Divine-Class Awakening: I Can Steal From Gods!-Chapter 19: The Sword That Turns Things to Dust
Nep’s death bought them nothing.
The corridor stayed clogged with the dead, and the gap his body had left in the fight became a problem almost at once. Skeletons kept pushing through the broken front, climbing over rubble, dragging themselves out of cracks in the floor, dropping from fractured ledges where the ruin still hung above them in uneven slabs. The Lich remained in the rear, pale light gathering and fading around its staff while more bodies answered its call from deeper in the buried section.
Max caught a strike on his shield hard enough to force one boot half a step back over broken stone. Alice moved in before the opening could widen and smashed the nearest skeleton apart, but another took its place right away. Marika burned a cluster trying to close around Snot, then had to cut the flames short when three more shapes emerged from the smoke on her other side. Snot swore, ducked under a rusted blade, and buried his knife into the gap beneath a ribcage before twisting away again.
Then his eyes caught the body half-buried under the fallen bones.
"Shit— Nep’s dead!"
The shout cut through the corridor.
Snot slashed across another skeleton’s throat and looked again, his expression tightening when he saw the blood and the way Nep’s body wasn’t moving.
"What the hell happened?" he snapped. "Did anyone see it?"
No one answered.
Max was still stuck at the front, shield raised against two more dead pressing into him. Alice broke one apart and glanced over, but only for a second before another skeleton forced her attention back. Marika looked too, fire gathering in her hand, but whatever answer she might have given died there. She hadn’t seen it.
"I didn’t," she said.
"Neither did I," Max threw back between clashes. 𝘧𝓇ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝘣𝓃ℴ𝓋𝑒𝑙.𝑐𝘰𝑚
Alice said nothing, which was answer enough.
Neo cut one skeleton down near him and turned in time to drive his sword through another skull before it reached Marika’s flank. The body fell. A second climbed over it. He killed that one too.
Still not enough.
The pressure had crossed that line already. They were no longer holding ground with any real control. They were fighting to stop the whole thing from collapsing on top of them.
Then something changed.
Neo felt it before he understood it. Not from the dead in front of him, but from the rhythm of the fight itself. A shift on the far side. A pressure breaking where it should not have broken.
A skeleton near the rear lifted its sword to strike and the weapon came apart the moment another blade touched it. The metal lost itself in an instant and spilled into gray dust that scattered through the air before the thing had even finished the motion. The skeleton stared at the ruined hilt still in its hand before a narrow silver line passed across its throat and the whole upper half of its body started to come apart after it.
Vivienne.
She was simply there, already inside the fight, already moving as if she had measured the space before taking the first step. Her group entered with her without hesitation, spreading where the line was weakest and cutting into the pressure from the side the moment they saw what state Neo’s group was in.
Vivienne went straight for the densest point.
The sword in her hand looked clean even in that ruin, pale steel catching the broken light with a stillness the rest of the chamber did not have. She met the next skeleton with a short step and a turn of her wrist so precise it barely looked like effort. Its shield touched her blade and the rim began to loosen at once, then the whole thing collapsed into drifting powder before the dead thing could brace behind it. Her second cut followed through the space that opened, neat and final, and the skeleton fell in two pieces that did not stay whole for long.
Neo saw another weapon break the same way when one of the dead lunged at her from the side. Its rusted spear brushed her sword and the shaft lost integrity from the point of contact, wood and metal thinning into ash-colored dust that slipped through bony fingers before it could land. Vivienne did not waste the opening. She pivoted, stepped inside the thing’s reach, and cut once through the neck.
She chose what failed.
It was not random. It happened exactly where her blade went, exactly when she wanted it to. Weapons, guards, weak points in a defense that should have held for another exchange. The dead tried to meet her and found nothing solid enough left to trust.
Max caught sight of her from the side while forcing another skeleton back and, for the first time since the fight had turned ugly, Max looked genuinely surprised.
"That movement..." he said, voice rough between strikes. "It’s perfect."
Neo did not know enough to name what he was seeing. He only saw results. Wherever Vivienne moved, the pressure changed. The dead stopped feeling endless and started feeling breakable.
He did not stand there watching.
The instant her group tore space into the front, Neo used it. He stepped through the first opening Vivienne created and cut down a skeleton trying to reach Snot from behind. He drove his shoulder into another one crowding Marika, forced it off line, and split its skull before it could recover. When a pair of skeletons tried to fold back into the gap from the left, he reached them first and killed one fast enough to turn the second into an easy finish for Alice.
