#EDITED...

The vault doors slammed against the inner stone walls with a deafening boom.

The pitch-black darkness inside didn’t stay dark for long. Hundreds of glowing yellow eyes flared to life. The air grew thick with the smell of rusted metal, ozone, and rotting, ancient mana.

A horde of corrupted Imperial constructs... hulking masses of bronze and jagged steel, surged forward. Their metallic joints screeched like tearing iron as they charged the entrance.

"They look angry," Valeria noted, her voice muffled by the black cloth mask. She casually rested the flat of her massive, blood-red broadsword against her shoulder.

"They’ve been locked in here for how long? Five centuries," Zen replied as he tightened his hand around the heavy hilt of his tungsten blade. "I’d be angry too."

He shifted his gaze up to the hovering GE drone, the audio distortion already in place.

"Alright, chat," Zen announced. "We are clearing the lobby. Let’s see what kind of bounties you have for me today."

The GE drone hovered just above their heads, broadcasting the nightmare directly to the global network. The chat instantly blurred into a frenzy.

Just then, a pair of bright golden notifications popped up on his stream interface.

[ScrapRat has pledged a 5,000 Mana-Credit Bounty!]

ScrapRat: 5,000 Credits! I want to see you take down five of them using only one hand on that heavy sword!

[MetalHead has pledged a 10,000 Mana-Credit Bounty!]

MetalHead: 10,000 Credits! Let the scary girl go first!

[VanguardFan1 has pledged a 20,000 Mana-Credit Bounty!]

VanguardFan1: You are both going to die in ten seconds. Those are Imperial Grave-Sentinels. 20k if you survive the next minute!

Zen smirked under his mask. He looked at the system prompt hovering in his peripheral vision.

[SYSTEM ALERT: MULTIPLE THREATS APPROACHING. HIGH E-RANK CONSTRUCTS.]

[PROBABILITY OF TAKING DAMAGE: 82%.]

[RECOMMENDATION: UTILIZE CHOKEPOINT AT THE DOORWAY.]

"I’ll take the ten thousand first," Zen said aloud. He glanced sideways at Valeria. "The chat wants to see the scary girl go first. You’re up."

Valeria didn’t even reply. She just vanished.

A shockwave of displaced air hit Zen’s face. A split second later, Valeria materialized in the dead centre of the charging horde. She didn’t swing her sword. She simply drove her combat boot directly into the chest plate of the leading bronze construct.

The heavy metal chest caved inward with a sickening crunch. The impact sent the construct flying backward like a cannonball, bowling over a dozen others in a tangle of sparking wires and shattered bronze.

"Show-off," Zen muttered.

He didn’t wait.

He lunged forward, grabbing his hilt with only his right hand to satisfy ScrapRat’s bounty. The eighty-pound tungsten blade dragged against the floor, throwing sparks into the dark.

A Grave-Sentinel jumped from the shadows, aiming its jagged metal claws at his throat.

Zen didn’t block. He dropped to one knee and ducked under the attack.

At the same time, he swung his heavy tungsten blade in a low, powerful circle. The weapon smashed through the robot’s legs and knocked it to the ground.

In that exact fraction of a second, a massive red blade cleaved the space right above his head, slicing a second airborne construct cleanly in half.

Before the two halves could hit the floor, Valeria spun and kicked a third construct toward Zen’s blind spot.

Without turning around, Zen reversed his grip and thrust his heavy tungsten blade behind him. The dense metal punched through the machine’s bronze core, pinning it firmly to the ground.

"That’s one," Zen counted.

He ripped the sword out, knocking the glowing, jagged Heart-Stone loose from the construct’s ruined chest.

He didn’t touch it. Absorbing raw mana on a live broadcast without any specialised equipment would instantly expose his Imperial core to the world.

He simply kicked the stone toward the wall to collect later.

But as Valeria stepped perfectly into his blind spot, her golden aura brushing against his, a sudden, familiar heat flared deep inside his chest.

[SYSTEM NOTIFICATION: COMBAT RESONANCE INITIATED.]

[SYNCHRONIZED COMBAT WITH VANGUARD DETECTED.]

[PASSIVE MANA TRANSFER FROM SOUL FRAGMENT ’BODY’ ACTIVE.]

Zen gripped his heavy hilt, feeling his F-Rank pathways suddenly flood with power. "System," he demanded silently. "Report. What is this?"

[ANALYSIS: PERFECT BATTLEFIELD SYNCHRONIZATION ALLOWS FOR TEMPORARY, SURFACE-LEVEL MANA SHARING BETWEEN HOST AND VANGUARD.]

[WARNING: THIS IS A TEMPORARY COMBAT BUFF. IT DOES NOT ACCELERATE PERMANENT CORE REPAIR AND CANNOT REPLACE PRIMARY DUAL CULTIVATION PROTOCOLS.]

Zen smirked beneath his mask, his core burning with the borrowed power. "Temporary or not, it’s exactly what I need right now."

Meanwhile, the chat was losing its collective mind.

User_992: WHAT WAS THAT?! They didn’t even look at each other!

ScrapRat: Bro, they fight like they share a brain. That was insane!

[ManaJunkie has pledged a 20,000 Mana-Credit Bounty!]

ManaJunkie: 20,000 CREDITS! I want to see a combo move!

Zen deflected a huge downward strike from a towering golem. He groaned as his right arm strained under the weight of the heavy tungsten sword. But the metal didn’t break; it absorbed the impact perfectly.

"We have a request for twenty thousand!" Zen yelled over the loud noise of scraping metal and crashing machines. He sidestepped a spear thrust and swung his blade in a hard arc, cutting the construct’s legs off at the knees. "Combo move!"

"Tell them to keep their pocket change!" Valeria yelled back, laughing wildly as she severed a construct’s arm and used it to beat another one to pieces. "If they want to see a combo, just try to keep up with me!"

Before Zen could reply, the drone’s speaker chimed with a high-priority alert, projecting a golden text box directly into Zen’s HUD.

[SYSTEM ALERT: ANONYMOUS DONATION RECEIVED.]

[AMOUNT: 500,000 MANA CREDITS.]

[ATTACHED MESSAGE: "Beautiful footwork. But your partner’s guard is far too wide. Tell her to close her stance before she embarrasses herself."]

Zen almost tripped over a piece of scrap metal. He read the absurd amount and the petty message, immediately knowing exactly who was sitting in a dark server room hundreds of miles away watching them.

He couldn’t resist. He parried a construct and called out to Val.

"Hey, Vanguard!" Zen shouted. "Someone just dropped half a million credits anonymously to say your guard is too wide! They think you’re going to embarrass yourself!"

Valeria stopped mid-swing. She kicked a golem so hard its bronze head snapped clean off, then glared up at the floating silver drone.

"Half a million?" Valeria’s eyes narrowed behind her mask.

The realization hit her instantly. There was only one person petty enough and rich enough to stalk them digitally just to critique her swordsmanship.

"That little digital rat," Valeria snarled, her golden aura flaring into a violent, blinding blaze of pure irritation. She stared dead into the drone’s camera lens. "You want to see my guard, Spymaster? Watch closely."