Zeus moved before Kara hit the ground.

He didn’t cross to her — he couldn’t, not with the corrupted knight between them and the Siegal repositioning on the far side of the chamber. Going to Kara meant going through both, and going through both meant dying alongside her, which helped no one.

He went wide instead. Circling the edge of the room, keeping the boss in his peripheral vision, watching the corrupted knight track him with those sick-green eyes.

"Sawn," he said.

"I’m here." She was already moving in the opposite arc — they had been in enough raids together that the geometry of this was automatic. Draw attention. Split the threat’s focus. Keep the space open.

The problem was the boss room.

S-rank bosses were not fought the way most hunters fought. Most hunting was close — get inside the reach, apply force, end it fast before mana reserves bled out. Zeus had spent his entire career working that way. His talent was built for it. Transmogrify was a contact talent at heart — he had to touch the thing he was changing, or be close enough that the transformation could bridge the gap. Across a boss room with a hostile summoned knight between him and the target?

He was not built for this.

He reached to his side and pulled his blade.

It was a standard weapon — well-made, no particular enchantment, chosen specifically because it was a blank canvas that his talent could write on. He held it up in front of him, ran his palm along the flat, and felt the metal’s properties beneath his fingers. Steel. Dense, linear, strong under compression.

He thought about what he needed.

Range.

He transformed the blade.

It took three seconds. The metal flowed — not melting, just *changing*, the way water becomes ice but faster, the crystalline structure rearranging under his direction. The edge softened and curved. The crossguard folded outward into a limb on each side. The whole thing bent and narrowed and when he raised it, he was holding a bow.

He had no arrows. He transformed the spare mana he was carrying in his right hand — compressed it, shaped it, gave it mass and density — and nocked it.

The Siegal turned toward him.

He loosed.

The mana-arrow crossed the chamber fast. The Siegal took it in the shoulder and stumbled — not fell, but stumbled, which was something. It reassigned the arrow’s properties on contact, turning its kinetic force into ambient heat, but the impact itself had already landed.

Zeus pulled and fired again. And again.

The Siegal adapted faster than he wanted it to. By the fifth shot it was moving laterally every time he drew, anticipating the angle. He switched to three in quick succession — walk it left, cut it off, force it to commit — but the range advantage was shrinking. The Siegal was crossing the room.

Zeus felt the distance close and made the decision before the boss finished making it.

He transformed the bow.

The wood-and-metal curve expanded, thickened, the limbs fusing back into a single mass that grew and grew until he was holding a warhammer with a head the size of a wheel. He charged.

It was not subtle. It was not clever. He crossed the distance at a dead sprint and swung low — aiming for the knees, for the balance, for the thing that made a standing creature a standing creature — and the hammer connected and the force was enormous and the Siegal went sideways.

Then the Siegal put its hand on the hammer.

Zeus felt it happen — felt the Siegal’s mana reach into the weapon and begin to reassign. It reached into the transformation he was actively maintaining, found the intention inside it, and inverted it. The hammer’s direction of force reversed. The mass of it turned against his grip.

It swung back.

He let go.

The hammer hit him in the chest and he flew. His back hit the wall and he dropped, and for two seconds everything was edges and sparks. Then he sat up.

He was already grinning.

Because he had expected this. Not the specifics of it — he hadn’t known the Siegal would invert the hammer’s force rather than reassign its element — but the shape of it. He had known the hammer would be turned against him. He’d counted on the Siegal reaching in and finding something to work with, because the moment it committed to the hammer, it wasn’t doing anything else.

And three seconds before it hit him, he had quietly added a condition to the transformation.

The hammer, as it approached him, had shrunk.

Not gradually. Sharply, in the last meter of its arc, the mass reducing — *he had specified this* — until what hit his chest was the size of a child’s toy mallet. The force was still enough to send him into the wall. But he was sitting up two seconds later, and his ribs were bruised rather than broken, and that was the difference between a bad moment and a dead hunter.

He looked across the room at Sawn.

"I am not good at range," he said.

"I noticed," she said.

"I’m telling you now so you understand I’ve already tried my best idea."

The Siegal was repositioning. The corrupted knight was still standing over Kara’s body — she was breathing, they could both see that, but she was not moving and the knight had not dismissed.

Zeus looked at the boss and then at the floor.

"I’ve only ever been useful in a team," he said. It wasn’t self-pity. It was the plain assessment of a man who understood his talent’s shape. "Every good raid I’ve been in, I was the piece that made other pieces work. I change things that other people are already doing. Alone, I’m a man with a bow made of knives. With the right people, I’m the reason the spell hits."

Sawn crouched down, watching the Siegal pace.

"Then we’re not doing this alone," she said.

"There are two of us."

"I know," she said. "We’re not doing this alone."

She didn’t explain what she meant. She filed it away and stood up and began to time the Siegal’s movement, measuring its pace, counting the intervals.

"Depend on me."

Zeus turned to look at her.

Sawn was already watching the boss — not him, the boss — but her voice carried a direction he hadn’t heard from her before. Not authority exactly. Something quieter. Something certain.

"Kara isn’t dead," she said. "I can see her breathing from here. The knight isn’t attacking because it doesn’t need to — she’s down and the boss has other concerns. If we coordinate, we clear it and we get her out."

"I know that," Zeus said.

"Then act like it."

