Chapter 16: First Encounter with White Draco
"That was weird," Karn said.
"I know what you're going to say."
"Neither of our attacks did anything to it. The water compression — nothing. And we were taking serious hits. Which shouldn't be possible."
"Suit repair is underway. Eighty percent complete. The nanobots are handling it."
"That's not what I'm asking."
"I know." A pause. "The hits landing the way they did — it's not a material problem. Nexnium is a hundred times stronger and lighter than any carbon fibre on Earth. It shouldn't dent under what we encountered. The problem is the type of energy behind the attacks. Something in it bypasses the material properties entirely and gets into the internal systems."
"So speed isn't enough. If we avoid the hits we're fine, but the moment we eat one—"
"It goes places it shouldn't. Yes. I'm running analysis on what specifically is taking damage, but I don't have a complete picture yet." She paused. "I do have a theory about where this energy originates."
"Go ahead."
"You remember what I told you about the ship crash. The Nexarion vessel entering the atmosphere — the unidentified energy that hit it. Something the field couldn't detect, didn't register in any known system. It came straight through and killed everyone aboard before anyone could respond. The ship went down over the desert."
Karn stopped walking. "You're saying that was mana."
"Not mana on its own. Mana pushed far beyond its normal application — concentrated, weaponised, and released with enough force to distort spacetime. Think about how we fire the laser: precise, calculated, a clean line from source to target. What hit the ship was the same principle but at a completely different scale. Two forces colliding so violently that the energy broke dimensional boundaries. A fight between beings powerful enough that the residual force travelled and struck the ship by accident."
Karn let that sit for a second. "So the ship crashed because two people on this planet were having a bad day."
"That is one way to put it. And yes — that is how you ended up here."
He exhaled slowly. "Alright. So practically speaking — what do we do about the energy problem?"
"Blacksmith," Zangika said. "Find someone who works with mana-resistant materials. If this world has developed armour or weapons that interact with this energy, there's knowledge here we don't have. And—" her voice shifted slightly "—don't worry. I won't let anything happen to you. My love for you will never fade."
"Blacksmith. Got it."
"You could acknowledge what I said."
"Blacksmith first. Feelings second."
"I will remember this."
* * *
Back at the Guild
They went to the guild association first to hand over the dungeon stones and collect payment.
Cersy was at her counter when they arrived. She looked up and her expression did the thing — a fraction too bright, a fraction too quick — and she started playing with a strand of hair without seeming to notice she was doing it.
Karn, now that he was paying attention, noticed she was genuinely attractive. The way she tilted her chin when she smiled. The small laugh she gave before she had even processed what he said.
A sharp pinch hit him above the hip. He flinched.
"Are you alright?" Cersy asked.
"Fine. I'm fine."
Cersy studied him for a moment. "You always act like someone is watching you very closely. Most people who come in here are either loud or trying to look important. You're neither."
"I have a lot of respect for women," Karn said carefully.
"You don't have to be so formal with me."
"Should I tell her you prefer step—"
Please do not finish that sentence.
Cersy examined the stones with practiced efficiency. "These are second-floor quality. All of them." She didn't phrase it as a question. "Five thousand silver pieces."
"For a single person, you're quite wealthy."
Karn accepted the heavy pouch and turned to leave.
That was when the guild went quiet.
* * *
White Draco
Not fully quiet — the background noise didn't stop — but the tone of the room shifted half a register. Conversations dropped in volume. People turned their heads without meaning to.
Six people had walked in.
The one out front had black hair and blue eyes, light chest armour, boots up the calf, both hands free. A sword on her hip that sat low and easy, like it had been there so long she had forgotten it was weight. She moved like she had already calculated the room.
Behind her: a shorter woman — no armour, two short swords, the specific expression of someone who had been underestimated enough times that she had stopped finding it interesting. Next to her, a woman built solidly from every angle that mattered — full chest armour, heavy greaves, an axe over her shoulder that was technically closer in size to a siege weapon than a handheld tool, and she carried it like it weighed nothing.
Then an older man in an immaculate dark suit — gloves on both hands that Zangika flagged immediately as mana-conducting material — carrying the quiet that belongs to someone who has never needed to be loud about anything. Beside him, a woman who hadn't stopped talking since she'd walked through the door, a metallic wand spinning idly in one hand, purple crystal at the tip, clearly old and clearly built for more than one purpose. And at the edge of the group, set apart by half a step: one who said nothing. Two swords at the waist. A structured garment that sat somewhere between a dress and a robe — not quite a kimono, but closer than anything else Karn had a word for. She watched the room.
"Isn't that White Draco?"
