Moriko found the start of this delve to be a bit disturbing, though practical. Watching all of those vats get emptied to create a temporary seething pit of liquids that had drained off into the nexus below was quite a show, and she could imagine how well, or rather, how poorly, most forces would fare against such a deluge.

It had also ensured that those vats were not readily available to be used on them. Mordecai didn't say that out loud, or even insinuate it really, but his lack of absolute trust in the Trionean forces was clear.

While she was pretty certain she could make it through that kind of attack, even her control over wind could not create a barrier that would protect her completely, and protecting Thunder and Lightning from the deluge would be even harder than protecting herself. Sure, someone like Gil could probably bathe in the stuff and consider it bracing and an efficient cleanser, but even at the first stage of immortality, Moriko was still far away from that sort of power.

After that, the delve became a strange mix of disturbing and boring.

The boring part was simply because there was little to do. Most of the work was being done by the soldiers, and with Mordecai at the front to assist them, there was little else for her to do except aid any soldiers who were injured, and help guide Kazue, Fuyuko, and Amrydor away from the worst areas.

That was where the disturbing part came in. Someone had taken the dungeon term for downward growing nexuses and had both been too literal and had taken it to extremes. While there certainly was a combat challenge to find here, the setting had clearly been designed to build fear and hatred, with nasty caricatures of kobolds occupying literal torture chambers and empty prison cells filled with the discarded bones of bipeds that had clearly been gnawed on by sharp teeth.

It had not gotten better from there, and it truly felt like traveling into a dark lair of evil creatures. The attempts at ambushes were constant, and there were traps everywhere; it seemed like every weapon and trap was poisoned, though at least the poisons were more on the torturous and debilitating side of things rather than the lethal kind. The people who had trained here were supposed to actually survive, if with a well developed hatred for anything resembling a kobold.

Even the animated skeletons had been a disappointment, compared to the craftsmanship they had seen when venturing into Dersuta's territory. They were simply constructs made of bones and had none of the unnerving aspects that a well-done mock-up of the undead would have.

Though she had to admit that the often strange mixtures of different types of bones in a single construct could be a bit off-putting.

The kobolds did get more dangerous, slowly taking on more draconic abilities and forms, though always twisted toward sinister and frightening appearances. More false undead were deployed too, though again, nothing particularly creative. Zombies that had to be hacked to pieces; ghouls with a craving for fresh meat; skeletons of predatory creatures like wolves and lions and even a few bears; and the occasional mashup of bits, such as a snake like construct that had a fanged human head, and whose 'rib cage' was actually made of skeletal hands which could grasp and claw at anyone they got ahold of.

It was all simple nightmare fodder and tales told to frighten children. The same sort of stories that Moriko had mentioned to Mordecai when she'd first met him, about a wrath-bound entity and its army of monsters. Mutated stories of Mordecai's history.

Oh, these creatures were all still dangerous and perfectly functional, but somehow they lacked the pride of craftsmanship that she'd seen from Dersuta. They also didn't function very well as accurate models of undead; they were mostly simple constructs and lacked the enchantments that enabled them to react correctly to divine energies.

However, Moriko felt rather sorry for the ghouls and similar creatures. They were not constructs — they were living creatures whose bodies had been twisted to give the appearance of death and the stench of decay, and driven to attack with frenzied blood lust. It was truly horrific.

There was an abrupt shift in tone with the sixth zone. The bodies of the dungeon creatures in this zone were twisted mockeries of various ancestries. Those bloodlines that innately appeared to be hybrids, such as kitsune, had their appearances twisted, distorting human-like faces into grotesque imitations of fox-shaped faces and giving them backwards hands. Others were oddly distorted combinations of various heritages, such as elf-dwarf mixes with almost comically short legs and arms longer than their entire body and legs combined.

With these mockeries had come elements of civilization. The Trionean soldiers were now facing these hybrids as soldiers in fortified positions that had been set up like the interior of a castle that was being invaded. These forces had come complete with their own archers, mages, and priests, making assaults even more difficult.

Mordecai maintained his role supporting the soldiers, while Moriko moved up to the front to assist the troops. Her job was to break formations and crack open or cast aside barricades, with Sparks darting about to spit lightning at anyone who got too close, but she did not maintain sustained engagement. Similarly, Bellona and Xarlug were acting in tandem as supplemental defenders, moving in to cover gaps in formations and give soldiers a chance to regroup. But most of the work was still left to the soldiers.

Then there had been the 'prisoners'. Almost all of them were traps, but this was part of Mordecai's job. He was the avatar of a very experienced nexus; he could untangle the aura of any inhabitant that was trying to pretend to not be one. The most disturbing part was that there had been any real prisoners at all. Those few people were carefully handed off to teams that would escort them to the surface. They would remain prisoners of a sort for a little while longer, at least, but they would have better conditions and have a chance to be identified and reunited with loved ones, depending on their origins.

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Moriko noticed that Mordecai was being careful about which teams he handed the prisoners to, effectively snubbing a few. Those few looked annoyed, but they also had an edge of suspicion and nervousness, almost like they were concerned that they had been caught at something.

Deidre had warned them of what her zones contained, but the warnings only helped so much. She hadn't been certain if there would still be real prisoners, as they were often forced into becoming her inhabitants. Moriko couldn't truly understand what that experience must be like, but the idea of two beings forced into that sort of bond was nauseating, and she could see why it would not be good for anyone's mental health.

However, these zones also showed why Mordecai was confident in his training tactics for the soldiers. By the time they'd had this many zones, Kazue and Mordecai had been creating libraries, mushroom forests, rivers, and more, and all of those zones were much more open, with some variation in potential fights or other encounters. Svetlana's zones were not done that way.

