Before Gwen could react, Kitty intervened, sparing her from finding out whether her non-newtonian shield was capable of absorbing the impact from an iron girder falling from a high-rise.

As the frontal lobe of Gwen's Shield cracked, taking on the likeness of frosted glass, Kitty instantly completed the circuit for a Wall of Ice which erupted underfoot from her barrier, diverting the momentum of the terrific blow aside, shattering as it consumed the kinetic energy.

The foursome then turned their gaze upward, where the transmuted aperture of the ceiling gaped like a dark maw with folded iron for teeth.

There was first a smell of burnt flesh. Then a girl-Mage descended through the air.

"Lulan Li?!" Gwen spluttered with shock and bewilderment, her Divination Sigil screeching like a cat dragged across a chalkboard. "What are you doing here? Were you in that room?!"

The girl was half-naked and half-baked; Gwen's baptism of lightning had destroyed her riding leather to charcoal. Lulan's dark head of hair was a burnt mess, smoking in clumps and missing most of its mass. Her eyebrows were gone as well, giving her a comical expression, while her skin wept from a dozen wounds gooey with mangled heat-rash. There was blood seeping down from her ears and her nostrils, but even so, her irises were two glowing orbs of molten iron locked solely onto Gwen.

When she opened her mouth to speak, Gwen swore she could see smoke billowing from Lulan's throat.

"Gwen Song… Daggers… give me back brother's daggers," the girl murmured, spitting splutters of scarlet with every rise and fall of her chest.

Gwen felt an instant impulse to lie—to delay until they had the time and convenience to sort out Lulan without a dozen Slavers rushing toward their location as they dallied. She did not doubt that the other Slavers knew their monster was a smoking mess of ravaged offal by now and coming in hot.

"Lulan, are you... okay?"

"Cao! We don't have time for this." Kitty hissed. "Glacial Spike!"

A conic missile of ice materialised with a crinkling clatter of frigid air, then launched itself with terrific velocity toward Lulan.

"Parry!"

Effortlessly, Lulan raised a hand, forming a slab of iron that deflected the blast. A rush of cold air filled the space between Gwen and Lulan as Kitty's spell exploded, half covering the blade with rime.

The blade barrier barely moved.

Kitty's brows knitted.

Gwen gulped. That was a tier 4 Evocation spell, and Lulan wasn't an Abjurer. Was the girl using the weight of her blade as a form of defence? How stoic was a slab of iron ripped from the bowels of the Elemental Plane of Earth!

Still, she attempted to disarm the girl verbally.

"Lulan, listen to me. Now's not the time to discuss Kusu's implements. If you could just calm down for a minute—"

"Don't lie to me!" Lulan's face was a mask of anguish and pain, livid with suffering. "THRUST!"

Another girder of iron took a split second to materialise, then sped toward Gwen's Shield with the momentum of a rockslide.

"Fuck!" Richard snapped; his cool finally depleted. Gwen felt his frustration, for Dick's water Shields were weak against a specific type of magic—and it just so happens that Lulan specialised in that same form.

He had wanted Gwen to continue her training - but it looked as though circumstances had rapidly changed for the worse.

"Gwen, LEAVE HER! Regroup! Back to the tunnels!" he shouted at her.

"Lea! Elemental Form!"

Silvery Conjuration filled the air as Richard's Undine manifested in full. It was the first time Gwen had seen Richard Conjure Lea in her entirety—and the effect reminded her of when her Master brought forth Sufina's full power.

A resplendent goddess in blue materialised, hovering six feet from the floor, instantly drawing every mote of elemental water toward her consolidating form. First, a head full of rope-like cobalt hair distended, followed by a long, elegant neck, a serpentine waist and two pale white stalks for legs. As her elfin form solidified, motes of bean-green mossy liquid dripped from her toes. In Gwen's eyes, Lea's appearance, ethereal and elven, was equally cruel and beautiful.

