"...."
The silence stretched for another moment.
Then Richard, still hovering in the dissipating smoke, glanced downward at his temporary party with a mildly enquiring expression beneath his hood.
"Do you need help with the rest?"
It was a genuine question.
He asked it the way someone might ask if you needed assistance carrying groceries—helpful in intent, completely unaware of how it landed.
The way it landed was this: Carra's eye twitched once, very slightly.
Vesh inhaled through his nose with the controlled breathing of someone managing a strong internal reaction. Dort made a sound that was not quite a grunt and not quite a laugh but occupied the territory between them.
The B Rank Beasts surrounding them had lost all semblance of coordinated aggression.
Whatever invisible thread connected them to the Beast King—some shared instinct, some hierarchical current that ran through the horde like a spine—had snapped the moment their leader collapsed.
They still existed.