Instead, these zones were divided into five discrete sections with a single fight in each of them. Well, aside from the eighth zone; that one had been shortly after a nexus reset, and had been flooded with all the inhabitants from the earlier zones. But that same flood also made it easier to clean them out with wide area spells, and a little bit of Moriko's own black lightning.

This also confirmed what Deidre had said her schedule was: four times a day, at dawn, noon, dusk, and midnight. Mordecai had been fairly certain that Svetlana's reset schedule couldn't be made faster than that yet, but that assumption involved limits on the number of zones Svetlana had.

Switching between thinking of the nexus's avatar as Deidre and the core as Svetlana was odd, but given the circumstances, it made sense. The core would likely not identify with the name Deidre, and if Moriko ended up addressing her, it would be best to use a name she was familiar with. Deidre had decided to keep using that name for now; once she was reunited with her other self, well, she'd decide then.

The tenth zone was another abrupt change in style, which also marked another change of who had been wearing the ring that controlled Svetlana.

They were back to caverns, but these were not part of a castle's dungeon. Instead, these caverns were large to accommodate their inhabitants: drakes and wyverns. Now the fights were at least getting interesting.

Moriko was still providing mostly support by dashing in to relieve the pressure on soldiers and give them a chance to reorganize, but she also dashed back out of engagement quickly, remaining at the ready to help deal with bigger dangers if needed.

Those dangers finally made themselves known in the middle of the eleventh zone. Moriko wasn't sure why they hadn't been deployed earlier, but three raid bosses attacked while the soldiers were in the middle of a battle with four drakes and a pair of wyverns.

Mordecai launched himself into his battle form as he tackled the dragon raid boss.

Bellona and Xarlug immediately charged the giant, eight-armed kobold skeleton that had risen from the ground, with Fuyuko and Amrydor providing support.

Moriko leapt to intercept a lightning bolt that had seemingly appeared from an empty spot near the cavern's roof, and she channeled it into the ground before it could strike the soldiers. Before she could intercept the kobold sorcerer that Deidre had told them about, Moriko found an enraged Kazue already taking the invisible, flying mage on, though that invisibility didn't last much longer.

It was a strange fight to observe, and Moriko hadn't dared to interfere so long as Kazue had control of the pacing. If one were to compare them by raw power, the kobold should have been dominating the battle, but there was a problem with that assumption.

The kobold's power came almost entirely from being a raid boss. Svetlana's inhabitants were barely allowed to drill in basic combat maneuvers, and only if they were playing the part of soldiers, let alone spar and contest with each other to get a true grasp of their power and grow to match or even exceed the power granted to them.

Their own raid bosses had started in the same position, of course, but they were also allowed to be people and had always been encouraged to find ways to challenge themselves and grow.

In contrast to the kobold, Kazue had earned her power; first by learning the patterns of how her power should grow with the aid of her core, and then through starting over as a fully invested avatar. She had studied; she had practiced, however reluctantly at times; and she had pushed herself into exhaustion contesting herself against others, even if she had hated much of the delve into Dersuta's territory.

Kazue was constantly on the move, switching between spells and foxfire with fluid ease, and occasionally mixing in a strike from her staff. At any given moment, there was at least one echo or illusion of her active, and they were all too dangerous to ignore. Sometimes that fake one turned out to be the real one, or was imbued with a small spell of its own that it would consume itself to use if it was ignored. On top of that was her familiar; Carnelian Flame darted about and added her own fire breath to the attacks, but the little dragon also used that or any other fire to jump in close to the kobold mage and rake at him with fire imbued claws.

From what Moriko saw, Kazue hadn't even bothered to use any of the elemental wands that she had collected. Every spell relied on her specialties as she cast her dreams and imagination into reality. If her empty hand appeared to be grasped around a hilt, then you could expect a weapon to appear in it just as she struck, except for when it didn't, and a feint was often successful at drawing the kobold mage off guard.

Another advantage that she had was that she was comfortable casting her magic at close range. It wasn't normally something she'd preferentially do, but it was clear that, unlike her, the kobold had little if any experience combining his magic with close-quarters combat.

Moriko felt sorry for the clearly befuddled sorcerer as Kazue overwhelmed it with her fury. Fury that dissipated suddenly when the kobold collapsed and fell to the ground, unable to fight any more, but clearly not dead yet. Which was what Moriko had been worried about.

If this were another nexus, a defeat and surrender could be accepted, but not here. At least, not until Svetlana was free. So Moriko dashed in to grab Kazue by the shoulders and turn her away from the fallen kobold. "Don't look; you know I have to do this," Moriko said before muffling sound around the kitsune. Then she moved to kneel next to the fallen kobold before Carnelian could dart in for the kill; Moriko didn't think that Kazue would appreciate having her familiar make the kill either. "I'm sorry we can't accept your surrender; a free nexus is allowed to be much more civilized." Then she twisted the sorcerer's head and snapped his neck.

The skeletal raid boss had gone down first, and it took just a bit longer for Mordecai to take down the dragon raid boss, in part because he was keeping the fight away from everyone else, but Moriko was paying little attention to them, or to the soldiers that had finished off their opponents. Kazue was reacting to her own burst of anger and was now shaking and crying while Moriko held her close.

Moriko did pull one small bit of amusement out of the situation, though; the soldiers nearby were eyeing Kazue warily and were occasionally whispering to each other. Rumors about Kazue's temper were fine as far as Moriko was concerned, even if they were mostly incorrect. It was pain and grief at the suffering of others that had driven Kazue into her bout of rage.

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