Chapter : 1845

  The guard’s eyes widened. He reached out with one of his four hands and snatched a stone. He popped it into his chest-mouth. Crunch. He chewed the rock. A look of bliss washed over his ugly face. His shoulders slumped, and the frantic twitching of his limbs stopped.

  "Mmm," the guard groaned. "Quiet. It tastes like... stopping. Good. Very good."

  He waved his spear lazily. "Go in. Sell your rocks. But don't let the vines get you."

  Ben’s eyes snapped to the guard. "Vines?" he asked, his voice sharp. He didn't like unknown variables.

  The guard didn't answer. He was too busy enjoying the numbness of the stone.

  Lloyd grabbed Ben’s arm and pulled him through the gate before Ben could interrogate the guard. "Focus, Ben. We’re in."

  Inside, the city was a nightmare of activity. The streets were narrow and winding, crowded with thousands of demons. The buildings leaned over the streets, casting long, dark shadows that seemed to move on their own.

  There were no houses, only "feeding stalls." Everywhere Lloyd looked, demons were fighting over food. He saw bowls of glowing green soup that bubbled. He saw skewers of meat that twitched. The noise was deafening—a constant roar of demand and consumption.

  "Target rich environment," Ben whispered, leaning close to Lloyd. "But the noise discipline is atrocious. How does anyone command an army in this racket?"

  "They don't," Lloyd said. His head was throbbing. The "noise" Lloyd had detected outside was ten times stronger inside the walls. It was a constant, low-frequency hum that vibrated in his bones. "They just point them at the food and let them run. The city is breathing, Ben. It’s alive."

  They moved through the crowd, heading toward the upper district where the palace of Beelzebub sat like a crown on the hill. Lloyd kept his eyes moving, scanning for traps. He noticed something disturbing about the cobblestones under their feet. They were warm. They were soft. It felt less like walking on stone and more like walking on hardened skin.

  "Rubel didn't just find a hiding spot," Lloyd noted grimly. "He helped build a fortress. This entire city is designed to funnel power to the top. Every demon here is just a battery cell, and the city is draining them slowly."

  "It’s parasitic," Ben said, his disgust evident. "A ruler who eats his own people isn't a king. He's a cancer."

  "And we're the surgery," Lloyd said.

  They reached the central town square. It was a large, open space paved with red tiles. In the center stood a fountain, but instead of water, it sprayed a thick, red liquid that smelled like copper.

  Suddenly, the crowd around them stopped moving.

  The noise of eating, shouting, and fighting vanished instantly.

  Lloyd stopped. Ben bumped into him, his body going rigid.

  "Where did everyone go?" Ben asked, his voice low. He didn't look around with fear; he looked around like he was selecting targets.

  The demons in the square were retreating. They were running into the alleys, slamming doors, diving into shadows. Within ten seconds, the bustling square was completely empty.

  Lloyd and Ben stood alone in the center of the vast, red square.

  Behind them, the massive iron gates of the district slammed shut with a sound like a giant jaw snapping closed. Boom.

  The silence that followed was heavy and threatening.

  "Well," Lloyd muttered, his voice echoing in the empty space. "I think the merchants just left because the main event is starting."

  "Ambush," Ben stated calmly. He reached under his cloak and gripped his weapons. "They knew we were coming. The Stagnant Stones got us in, but they were the bait."

  "Of course they knew," Lloyd said, dropping the slouched posture. He stood up straight, his presence shifting from a bored merchant to a dangerous warrior. "Rubel has been watching us since we walked through the gate. He wanted us here. In the kill box."

  Lloyd looked up at the palace balcony high above them. He couldn't see Rubel, but he could feel him. He could feel the smug satisfaction radiating from the tower.

  "Sarcasm time is over, Ben," Lloyd said quietly. He centered his mana, preparing his body for the impact. "The vibration in the ground is changing. It’s not humming anymore. It’s screaming."

  The ground beneath their feet began to tremble. The red tiles cracked. Something massive was moving under the city skin.

  "Finally," Ben said, a savage grin spreading beneath his mask. "I was getting tired of walking. Let them come."

