⟟ Vault Seeker VIII ⟟
Valemont City Plaza was no longer a mall.
It was a corpse, hollowed out by time and calamity. Glass crunched beneath boots, the echoes distorted by collapsed walls and warped metal. Storefronts gaped open like broken mouths, vomiting out mannequins and ash. Discarded belongings lay like offerings—shoes, dolls, cracked phones—each a fossil from a forgotten life.
Alina's sister stepped quietly over the twisted leg of a rusted escalator.
Her eyes scanned everything. Every angle. Every broken sign. Every shadow that shifted unnaturally. Her companions followed in silence—five shadows moving in concert, bound not by orders but by understanding.
They were the fourth to eighth strongest Dungeon Raiders in the nation. And yet here, none of them walked ahead of her.
She halted at the concourse.
What lay beyond was chaos made flesh.
Ruinborn.
Two dozen—maybe more. Scuttling across shattered benches and shattered tile. The weaker ones—E-ranks—looked insectile, dragging limbs and chittering hungrily. The D-ranks snarled like half-formed beasts, twitching with instability.
And in the center…
A 9-foot humanoid. Pale. Naked. Weaponless. But its stillness screamed danger. Its eyes—empty holes radiating red mist—stared not at them, but through them.
Alina's sister didn't blink.
Then, without looking back, she whispered: "We don't have time for mistakes. This thing adapts to whatever it's exposed to. Five minutes and it'll nullify anything we throw at it."
She turned, her eyes clear and cold.
"We beat it before then. Or we die."
Silence.
Then she walked to the center of the group and knelt, using a shard of glass to sketch on the dirty floor.
"Strategy?" Lirael asked, twirling her wand idly. Purple sparks danced across her fingers.
Alina's sister spoke without looking up.
"Rovan, set up on the second floor. Your role is suppression and coordination. Keep eyes on the big one and call its adaptive changes as they happen."
Rovan nodded and vanished into the upper level. His boots didn't make a sound.
"Lirael, you're not to use the same projection twice. One illusion, one blast type, then change. Keep it guessing. Focus on distractions, not destruction. Aether conservation is priority."
Lirael smirked. "So I don't get to blow everything up?"
Alina's sister didn't answer.
"Sahir. We'll let your urumi take punishment. The more it does, the better you control it, right?"
He nodded. "But if I stop fighting, the buff fades."
"Then don't stop," she said. "I'll bait the big one to attack you. You intercept it. Use your mind to move the blade—it won't expect mental weapon control."
Sahir cracked his neck. "Sounds fun."
"Morien," she continued, voice low. "You're our finisher. Stay hidden. Use the shadows. Only attack once the titan is overwhelmed. You've got one shot before it adapts to shadow strikes too."
Morien said nothing. He was already fading into the dark.
She stood.
"I'll be the pivot. My foresight gives me ten seconds. I'll counter any change it makes before it completes. If I burn through my aether, I can stop time for one second—but only once."
They stared at her.
No speeches.
Just trust.
Then she said, softly: "Execute."
The air changed.
Rovan's voice crackled into their earpieces. "Hostiles shifting. No reaction yet. Wait—eyes on. It's tracking us passively. Beginning countdown."
Ten seconds in.
Alina's sister dashed forward, cloak fluttering.
The Ruinborn noticed.
Too late.
Lirael leapt onto a collapsed shelf and summoned a platform of violet energy beneath her feet. From her wand exploded a crackling blast of force—splintering two of the smaller beasts on contact.
One illusion peeled off from her—an identical clone darting left.
The swarm divided.
The humanoid didn't move.
Not yet.
Rovan whispered: "Six down. Three mimicking Lirael's energy signature. They're reacting to color now—switch tone."
"Got it," Lirael replied, and her next blast came golden-white instead of violet. It slammed into the concourse with a thunderous boom, hurling a cluster of Ruinborn into a broken fountain.
Sahir entered the fray with elegance and brutality. His urumi slashed through the chest of a D-rank, and another leapt on him—striking his arm.