He exhaled slowly through his nose.

He didn’t have an issue with Sawn specifically. He had an issue with the feeling of being the one who didn’t know what was happening next, and right now that was exactly what this was.

She had an idea.

He didn’t.

He hated not knowing what was happening next.

"Tell me," he said.

"You rush," she said. "Close the distance, blade in hand. When you get within reach and you go for the strike, the Siegal is going to do what it did with the hammer — it’s going to reach into the transformation and flip it. The moment you feel that happening, release the blade entirely."

"And then?"

"I’ll have it slowed," she said. "The blade. The moment it turns on you, I slow it. You step out. While you step out, I accelerate you. You immediately summon a new transformation — new weapon, fresh material — and you go for it. You don’t let it set its grip on the second one."

"One shot with each weapon."

"One shot each. Don’t give it time to learn you. You change faster than it can adapt."

Zeus turned this over.

He reached to his side and felt the blank steel there.

The plan was not perfect.

The plan had a gap in it the size of the Siegal’s reach — the moment between releasing the turned weapon and the new one being ready, he was open. Completely open. The boss could step into that gap and end it.

"What covers the transition?" he said.

"I do," she said. "When you step out, you’ll be moving faster than the boss can track. I’ll give you enough to make the gap irrelevant."

"You’re certain?"

"I’m always certain," she said. "That’s the thing about timing. It’s not confidence. It’s just numbers."

He looked at her for a moment.

Then he rolled his neck once and raised his blade.

"Let’s go."

He moved.

He crossed the chamber at an angle — not directly at the Siegal, which would telegraph the rush, but on a curve that forced the boss to reorient.

He felt Sawn’s talent engage at his back. A subtle acceleration, not the maximum, just enough to shave a step off the distance.

The Siegal tracked him.

He went for the midsection. Blade extended, transformation ready at the edge of his grip — he intended to transform the blade tip into something rotating, something that would dig rather than cut, making it harder to simply invert the direction of force.

The Siegal reached in.

He felt it.

That same invasive sensation. The dungeon’s mana threading through the transformation, finding the mechanism of it, beginning to reverse the intention the way you’d pull a sleeve inside out.

He released.

The blade slowed.

He felt Sawn’s talent catch it — decelerate the whole arc of it, bleed the momentum so what arrived at his hand was a gentle tap rather than a sharpened impact.

He stepped sideways, and the acceleration hit him like a hand at his back — sudden, propulsive, his feet barely making contact with the floor.

He raised his hand and transformed the mana there.

Compressed it differently this time.

Not a blade.

A spike.

Simple. Fast. Less for the Siegal to grab onto.

He went in.

The Siegal hit him with raw mana.

Not a technique. Not a skill.

Just the accumulated force of a boss that was done being managed — an exhalation of raw mana output that hit Zeus full in the chest and launched him the length of the room.

He hit the floor rolling and came up on one knee.

He’d felt it coming — a half-second warning in the way the Siegal’s mana had compressed before the release — and he had transformed the properties of the wave as it arrived. Changed the kinetic intent of it. Reduced its penetration. Absorbed the concussive element. Converted some of the force into heat that dispersed outward instead of inward.

It was still enough to send him flying.

But he was on one knee and not flat on his back.

He looked across at Sawn.

She was already at his side. She moved fast even without her talent engaged.

"We’re not cut out for this," he said.

It came out flat. Not dramatic. Just honest.

"We might not be," she said.

"I can’t land a clean hit. Every time I get close it flips everything I’m holding." He looked at his hand. "I can transform what it does to me on the way in, but I can’t transform what it does to my weapon once it’s already inside the technique." He paused. "I guess we can’t move like we hoped in an S-rank gate."

Silence.

Then, from behind them and slightly to the left:

"Disappointing."

They both turned.

A figure was leaning against the wall of the boss room with his arms folded.

Medium height. Unremarkable in the way that people who are very good at going unnoticed are unremarkable — not plain exactly, just... easy to not look at.

He had the expression of someone who had been watching a film and found the second act underwhelming.

Zeus stared at him.

"Where did you — how long have you —"

"Long enough," the figure said.

He unfolded his arms and tilted his head with mild interest.

"You two kept assuming this was a three-person raid. Every decision you made was built around the idea that the team ended at you." He gestured loosely at Zeus and then Sawn. "That’s not how teams work. That’s not even how math works."

"Who are you?" Sawn said.

The figure seemed vaguely pleased to be asked.

"I’m Shoba," he said. "And I think you need to consider the logic of what you just said. Rean got six dungeons in his playlist. Victor got ten. The system didn’t give everyone the same number. Teams aren’t equal. The size of a group isn’t fixed by assumption."

He looked at them evenly.

"So why would you assume you were only three?"

Zeus opened his mouth.

Closed it.

"What the hell," he said.

Shoba smiled.

It was a small, neat smile. Not unkind.

"Think of me," he said, "as your Xander."

He glanced at the Siegal, which had paused at the center of the room, watching the exchange through dim red slits.

"So. Have no fear."

The boss room felt different with four people in it.

Zeus wasn’t sure if that was real or just the adjustment of realizing he’d been counting wrong.

He looked at Sawn.

She was already timing the new variable, watching Shoba the way she watched everything — measuring intervals, calculating weight.

She met Zeus’s eyes and gave the smallest nod.

They weren’t three.