"Human! Release your weapon and begone!" the Undine commanded Lulan, her fluttering, inch-long lashes opening to reveal sapphire-blue eyes without pupils. Her voice was ethereal, unearthly, informing the young Mages in front and behind that indeed, she was a higher-order being, a resident of the Elemental Plane of Water.

SCHWING—

What greeted Lea was a sword-strike, cutting her watery torso in half.

Water was the most harmonious of all elements. The very weakness that ensured Richard's Shields could not block Lulan's attacks—but that also implied Lulan could not harm Richard's familiar.

As expected, Lea scoffed.

"Lea!" Richard urged his Familiar to focus on attacks and belay her love of posturing. As a fellow Conjurer, Gwen knew Elemental manifestation consumed mana at an atrocious rate.

Lea's eyes flashed.

She opened her mouth, and what emerged was a string of strange invocations innate to creatures of her Elemental race.

The Undine was a creature connected to a place of infinite mass and space. As a creature of the estuary and the river, Lea's link was to the brackish flow of streams fecund with life.

Lulan affected another swing.

Once again, Kitty diverted the strike with a grunt.

With a simple gesture, Lea opened an elliptic portal four-foot in diameter. A jet blast of water, forced under the immense pressure of the near-infinite tonnage of the watery Plane, erupted horizontally and struck Lulan across the chest, blasting her off her feet and launching the unsuspecting Sword Mage into the furthest concrete wall.

Four seconds later, Richard was stumbling.

"Lea!" He called out weakly. "Come back."

Sullenly, his Familiar returned.

Dark and tenebrous waters thick with reeds and silt, now knee-deep, sloshed back and forth across the filtration room. The party turned their attention toward the concrete wall, where Lulan's pressed into the rebar-reinforced concrete.

The Sword Mage's arm was twisted in impossible directions, broken in two places, one leg now hung limply. She slid from the wall into the water with almost comical slowness like a mannikin with its joints smashed. The only indication that she was still alive was the dull glow of wine still circulating in her eyes, glaring at Gwen with a dark and unwavering passion.

Lulan attempted to move, but a racking pain seemed to overcome her twisted body, sending a jolt of agony into her face despite her most ardent effort to remain stoic and impassive. When she attempted to lift herself from the floor again, a torrent of blood erupted from her nostrils, indicating extensive internal damage.

"Jesus, Dick." Gwen winced.

The others likewise could scarcely believe Lulan was alive as well.

Richard's eyes moved from Gwen to Lulan, Kitty and Mayuree, pondering the possibilities.

Her cousin seemed to withhold something he wanted to say.

"What a waste," Richard muttered under his breath. "Okay, let's regroup."

Lea returned to Richard's side, again becoming ethereal and invisible. Manifesting Lea in her full glory was no easy task for a Conjurer without the necessary expertise to control a high-tier humanoid Spirit, much less utilising her innate ability to such a degree.

Her cousin materialised a mana potion and injected himself in the thigh. Alchemy fatigue implied that his next dose would only be half as effective.

"Gwen, you alright?" Richard asked.

"Y-yeah. Jesus…" Gwen muttered, still shaking herself from the rapidly escalating events of the last two minutes or so. "Bloody impressive spell, Dick."

"You tanked that sword with only Shield," Richard replied. "Isn't that more impressive?"

"Are we finishing her off?" Kitty turned to Gwen with impatience. "Your enemy, your choice."

"Gwen," Richard coughed. "Waste not, want not. Caliban's around, right?"

"GWEN—!" Mayuree's warning came on yet again before Gwen could catch on to Richard's suggestion. "AGAIN!"

Gwen looked up bewilderingly while Mayuree directed their attention toward the hole Lulan had come through.

"Something's coming!" Mayuree shouted, moving to the side.

"Shield!" Richard called out to his familiar. "LEA! MAKE A DOME NOW!"

Lea instantly formed an umbrella-shaped Shield large enough to cover both himself and Gwen, but still, the flood of milky white liquid that came from above splattered off the walls and splashed on the shield, frothing as it slid into the knee-deep water.

