The humanoid Enhanced Species crossed the cavern so quickly that the sound of its first step reached them only after its sword had already slammed into Benihime.
Rayleigh caught the blow in front of his chest, and the force behind it immediately told him how much power the creature had compressed into its new body.
His boots scraped across the damaged floor as he redirected the blade rather than trying to absorb the impact head-on, but the monster gave him no chance to recover.
It changed its grip in the same motion and drove the edge toward his shoulder.
Ais came in from the side and knocked the weapon away with Gonryōmaru, giving Rayleigh enough room to withdraw.
The creature turned toward her without hesitation, and within the first few exchanges the difference between this body and everything they had fought before became obvious.
The monsters connected to the network had depended on instructions sent through the roots, while the larger Enhanced Species had possessed stolen techniques without always understanding how those techniques worked together.
This one had inherited both the knowledge and enough experience to use it without either limitation.
It slipped outside Ais's thrust, redirected Gonryōmaru with the flat of its sword, and stepped straight into her guard with a shoulder strike similar to the close-range movement Anakitty had used earlier.
Tempest absorbed part of the impact and allowed Ais to slide backward rather than be thrown, but before the creature could pursue, Tsubaki came in from the opposite side and brought Tobiume down hard enough to crack the floor beneath them.
The monster did not try to meet her strength directly.
It angled its sword, shifted its weight, and let Tobiume's force slide past its body in a defensive movement that reminded Rayleigh of Raul.
The counter that followed belonged to a completely different style, however, turning the deflection into a short thrust aimed beneath Tsubaki's ribs.
She twisted aside and caught the blade before it entered, though the impact still forced her back several steps.
When she steadied herself, the easy amusement she had worn earlier was gone.
"All right. This one actually knows how to use the things it stole."
Rayleigh had reached the same conclusion.
The roots were gone, the brood chambers had stopped producing replacements, and the source could no longer draw fresh energy from the Dungeon, but everything it had accumulated before being cut off had been compressed into this body.
Beneath the grey armor were thousands of magic-stone fragments and the combat experience gathered from every Enhanced Species that had once been linked to the network.
At least the problem in front of them was now straightforward.
There were no more roots to coordinate, no endless brood sacs to replace whatever they killed, and no external supply restoring the creature whenever they damaged it.
They only had to bring down the thing standing in front of them.
"Asfi, find the real core," Rayleigh said as he moved back into position. "The rest of us will keep it busy."
Asfi was already rising on Talaria.
"I was planning to."
Her attention remained fixed on the black lines visible beneath the monster's armor as she gained altitude, following the movement of energy rather than guessing where the core might be.
The creature noticed what she was doing almost immediately. Blue-white light gathered around its free hand.
Ais saw the attack forming first.
"Asfi, right!"
Talaria changed direction sharply, carrying Asfi clear just before a bolt of copied lightning crossed the cavern.
The discharge struck the ceiling and branched through the surrounding stone before fading, showing the same weakness Ais had discovered during her earlier fight.
The creature could reproduce Gonryōmaru's lightning, but it still lacked the Zanpakutō's control.
Ais gave it no time to prepare another shot.
Tempest carried her forward, and she deliberately kept Gonryōmaru sealed as she forced the creature into a purely physical exchange.
Their blades met again and again, but she changed the angle and rhythm of every attack before the source could settle into one of the patterns it remembered from her earlier battles.
Even so, the monster kept pace. It blocked a thrust toward the ribs, slipped outside a cut aimed at the neck, and countered toward Ais's wrist with timing good enough to make her abandon her next strike to protect her sword hand.
When she gave up half a step, it followed exactly as she once would have, trying to turn that small opening into a decisive rush.
Tsubaki interrupted with a horizontal strike that launched the creature across the cavern.
It landed on its feet and corrected its stance almost immediately, only to find Ardi already waiting in its path.
"Rankle the Seas and the Skies, Nejibana!"
Her Zanpakutō lengthened into its trident form, but she avoided releasing any large volume of water.
Instead, Ardi drove the center blade toward the creature's chest, forcing it to defend with its sword, while one of the side blades hooked behind its knee and pulled its lower body out of alignment.
The monster slammed its palm into the floor.
A burst of copied water erupted around its feet, rougher and weaker than Nejibana's true output but strong enough to break Ardi's leverage and force Tsubaki to alter her approach.
The moment both women were pushed back, crimson energy gathered along the creature's sword.
Tsubaki narrowed one eye.
"It's using mine now."
The stolen fireball came off the blade in a rough burst that lacked Tobiume's stability but still carried enough power to tear across the chamber.
Tsubaki released her Zanpakutō.
"Snap, Tobiume!"
The blade shifted into its modified flame-shaped form, crimson liquid flowing through the groove along the center as she fired directly into the incoming attack.
The two blasts collided midway between them, but the imitation gave way almost at once.
Tobiume's fire tore through the weaker copy and struck the creature across the chest, sending it crashing through one of the dried brood sacs behind it.
Tsubaki lowered the blade slightly as the ruined sac collapsed around the monster.
"Little Ume still does it better."
The creature tore itself free before anyone could relax.
The blast had not stopped it, but a wide crack now ran through the armor protecting its chest.
Asfi saw it immediately.
"Keep hitting that section. Something underneath is carrying far more energy than the rest of the body."
The source reacted to her observation with the same speed it reacted to an attack.
It crossed both arms over the damaged chest and rushed toward her, apparently deciding that the person reading its internal structure had become the greater threat.