He smiled.
Another hit—his weapon pulsed.
It began to move even without his hand.
"Keep hitting me," he muttered, almost amused, dodging another strike as the urumi slashed with a thought.
Rovan's voice again: "Twenty seconds. The humanoid's skin is thickening. It's copying Sahir's kinetic tempo. I see the same angle bend in its shoulder."
Alina's sister saw it too. A second ahead. No—ten seconds.
She pivoted and lashed her chain at the humanoid's foot, dragging it off-balance. It barely moved—until Morien surged from a nearby collapsed kiosk.
Shadow clung to him like armor. His scythe gleamed.
One strike—silent, perfect—cleaved through the humanoid's ribs.
It roared.
A soundless roar.
And then its body shimmered. Flesh rippled, darkened.
It had learned shadows.
"Fall back!" Alina's sister ordered. "Rovan, where are we?"
"Forty seconds left."
Then the humanoid moved.
Too fast.
It appeared behind Sahir, mimicking his urumi's motion with its own tendrils of hardened flesh.
Alina's sister froze time—just one second—and moved between them.
When the world resumed, she blocked the strike with her chain. Aether burned through her limbs like acid.
Lirael yelled, "I'm out of platforms!"
"Make illusions! NOW!"
Three fake Sahirs split off. The titan struck two—wrong ones. Sahir's real body arced above and slashed down with a cry, his urumi spiraling like divine punishment.
Rovan fired again—this time at the humanoid's foot. It staggered.
"Ten seconds left," he said. "It's trying to retreat—probably to reset adaptation."
"Not today," Morien growled, and emerged from pure black. His body blurred in shadow.
The scythe struck again.
This time, it bit deep into the humanoid's spine.
It collapsed.
For now.
Alina's sister dropped to one knee, breathing hard. Aether trickled from her fingertips.
Rovan's voice came slowly.
"It's not dead. Just… confused. Overloaded."
Sahir spun his urumi into a coil. "So what now?"
She stood.
And smiled.
"We bury it."
The air in the underground car park was stagnant, heavy with the scent of old oil, rust, and dust. Wrecked cars loomed like metal corpses in the dim light, shadows stretching unnaturally against the cracked concrete walls.
Alina and Rowan moved cautiously between the vehicles, their only source of light the narrow beam from Alina's smartphone flashlight. It flickered occasionally, casting long, uncertain silhouettes.
They had heard something—a sound that didn't belong. Something soft, like a shuffle. A whisper of movement.
Then—
Tap.
A single step echoed behind them.
Both Rowan and Alina whirled around. The flashlight caught it for just a second.
A humanoid figure.
Its skin pale and stretched, body human-sized, arms unnaturally long.
The moment the light hit it—it turned invisible.
Gone.
Alina's breath caught. Her eyes widened in sudden realization. "We're going to be trapped!" she gasped.
Rowan tensed, confused. "What?"
"This is a low B-tier Ruinborn!" she said rapidly, stepping closer to him. "I read it in a bestiary. It creates an illusion… if we stay here too long, we'll be pulled into its dimension."
Rowan's hand tightened around his keris. "What kind of illusion?"
"A maze," Alina said, eyes darting across the shadows. "And in that maze, there are others—Ruinborns. If we don't look at them, they'll kill us. But the moment we look at them, they vanish."
"So they go invisible… if we look at them?" Rowan asked, his voice low.
"Yes," Alina said. "They kill anyone who doesn't look at them. If we look away, even for a second… they'll sprint for us."
Rowan's face darkened. "How strong are they?"
"Mid E-rank," she replied. "But the numbers will be the problem."
They stood back-to-back now, the flashlight held between them as Alina swept it around in small arcs.
"This is bad," Rowan muttered.
"We're already inside the illusion," Alina said grimly. "We just didn't notice it until now."
Alina looked at Rowan, their faces tense under the beam of weak light.
"We need a plan," Rowan said.