Someone said it too loudly and then looked embarrassed. But the name spread fast — low voices carrying it from table to table.
"S-rank squad," Zangika confirmed. "Six members. Their names: Captain Alice — the short one. The axe is Bietrus. Blue eyes is Saber. The silent one is Momo. The talker is Nancy. The butler is Alberto."
Karn looked at the woman without armour. She was explaining something to the axe woman, who was nodding with the patient expression of someone who had heard it before but was letting her finish anyway.
S-rank squad captain. Short. No armour. Loud. He thought about what that combination probably felt like to navigate on a daily basis and decided he was sympathetic to the other five.
"Good name for a squad," he said.
"Let's go before you say something."
"I'm not going to say anything."
"I have data on this."
* * *
The Incident
Karn was halfway to the door when Alice walked into him.
A shoulder clip — the kind that happens when two people come around a corner at the same moment and neither is looking. He stepped back, said sorry, and kept moving.
"Excuse me?" Alice said to his back. "That's it? You bump into someone and just — you don't stop, you don't properly apologise, you just keep walking? In that fancy suit like you own the—"
Karn kept walking. He said something — very quietly, pointed entirely at Zangika, not intended for any other ears in the room.
"I don't take women with small chests seriously."
Zangika enhanced the audio and amplified it to fill the room.
Every conversation stopped.
Bietrus, across the room, closed her eyes slowly.
"This man is done," she said quietly, to no one in particular.
ZANGIKA. That was meant for you.
"I know," Zangika said brightly. "Oh my. Look at you. Saying that out loud, in broad daylight, in front of the entire guild, to an S-rank captain."
I am going to die.
"You might, yes."
He turned around.
Alice's face had gone through several colours and landed somewhere that wasn't quite red — the specific shade a person goes when they are simultaneously furious and mortified and haven't decided yet which one to lead with.
She opened her mouth.
"Shut up," Karn said.
Still pointing at Zangika. The room didn't know that.
"Bold," Zangika said. "Very bold. I didn't know you had it in you."
Saber stepped forward. "I wouldn't have expected someone dressed like that to have a mouth like that."
"It just slipped out," Karn said.
Bietrus folded her arms. "Men like you always say that. 'It came out.' 'I didn't mean it.' But you thought it first. That's the part that matters."
"You're reading this wrong."
"We all heard it," Saber said flatly. "Just leave before we lose our patience."
Cersy pushed out from behind her counter.
"Everyone calm down. You're misreading the situation. Mister Nexus isn't — he's not that kind of person."
"We all heard what he said," Saber replied.
"Look," Cersy said, turning to Alice, "it doesn't matter if the captain has a small chest — she has an incredible personality. I mean, she's a bit much sometimes, but that has nothing to do with—"
She stopped.
The room had gone very quiet again. Alice's face had found a new colour entirely.
Cersy seemed to process what she had just said. She opened her mouth. Closed it.
"That... came out wrong."
Alice was past embarrassed. Past it and somewhere darker.
* * *
The Fire Arc
She moved.
Not toward the door — upward. A single burst, vertical, and then she was at the ceiling, gripping a beam with one hand, wand raised and already pulsing.
The White Draco members all moved at the same moment — hands to weapons, weight shifting. Then stopped. They had come straight off a full run of floor fifteen, no rest, no breaks. Whatever Alice was building above them was something any of them could have intercepted cleanly on a fresh day — matched in output, neutralised without collateral. Not today. If they deflected it without fully absorbing the force, the energy would spray sideways and take out the rest of the hall.
Saber looked at Bietrus. Bietrus looked at Alberto. The answer was the same across all three faces.
Not enough left.
Alice released the arc.
A massive crescent of fire came down from the ceiling. She felt the moment it left her hand — too much, too fast, already committed — but it was gone.
"That bitch—" Karn said.
"Spear," Zangika cut in. "Suit is damaged. Galaxy Nexus is still offline. Water reserves are low. This could be fatal."
"Options?"
"One. Maximum water output. I'm pulling residual mana from the skeleton stones we didn't sell and mixing it in. It won't match the arc cleanly. It will be enough to survive it."
The spear appeared in his hand.
Water pressure built along the shaft — not clean, not the pure high-output stream of a system running at full capacity. It was everything scraped together from a damaged suit running on partial reserves, mixed with the faint mana residue from a handful of skeleton cores. It hummed unevenly. Imperfect.
"Full burst."
The water arc launched upward and hit the fire crescent head-on.
SHHHHH — CRACK.
Steam detonated outward. The collision point exploded into a wall of white mist and the shockwave hit everything in the room at once — tables thrown, papers flying, chairs skidding, lanterns swinging hard on their brackets. Heat and fog and noise filled the hall in every direction.
