincushion made of its own pride.
Golden blood sprayed.
Cà rồng tore itself free with a horrible shriek, leaving chunks of flesh and clots of glowing blood hanging from the blades. The delight was gone from its face now. Only rage and fear remained.
It looked at Séline. Then at the phantom glow still lingering inside her eyes. And ran. Not retreated with dignity. Ran!
It spun midair and fled into the darkness beyond Croak Wood with a speed that left only a smear of shadow behind. Its shell-less followers wavered and then scattered with it, the whole nightmare procession breaking apart into the moving dark of the forest.
For a second, nobody moved. Then Séline swore. A raw, ugly curse in French.
Camille blinked at her sister. "You okay?"
Séline's voice came out strained, furious, and not fully her own.
"My level is too low," she snapped. "If I were stronger, I could have killed it."
The words had barely left her mouth when the light left her. The phantom peeled out of Séline's body in one smooth tide, as if it had only borrowed her for the fight and nothing more. The shifting character in her eyes vanished at once. The blanket of light drifted back toward the tortoise statue, sank into it, and the old totem dimmed once more.
The moment it left, Séline's knees gave out. Camille lunged first and caught her before she hit the ground face first.
Dominic and Janet were beside them a second later. Alex kept her eyes on the tree line in case cà rồng tried one last cheap trick, but it was gone. Truly gone, at least for now.
Séline looked pale and spent in Camille's arms, like the secret had wrung every drop of strength out of her.
The camp was silent. Then, one by one, the Tortura began emerging from their lodges, finally daring to step out now that the thing in the woods had retreated.
And at the center of it all, the tortoise statue stood quiet again, as if nothing impossible had just happened at its feet.