"Not bad. We got a good haul."

"As expected of the rich families. They’ve got more Mana Stones than us."

"All combined, we got 638 Tier-5 Mana stones. Let’s split it in half." Rudrean smiled as he said to Rhodin and Trisha. "We wouldn’t have finished them off this easily without you."

"Haha, then we won’t stand in the ceremony." Rhodin laughed.

Rudrean handed over 319 stones to them.

"Well, I guess we can buy some good stuff in the upcoming auction with this increase in wealth." Aelira grinned. "These fools must have kept these Tier-5 stones for the auction as well."

"Now they are ours." Isalyn smiled.

"Since we are here, we might as well join the expedition secretly." Trisha smiled. "We’ll help in case things go bad. Otherwise, we’ll just observe."

...

The hours passed.

Lyra emerged from her crafting spot a little before the expedition was due to depart, her cat ears flicking with the small satisfaction she only ever showed when a project went right.

"Done," she said.

She held out a single piece toward Rudrean. Not a glaive. Not a bow.

An arm-gauntlet, sleek matte black with hairline engravings that breathed faintly under the light, wrapping from his knuckles to just below the elbow.

"You lost your last weapon when it got broken at a single-tier disadvantage," she said. "So I built this one tougher and gave it two modes."

Rudrean slid it on. It locked to his forearm and adjusted to his mana signature with a soft pulse.

"Blade Mode," Lyra said.

The gauntlet’s outer plating flowed forward off his knuckles and extended into a long, clean edge of condensed dark alloy, humming faintly with its own structural mana.

"And Gun Mode."

The blade folded back, and the forearm housing reconfigured, the barrel forming along the top of his wrist, an aperture opening at the back of his hand.

"It channels both Heavenfall Wind and Phoenix Flame through either mode," Lyra finished. "And it will not break to a Tier-3 weapon-breaker. I made sure of that."

Rudrean flexed his hand and watched the gauntlet respond instantly to the intent. "It’s perfect, Lyra. Thank you."

Lyra’s tail did a slow, pleased arc. "Mm."

She handed Ryzen and Rivera their artifacts as well, two small focusing cores that would temporarily push their elemental output higher, and the team was set.

...

The expedition gathered at the northwest gate of Mirewatch as the timer ran down.

Twenty of them. Aelira, Rudrean, Isalyn, and Lyra had all secured their spots through the combat measurement. Ryzen and Rivera had stayed on the patrol roster, and they remained behind to keep the town’s edge clear while the main team pushed inward.

The expedition leader, a steady woman in her thirties, laid out the rules before they moved.

"Stay within sight of the group. The deeper we go, the worse the space gets, and anyone who strays too far gets cut off and surrounded. The mission is the Core. Resources you find along the way are yours to keep, but most of them are guarded by something that will not give them up easily. Claim them on your own time and at your own risk. Do not slow the group."

Nods all around.

"Then move."

They crossed into the twisted space.

The world beyond the gate stopped pretending to be a world. The Miasma had reshaped everything here, the ground folding into impossible terraces, the sky bleeding violet, trees growing sideways out of floating stone and dissolving back into the air at their tips. Exotic plants pulsed with corrupted light. Strange resources glittered in the deep pockets of the warped landscape, half hidden behind packs of mutated monsters that prowled the broken terrain.

The team moved as a unit, carving through the monster packs that blocked the path while leaving the rest alone. Speed mattered more than completeness. Aelira and Isalyn anchored the front. Rudrean tested his new gauntlet on the way, switching fluidly between Blade Mode and Gun Mode, Spiral Infernal bullets he created using Heavenfall Wind and Phoenix Flame tore through one pack while the Jet Blaze Blade cleaved through the next. Lyra’s crafted weapons drifted around the group in a protective lattice, sealing flanks and clearing stragglers.

The kilometers fell away faster than any prior shift had managed.

The Core came into view sooner than expected.

It sat at the heart of the most twisted region, a slowly rotating mass of dense violet light suspended above a cratered hollow, threads of corrupted mana feeding into it from every direction. The source of the seal. The thing they had come to break.