  Chapter : 1846

  They stood back to back, two tiny figures in the belly of a hostile city, waiting for the first strike.

  Part 1

  The silence that fell over the central square of Gator City was heavier than any noise Lloyd Ferrum had ever heard. It was a pressurized silence, the kind that exists deep underwater right before a submarine hull begins to crack.

  Lloyd and Ben stood back-to-back in the middle of the vast, red-paved plaza. The massive iron gates had slammed shut moments ago, sealing them inside. The crowds were gone. The noise was gone. The only thing left was the vibration beneath their boots.

  "Seismic activity detected," Ben announced, his voice devoid of panic but tight with anticipation. He gripped his heavy lance with both hands, his knuckles turning white beneath his armored gauntlets. "The ground... it is humming. Frequency is rising."

  Lloyd didn't just feel it; he could read it. The vibration wasn't random. It was a rhythmic, pulsing thrum that traveled up through the soles of his boots and rattled his teeth. It felt like standing on the chest of a giant beast that was slowly waking up from a long sleep.

  "It isn't just humming, Ben," Lloyd said, his voice amplified by his helmet speakers. "It is charging up. It's a localized activation sequence."

  Lloyd activated the [All-Seeing Eye]. The world around him shifted from the dull red of the Underworld stone to a wireframe grid of blue and white data. He looked down, peering through the layers of rock and dirt.

  What he saw made his engineer’s heart skip a beat.

  The city square wasn't just a gathering place. It was a lid. Beneath the cobblestones lay a massive, intricate network of magical conduits. They glowed with a sickly, crimson light. It looked like the motherboard of a supercomputer, but instead of copper and gold, the circuits were carved from bone and filled with flowing, pressurized blood.

  "It is a circuit board," Lloyd analyzed, his eyes scanning the flow of energy. "A city-wide motherboard designed to funnel mana. And someone just flipped the 'On' switch."

  As he spoke, the red cobblestones beneath them began to weep. A thick, glowing red liquid started to seep up through the cracks in the stone. It hissed as it touched the air, releasing a pungent smell of copper and ozone. The light from the ground grew brighter, bathing the entire square in the color of a fresh wound.

  Then, the pavement exploded.

  CRACK-BOOM.

  It happened everywhere at once. The stone floor shattered, sending jagged shards of rock flying through the air like shrapnel. A cloud of red dust billowed up, momentarily blinding them.

  Through the dust, the garden emerged.

  These were not plants in any natural sense of the word. They were monstrous, biological weapons. Massive vines, thick as ancient tree trunks, erupted from the earth. They were a deep, bruised purple color, glistening with a wet, sticky slime. They didn't grow slowly; they shot upward with the speed of a striking cobra, reaching heights of twenty feet in seconds.

  The sound was nauseating—a wet, tearing noise, like muscles ripping apart.

  "Hostiles at three o'clock!" Ben shouted, his lance already moving.

  A massive tendril swept toward them, slamming into a stone pillar nearby and pulverizing it instantly. Lloyd got a good look at the thing. It didn't have leaves. Instead, it was covered in thousands of curved, black thorns. Each thorn was the size of a dagger, dripping with a clear, viscous liquid.

  "They are hunting us," Lloyd observed, dodging a strike.

  Ben didn't dodge. He struck. His weapon, forged from high-grade spirit steel, bit deep into the plant’s flesh. Purple sap sprayed out, sizzling where it hit Ben’s armor. But the vine didn't recoil. It didn't retreat.

  Instead, the wound Ben had inflicted began to bubble. Within a second, the purple flesh knitted itself back together. The vine seemed to get angry. It twisted in the air, revealing a "mouth" at its tip—a flower-like opening filled with rows of spinning teeth.

  "Regeneration," Ben noted with a sneer. "High-speed cellular repair. Typical biological weapon. Annoying."

  "Physical attacks are useless," Lloyd warned. "You are trying to chop down a forest that grows back faster than you can swing."

  Lloyd scanned the environment again. He noticed something horrifying happening near the edges of the square. A few unfortunate demons, scavengers who had been hiding under the food stalls, had been caught in the eruption.

