Chương 40: Chapter 39 - All In

Mahkir hit the boss's flank first, claws raking deep gouges across something that gave under the strike without properly bleeding, and for a moment — one clean, bright moment — it actually worked. The boss staggered. Genuinely staggered, weight shifting back off the leg Mahkir had torn into, and Kalsar's Kithren used the opening to drive another bite in, runes flaring bright enough to throw shadows across the chamber walls. Mahkir pulled back half a step, flame already gathering at the corners of his jaw.

"Flame Breath!" The fire tore across the boss's exposed side, intense and unrelenting, and the violet mass recoiled from it properly this time — not just staggering, but visibly thinning where the flame touched, streams of light unraveling before knitting back together.

"Now!" Maren's voice, from somewhere behind them, and Axel was already moving, four arms hardening as he crossed the distance, the skin along them taking on a dull grey sheen.

"Iron Hands!" Axel slammed into the boss's side with the full weight of his charge, and where Kalsar's Kithren had been trading damage and Mahkir had been cutting in with claws and fire both, Axel simply held — planted himself against the boss's next strike and took it on hardened forearms that didn't give, didn't crack, didn't do anything but absorb the force and stay standing. For a handful of seconds, all four of them found the same rhythm at once.

Kalsar's Kithren biting where it could, every strike still carrying more weight than its size alone accounted for. Mahkir circling, fast, cutting in wherever an opening showed. Axel planted directly in the boss's path, forcing it to spend effort just getting past him. Ground gave. Actual ground, the boss forced back a full step, then another, and Ant felt something wild and hopeful rise up through his chest watching it happen. This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road.

If you spot it on Amazon, please report it. It didn't last. Kalsar's Kithren took another hit it should have dodged, the runes flaring but the strength behind them clearly thinner now, borrowed against reserves that weren't there anymore. It didn't go down. It didn't have to. The half-second it lost recovering was enough for the boss to find its rhythm again, enough for the pressure to start building back the other way. Mahkir alone wasn't going to hold that gap.

Ant could see it even without wanting to — Mahkir was fast, was clever, was landing real damage every time he found an opening, but he was Level 5 against something the system itself refused to put a proper number on, and speed and cleverness only closed so much of that distance.

"Quad Strike!" Axel surged forward, all four arms moving in a blur of overlapping hits, and for a moment it looked like enough — the boss actually rocked back under the combined weight of it, staggering again. Then it turned. One arm swept wide, catching Axel mid-strike, and the force behind it sent him off his feet entirely, his whole body leaving the ground in a spinning arc before slamming into the far wall hard enough that the stone cracked around the impact. He didn't get up.

"Axel!" Maren was already moving, sprinting across the chamber floor toward him, and Ant felt something in him go very still and very loud at the same time. Everything else in the room seemed to slow. Mahkir was still fighting, still cutting in wherever he could, but he was one small shape against something that had just thrown a Kithren three times his size across a room without visible effort. Kalsar's Kithren was still standing but barely, runes dimming, breath ragged.

Axel was down, unmoving, Maren dropping to her knees beside him with both hands already searching for signs of life. Ant didn't decide anything. His hand was already moving toward the place inside himself where the skill sat, the one he hadn't used, hadn't tested, hadn't let himself think too hard about since the warning had settled into him back in the passage. Attribute Sharing. The world tilted.

For half a heartbeat everything doubled — his own heartbeat and something else's layered underneath it, his own limbs and something faster, stronger, running through the same frame — and then it settled into something that felt less like borrowing and more like becoming, briefly, more than he'd ever been on his own. Mahkir's head snapped toward him, amber eyes going wide. What are you doing.

"Helping," Ant said, and the word came out steadier than he expected, steadier than he had any right to feel with his legs carrying weight they'd never carried and his hand closing around Soul Render's grip with strength that wasn't his. He moved before either of them could argue about it.