Besides Richard, Kitty had done for Mayuree what Richard had done for Gwen, erecting a wall of ice that momentarily protruded from an adjacent wall while she effortlessly dodged the incoming tide.

When the foursome looked up, they could see five aberrant silhouettes imposed against a blinding backlight of Dancing Lights descending toward them.

Five Carrion Crawlers, each more massive than the one Gwen had slain, were roving downward toward them, adhering to the smooth sides of the hole shaped by Lulan when she had earlier intruded into the chamber.

Fucking Five?! Gwen felt her mind reel with an unpleasant realisation. So they were breeding them! The monster wasn't just a single creature being reared for whatever nefarious reason! There was a large-scale professional set-up! They had all underestimated the criminal undercurrent running under the ferroconcrete of the Lost Districts!

But wait! Gwen sensed her rationality challenged by their precarious circumstance. None of this made any sense. What would some ruffians from the Triads gain by attacking them? Did these fools have a death wish? Are they not afraid of Purges? They were LCSS candidates! Students of Fudan!

She scanned his companions.

She couldn't see any reason a District would risk a Purge for her friends. Were they here for her? Did the Slavers have a network where they communicated and exchanged information on rare specimens akin to how collectors traded the location of exotic Magical Beasts?

Her eyes gazed past the monsters covered by the glittering mass of Dancing Lights to the hole beyond. Was this group the ones who they'd seen before? Or were they another party? How should she fight them now?

Would it have been wiser if she had murdered them in cold blood?

[https://imgur.com/xJGXTPm.jpg]

Lulan felt the red mist fall away.

The berserker's haze had not departed by choice. It was forced to retreat by her battered body, now incapable of sustaining the stress put on by the Heart Iron.

Then the pain struck.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

Searing, burning, scalding pain that oppressed the breath in her body.

Barely lucid from her torturous injury, she watched the Water Mage with Gwen erect an impressive dome that splashed the milky liquid all over, splattering the walls and herself. Where the liquid touched her bleeding body, it quickly frothed, eating into her skin.

Numbness, paralysis, and incapacitation, Lulan recognised the symptoms but was glad for their anaesthesia. Without the chemical insensibility, she would have likely perished from the shock.

In her consciousness, she recognised the beasts as Carrion Crawlers—specially bred variants with a highly potent dose of the paralytic saliva. From the bestiary, she knew that despite the horrid nature of the Crawlers, they were often bred for the many medicinal agents extracted from their glans. Their saliva could be distilled to become poison, used as a replacement for morphine, or synthesised into alchemical gas for use in the battlefield against troops of Demi-humans like Orcs or Hobs. Likewise, their ichorous blue blood was a precious reagent used in healing magic or even distilled to produce a potent opioid.

Somewhere between her thoughts drifting, she acknowledged that she was bleeding out.

With a wet plop, a Crawler landed beside her.

She was covered with wounds, on the verge of death, and unable to fight.

That made her its favourite sort of prey.

The pallid-fleshed aberration approached. From either side of its teeth-lined maw extended two pairs of suction-cupped tentacles barbed with jaundiced teeth-hooks.

Lulan felt the birth of a new awareness press upon her brain, one that she understood in its entirely—despair. The despair of knowing one died for nothing.

Was this how her life was going to end? Like a dog with its legs snapped, fed to a monster like carrion?

Kusu… she had caused him no ends of trouble.

As the Crawler's tentacles grappled her flesh, Lulan wondered if her brother would cry.

[https://imgur.com/xJGXTPm.jpg]

Gwen's team had made it no more than a dozen meters back the other way when they ran into the ambush party that they had seen in the upper chambers of B4, ratifying Richard's worst fears.

The Mages in the enemy party immediately opened up with a barrage of Flaming Hands, Magic Missiles, and Scorching Rays. An Abjurer in the ambush party brushed away a few Water Bolts Richard sent his way, erecting a half-dome Earthen Shield, forming a pincer attack with the Mages from the other side.