"There," the leader said. "Formation up. We hit it together, and we hit it hard before—"

She never finished.

The Core pulsed.

A single wave of pressure rolled outward across the entire twisted space, deep and resonant, and every adventurer in the expedition felt their stomach drop at once.

"It’s upgrading," Lyra said sharply, her ears flat. "Now. Earlier than the projection."

The threads of corrupted mana reversed direction.

Every monster still alive in the twisted space, hundreds of them across the warped terrain, was wrenched off its feet and dragged screeching toward the Core. They struck the violet mass and dissolved into it, one after another, the Core swelling larger and darker with each absorption.

The light condensed. Compressed. Took shape.

What rose out of the hollow was no longer a Core.

It was a monster. Towering, four-limbed, its body a churning amalgam of every creature it had just devoured, violet light bleeding from the seams of its fused form. It planted itself in the crater and let out a roar that shook the warped sky.

[Miasma Core Manifestation]

[Combat Power: 15,000,000]

"Fifteen million," the leader breathed. "Everyone, full power! If we break it, the seal breaks with it!"

The team scattered into formation.

The monster swung first, a massive corrupted limb sweeping across the hollow with enough force to flatten the front line. Isalyn met it. Wind erupted from her in a screaming wall, catching the limb and redirecting its momentum sideways into the warped ground, the impact cratering the terrain.

"Stagger it," she called. "Don’t let it set its footing."

Aelira layered the next answer. "Pyrus Vale Fort, full potency."

The blazing construct erupted around the front of the team, catching the monster’s follow-up swing and turning the energy back into a counter-burst of plasma that scorched deep into its fused hide. The thing recoiled, roaring.

Rudrean went up its blind side.

Combat Art blazing, gauntlet in Blade Mode, he climbed the monster’s flank in weightless bursts of Heavenfall Wind and drove Hell Rampage Strikes into the seam of its shoulder. First swing, second, each one compounding, peeling violet light from the wound with every blow.

The monster twisted to swat him off. Trisha’s thread caught its arm mid-motion, locking the joint for a critical half-second. Rodnis hammered a wall of force into its opposite knee, buckling it.

The leader and the rest of the expedition poured everything they had into its lower body, a continuous barrage of spells and techniques that kept it from regaining its stance.

Rudrean reached the seventh swing.

The single horizontal line of crimson and cyan cut clean through the monster’s shoulder joint, severing one of its massive arms entirely. The limb dissolved into violet motes before it hit the ground.

The monster screamed and lashed out blindly.

Isalyn answered with the killing weight. The dense screaming column of Heavenfall Wind gathered above the monster, stacking pressure on pressure until the air itself warped, and she drove it down onto the creature’s skull.

The Core’s manifested form buckled under the column, its body cratering into the hollow, and in that pinned instant, Aelira and the entire expedition unleashed their full output into the exposed core of violet light at its chest.

The light cracked.

Then it shattered.

The Miasma Core Manifestation came apart in a single soundless burst of violet that scattered into harmless motes across the twisted space.

For a moment, nothing happened.

Then the warped sky began to peel.

The impossible terraces flattened. The sideways trees straightened and faded. The violet bleed drained from the air, and far above, the dark veil that had sealed Mirewatch from the outside world thinned, cracked, and dissolved entirely.

Real sunlight poured into the valley for the first time in seven days.

The seal was gone.

The expedition stood in the cleansed hollow, breathing hard, as the corrupted landscape settled back into ordinary ground around them.

"Mission complete," the leader said, and let out a long breath. "Town’s free."

Aelira dropped onto a flat stone, stretched both arms over her head, and grinned at Rudrean.

"Well, this was fun."

Rudrean nodded. "Now we are ready to attend the auction tomorrow."

’We have a night to spend, so let’s rack up some LPs.’ Isalyn winked. ’The Auction is in the same city as the resort we went in, so we can enjoy there.’

’Yeah, let’s take a faster transport this time and get there quickly.’

"Everyone. The mission is completed, and the rewards are ready. Collect them from the plaza’s tent before leaving!"