Natsuko had expected Hemiola to go after her first. Not just because she had the bottle, but because there was still a twinkling of their old rivalry in his eyes. He had floated between #2-#4 during their heyday, never managing to get ahead of Natsuko. He could play the wise, transcendent Xian all he wanted, but the way he’d called her obnoxious, Natsuko knew the Yishang hadn’t plucked out the old Hemiola. Not entirely.

So the second he seemed ready to drop the act and start killing them, Natsuko let herself fall backwards, expecting him to overshoot the tip of the rod and smack her in the side. Natsuko’s plan worked, but it hurt like hell. The rod wasn’t an equipable “weapon,” just like her bottle wasn’t, so it didn’t interact with her HP at all. Instead, it was a bar of iron colliding with her rib cage at high speeds. She felt something crunch in her chest. Blood spattered the floor where she coughed it out.

The hit was hard enough that the next few things that happened were a blur. Shuixing yelled something about the teleport cooldown, gunshots ricocheted around the chamber, and chunks of earth shattered against Hemiola, showering Natsuko with dirt. A second later she was yanked forward by someone grabbing her ankles.

Natsuko looked up to find Sofiane hauling her across the floor.

“Thanks— puffball—” Natsuko wheezed while blood dribbled out of her mouth.

“Yeah, yeah. I’m a saint,” Sofiane said.

Right as he said this, he dropped her legs and pulled his sword up. With an ear-splitting clang, the side of Hemiola’s rod clashed with the emerald sword. Sofiane’s free hand shot to the end of his blade to support it. The stone underneath Sofiane’s feet cracked. Even with both hands bracing for it, the force of Hemiola’s strike still almost knocked Xiuquan’s sword out of his hands, but the sword held. Sofiane thought of it as one last piece of defiance on the part of his deceased teammate.

Rocks summoned by Daisy’s pocketwatch continued to collide with Hemiola’s back, but basic attacks were not her specialty. Even if they could kite Hemiola around for a while, without their abilities, it was a matter of time before he caught them with the tip of the rod.

“Daisy, can you hit his face with the dirt?” Shuixing called out, repositioning herself to have a clear shot at Hemiola’s face.

Almost as fast as Sofiane’s Ball Lightning, Daisy bolted in front of Hemiola where he was slowly inching the tip of the lethal rod towards Sofiane’s chest against the sword’s resistance. She clicked her pocket watch and a ball of dirt hurled itself at Hemiola’s face while Shuixing followed with a synchronized water bolt. The dirt turned into mud, dribbling into Hemiola’s eyes.

Hemiola pushed off Sofiane’s sword and jumped back to wipe the blinding mud off his face.

“Cute,” he said, flicking mud from his hands. “But I preferred your outside-the-box thinking when it wasn’t being used to help the Yishang, Shui.”

“I’m not helping the Yishang, I’m helping my friends,” Shuixing replied.

Far beyond even the agonizing self-doubt that usually accompanied Shui when she tried to make her brain work, her mind was now nothing but a white hot ball of desperation. She needed to figure out how to unlock their abilities or they’d be dead. Everything was on her.

Shuixing felt a wet hand grasp hers. Sofiane had backed up to her with his sword still pointed at Hemiola and grabbed her hand with the one that had been bracing his blade. Blood trickled between their entwined fingers.

“Stay calm, Shui,” he said.

That was a tall order as Hemiola triggered a point-blank sonic boom on top of Daisy, throwing her across the room and knocking out half her health in one shot.

What did Shuixing know? Heroes’ Abilities didn’t work, but Xians’ did. As far as she could tell, Hemiola functioned the same as the rest of them. He too was a product of whatever technology the Yishang used to create artificial souls.

No, they had to be the same thing. She knew Hemiola had stats. She knew there were numbers attached to his capabilities, and that meant his Abilities were tied to them as well. The only way the dungeon could’ve separated Hero and Xian was if it was deliberately designed that way by the Yishang. But the dungeon was an abandoned project, there was no way the Yishang had anticipated something like this happening.

Her breath hitched as she was shoved to the ground by Sofiane. Hemiola had teleported behind them while Shui who was lost in her thoughts, but Sofiane had been prepared for it. Where she’d stood half a second prior, a metal rod was finishing its downward arc.

Sofiane caught himself from falling with outstretched palms and used the leverage to kick out at Hemiola, nailing him in the arm. It felt like kicking a brick wall.

“Sixty seconds!” Sofiane shouted. “That’s the cooldown on the teleport!”

Before Hemiola could attack Shuixing, now lying helplessly on the floor, Sofiane thrusted and slashed with his sword. Damage-wise it barely scratched his opponent, but it forced Hemiola’s attention towards him. That was, until Hemiola got a clean hit with the tip of his rod on the emerald sword, sending it plummeting through the ground and disarming Sofiane.

Shui’s heart pounded. There was no more time left. She had a guess, and it was stupid, but it was all she had.

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

“Pech, how’d you bypass the special event field!?” Shui yelled as Sofiane frantically backpedaled, missing the rod by inches.