The fight had not become easy, but it had become possible.
Vivienne broke the hardest point of pressure near the center, her sword turning weapons and defenses unreliable the moment they met her.
Her group widened that damage and kept the dead from closing it again. Neo’s group answered at once, stepping into those openings instead of wasting them. Max pushed forward with renewed weight behind his shield. Alice started hitting for space instead of survival. Marika’s fire came cleaner now that she had room to place it. Snot’s warnings sharpened because there was finally something to work with.
Neo killed another skeleton and looked past the falling bones toward the rear of the corridor, where the Lich still stood with its staff raised and its dead packed around it in layers.
For the first time since the fight began, the next thought was simple.
They could reach it.
The push started at once.
Max took the front again where the corridor narrowed, shield up and shoulders squared. Alice stayed close enough to break any knot that formed around him. Marika shifted her fire farther back, sending controlled bursts into clusters that tried to spill in from the sides and cutting off angles before they could close again. Snot moved through the gaps between all of them, finishing what staggered, warning where the next line was bending, and keeping the advance from losing its shape.
Neo went where the openings were.
The difference in his body was clearer now that the fight had turned from survival into movement. Strength had rooted itself in his arms earlier, but it had not stopped there. His legs answered faster as well, carrying him across broken ground with a sharpness they had not had before. He felt it each time he pushed off stone and reached a space sooner than he should have. He was faster into the gap and stronger when he arrived.
A skeleton lunged for Snot from the side. Neo crossed the space before it landed, drove his shoulder into its ribs hard enough to send the whole frame skidding sideways, then caught another by the throat with one hand and slammed it into the wall. Bone cracked. His sword followed at once, punching through the skull before the thing had even finished collapsing.
Another pair came for Marika through the smoke. Neo reached them in three hard steps, cut through the first guard with enough force to split weapon and arm together, then pivoted into the second and kicked it back down the rubble slope into Alice’s path. She crushed it without even slowing.
Ahead, Vivienne kept cutting the path open.
The better-armed skeletons lasted no longer than the others. A sword met hers and came apart from the middle. A shield touched the pale edge and lost its shape, the whole face of it thinning into gray dust before the dead thing behind it understood it had nothing left to hold. One of the Lich’s summoned barriers rose in front of the rear line, pale and thin like stretched glass, and Vivienne stepped into it without hesitation. Her blade touched the surface. Cracks spread across it at once, not wild, not random, but exact, as if she had chosen where the thing stopped being whole. The barrier collapsed in silence.
At the same time, something moved behind her.
A skeleton had come in low through the smoke and broken stone, slipping around the rear line while everyone’s attention stayed on the path Vivienne was opening. Its blade was already rising toward her back.
Neo reached it first.
He cut through the arm at the elbow, stepped in before the body could even finish turning, and drove his sword clean through its skull. The dead thing folded at Vivienne’s heels with a dry crack of bone against stone.
Vivienne’s eyes flicked sideways.
For the briefest instant, she understood exactly what had happened.
"Thanks."
Neo did not look at her. He was already moving past the falling body, cutting into the next skeleton trying to close the gap she had just opened.
Vivienne did the same. So it was not just a sword that ruined steel. It ruined whatever she chose to break.
Neo filed that away and kept moving.
The Lich felt the pressure turning. Its staff flared brighter. More dead tried to answer from the rear, clawing their way from the buried dark, but Max and the others were already too close now. The corridor no longer belonged to it.
"Push!" Snot shouted.
Max slammed forward and opened the lane.
Vivienne went through first. Neo was right behind her.
The Lich dragged a final screen of skeletal bodies into place around itself, but the defense had already come apart. Vivienne’s sword touched the first weapon raised against her and it turned to dust in the dead thing’s hands. Neo hit the opening she created a heartbeat later, his legs carrying him in fast enough to get there before the gap could close. He drove through one skeleton, tore his blade free, then cut another down at the waist. Alice crashed into the side of the formation and broke what remained of it.
The Lich tried to lift its staff again.
Vivienne severed the spell first.
Neo reached it in the next instant and struck before it could recover, his blade driving deep through brittle bone and rotten cloth. The body folded with a dry crack. Max’s follow-up crushed the rest of the frame apart.
The weight in the air thinned. The buried ruin trembled, and somewhere ahead, deeper in the broken stone, a jagged opening began to form where none had existed before.