"Shit!" Richard now understood the meaning of one step wrong, and every step was a foot deeper into the grave. He had placed too much faith in Mayuree's detection spells and vastly underestimated the complexity of the tunnels that had been worked into the basement by the locals.

Mayuree's demonstration of her prowess had proved too impressive. Her seemingly omniscient knowledge of the lay of the land had made them all lower their guard. Locating the creature and scouting the tunnels that lead to it was one thing—but they should have had the patience to scout out the other tunnels with her Arcane Eye. That their team stopped at their quarry was his mistake, for he was the oldest and the most experienced.

Then there was Gwen's proposal.

Was it her fault then? She was the one who had urged that they immediately slay the creature and extract themselves from the level for five quick CCs.

Or was it Lulan's fault, or were more extraordinary powers at play?

He glanced over at his cousin, who was firing off Lighting Bolts at the Crawlers. As usual, her spells were supremely effective against Magic Creatures, and the deranged worms screeched and screamed as they fried.

Kitty, likewise, was flitting back and forth through the air, nimbly firing off darts of Glacial Spike that on impact snapped off tentacles and slowed the Crawler's movements.

Mayuree now exhibited the classic weakness of the single-class Diviner. She had to rely on her expendable Wands, blasting away at the Crawlers and keeping them at bay with Scorching Ray and Magic Missiles. In addition, it was up to Richard as the Abjurer to protect her, as Gwen wasn't yet proficient enough to be both Abjurer and Evoker.

"Gwen! Can you get us out of here?" Richard implored his cousin. "I can keep us Shielded while you work the Dimension Door."

Gwen could teleport one of them at a time, with her mana pool; she should be able to take Mayuree and Kitty to safety. As for himself, Richard was confident that should he flood the tunnels with Lea, he could at least escape.

"I can—"

WHOMP—!

Gwen's answer was lost as a blast of explosive air discharged in the middle of Richard's Shield, displacing the flowing mass of water for a split second. To his cousin's horror, a few splattered drops of the nasty, creamy Crawler phlegm landed across his face and arms.

"Fuck!" Richard immediately directed a stream of clear water to his face and limb. His timely action was sound, but the venom was most potent.

Gwen watched as Richard's face drooped, losing all expression.

"WEER!" Richard called for his Familiar once more, his voice mangled by the injury.

Lea manifested and took over Richard's Shielding of his companions, demonstrating one of the top reasons Creature Conjurers were unmatched. He fumbled in his ring, produced a Remove Poison injector, and slammed it into his thigh.

"Garrrgh!" He grunted as the magical adrenaline dispelled the paralytic alchemical effect. "Fuck!"

"Blizzard!" Seeing Richard taking a hit, Kitty could no longer hope to preserve her mana. She turned upward the front of the party where the second group of Slavers were trying to close in, then opened up a long-range, wide-radius AOE.

Instantly, shards of ice and slivers of arcane frost pelted the Abjurer's Shields, turning the ground to slush and rime.

"Gwen! Help Kitty!" Richard howled.

By now, Gwen had taken enough of a pause to resummon both her Familiars. Whatever impacts Caliban might have on her body, the situation was now life or death.

"Caliban! Keep them off us! Clear a path!"

Caliban had taken on its most mana-efficient form, the scorpion-spider.

Her netherworld fiend leapt into being, taking with it a chunk of her vitality no longer offset by her waning supply of Druidic essence, then charged the crawlers with its scything limbs.

"Ariel!"

Gwen's marten emerged in its Mongoose form, doubling the firepower of her Evocation Lightning.

Between their Glacial Spikes, Lightning Bolts, Wands and Richard's Shielding, the second ambush party slowed to a proverbial crawl, becoming entrenched by their defence.

As for the other side, the Carrion Crawlers were fighting a protracted battle of attrition.

