Rieren hurried over to the captives. The monsters below might be incensed, but it would take them a good amount of time to reach them. If there was even a path to climb up. There was likely at least one, the same one they had taken to get down. Rieren just hadn’t seen any.

There were a few dead bodies here and there, some guards and disciples she hadn’t noticed before. That made no sense. Why kill some but spare the others?

“Mmpmf,” Serace was saying from behind the webs bound over his mouth. “Mmmmppfff.”

“Did you leave him for last?” Rieren asked Amalyse.

She frowned at his struggles. “Not on purpose.”

“He looks agitated.”

Rieren reached him and brought her sword forward. The appearance of the blade stilled him for a moment. With a quick slash, Rieren freed his mouth.

“Thank you,” Serace said. He glared at Amalyse. “She was definitely ignoring me on purpose.”

She shrugged. “The others were more pleasant.”

Amalyse had summoned a smaller sword at the tip of her staff with which she had been trying to free the others. Folend was pulling off several threads that Amalyse had ignored after freeing his limbs. There were a few other guards Rieren didn’t recognize, most of whom were in the process of being freed by Amalyse.

Rieren glanced at the human corpses farther away. “Who are—”

“We need to hurry,” Serace said, cutting her off and pointedly ignoring the bodies as he struggled to pull himself out of the rest of the grey threads. Rieren took pity on him and, after asking him to still himself for another moment, she slashed through most of the rest of the webs. “There’s not much time.”

There was something strange about him. His face was flushed and his eyes were bloodshot. Rieren had never seen that sort of grim, enraged set to his mouth before.

“What urgent business do we need to attend to?” Rieren asked.

Serace stared at her as though she had asked the silliest question possible. He stood up and pointed past the ledge. “The Abyssals are trying to take the Beast Core from that Anachron. We can’t let them have it. Do you have any clue how valuable that thing is?”

She supposed it was valuable. That was a powerful Anachron in the pit. If the Abyssals could excavate out its Beast Core, which was likely a B-Grade one, at least one of them could raise themselves all the way to B-Grade as well.

For Rieren, that would only mean more monsters to fight and kill. More Beast Cores she could sell and earn more Credits.

Though, her greater priority was finding out what had happened to the rest of the Sect.

“Where are the others?” she asked.

“Taking care of the Abyss Rents,” Folend said. He was trying to glare at her, but his expression kept faltering. Apparently, even Folend could feel gratitude, if reluctantly so. “We were left here to stop the Abyssals from taking the Beast Core.”

“Why is the Beast Core so important?” Amalyse asked.

Rieren nodded. “I would like to know as well.”

“It is how they reproduce,” Kervantes said.

They all turned to see the automaton approaching. He was still far enough that the clinks and clanks of his movement couldn’t be heard, so he had shouted his answer at them.

Rieren frowned down at the pit, where the Abyssals were rousing themselves. “What do you mean?”

“The Beast Cores are what the Abyssals use in conjunction with the dungeon’s recreation capabilities to make more of them. By offering the dungeon to absorb various corrupted Beast Cores, they both corrupt the dungeon’s innate Essence and allow it to create the original holder of the Beast Core.”

Rieren’s eyes widened. “That means they can create an Abyssal version of that Anachron.”

“Correct.”

“Which is exactly why we need to stop those monsters,” Serace said. He started looking around, likely for his weapon. “Also, what is that thing doing with you? He tried to kill us!”

Amalyse and Rieren both stared at Kervantes. The automaton’s gears clicked as it approximated what Rieren supposed had to be a shrug.

“Never mind that,” Rieren said. “He’ll be helping us from here on out. We need to focus on the monsters.”

“But… what can we do against so many of them?” one of the guards at the back asked.

That wasn’t a cowardly question, despite first impressions, and despite Folend’s glare. It was only pragmatic not to take on a battle where they would be disadvantageously outnumbered. That was why Rieren and Amalyse had taken out so many of the Abyssals in one blow first.

“The ledges are narrow,” Serace said. “We can force them to come through a choke point and then we take them down with ease.”

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“There is a better way.” Rieren turned to the automaton. “Traps.”

“Hmm?” Kervantes seemed to consider the notion as though it was foreign to him. “Ah, of course. Traps. The traps we normally reserve for intruders such as yourself. The traps that you apparently know all about.”

“Yes, yes. But is it possible to still use them? Can we activate them on the Abyssals?”

“Hmm. I am no expert. However, I know one who is and she may be able to help.”

“We don’t have the time to deal with hopes and maybes,” Serace said. “Why don’t the rest of us prepare to take that thing down while you prepare your traps?”

Rieren looked down at the Abyssals charging up the path that she had overlooked before. There really were a ton of them. The Enforcers wouldn’t be too much trouble, but she was worried about the stronger ones. There was a large gaggle of Blightmanes and Shadeborns in that little army charging towards them.

“Amalyse.” Rieren found her friend looking at her with the same hard expression that she felt stretching taut over her face. “Can you go with Kervantes and ensure the traps are properly set? The rest of us will hold our ground until you’re done.”

Amalyse looked like she preferred to fight instead, but she nodded. “Alright, automaton. Let’s get going with these traps of yours before the monsters overwhelm us.”

“No one is getting overwhelmed while I’m here,” Folend said, hefting his mace out of his storage ring.