Zangika pushed out a second arc. Then a third. The water was burning off fast — the fire too hot, too much mana behind it — but each stream bought another half-second, eating into the crescent from the front, stripping its force layer by layer.
The water ran out.
What was left of the fire arc — guttered, stripped down, most of its force spent — hit Karn full in the chest.
The impact drove him back. His feet left the stone for a moment. He drove the spear tip into the floor mid-slide — a furrow cracked open along the flagstones — and the wall stopped him. He hit it hard, stayed standing, and didn't fall.
Silence.
Steam and mist drifted through the hall. Half the furniture was on its side. The floor between Karn and where Alice had been standing was split open along the line his spear had carved.
"Host status: clear. Shadow Nexus at seventy-five percent," Zangika said. "Another five gone. Most of that arc was neutralised. If the system had been at full capacity it wouldn't have touched us."
"Bad luck."
"Bad luck," she agreed. "I'm sorry."
* * *
Aftermath
Bietrus, Saber, and Momo reached Karn first.
"Are you hurt?" Bietrus asked.
"What's the point of asking that now?"
Saber's jaw tightened. "We didn't intend—"
"Don't." Karn pulled the spear free from the cracked floor and dismissed it. "Don't try to be kind now that I'm on my knees. I don't need your pity."
Momo spoke quietly. "You deserved a response. Not that one."
"Fair enough," Karn said.
He walked — not quickly, just steadily — and went through the door.
Alice dropped from the ceiling beam. She looked at the cracked floor. The split line running from the collision point to the wall.
"Are you okay?" she called after him.
Karn didn't look back.
"I didn't mean for it to be that strong," Alice said, to her squad now rather than his back. "I just wanted to scare him. It wasn't supposed to be that big."
"It's alright, Captain," Bietrus said, with the resigned warmth of someone who had been cleaning up after this specific problem for a long time.
"It really isn't," Cersy said.
Everyone turned.
Cersy had the expression of someone who had been professionally patient for a very long time and had reached the end of it.
"Do you understand what a captain's legal standing means within this association? You are classified the same as a war knight. The power you carry and the responsibility attached to it are equivalent. You do not fire a full-output attack inside a civilian hall because someone said something that upset you." She looked at the split floor. "People could have been killed. And Lord Nexus — thank god — was strong enough to survive it. But that is his fortune, not your caution."
Alice said nothing.
"The White Draco squad will cover all structural damage. The guild will invoice you directly."
"We are not contributing to—" Saber started.
"Invoice will be issued to the squad account," Cersy repeated.
Saber closed her mouth.
Nancy, across the hall, had actually stopped talking. She was staring at the furrow in the floor.
"What was that attack he used?" she said. "That wasn't mana. What was that?"
Alberto looked at the door Karn had walked through. "Interesting," he said quietly.
Bietrus had her eyes on the same door. "Captain barely held back and he came out almost unscratched."
"She held back plenty," Momo said.
"Even so," Bietrus replied.
Alice hadn't moved from where she'd landed.
* * *
Karn
He found a tavern two streets from the guild and ate alone at a corner table. The food was good — something slow-cooked and heavy. He didn't pay much attention to what it was.
"You're quiet," Zangika said.
"I'm eating."
"That has never stopped you before." A pause. "The S-rank captain fired a war-level discharge inside a civilian building because of a comment about her chest. In fairness — some of the fault in that chain belongs to me."
"Most of it."
"Most of it," she agreed, without any particular shame. "On the other hand — we learned something. Her output, even exhausted, is serious. And the other five had enough left to worry me. White Draco is strong."
"We should avoid them."
"Statistically we'll encounter them again. This city uses the guild as a hub. S-rank squads pass through regularly."
"Then we avoid them when we do."
"In my defence," Zangika said, "it was funny."
Karn said nothing. He finished eating, paid, and walked back to his lodging in the dark.
By the time he got there the nanobots had pushed repair to ninety-two percent. The Galaxy Nexus was still offline — Zangika estimated another six hours. He lay down without changing and was asleep in under a minute.
Elsewhere in the city, a rumour was already spreading through the adventurer community — moving between taverns and guild boards and shared lodging rooms, carried by people who had been in the hall when it happened and people who had heard it from people who had.
Some man had said something about Alice's chest.
Alice had nearly destroyed the entire guild hall trying to kill him.
He had survived. Walked out. Didn't run, didn't apologise, didn't look back.
Nobody knew his name yet. Most of them were calling him the man in the black suit.
By morning, the story would be twice the size it was now.
End of Chapter 16