Lyra stopped it before it could get far.
"Weave the net, Arachne!"
The short sword vanished as black gauntlets formed around her hands and forearms.
Instead of repeating the tricks the network had already learned, Lyra anchored several threads to the broken brood sacs around the creature and dragged the heavy shells inward from both sides.
The monster cut through the first, but the second struck across its back and forced it forward.
Ardi took the opening.
Nejibana drove toward the crack Tsubaki had already made, and although the monster managed to block the center point, one of the trident's side blades caught beneath the damaged armor.
Ardi twisted hard as she pulled free, tearing away a large section.
For the first time, the structure beneath the grey exterior was clearly visible.
Thin glowing lines spread from the center of the chest toward the shoulders, abdomen, and limbs, branching through the body like an artificial circulatory system.
Every movement sent energy racing through those paths and into the countless magic-stone fragments compressed into its flesh.
Asfi tracked the flow from above.
"They all converge near the center of the chest, but don't destroy the whole area at once. There are too many fragments packed together, and I still can't distinguish the true magic stone from the storage around it."
Rayleigh glanced up.
"How long?"
"I need the chest exposed again and preferably more than half a second to look at it."
"Then you'll get it."
The monster seemed determined to make sure she did not.
It changed direction and attacked Ardi so quickly that she had to use Nejibana's full length defensively, catching the sword against the trident shaft before the point reached her shoulder.
The creature pushed hard, then abruptly released the pressure and spun toward Lyra the moment it noticed her beginning another web.
Lyra withdrew her hands and moved, but the monster accelerated after her with a thrust Rayleigh recognized immediately.
It was Ais's old style reduced to its simplest principle: commit everything to the rush and reach the target before anyone else could interfere.
Lyra did not have Ais's speed.
Rayleigh used Shunpo.
Benihime appeared between them just before the stolen blade could reach Lyra's chest.
The collision sent a sharp vibration through his arm.
He held long enough for Lyra to clear the line, but the creature noticed the weakness in his guard almost immediately and increased its pressure instead of disengaging.
Rayleigh could hardly blame it.
The fight against the roots had taken more out of him than he wanted to admit.
The signal root had drained a noticeable amount of spiritual pressure when it wrapped around his arm, and although he had recovered substantially since Knossos, the strain left by forcing Kannonbiraki Benihime Aratame through that crisis had not vanished simply because several days had passed.
The creature pressed harder when it sensed the weakness.
Rayleigh let it.
As soon as the monster committed its weight, he stopped resisting and turned with the pressure instead.
The stolen sword slipped past his body while Benihime circled around the outside of the creature's arm and cut across its exposed ribs.
The wound was shallow, but Lyra had been waiting for exactly that opening.
Arachne's silk snapped around the creature's extended sword arm and tightened once.
The moment the monster began turning its wrist, Lyra released the thread rather than give it enough contact to study or drain.
That brief pull was still enough to delay its recovery, and Ardi struck behind the knee before it could reset its stance.
The creature dipped.
Ais was already behind it.
Gonryōmaru entered through the damaged armor, and this time she released only a compact pulse of lightning.
"Pierce them, Gonryōmaru!"
Electricity spread through the metal and magic-stone fragments inside the creature, lighting the black network beneath its skin for less than a second.
That was all Asfi needed.
She followed the illuminated paths through the chest and finally saw what separated the scattered fragments from the one stone they actually needed.
"There. The smaller fragments form a shell around one larger magic stone beneath the sternum. That's the real core."
Rayleigh looked through the opening Tsubaki and Ardi had created.
"How deep?"
"Several centimeters behind the outer layer. You'll have to destroy the surrounding fragments first. Once they're gone, the body will probably try to close around the core immediately."
They finally had a target.
The source knew it too.
It tore itself away from Gonryōmaru and rushed Asfi before anyone else could move, ignoring Rayleigh and Tsubaki entirely in favor of the person who had just exposed its weakness.
Asfi climbed on Talaria.
The creature jumped after her.
Its sword came up fast enough to clip one of the winged sandals even as she twisted away.
Talaria lost its balance, and Asfi dropped several meters before Ardi reached her and caught her around the waist.
Asfi steadied herself against Ardi's shoulder and immediately checked the damaged sandal.
"I'm fine. Talaria isn't."
"You can fix it later," Ardi said. "Tell us what to break."
"The same section Tsubaki opened. Once the outer fragments are gone, the true stone is almost directly behind them."
Tsubaki raised Tobiume.
"I'll open it again."
Ais moved to her side, Gonryōmaru settling naturally into her hand.
"I'll take the core once you do."
Rayleigh looked toward Ardi and Lyra.
"Give them room. We only need one clean opening, so don't let it drag this out."
The source attacked first.
It had seen enough of their teamwork to understand exactly what they intended, and this time it tried to disrupt all of them at once.
Lightning spread across the stolen sword while crimson energy gathered close to the edge, and water began flowing around its feet as it combined three of the abilities it had copied during the expedition.
The amount of power was considerable, but the creature's control over the combination was poor.
Electricity immediately began leaking into the water around its legs, while the heat gathering along the blade disrupted the copied fire before it could stabilize.
The source forced the three abilities together anyway.
Asfi saw the flaw before it could release them.
She threw an explosive toward the water beside its foot.
The charge struck the floor and detonated, throwing the liquid upward across the creature's body.
Its own lightning followed the easiest conductive path through the spray and surged back over its limbs, making them jerk as the crimson energy around its sword broke apart before the attack could properly form.