Kervantes tutted. “And they aren’t my traps, as I said. But yes, let us proceed. I suppose I can insist that I always intended to use it upon you intruders instead of the monsters. You just happened to be fortunately standing in the wrong spot.”

They parted quickly. Amalyse and Kervantes headed back the way they had come. A part of Rieren wished to go with them to see where and how the traps were operated, and to make sure Amalyse would be safe, but that wouldn’t be a good decision. She was the strongest among them here. They would need her on the frontlines.

That line of thought nearly made her grimace. Her priorities had shifted over the course of the last few weeks like a leaf blow in a storm.

She had arrived in this timeline hoping that she could do something different. After focusing on attaining strength and power, on ascending higher and higher as much as possible, those seemingly limitless possibilities of growth had suddenly seemed so limited when it came to living life to the fullest.

There had been a tiny bubble of hope that things might have been different this time. That yes, she could have grown strong as her world demanded, but she could have forayed in other directions too.

Rieren could have tried raising a family of her own. Could have tried growing a garden. Could have attempted to become a master in a different art, such as ventriloquism, or poetry, or even creating pottery. None of that was to be. Cruel fate had determined that all would recall the past, not just her, so now she was being forced to contend with that.

How in the world was one supposed to live a new life when every single day, that life threatened to collapse? How was one to dream when nightmares lived in reality?

Rieren pushed down her building fury. For all that things had well and truly gone to the dogs, all wasn’t lost just yet. Most people of Lionshard Sect were still alive. Her father had to have survived. Even Lionshard mountain hadn’t fallen. Not completely, at least, though what she’d seen of the Banishedborn’s handiwork on the surface didn’t leave her with much hope.

The point was that all their lives could still be rebuilt. Perhaps the approach they had taken so far had been lacking in certain ways. Maybe they couldn’t simply go on taking classes and exams, learning and sparring and growing in a closed environment any longer. Maybe the fundamental way a Sect normally ran would have to be changed.

But that was for the Elders to decide. For the Sect Leader to determine. All Rieren owed them was her assistance in bringing them back together and destroying the immediate threats.

And then, perhaps, it would be time for her to leave them altogether.

“They’re nearly here,” Serace said. “Get ready!”

He was brandishing a gleaming new sword, apparently acquired after he had sold some of the nearby Abyssal corpses to the System Shop. A bit rude, considering Rieren was the one to have killed most of the monsters, but circumstances dictated necessities.

After all, she had “stolen” most of their kills while trying to get something that could stop the undead Fellserpent too.

Nevertheless, Rieren quickly sold the corpses around her to get herself some more Credits. The only she had to pause at was the Shadeborn. Bastard Abyssal was too big to be sold off without being chopped up first. Size was the only true limit regarding selling things to the System Shop. That was why the Sect hadn’t simply peddled off the Fellserpent’s body.

Except, as she sold off one monster after another, she finally arrived at the human bodies. One of the corpses was Kalrace.

She twisted around to find Serace staring at his friend’s body at Rieren’s feet. All that anger and determination now made sense, but at the moment, Serace’s expression had simply gone vacant.

“Serace,” Rieren said. “I am sorry.”

“Don’t be,” he said after a while. “Just make those cursed Abyssals sorry instead.”

He swallowed, then quickly looked away. Rieren’s heart lurched. It was easy to imagine herself standing in his position, easy to see Amalyse’s corpse lying where Kalrace’s was. Would she have been able to hold herself together the way he was able to? The long decades of her last life had taken her through loss after loss until grief had no longer held any meaning.

But that first moment of understanding that she would never see her loved one smile again, that first hammer blow of shock and anguish, that never ceased being debilitating.

“They’re nearly here,” Folend said.

He was right. Rieren forced herself to focus on their current predicament. The monsters were charging up the platforms at an incredible pace. They really did have to be ready. The guards prepared themselves while Rieren and Folend joined Serace to stand before them with their own weapons in hand. But then they were interrupted by a shout from behind.

“The trap won’t work there,” Amalyse shouted, running at them. Rieren frowned. She needed to not put that kind of pressure on her leg. “You need to go to the middle.”

“What?” Folend yelled back.

“The middle of the room,” she said as she arrived. “We need to take them all there. That’s where the traps will have the most effect. They come out through the passageways.”

Rieren was starting to understand. Of course, the dungeon’s traps hadn’t been built to affect an entire chamber that had appeared spontaneously during the mountain’s collapse. As such, they needed to corral the Abyssals into a location where the traps would work, and that meant pulling them to the centre of the pit, where the passageway normally would have run.

“Then let us not wait a moment longer,” Rieren said.

“What are we going to do?” Serace asked. “Those Abyssals have blocked up the platform.”

Rieren looked around. Jumping down wasn’t a possibility. They were too high up. There were enough handholds for them to climb down with, but that would again be too slow.

“We’ll charge through,” Folend said, stepping forward and tapping his mace on the ground. “Those Abyssals will be regretting forever that they couldn’t keep me trapped for long.”

“They would have if it wasn’t for us,” Amalyse muttered.

“I agree,” Rieren said. “No time to waste.”

“I’ll go with you. Kervantes can keep watch until we’re in position.”

That assumed that whatever location they had to go to activate the traps had a clear enough view of the chamber. Rieren pushed those thoughts out of the way as they started rushing at the approaching monsters.

It was time to fight again.