Lucius, are you alive…? Vivi asked. Her thoughts were calm considering the situation. The world seemed to move slowly. Nothing around her was clear.

The crawling skeleton smashed its wings at the columns. The ground underneath rumbled, and bits of stone fell from the ceiling. The column didn't fall in one hit, but Vivi wasn't confident her cover would hold. The skeleton raised its wing for another hit.

Why don't you just finish me with another discharge… Vivi thought. For some reason, she was no longer panicking. Her eyes wanted to close as the monster hacked away at the column.

Her legs wouldn't move. Her arm was snapped. Her sword was somewhere; Vivi couldn't see it. She couldn't sense Lucius.

She couldn't feel a damn thing. Vivi didn't even know if she was awake at all. Sounds came at frequencies her ears struggled to understand. Her nose only smelled blood; her head was muddled, struggling to understand the situation she was in.

In the stories of legendary fights, the ether hunters always seemingly had infinite stamina. They could run, they could fight, and they could defeat any monster they came across. Ether helped hunters push their bodies to their absolute limits and beyond.

It turned out, ether hunters didn't have infinite stamina at all. A few minutes of running and a good hit to the back was all it took to immobilize Vivi.

I'm not a hero, Vivi thought. The ground rumbled as the monster slashed at the column once more. A few more hits, and it would fall. How was I ever supposed to defeat that thing?

Vivi was a runesmith without tools. A swordmaiden without practice or a mentor. She was an ether hunter without ether, without skills, or any special abilities other than a mountain of debt to drag her down.

Of course she was weak. Of course she couldn't defeat bosses. All she had was a dumb spirit and some experience running from bullies. From the start, this boss fight had been over. Vivi had nothing to use to defeat a skeleton like that.

Really, the ether hunters had been right. Vivi wasn't cut out for fighting. She was a runesmith. She had never been special.

And now she could only wait to die.

Would have been nice if I had a three-runed sword… Vivi thought. And it sure would have been nice if she'd received training with her spirit like every other ether hunter in the world. Perhaps Vivi would have done better if she wasn't tossed straight into the fourth level with nothing but her raincoat.

Allies would be nice… To help me when I fall…

The boss would have been so easy to overwhelm with a proper hunting team that could attack it from multiple directions at once.

Hell, Vivi would have been content if every living thing around her didn't want to kill her or steal the few wisps of ether she'd managed to gather. If everyone didn't just hate her when they saw her.

A vague voice came from somewhere in the back of her head. Vivi couldn't tell if it spoke words. Nothing in her head made sense.

The worst part was, everyone that had spat on her would get exactly what they wanted: the news of her death. Fellwater would shrug, perhaps smile a little, telling tales for years about that one cursed idiot that died on the fourth level. Ether hunters would pat themselves on their backs and laugh at Vivi for ever being stupid enough to think she'd get out of debt.

Vivi bit her lip, as if hoping some surge of power would suddenly awaken within. She had no energy to do the damnedest thing. She was starting to see black.

The vague voice in her head became louder. "Vivi…" it said.

Shut up… she thought.

"Vivi, wake up, you idiot!"

Suddenly, Vivi flinched. Her eyes saw reality again. New power flowed within her. It wasn't ether or adrenaline, or anything else. A new power.

"I'm burning our ether!" Lucius said. "It's going to be expensive, but we need to live! We'll gain it back if we kill the boss!"

Lucius's ether reserves dwindled. His dimmed-out wisps burned, disappearing from his core entirely. He was permanently burning the wisps for the remaining power left. The power wasn't much. Lucius had to spend over a hundred wisps just to get Vivi awake.

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But she was awake. Her legs could move. And her sword was still in spatial storage.

Gritting her teeth and growling, Vivi pushed herself up. Her muscles were totally spent. Her joints moved only with the power of ether. But she managed to stand.

The boss slammed its wings into the column. The stone crumbled, stone dust clouding the stairway. The column tipped over, bits falling. The next attack would hit her.

Lucius pushed ether into her eyes. She saw the boss's blue ether inside the stone-dust. The boss wound-up its wings for another heavy attack.

Vivi ran into the cloud, yelling. Her steps were clumsy. Her chances were still next to nothing. But she ran, charging the boss with all she had.

As she passed the cloud of dust, Vivi was faced with the skeleton's open jaw. Another ethereal discharge was about to hit.

She shouted louder, hoping for some miracle, while Lucius burned over half of their ether reserves. Parts of the colossal column were falling around her, creating more clouds of stone dust.

A chunk of the column, the size of a small boulder, fell on the skeleton's shoulder.

The impact knocked the skeleton slightly to the side and down. Its head hit the ground, and the jaw was forced shut.

The discharge of ether was released at the same time. Wisps of ether escaped through cracks of the boss's teeth. It was as if an explosion had gone off inside the skeleton's head.

