"Charge."
The members of the Ichigo clan and the Lu family surged forward simultaneously — weapons already drawn or being pulled mid-stride, boots hitting the ice floor in a wave of overlapping sound as they closed the distance toward the team.
Socrates glanced back.
George and Fatso were already positioned in front of the two ladies — bodies between them and the incoming rush, feet planted. Good.
*We can't be too close to them. Can't be too far either.*
He didn't deliberate. He jumped forward — cutting into the space between his team and the charge, intercepting one of the men midway. The man's eyes registered surprise for a fraction of a second, his brain catching up to the fact that the person he was rushing toward was now directly in front of him.
"Heh—"
The sound barely left his mouth.
Socrates brought the sword down.
The man scrambled to raise his own blade — trying to get something between himself and what was coming — when the unexpected happened. Socrates' blade didn't announce itself. It didn't slow. It made contact with the man's sword and passed through it — through the metal, clean and without resistance — and kept going, continuing its arc into the man's chest and out the other side.
The upper body separated from the lower.
Blood spiraled outward in a loose expanding pattern as the two halves went in different directions, and Socrates stood in the space between them and looked at the blade in his hand.
Clean.
Every trace of blood that had been on it a moment ago was gone — the metal bright and unmarked, the edge catching the amber light from the cracked walls as if nothing had touched it.
He stared at it for one quiet second.
"Socrates—"
Anger clouded a man's face as he swung hard toward Socrates' neck. Socrates caught it on his blade, deflected the force sideways and countered in the same motion. The man blocked — but his sword broke on contact, the metal giving way with a sharp crack, and Socrates drove the blade through his esophagus before the pieces finished falling. It burst out the other side.
He pulled it free.
Checked it.
Clean again. Every drop gone. The metal shining like it had just been forged.
A slow smile crossed his face.
"I'll name you Bloodsucker."
An expert from the Lu family lunged at him from the left — but Cleo was already there, cutting across to intercept, his shoulder dropping into the man's path and drawing him away.
Socrates kept moving.
Across the room Judas was locked in with a mid-stage Foundation Establishment expert — the exchange tight and controlled, neither man giving the other room to breathe. Zina had positioned herself at an angle behind the throne, silver bow working steadily, picking off anyone threading too close to the ladies.
Then she stopped.
Her hand went to her quiver and found nothing.
"Oh no..." Her face dropped as she turned the silver bow over in her hand, suddenly holding a weapon with no ammunition.
A cultivator saw it immediately. He rushed forward with his sword raised overhead and brought it down hard — Zina ducked, the blade passing through the air above her hair, and as she came back up she drove the tip of the bow into the soft underside of his jaw. He staggered. Before he could recover she had the string of the silver bow across his throat and pulled — the cord biting through with the clean efficiency of something built better than it looked.
He dropped.
She straightened and exhaled through her nose.
From the back of the formation, one of the elders turned to the Foundation Establishment experts clustered behind him.
"We can't just stand here while our clan members fall." His eyes moved across the room — reading the battlefield with the patience of someone who had done this many times. "Separate them. Eight of you on Socrates — overkill, yes, but he carries something dangerous. Don't give him room. Four of you on the second ranker. The small fries are mine."
They dispersed without a word.
Socrates felt it before he fully processed it — the shift in the room, the way the energy around him changed as bodies repositioned. He looked up and found eight Foundation Establishment experts forming a ring around him, each one watching him with the careful attention of people who had been warned.
Eight. Any one of them would be a difficult fight alone.
"Let's not take risks." One of them said quietly. He weaved his hand — the others followed in unison — and the air around the entire team changed texture, thickening, pressing inward from all sides.
"Blue Square Formation — Second Suite — Withdraw and Transfer."
The formation activated.
The room lurched — not physically, but in the way space itself lurched when something fundamental about it was being rewritten — and then Socrates was gone. Pulled clean out of the room without sound, without ceremony, the space where he had been standing simply empty.
The air settled back like water closing over a stone.
"Socrates—" Zina turned, eyes finding the gap where he had been.
"I'd worry about yourself, girl."
The elder's voice came from directly in front of her.
She hadn't heard him move. Hadn't felt him arrive. He was simply there — the sword already descending toward her neck with the unhurried precision of someone who didn't need to rush because the outcome was already decided.