Eloy's hand closed around something cold on the floor. He didn't check what it was until he was already rolling sideways, and by then the operative had landed exactly where he'd been crouching.
A dagger. Dropped from the ceiling with its owner. He kept it.
Valen's boot caught Arthur at the hip and sent him sliding three meters back into the dark. The two remaining operatives didn't spare him a look. They split around Valen without slowing, both fixed on Isolde, and one adjusted toward Eloy like he was a secondary objective on a shared contract.
[Slayer_007]: 2v2 IN A HALLWAY. NO ROOM TO RUN.
[SpeedrunGod]: HE'S AT 13% HE'S LITERALLY ONE HIT FROM THE CREDITS
[LMAO_cat]: bro is about to get deleted lmaooo
Two on two, Eloy's brain logged. Except one of us is at thirteen percent HP and the other just became the primary target.
Valen crossed blades with the leader at the tunnel's far end. The impact rang off limestone once, sharp and fast, and then Valen was gone into the dark with the sound of wet leather and grinding steel behind him. "Handle your end!" he called back.
Isolde moved before Eloy could process what she was doing.
She stepped forward, between Eloy and the two operatives, her hair rising in a slow static arc as charge built at the roots. She didn't explain herself. She didn't look back at him.
Oh, Eloy thought. She's tanking.
The first operative rushed her left side. She raised two fingers and dragged a discharge sideways along the wet limestone wall. The arc scattered in the water seeping down the stone, branched into six directions, and caught the operative's leading leg. His next step buckled.
The second operative kept his line.
Left shoulder, Eloy read. The man's shoulder locked a half-second before his arm followed.
He dropped.
The blade passed above his ear close enough to move the air. His palms hit cold wet stone, and he pushed through the roll, came up on the operative's right side where the sword arm was still extended, and drove the dagger into the gap between pauldron and gorget.
Three centimeters of opening. He found all three.
The operative went down and stayed down.
[ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED: First Blood — Win a Fight Post-Tutorial]
[+1 Dexterity]
[+1 Wisdom]
The celebration lasted one second.
The Corrupted Shadow Mark lit up without warning. It was a hot wire threaded through muscle, and it pulled. Black veins surfaced under Eloy's skin in a slow pulse, and the dead man's residual mana moved up his forearm like water through a hairline crack in stone.
[FOREIGN MANA ASSIMILATED — MARK SATIATED]
[MP: +15]
Eloy yanked his sleeve down. The veins faded. He stood there with his hand clamped over his forearm and stared at the wall.
He'd killed someone. He'd actually—
The Mark pulsed once more, satisfied, and the thought dissolved before it finished.
Isolde's discharge caught the first operative square in the chest from two meters. He hit the tunnel wall and folded. She stepped back and shook out her right hand once, three quick flicks, the way someone relaxes a cramped grip.
Valen's fight ended somewhere behind them. One wet sound. Then silence.
The tunnel went still.
Eloy exhaled. He checked his HUD out of habit, the way he'd checked frame counters after a difficult sequence, and the notification sitting in the top left corner was not the one he'd expected.
[Isolde Reichenbach — Affinity: 3.25/100 → 9.50/100]
[SYNERGY RECOGNIZED: Combat coordination under lethal pressure]
[IsoldeSimp47]: WAIT
[PraiseTheSun]: THAT'S 9.5 THAT'S HALF A POINT FROM THE MILESTONE
[nachtfalter]: "synergy recognized" is a NEW tag. that's not a standard affinity increase at all
[IsoldeSimp47]: I AM DEVASTATED IN A GOOD WAY
Nine point five.
The completionist greedy was already running before Eloy consciously engaged it. Half a point was nothing. Half a point was rounding error. Half a point was right there.
[x_DatingSimPro_x]: bro. BRO. adrenaline makes them receptive. compliment her hair RIGHT NOW. it's in the guide. my credentials are impeccable.
[Slayer_007]: DO NOT LISTEN TO HIM ELOY
[LMAO_cat]: DO IT DO IT DO IT
[MayaBestGirl98]: x_DatingSimPro_x your credentials are a war crime
[x_DatingSimPro_x]: the guide is peer-reviewed
Isolde had turned away. She was picking dried grit off her sleeve with two fingers, her hair still carrying a faint charge that made the ends drift.
Eloy's social filter, normally already not too functional, had been running on combat adrenaline for the last ninety seconds.
"Your hair," he said. "It, uh. Has good volume."
Isolde went still.
She turned very slowly. The look she gave him was not angry. It was the specific expression of someone calculating whether the person in front of them had hit their head, or was mocking them, or both, and was arriving at both.
[Isolde Reichenbach — Affinity: 9.50/100 → 9.00/100]
[-0.5: Subject interprets unsolicited compliment as deliberate mockery. Context: post-combat, no established precedent for physical compliments. Advise recalibration.]
[LMAO_cat]: LOOOOOOOL
[Slayer_007]: BAN DATINGSIMP. RIGHT NOW. IMMEDIATE BAN.
[TrollKing99]: -10,000 AURA. NEGATIVE. TEN. THOUSAND.
[x_DatingSimPro_x]: my bad bro. it usually works
"I meant—" Eloy started.
"Don't." Isolde turned back to her sleeve. One word, no inflection, final.
Arthur's voice came from somewhere behind them, strained and quiet. "Is everyone alright?"
Nobody answered him for a moment. The tunnel dripped.
"Boy."
Valen's voice came from the far end of the passage. He was crouched over the leader's body, one knee on the stone, a fresh cigarette pinched between two fingers. He'd used the dagger to pull the collar of the man's tunic aside.
Eloy walked over. Isolde followed a half-step back, still not looking at him.
There was no Mugen-Za tattoo. No clan sigil.
Pressed into the skin at the hollow of the man's throat was a silver pendant, small and flat and very precisely made. A set of scales. Crossed at the center.
Eloy knew that emblem. He'd seen it in a pre-run lore document, three years ago in his old life, in a room that smelled like instant noodles and old thermal paste. He'd skimmed past it because it hadn't seemed relevant to the main route.
The Aethelgard Cavalry. The Royal Academy's enforcement arm.
"They weren't dissidents," Valen said.
He didn't look up. His voice carried the same cadence he used for scheduling conflicts. But his cigarette had gone dark somewhere in the last thirty seconds, and he hadn't noticed, and when he reached into his coat for a new one, his hands weren't quite steady.
The silver scales caught Isolde's light and held it.