Vivi shouted as hard as she could, running at the boss with her sword up. Wisps from the discharge grazed her cheeks, pushing pressure all over her body. It felt like she was climbing a steep mountain.

She pushed through. Just a few more steps until the boss's head. Lucius spent more ether, burning their reserves below three hundred. All of the ether they'd worked for disappeared just to give Vivi a little more strength.

The boss's giant jaw was within lunging range. Vivi raised her sword and cast down a heavy overhead swing.

She hit a tooth. Cracks appeared. Vivi raised her sword, hitting again.

The tooth broke, and Vivi's runesword made it to the jaw below. It wasn't enough. The boss was still alive. More ether surged into the mouth from its neck; the monster tried to send another discharge.

Vivi hit again, and the discharge released prematurely, pushing wisps of ether into the surroundings. Vivi felt like she was standing in a storm. She slashed and slashed, carving through the boss's face.

A crush rune would have made her sword a lot more destructive. Vivi didn't have the luxury of insane runeswords. All she had was a single strength rune and the will to hit hard.

Bones began cracking. Each swing was easier than the previous as damages spread. Vivi yelled out, hitting and hitting, cutting as much bone as she could, using the last bits of strength her body had to offer.

At some point, over twenty heavy swings deep, Vivi noticed she was no longer hitting bone. She was faced with bits of stone. She stopped and caught her breath. Concerned, she took a step back to examine what was going on.

The boss's bones had turned to stone. Ether sizzled all around her. Not hostile ether, but collectible wisps rising from the corpse. The pressure around her calmed down as a beacon of wisps rose to the ceiling.

The boss was dead. She had done it.

Vivi's legs gave up. She fell on her knees. The moment her body realized she wasn't in immediate danger, she collapsed.

"We did it!" Lucius shouted. He wore the widest grin Vivi had seen so far. His spirit form blinked, almost fully solid with color. "It's dead!"

His reserves had fallen to 248. Right away, Lucius began collecting ether. The boss brought his reserves back to 500, then 700, before eventually stopping at 1487. All that for a net loss…

With everything collected, Lucius flew back to Vivi. He floated over her with a grin. "I can't believe it. You killed it. Vivi, that was… Vivi?"

Vivi coughed. Her lungs begged for air, yet her throat revolted at the thought of breathing. The ground beneath her eyes seemed to shake. She wanted to puke.

"Oh…" Lucius said. "We, uh, maybe abused ether a bit too much."

Lucius? She could only speak in her thoughts. Talking took too much effort. I think I'm dying.

Lucius watched her in concern for a bit. He pushed more ether, freshly collected from the boss, to keep her awake. "You should be fine. You'll probably pass out. It might take a few days to recover. That's okay. We lived."

The mention of passing out made Vivi collapse on the ground, head laying on the stone. The gnolls' spikes still pierced her back. She was bleeding all over. A lot of her bones must have been broken.

Vivi's eyes wanted to force themselves shut. She felt herself lapsing into a deep sleep, and she didn't know when she was going to wake up.

"Ah, wait, don't pass out yet," Lucius said. "You need to collect the skill."

Skill? Vivi thought. Her head lifted slightly.

The boss's corpse remained even after all of the ether was collected. Vivi sensed something within the skull. A powerful wisp of ether moving within, like the soul of a nascent spirit.

Lucius watched it with sharp eyes. "That's it," he said. "The prize we've been looking for. Take it, Vivi."

Awed, Vivi reached for the wisp of ether. She saw the wisp fly to her core. Not into her ether reserves, but a different slot within her core. She felt the wisp's powers flowing inside, filling one of the three slots Vivi now sensed within.

The boss had dropped a skill.

"Alright, now you can pass out," Lucius said. "Let's examine our loot when you wake up."

With the boss dead and everything collected, the slab blocking the door slowly lifted open. Vivi rested her head back on the ground, eyes facing the door. Her eyes didn't see straight. The moment she closed them, she knew she would pass out.

Then she saw movement. Figures entered the arena.

The gnolls were outside the door! Vivi thought.

Vivi reached for her sword and attempted to push herself up. She wasn't safe yet. It was a stupid idea to pass out in a boss room, especially when she'd just escaped from monsters to get here.

Her arms collapsed under her own weight. Vivi gritted her teeth, glancing up at her opponents.

The blurry figures weren't gnolls. Vivi saw two demons wearing black masks. They approached slowly.

Not monsters… Vivi thought. If she fell now, she would most likely get captured. That could be disastrous, depending on who caught her.

Vivi didn't have much of a choice. The moment her body realized she wasn't in immediate danger of being mauled alive, all energy left her limbs. Vivi hid her runesword back in spatial storage and collapsed on the ground. She passed out.

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