Alina nodded. "Okay. I'll keep the flashlight steady. You use the keris—only if they get too close."
"They're fast?"
"Faster than us," she said. "But they won't move as long as we're looking. That's our edge. We use the layout. The cars, the mirrors."
Rowan's eyes scanned the space. His mind moved like clockwork, calculating. "Okay… we split our sight lines. Keep the beam on any angles we can't see directly. You use the flashlight, I'll use car mirrors. If we angle them correctly, we'll have a view around us."
Alina blinked. "That's… actually good. But we'll still have blind spots."
Rowan looked at the rows of cars. "We'll move slow. Use the hoods for height. Hop over instead of going around. Anything to avoid looking away for too long."
"And if we hear more footsteps?"
"Stop. Look. Don't move," Rowan said.
They both nodded. A quiet understanding passed between them.
Moments Later
They began to move.
Alina held the flashlight steady as Rowan moved with it, using angled side mirrors to catch glimpses around corners. The car park seemed endless now—each aisle stretching into unnatural darkness.
Rowan caught one out of the corner of his eye—a humanoid figure, crouched behind a tire. He didn't blink.
Alina stepped over a hood, breathing shallowly.
Rowan whispered, "Three ahead. Standing still."
Alina swept the light, catching one—it turned invisible immediately.
She winced. "Damn it. We lost track of one."
Then—a creak behind them. A sprinting sound.
Alina didn't hesitate. She spun and blasted a blast of compressed air behind them. The beam of her flashlight caught a Ruinborn just as it lunged—it vanished again, stopped in its tracks.
"Go!" Rowan shouted. "We need to get out of the illusion's range!"
But just as they reached the edge of the next row of cars—
Five more figures emerged.
They were already in motion.
Alina turned the flashlight—two disappeared, but three kept running.
"We can't hold them!" Alina shouted.
Rowan stepped in front, slashing with his keris. One of them veered off—but another came from the left.
A blast of air hit it hard—sending it tumbling into a dented SUV.
But it wasn't enough.
Alina gasped. "Rowan!"
A black mist began swirling at her feet. The air vibrated with distortion.
"It's the B-rank's trap—! It's activating!" she screamed.
She turned to him, a desperate look in her eyes. "I'm being pulled in!"
Rowan tried to grab her, but the space around her was collapsing—folding like paper.
"I can't stop it!" she yelled. "Rowan—you have to go! Find my sister!"
"No!" he shouted, voice cracking.
"Go!" she cried. "Please! I can hold them off a little. Don't let me disappear for nothing—!"
And in a blink—she was gone.
Rowan Alone
He stood there for a second, stunned.
Then something slashed across his back.
He grunted, barely dodging another clawed swipe.
Blood ran down his arm.
He turned and ran—sprinting down a row, limping, panting, stumbling over debris.
The light was gone. The phone was gone.
Only darkness.
Rowan gritted his teeth, his entire body aching. He pressed on, ignoring the warm wetness of blood soaking his side.
"I have to find her…" he whispered. "I have to find her sister."
He staggered up a set of broken stairs, leaning on the railing. The mall stretched before him in ruin.
His eyes burned. His legs buckled.
He dropped to his knees.
"…I can't do this…" he breathed. "I can't even save her. I'm… I'm useless…"
Silence.
But something in him—something deeper—refused.
"No…" he said aloud, staring down at his bloodied hands. "I won't give up. I won't leave her behind. I promised…"
He pushed himself up.
One step.
Then another.
And another.
Until—
He saw them. A group moving through the corridor ahead. At the center—Alina's sister.
He limped toward them, calling out hoarsely. "Your sister… she's in trouble… please—!"
Alina's sister turned. Her eyes widened. "What…?"
Her expression changed—shock, then fear.
"Where is she?" she asked, her voice sharper than steel.
Rowan collapsed in front of them, gasping. "Trapped… in its dimension… I couldn't stop it…"
Her eyes narrowed. "Show me."