Chapter 63: The Rat’s Domain

The explosion did not sound like a bomb. It sounded like a scream.

When Isole’s mana bolt breached the main boiler, the pressurized vessel didn’t just rupture. It disintegrated. Thousands of gallons of superheated water flashed into steam instantly, expanding with a violence that defied physics.

The shockwave hit Vane like a physical hammer.

He didn’t try to stand against it. He threw himself flat against the rusted grating, wrapping his arms around his head. The world turned into a white, roaring void. The air pressure spiked so hard his ears popped painfully.

Then came the heat.

It wasn’t a fire. It was a wet, scalding suffocation. The steam rolled over him, searing exposed skin and turning the freezing air of the sub-level into a chaotic storm of thermal shock.

Vane gritted his teeth, forcing mana into his skin to reinforce his natural durability. The heat battled against Isaac’s lingering cold, creating a bizarre sensory nightmare where one side of his face felt like it was burning while the frost on his coat refused to melt.

He opened his eyes.

He couldn’t see his own hands. The visibility was zero. The room was filled with a dense, churning soup of white vapor.

’Perfect,’ Vane thought. A grim smile twisted his lips.

He pushed himself up. His body screamed in protest. His shoulder was bruised from the fall, his skin was red from the heat, and his mana reserves were dipping dangerously low.

But he was alive. And more importantly, the monsters were blind.

“Check your targets!” Anastasia’s voice cut through the roar, sounding thin and panicked. “I cannot see!”

“Who cares?” Ashe’s laughter echoed from the white void, followed by the wet crunch of metal being sheared. “Just hit everything!”

Vane moved.

He didn’t run. Running was loud. Running vibrated the floor plates. He moved with a crouched, sliding gait, placing the balls of his feet carefully on the grating to dampen the sound. It was the walk of a thief in a crowded market. It was the walk of a rat in the walls.

He navigated by memory. Before the steam had swallowed the room, he had clocked the layout.

Boiler in the center. Gantry above. Ladder frozen. Support pillars to the right.

He moved toward the pillars.

Something massive loomed out of the fog to his left. A wave of crushing pressure washed over him.

Valerica.

The Titan was stomping blindly forward, her arms wreathed in gravity fields. She swung a fist at a shadow, obliterating a steam pipe. The metal groaned and twisted as if it were made of clay.

Vane froze. He held his breath. He became a statue in the mist.

Valerica walked past him, missing him by less than three feet. She was looking for a fight, for resistance. She didn’t notice the silent figure huddled in the steam.

’They rely on their eyes,’ Vane realized as he slipped past her wake. ’They rely on sensing mana flares. But I am small. I am quiet.’

He reached the support pillar. It was a thick, riveted I-beam that ran from the floor to the ceiling, passing close to the maintenance gantry where the beacon sat.

It wasn’t a ladder. It was slick with condensation and grease.

Vane holstered his spear on his back. He reinforced his fingertips with a small amount of mana—not enough to flare, just enough to give him grip.

He began to climb.

Below him, the battle was raging.

“Isaac!” Ashe roared. “Stop hiding!”

A blast of black fire cut through the fog below, illuminating the steam with a hellish red glow.

“I am not hiding,” Isaac’s voice replied. It was calm, but there was a tremor of genuine irritation in it. “I am cleaning up your mess.”

The temperature dropped sharply.

Vane scrambled faster. He knew what was coming.

Isaac wasn’t attacking. He was expanding his Authority.

[Authority: Pale Eternity]

The steam around Vane began to slow down. The swirling currents of vapor grew sluggish. The white fog started to crystallize, turning into millions of tiny, suspended snowflakes.

Isaac was trying to freeze the explosion itself.

Vane’s muscles stiffened. The cold was biting into him again, fighting the heat of the boiler. If Isaac froze the room solid, Vane would be encased in ice halfway up the pillar.

’Faster,’ Vane commanded his limbs.

He scrambled up the I-beam, ignoring the metal tearing at his fingernails. He reached the level of the gantry.

The walkway was ten feet away. There was no railing. Just a gap of empty air filled with freezing steam.

Vane coiled his legs to jump.

A shadow flickered in the fog ahead of him.

Vane stopped.

Someone was already on the gantry.

The fog thinned for a second, pushed aside by a gust of wind magic.

Anastasia Aurelia stood on the walkway. She was battered. Her pristine uniform was scorched and torn, and blood trickled down her forehead. She was scanning the fog with wide, frantic eyes, her rapier held ready.

She hadn’t seen him yet. She was looking down at the fight below.

Vane hesitated.

If he jumped, she would hear him. She would blast him out of the air before he landed. She was a Rank 3 Elite. Her reflexes were faster than his.