“I just didn’t care that there was one,” Pechorin said, putting down cover fire for Sofiane that did nothing but assault Hemiola’s eardrums.

Shuixing made a guess and a prayer and dashed around Hemiola. Lifting her own rod, Light of Hope went off directly in Hemiola’s eyes, blinding him for a moment.

“Agh! What the hell—”

She grasped Sofiane’s wrist and sprinted away from Hemiola who swung his rod wildly in every direction.

“How did you do that!?” Sofiane asked.

“The dungeon has an event field that was never tied to a quest!” Shuixing said.

She called down Bubble Storm to heal some of Daisy’s HP and Natsuko’s broken ribs. The trick to ignoring special event fields was that there was no trick at all. There was a subtle suggestion placed in them, undoubtedly by the Yishang, which told them to obey it, but it was just that: A subtle suggestion. It worked only if you didn’t know it worked.

“Oi! Puffball! Catch!” Natsuko said, tossing Sofiane the katana she stole from Shinshuu.

After a few blinks, Hemiola was focused once again. As Sofiane counted, they were halfway between teleport timings.

“Daisy, keep him pinned! Firecrotch, the usual!” Sofiane said.

Hemiola launched himself forward almost as fast as a teleport, but this time Sofiane was able to turn into a Ball of Lightning. He burst through to the other side of Hemiola and turned human again, ready to swap with Natsuko. Unfortunately, Hemiola was not fending off any stone golems.

“Daisy!?” Sofiane said.

“I don’t know! I don’t know what Shui’s talking about!” Daisy yelled back.

Hemiola swung the rod again. This time it was a feint. Instead of completing the swing, he let Sofiane lock himself into an immobile Perfect Parry stance and waited for the timer on it to run out before completing the swing. Sofiane’s heart stopped.

A second later he was across the room next to Pechorin. Where he’d been standing Natsuko had her palms planted on the floor, kicking upwards at an almost vertical angle. Taking a page out of Hemiola’s own book, she applied a Fire Gale blast to her palms but not her soles. The effect was upwards thrust without using anything that would be counted as an “Ability,” turning the kick from a small HP loss into the raw force of object on object. This force went straight into his jaw.

Hemiola made a choking sound and staggered backwards. With the brief reprieve purchased by Natsuko’s kick, Pechorin ran over to Daisy.

“Pech, what’s going on!? H-How do I use my Abilities!?” Daisy said, clicking her pocket watch to no avail.

“You have to stop trying,” Pechorin said.

“What!?”

“Bypassing the special event field is like poetry. The more you force it, the more your thoughts trap you. If you want to get away from how the Yishang trained you to think, all you have to do is open up. It’s as about as far from the act of grinding for numbers as you can possibly get.”

“But that’s all I know!” Daisy said frantically.

“No it’s not.”

His cryptic remarks were usually charming, but in that moment she wanted to throttle Pechorin. Now was the worst possible time to play the opaque mystery man. Why could he not just give her clear instructions?

“He’s right,” Natsuko called out.

“Right about what!?”

Hemiola launched himself back at Natsuko, leaving her unable to answer Daisy while she fended off the attack.

“Three seconds!” Sofiane yelled.

Three seconds to what? Gods-dammit, all Pechorin had done was get her so jumbled up she forgot what Sofiane was counting. Why was she the only one who didn’t get it? What was she supposed to get?

As she thought that, the world deepened. The lights and shadows playing off the flickering lanterns in the corner of the room seemed to pop out of the world. The gilding and jewels along the walls of the burial chamber arranged themselves in a repeating pattern, and she could see the hand the Yishang had played in designing them. But the strangest sensation of all was that she barely felt like she was there. There was no “good Daisy” or “bad Daisy,” there was just one piece of the drama playing out in the room.

Oh. That’s what Pechorin meant.

He’d put the revelation in his own words because that was the only way he could, but in her own words, her understanding was more like this: Bypassing the special event field was impossible. But if you knew it was there and how it affected you, it was possible to write your own part in the event. In other words, exactly what Hemiola said made Po-Lin different.

Stone gathered around Daisy’s hands and arms. Something told her that Hemiola would attack, and that he wouldn’t come from behind as he had been. She raised both arms as Sofiane’s count reached zero and the next thing she felt was a strange tingling as the rocks on her left arm spasmed and melted through first her body and then the floor while the rest of her remained safely intact.

Rather than angry, Hemiola looked sad. “I guess I didn’t win in time.”

A rhinoceros formed out of the stone of the burial chamber plowed into the back of Hemiola, forcing his face into the stone mitt around Daisy’s other hand. She slammed him to the floor. Guessing correctly again, Daisy leapt back as the air popped with an invisible explosion.

“Wait…” Daisy said. “We’re sharing the special event!”

That was how she kept predicting correctly, she realized. If they were all in effect “writing” a special event, that meant they were tapped into whatever Hemiola did to affect the field too. And with five against one…

“I surrender,” Hemiola said.

Everyone’s first thought was that it was a trick, but he dropped his force dimension-jump rod and kicked it away from him with his hands up.

Natsuko looked at him in confusion. “Wait… what!?”