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  Chapter : 1847

  One goblin-like creature was wrapped in a smaller vine. The creature screamed, clawing at the plant. But the vine didn't crush him. It didn't break his bones. Instead, the thorns dug into his skin, and the vine began to pulse with a rhythmic light.

  Suck. Suck. Suck.

  Lloyd watched through his sensor display as the goblin’s life force was drained. The demon’s body withered rapidly, turning grey and dry like a mummy. In seconds, the demon collapsed into a pile of dust. The vine, having fed, grew thicker and brighter. It turned toward the center of the square, hungry for more.

  "It is a battery system," Lloyd realized, his voice dropping to a cold monotone. "Rubel isn't just trying to crush us. He is trying to harvest us. This entire garden is a biological fuel cell, and we are the premium gasoline."

  The air in the square began to change. The pressure dropped rapidly. The massive array of vines was creating a magical vacuum, sucking the oxygen and the mana out of the atmosphere. It became hard to breathe. The humidity rose, thick with the smell of acid and rot.

  Hundreds of the purple, snake-like vines turned their heads toward the center of the plaza. They sensed the immense power radiating from Lloyd and Ben. To these hungry plants, the two warriors shone like beacons in the dark.

  "Ben," Lloyd said, taking a step back as the circle of vines tightened. "Check your seals. We are about to be processed."

  "Let them try," Ben growled, his body beginning to radiate a grey, heavy aura. "I'm not on the menu."

  Part 2

  The tactical situation collapsed from "manageable" to "catastrophic" in the blink of an eye.

  The wall of purple vines closed in. There was no space to maneuver anymore. The sky above was blocked out by a canopy of writhing, thorny branches. Lloyd and Ben were trapped in a cage of hungry vegetation.

  "Back! Stay back!" Ben roared.

  The Ironwood Knight was fighting for his life. He abandoned precision for raw power. He spun his lance in a whirlwind of steel, hacking at the encroaching wall. Chop. Slash. Smash. Purple limbs flew through the air, but the garden didn't care.

  A thick vine, acting with intelligent malice, waited for Ben to commit to a swing. As Ben lunged forward, a second vine shot out from the ground beneath him. It wrapped around his ankle.

  "Got you," a voice seemed to whisper in the wind, though it was just the sound of the leaves rustling.

  Ben was yanked off his feet. He hit the ground hard, his armor clanging against the broken stones. Before he could recover, three more vines lashed out. One wrapped around his waist, another around his chest, and a third seized his lance arm.

  "Lloyd!" Ben gasped, struggling against the grip. "The thorns... they are piercing the armor! It feels like... draining!"

  Ben’s first instinct was violence. He didn't panic; he got angry. He tried to summon his brute strength, to channel the raw density of his Steel Blood to crush the plants.

  "Steel Blood: Kiloton Press!" Ben shouted.

  His armor glowed with a heavy, dark light. He tried to increase his mass, to become heavy enough to shatter the vines holding him.

  But the weight never came.

  As Ben pushed his mana out of his core to fuel the weight, the vines didn't break. They pulsed. The thorns digging into Ben’s armor acted like conduits. They absorbed the kinetic mana instantly. The dark glow on Ben’s armor faded, sucked away into the purple flesh of the plants. The vines grew larger, swollen with Ben’s stolen power.

  "What?" Ben snarled, his eye widening. "They ate the gravity? That's impossible!"

  "Do not use mana!" Lloyd shouted, his voice cutting through the chaos. "Ben, stop! You are feeding the circuit! They are designed to absorb energy, not resist it! It's a mana-sink!"

  Lloyd needed to act. He couldn't let his friend be turned into a dried husk. He calculated the distance to Ben—fifteen feet. He could bridge that gap instantly with his [Void Step] teleportation.

  "Initiating spatial jump," Lloyd muttered. He focused his mind on the coordinates next to Ben. He reached for the fabric of space, intending to fold it.

  Error.

  The spell fizzled in his brain. It felt like trying to run through water that had suddenly turned into ice. Lloyd staggered, a sharp pain shooting through his temples.