"Blast BOLT!" His cousin gritted her teeth and channelled a sizeable portion of her mana through both herself and Ariel. The twin blasts of arcing electricity connected with the group of Crawlers, striking three in a row.

Immediately, the tunnel filled with fumes reeking of cooked flesh.

"SKREEEE—!"

The creatures' screech was like a mob of insane infants.

In the next moment, the party had expected the things to explode, or fall, or topple over.

Instead, the whole group of Crawlers glowed a shade of emerald, then came on again.

"Healing Magic!" Mayuree cried out in dismay. "They have a healer with them!"

"Oi, you gotta be shitting me!" Richard gnashed his teeth.

The party regarded one another with looks of doubt and disbelief, hesitant at this new information, A Combat Healer? The Slavers—ruffians and scoundrels of the undercity—had a battle-ready Cleric with them? It was already absurd that some mid-tier Mages from the Lost Districts were pinning them in a tunnel with sedan sized maggots. But now they also have a healer capable of casting ranged area heals? That would make the healer at tier 6 at the very least!

At once, Richard thought about Secretariat Choi's offer of 20 CCs.

If this hidden prize was what the CCs were for, it made perfect sense.

The problem now was that they were stuck between concrete and harder concrete. The escalation of the party's already dire circumstances meant they could be injured and sent back in disgrace.

As for death or capture? The risk was not high.

Gwen could escape by herself, though she would refuse. Her mana pool and her Dimension Door made her the least likely to be caught.

Kitty could also escape by herself, but likewise, she would not leave Mayuree.

Moreover, Gwen could take one of them with her, which meant Mayuree.

As for Richard, he would do his best.

The problem was if one of them were caught alone by the paralysing slime of the worms.

Had Secretariat Choi anticipated this? Would the smiling villain come to their rescue? Most importantly, would he be held accountable if the students were maimed? As far as Richard could deduce, fear of disadvantage to himself was the only reason why the Major would send someone to aid them.

CRACK—

The student Mages became aware of another impending crisis. The walls and the floors were shifting, boxing them inward.

"WOCAO!" Even Mayuree was losing her cool. "Someone's using Stone Shape on the walls! They're trying to box us in!"

The Diviner quickly materialised her Stone Shape wand and countered with borrowed Transmutation. Comparatively, her wand was at the minimum tier required for the spell, possessing only ten charges, meaning a maximum of eight odd minutes. The opposing Transmuter, assuming they were of average talent, could keep casting until they were OOM, furthermore restoring themselves with injectors.

"Kitty?" Gwen turned to their Transmuter. "Can you Stone Shape?"

"I am an ICE MAGE!" Kitty snapped at Gwen cattily. "AIR and WATER!"

CRACK— CRACK—

Their fighting space just narrowed by half a meter.

"By the Naga Goddesses!" Mayuree swore. "I can't hold them, Richard!"

"Gwen! Take Mayuree out of here with your Dimension Door!" Kitty yelled.

"We'll be fine!" Richard affirmed Kitty's call for an expeditious retreat. "Pop a potion, take Mayuree, and get out of here. Go!"

Gwen looked toward Mayuree, who shook her head angrily. "I am not leaving the two of you!"

"Now's not the time, you idiot!" Kitty was losing her patience. "Richard has Lea, and I can fly and Blink!"

Crack—Crack—CRACK—

The walls closed in.

FUCK! Richard's mind screamed with frustration. How dare these bastards fuck with them? God damn it! He should have killed the fucking lot of them as soon as they entered the Districts.

He needed to get them out of there somehow.

ELEMENTAL SWARM—he thought immediately.

Gwen could use that.

The Void variety.

But a Void Swarm was a double-edged blade.

Or Elemental Sphere? The AOE was too small to encompass both front and back, not to mention she now lacked the Druidic Essence for the version Ariel had manifested earlier.

The walls shuddered.

Richard made up his mind to take his cousin out. Damn the others.

"DICK!" Her cousin turned to him with the light of an epiphany shining in her electric eyes.

