“Who the hell—?” was all Natsuko could say before her attacker’s bladed biwa forced her wine bottle down to the ice floor.

The force should have shattered the glass bottle and the floor beneath it were it not for the strange, suspended state of the not-Dungeon. And Natsuko should have been sliding into two pieces after the follow-up swing, were it not for Daisy. Holding back the blade of the biwa was some kind of glowing blue rock angel. Despite her dainty appearance, the angel was slowly pushing the biwa back towards the black-cloaked attacker. With twin, cavern-shaking booms, the figure pulled their instrument-weapon free. Invisible shockwaves blew the angel’s arms off at the elbow.

Casually, their assailant uncurled the fingers of the angel’s severed hands from the grip on the instrument, letting them fall to the eerily undisturbed ice. The moment of calm after the raw display of power had a disarming hypnotism to it that froze everyone in the chamber where they lay knocked over. As the last finger of the second hand uncurled, the figure flicked a single golden string.

Daisy clicked her pocket watch and a giant wall of sand put itself between their party and another body-shattering shock wave. The plume of sand blew back into Natsuko and Shuixing, pelting them like a thousand tiny daggers. But they were alive.

“Go!” Sofiane yelled. His voice shattered the surreal moment, dissolving it into pure chaos.

From where he’d been knocked over, Sofiane turned into a ball of lightning and shot over to Pechorin, yanked him to his feet. Daisy’s usual happy-go-lucky expression sharpened into needle-point focus on her opponent. It frightened Natsuko that she wasn’t going for a kill, and was instead focused on countering attacks. That meant whoever was attacking them was as strong—or stronger—than Daisy, and as strong as Daisy meant the only thing preventing them from being turned into a shower of bloody giblets was Daisy herself.

“Run on my mark,” Daisy said under her breath to Natsuko and Shuixing.

As the whirlwind of sand settled to the ice, the black figure emerged from the haze. Their hood blew up to reveal a brass Thalia mask smiling back at them. Behind, Harald’s team cowered in terror. Margaret tried to make a run for it, but the biwa whipped out and sliced her in half, her upper body falling soundlessly to the floor, eyes blank in permanently frozen terror. The air dropped out of the room as everyone witnessed a Hero die for good.

“This is about the papers, isn’t it?” asked Daisy, the only one whose voice still worked. Never had Natsuko been more grateful for the Vermögenburgh Pie-Baking Contest.

The masked figure nodded, their expression hidden behind the smiling visage.

“And you’re attacking us because you don’t want the news to get out?”

The figure shook their head as they crept towards Daisy.

“Are you going to use it to have power over other Heroes?”

The figure shook its head again and wagged its finger, only a few yards away now.

Daisy noticed a change in the figure’s stance. “Now.”

Natsuko grabbed Shuixing and sprinted for the exit to the cavern. They felt their bodies grow lighter for a moment as pressure rushed out of the chamber, right before that same pressure rushed back in with an ear-splitting thunderclap. Natsuko looked behind her to see Daisy skidding to a halt, a summoned stone hand bracing her and stopping her from getting blown back.

In a perfect line along the floor, walls, and ceiling was a glittering trail where Daisy’s sand had been snap-pressurized into glass. If ever Natsuko needed proof that she was hilariously outclassed by the top Heroes, it was in the bare fact that Daisy and the masked figure were throwing basic elemental abilities at one another. Neither had broken out their Desperation Art yet. Both were coaxing the other into helping them build up the pressure for it.

“I’ll cover our escape,” Daisy said, the stone hand under her dissolving as she backpedaled towards her teammates and prepared to break into a run.

Before she ran herself, Natsuko’s gaze met the three remaining members of Harald’s team. A plan—a very stupid one—popped into her head, and because of the way Natsuko’s head worked, it didn’t go through any drafting or revision before it arrived at the execution stage. She pressed her bottle into Sofiane’s hands.

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“Take it and run,” Natsuko said.

“Wait, what!? Natsu—!”

With her Jack class, she had access to a toolbox so wide and varied that the handful of other Jack heroes hadn’t even scratched the surface of what they could do. Often it made her powers so cumbersome they felt useless. Sometimes, they required a wing and a prayer just to use remotely correctly. And that was if she had prepared the correct ones for the day. So she prayed to every god whose name she could remember and the Yishang and dashed towards the figure.

Shuixing gasped.

“Oh no…” Daisy said.

Pechorin nodded. “An honorable death.”