He needed an opening.

Below them, the sound of grinding metal intensified.

“Found you!” Ashe screamed.

There was a deafening crash as Ashe collided with Isaac’s shield directly below the gantry. The impact shook the entire sub-level.

The gantry swayed. Anastasia stumbled, grabbing a support cable to steady herself.

’Now,’ Vane thought.

He didn’t jump at her. He jumped at the cable she was holding.

Vane launched himself from the pillar. He flew through the ten feet of freezing fog.

He hit the steel cable. He didn’t try to land gracefully. He slammed into it, wrapping his legs around the wire.

The vibration traveled instantly down the line.

Anastasia gasped and spun around, her rapier lashing out in a reflex arc.

“Who—”

Vane didn’t give her time to cast. He released the cable and dropped to the metal grating of the walkway, rolling forward.

He came up inside her guard.

It was a suicidal range for a spearman against a fencer, but Vane wasn’t using his spear. He used his shoulder. He drove his body weight into her midsection, tackling her before she could bring her point back on line.

They crashed into the railing.

Anastasia grunted, the wind knocked out of her. But she was strong. She flared her golden mana, pushing Vane back with a pulse of raw energy.

Vane skid backward, his boots screeching on the metal.

Anastasia leveled her rapier at his throat. Her eyes were furious.

“You,” she hissed. “The rat.”

“Princess,” Vane greeted, breathless.

“You blew up the boiler,” she accused. “You nearly killed us all.”

“It’s a combat exam,” Vane said, his eyes darting to the beacon behind her. It was twenty feet away. “I improvised.”

“You are chaos,” Anastasia said coldly. The mana around her sword condensed. “You do not belong here.”

She lunged.

It was a perfect thrust. Fast, precise, aimed to disable his shoulder.

Vane didn’t block. He couldn’t block. She was faster than him.

So he cheated.

He stomped on the grating.

[Skill: Tremor Stomp]

It was a low-tier skill he had picked up from a dungeon beast weeks ago. It wasn’t strong enough to do damage. It just shook the floor.

But on a suspended, swaying gantry, it was enough.

The walkway lurched. Anastasia’s footing faltered for a microsecond. Her thrust went wide, grazing Vane’s coat instead of piercing his flesh.

Vane didn’t counter-attack. He dropped low and swept his leg.

Anastasia jumped over the sweep with ease—she was an elite, after all. But jumping put her in the air.

Vane threw a handful of grease he had scraped from the pipe earlier.

It wasn’t magic. It was filth. A glob of black, viscous oil slapped onto Anastasia’s face, covering her eyes.

She shrieked, clawing at her face. “My eyes! What is this?!”

“Slum tactics,” Vane grunted.

He sprinted past her.

He didn’t look back. He ran for the beacon.

The red light pulsed ahead of him. It was right there. Ten feet. Five feet.

The fog ahead of him swirled.

And stopped.

Vane’s instincts screamed. He dug his heels in, sliding to a halt just as a wall of solid blue ice slammed down from the ceiling, sealing off the path to the beacon.

The wind from the impact knocked him backward.

Vane looked up.

Isaac Glacium was floating above the gantry. He wasn’t flying with wind magic. He was standing on a floating disc of ice, looking down with an expression of utter boredom.

The fog in the room was clearing rapidly. The steam wasn’t dissipating. It was falling to the floor as snow.

Isaac had won the battle against the thermodynamics. The room was his again.

“Running around in the dark,” Isaac said, his voice echoing in the sudden silence. “How tedious.”

Below, the sounds of fighting had stopped. Ashe and Valerica were trapped in waist-deep drifts of snow.

Isaac looked at Vane. He looked at the wall of ice he had dropped between Vane and the beacon.

“You are persistent,” Isaac noted. “But you are trapped. The path is closed.”

Vane looked at the wall. It was three feet thick. It was made of Pale Eternity. Unbreakable.

He looked back at Anastasia, who was wiping the grease from her eyes, her face twisted in murderous rage.

He looked down at the spikes waiting below.

He was trapped on a narrow walkway, sandwiched between a furious princess and an unbreakable wall, with a god floating above him.

Vane gripped his spear. He pulled it from his back.

The silver tip glinted in the red emergency light.

“Closed?” Vane repeated. He adjusted his stance, widening his feet on the slippery grating. “I don’t believe in closed doors.”

Isaac raised an eyebrow. “And what will you do? Knock?”

Vane took a breath. He cycled his mana. He felt the phantom memory of Senna guiding his hands.

“No,” Vane said. “I’m going to pick the lock.”

He didn’t aim at Isaac. He didn’t aim at Anastasia.

He aimed at the wall.

And he smiled.

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