“I am going to get Lulan! She got us into this, and she can get us out of this!" She shouted over the ding of Crawlers, the crumbling tunnel, the splashing of poison on Shields, and bursts of blizzard and ice to their front and back.

"How do you know she's not with them?" Kitty shouted back.

"You think Lulan is capable of laying a trap like this?" Gwen fired back. "We need her absurd offensive abilities—there's no time! I am going to make her an offer she can't refuse!"

"Don't waste your fucking time, get Mia—"

"Kitty! SHUT UP!" Mayuree screamed at her friend, causing the girl to flinch. "Gwen, go! You can do it. I know you can."

Richard was amazed that Kitty had the extra energy to glare at her friend, who looked apologetic, then glower at Gwen with her jaws clenched in vexation.

"Gwen, are you sure?" Richard asked. "I can manage one more push with Lea. We can bullrush the rear. What if Lulan is dead?"

"She's alive," Mayuree said suddenly. "I can sense her still. Also, I can tell this is a... safe strategy."

The party turned to Mayuree.

"It'll work," the Diviner reminded them cryptically. "I have a good feeling about this."

"Thanks, Mia." Gwen turned toward the direction where she had last seen Lulan. The girl had been wounded badly, but Gwen had a solution for that. So long as the Sword Mage still had breath, Gwen was sure she could bring her around. "Caliban, distract them! Ariel! You help!"

"Shaa—Shaa—"

"EE—!"

Her cousin stabbed a mana potion into her thigh, shuddering as her mana pool refilled. Meanwhile, her pets bolted forward, taking advantage of the enclosed space to confuse her foes.

Gwen shook out the tension paralysing her body, feeling the empowering magic encompassing every sinew and muscle, then produced her Chameleon Cloak and wrapped it around her shoulders, covering the top half of her body.

"If Lulan dies or refuses—" Richard affirmed his cousin's valour. "Come back and Dimension Door Mayuree out first. I can get away through the water without drama."

Gwen affirmed his wisdom with a nod.

Richard redoubled the rigidity of his barriers, then commanded Lea to offer a distraction by misting the surrounding air.

"Dimension Door!"

And just like that, his cousin was gone.

[https://imgur.com/xJGXTPm.jpg]

Gwen was confident her plan would work.

It had to.

Her choice was a win-win for herself, for Lulan, and her party. If Lulan Li was idiotic or thick-headed enough to refuse, then the onus of what happened next was no one's fault but her own.

As she conjured the courage to venture outside Richard's barrier, her chest felt on the verge of bursting. But there was no recourse now. She was the one who got them into this mess, and now she had to dig them out of this hole. She had to become stronger. And she had to take responsibility.

"Dimension Door!"

With her growing command of the translocation spell, Gwen knew she could teleport further and more accurately. Therefore, she had calculated precisely the distance to where she had last seen Lulan before releasing the spell.

Her exit had been a slight wrinkle in space, but her arrival was a tenebrous burst of inky Void. Though precarious, she preferred the Void version of her Dimension Door because, unlike the lightning's thunderclap, the vitality-expanding variety was whisper quiet.

As expected, she appeared a safe distance away from the slavers. Very quickly, Gwen orientated herself and looked down toward Lulan's body.

Holy shit! Her mind reeled and recoiled as she caught sight of the Sword Mage a few feet away, half-submerged in the brackish water.

Lulan Li was missing an arm and half-covered in viscous white-goo. From the looks of the stump, one of the Crawlers had chewed it off a few moments ago. Were it not for the fact that somehow, Lulan's reinforcement Magic still coloured her pale complexion with a reddish shade, Gwen would have teleported back already.

She materialised a thick blanket without further hesitation, ready to wrap the girl. The only part of Lulan's corpse-like form that moved was her eyes.

From a blanched and disfigured face, pupils the colour of wine glared at Gwen with a resentment that could set the world on fire.

Gwen met those eyes without hesitation.

"Lulan Li," she spoke with absolute certainty. "Come with me if you want to live.