Natsuko could try to anticipate when the bladed biwa would swing to take her head off, but she would be too slow, so she ducked way too soon. This ended up being exactly on time.

Ignoring the pain of her kneecaps colliding with the ice, Natsuko dropped into a knee-slide. Her orange hair fluttered from the wake of the lethal swing as it came inches from her scalp. Using her Fire Gale ability, flame shot from her feet and propelled her out of the way of the lightning-fast follow-up strike. A moment later she tumbled into Faisal who fell backwards into Harald who let out a moan as his wounds were re-opened.

“Sorry!” Natsuko said.

The figure glanced back at her, but half of their attention was forced to remain on Daisy, the only one who was remotely a threat. Daisy clicked her pocket watch again and the maw of a giant sand worm appeared underneath the figure and gnashed at their legs. Despite the attack connecting, their opponent looked more inconvenienced than in danger of being killed.

This bought Natsuko a few precious seconds. She pulled Faisal up and gestured for the raccoon girl to help Harald.

“Head towards them,” Natsuko said, pointing at Sofiane and Shuixing watching her execute her suicidal plan. “And it’s a one-hit kill so… don’t get hit!”

Unfortunately, the person who could one-hit kill them was standing between them and the entrance to the cavern. As soon as she said this, Natsuko bolted for a group of ice stalagmites to the side of the cavern. At the same time, the figure cut through the summoned sandworm’s jaws, turning it back into lifeless sand.

“W-What about Margaret!?” the raccoon girl called out after her.

Not knowing if she’d reach the stalagmites in time, Natsuko hurled herself forward at them, then cast her Swap ability. Another crack of thunder resonated through the chamber, this time emanating from where their attacker lay sprawled at the foot of the stalagmites in the spot Natsuko had been a split second before. Even blocked by the impenetrable ice features, the shockwave still knocked the wind out of Natsuko.

“Go, go, go!” Natsuko yelled.

Everyone but Daisy sprinted into the central chamber of the Dungeon of Stars. Covering their escape, she threw up wall after wall, creature after creature of rock, sand, and stone the moment her abilities came off cooldown. It was still only just enough to keep up with the mysterious assailant’s onslaught of thunderous shockwaves. While Daisy kept them busy, Sofiane zipped up to the top platform, taking Natsuko’s bottle with him. Faisal and the raccoon girl guided an injured Harald up the winding paths through the caves, taking an agonizingly long amount of time. Pechorin tried to offer himself up as a heroic sacrifice, but Natsuko and Shuixing dragged him with them. Once the others cleared out, Daisy prepared to use her Desperation Art.

Above, Sofiane waited near the exit, bottle in hand. In the event that everyone else had been brutally murdered, he was prepared to do what was necessary and wield the wine bottle against the mysterious black figure. Excitement and fear rose together like twin spirals. Would he really use it? Could he really remove another Hero from the world?

Natsuko came around the corner and ducked under the bottle swing, leaving it to collide with Pechorin’s chest as Sofiane yelped in terror. Pechorin, however, stayed firmly in place. Natsuko tore her bottle out of Sofiane’s grip.

“Gimme my bottle back you idiot!”

Sofiane was aghast. “I’m sorry! I-I thought it might have been— wait, why didn’t it work on Pech?”

“I’m not telling you, dumbass, you’ll do something stupid.”

“Whatever. Where’s Daisy?”

As soon as the words left his mouth, the entire dungeon convulsed. Everyone was thrown to the floor as the world itself jarred out of its confines for a moment. Then it stopped. They were still picking themselves off the floor when Harald and his teammates limped into the entryway.

“W-Was that your girl just now?” Harald asked.

“Yeah, that was her,” Sofiane said, uncrumpling his poofy clothes.

“How can you be so certain? Perhaps she has been violently butchered, and we are next on the chopping block,” Pechorin said.

“Cuz I’ve seen her Desperation Art before,” Sofiane said. “Seeing it for the first time was when I knew I had no chance of making the Top 10.”

“So… does that mean the shithead that attacked us is dead?” Natsuko asked.

Sofiane, visibly deflated at the reminder of his own relative lack of power, shrugged. “Don’t know. Seems like he’s as much of a badass as Daisy so…”

With the sound of grinding rocks, Daisy stepped off a stone pillar of her creation which crumbled behind her. It took a few moments for their brains to register that she was sprinting for the exit. That was all the information they needed to join her.