  Chapter : 1848

  "Space is locked," Lloyd realized, looking at the glowing red runes on the ground. "The mana density in the air is too high. The 'noise' from the Blood Array is jamming the frequency. I can't teleport."

  He was grounded. And now, he was targeted.

  With Ben immobilized, the garden turned its full attention to Lloyd. A massive vine, the alpha of the pack, reared up in front of him. It was thick as a column, covered in spikes that dripped with neurotoxin.

  It struck.

  Lloyd dodged the first blow, sliding underneath the massive trunk. He rolled to his feet, checking his HUD.

  [Warning: Enemy Target Locked.]

  [Direction: All sides.]

  Two more vines attacked from his blind spots. He blocked one with his armored forearm, the metal sparking. But the third one caught him. It whipped around his waist, lifting him ten feet into the air.

  The constriction was immediate and crushing. The thorns ground against the plates of his Aegis Suit, screeching like nails on a chalkboard.

  [Alert: External Pressure Critical.]

  [Alert: Shield Integrity Falling. 80%... 70%...]

  [Warning: Mana Siphon Detected.]

  Lloyd felt the drain. It was a cold, sickening sensation in the pit of his stomach. The city was bypassing his physical armor and pulling directly at his Golem Heart. His energy reserves were plummeting.

  "I need to cut it," Lloyd thought. His instinct—the warrior reflex trained into him by the Ferrum bloodline—screamed at him to fight back with steel.

  Summon the blades. Cut the vine. Use the Steel Blood.

  He started to manifest the power. He visualized the iron in his blood hardening, ready to erupt from his skin in a storm of razor-sharp spikes.

  But then, his engineer’s mind saw the schematic.

  He looked at the vine wrapping around him. He saw the wet, conductive sap inside it. He saw the connection running down the vine, into the ground, and plugging directly into the massive Blood Array battery.

  And he saw himself. If he summoned metal, he would become a conductive rod.

  "If I turn into steel now," Lloyd realized with horror, "I am connecting myself to the main power grid."

  Metal conducts electricity. Metal conducts mana. If he used [Steel Blood], he wouldn't be cutting the vine; he would be completing the circuit. The massive suction of the city would have a direct, resistance-free path into his soul. He would be drained dry in a microsecond.

  "Rubel..." Lloyd whispered, the realization hitting him harder than the vine. "You clever, twisted old man."

  Rubel knew Lloyd. He knew the Ferrum family. He knew their pride and their power lay in metal. So he built a trap where metal was the trigger for suicide. He had weaponized Lloyd’s own greatest strength against him.

  Lloyd forced his body to relax. He suppressed the Steel Blood, leaving himself defenseless in the grip of the plant. He hung there, suspended in the air, his suit alarms blaring.

  He looked down. Ben was almost completely buried under a writhing pile of purple vegetation. Only the glow of his fading red eye was visible. Ben was trying to activate his Spirit: Sloth to freeze the vines, but the drain was faster than his activation time.

  He looked up. High above, on the palace balcony, a small figure was watching. Lloyd couldn't see the face, but he knew Rubel was smiling. The trap was perfect. It neutralized physical strength, it ate magical energy, and it turned the Ferrum bloodline’s signature art into a death sentence.

  Lloyd dangled in the air, the pressure on his ribs increasing. He was running out of options. He was running out of mana.

  "Okay," Lloyd whispered to himself, his breath fogging the visor. "The physics of this trap are solid. I cannot fight the hunger with force."

  He closed his eyes, shutting out the red sky and the screaming alarms. He needed to stop thinking like a soldier who wanted to break the wall. He needed to think like an engineer who wanted to redirect the flow.

  "You want to eat me?" Lloyd thought, a cold, dangerous idea forming in the back of his mind. "You want to drain my energy? Fine. But you should be careful what you swallow."

  He reached deep into his inventory, past the steel, past the fire.

  Lloyd opened his eyes. The fear was gone. The panic was gone. He looked at the vine squeezing him not as a monster, but as a pipe.