Disgust, not awe, rose in Night Frost. She refused to fall here; if she had to die, let it be at truth’s doorstep, not in this false shrine to beauty.

Her head felt like iron. Knives of light flared before her eyes, blinding as noon sun. Flame-patterns crawled up her limbs like vines. Skin and veins tore. Fire fed on her Blood and roared across her skin like a burning river.

Anyone could see it: Night Frost was going all in. The woman wasn’t surprised. She felt the pressure climb off Night Frost in waves, enough to block this strike, maybe. At best, only to block it.

She only needed to add a breath more force. Hide more Mana in a single arc of blade-light. Then, in an offhand moment, slip in the killing stroke.

Now.

The ceiling became a hanging sea of blade-light. It fell in staggering order, whoosh after whoosh, like a rainstorm that forgot its rhythm. Each slash held a different weight of Mana. Some shattered at a touch like glass. Some were hard and keen as winter ice.

Night Frost stared down the storm without a flicker of fear. She never meant to defend. The best defense is to strike first. She didn’t believe that line in full, but it fit this field.

The flame filigree flooded her limbs. She sprinted straight through the falling light. Razor slashes parted her soft flesh like wet silk, yet couldn’t sever where the flame-patterns wrapped tight.

Cuts opened along her arms and thighs. Blood streamed warm, red as maple leaves in frost. She didn’t halt. She drove on like a stag through thorns.

Her flame blurred at the edges. The slashes grew directionless, a blizzard without north. She couldn’t see the angles. She didn’t know how far the woman stood. Her speed bled away. Her body hollowed out, like a lantern burning its last oil.

At last she couldn’t hold. Blood poured harder, a red tide staining the stone. Her pupils lost their focus, like stars fogged by snow.

Thud. Night Frost dropped into a pool of Blood and didn’t move. Wounds combed her body; bone showed pale beneath torn flesh. She was a slumped heap of mud, letting Blood flow as it pleased, letting the blades finish a death by a thousand cuts.

Half the blade-light still hung in the air, waiting to fall. Night Frost was a spent bow. Even her breath thinned to smoke. Life seeped from her like a blossom at season’s end, withering in a cold night.

The woman sighed at the gap from her ideal. But Night Frost, in this instant, was a flower—Blood-red, tragic, perfect. She stayed her hand and watched the beauty.

On the ground, Night Frost tasted pain like iron. She felt life drain like sand through a fist. She looked dying, but she was not dead yet. The heart of the Black Dragon would knit flesh in time, and the Black Dragon that bargained in her mind would push when the moment came.

But first, she had to “die.” To beat her, she had to loosen the woman’s guard. This was the last opening.

She counted in silence. She pinned her will to her heart. The beat slowed, slowed, then stalled to a breathless stillness. Night Frost’s “life” reached its end.

So the woman believed. She stepped onto the hard floor, still smooth though a storm of blades had struck it.

She raised her miaodao, let the blade-light coil back, and sheathed it at her waist. She lifted Night Frost’s corpse, ready to cremate her. That would be more dignified. If Night Frost hadn’t resisted, she could’ve promised a clean, bloodless death. Now this scar-mapped body had no beauty to speak of.

She felt no warmth on Night Frost’s skin. She heard no heartbeat.

Now. Under the Black Dragon’s fading pressure, Night Frost’s heart kicked again. The Crimson Gold Flame burst from her flesh. Flares of Crimson Gold Flame, each veined with Black Flame, leapt out and set both bodies ablaze.

The woman had never seen Black Flame. She poured Mana to smother that familiar-yet-strange fire. But Black Flame burned Mana. The more Mana she fed it, the fiercer it clung.

This Black Flame wasn’t pure. It was weak, riding the heat of the Crimson Gold Flame. The Black Flame simply devoured Mana to keep the Crimson Gold Flame fed.

“You didn’t die?! Your heart stopped. Why?”

Night Frost’s heart hammered on. Her eyes cleared like ice after thaw. Hearing the woman’s voice, she opened them. Light came back to her gaze. Dim crimson lines reappeared on her forearms, like old scars relit.

The woman whipped her arms. Arcs of blade-light pricked Night Frost’s skin. Blood beaded and fell in drops, little garnets hitting stone.

Night Frost moved first. She clamped a hand on the woman’s shoulder. Her rune-wrapped fist hammered the woman’s chest like a piledriver.

The woman’s face bleached white. She steadied, caught Night Frost’s fist in her palm. They locked, breath to breath, like two beasts over a single throat.

Night Frost held the edge. The hateful flames still danced on them both, stubborn as weeds after rain. At this rate, the woman’s Magic Layer would burn away to nothing.

Not like this.

The woman gritted her teeth. She jerked a knee up and smashed Night Frost’s spine. Pain flared white. Night Frost’s grip on the shoulder loosened. The woman seized the opening and flung her away.

Night Frost twisted midair and landed rough, knees soft. She reached into the fire and drew the Crimson Gold Spear. The Black Flame sank into it, forming dark lines along the shaft like storm clouds.

One glance at the spear’s patterns, and Night Frost surged forward, spear sweeping like lightning. The woman set aside the clinging flames for a breath and snapped Mana Blades from her wrist.

The Mana Blades couldn’t scratch the Spear. She had to draw her miaodao again. In that heartbeat, Night Frost pulled a black, yawning gun from nowhere, its chamber brimming with Mana.

As the woman cleared the miaodao, Night Frost squeezed the trigger. Mana packed into a hard bullet and flew straight for the woman’s brow.

The woman stumbled back, lifted the blade to split the shot. Night Frost detonated it early. Flame blossomed like a sudden sun.

That was the plan. The miaodao that could match Night Frost’s Spear now stumbled under the blast.

Night Frost hit first. Her Spear thrust in. The woman could only parry and buck. Hunter and prey swapped masks in that instant.

“So this was your goal? You’re fading. Your wounds are pulling you under. You’re strong—but not enough!”

Night Frost alone wasn’t enough. Her wounds dragged her like lead. Even pressing the woman now, she would likely die—if not for the card she held.

In the corner, a black fox wood carving lifted its head. The wood seemed to breathe. From it, a shadow of a Black Fox unfurled like ink in water.

Night Frost triggered the Black Fox’s activation Formation. It was her second work, yet the Fox kept over half its strength—enough to unleash a strike of Cantata Two.

The Black Fox pounced, a streak of night, straight for the woman’s heart. Bound by pact, it ignored Night Frost and went for the kill.

In heartbeats, its claws raked the woman’s chest, skin and bone parting like damp paper. It shoved its head in. The woman tried to yank the carving free, but Night Frost, with a sliver of advantage, pinned her down.

The Black Fox bit the woman’s heart and tore it out. In that same instant, the Magic Stone set in the Fox burned empty and fell to dust.

With her last strength, the woman shoved Night Frost off. She stared at the Black Fox, stained red by her heart’s Blood and dead of Mana, and at the heart still beating.

The heart squeezed and sprayed, petals of Blood opening. With each breath, the beats grew weaker, like a flower drooping in rain.

“I never knew that was beautiful too… mine…”

She didn’t finish. She fell. No breath rose again.

Night Frost panted, lungs like bellows. She scooped up the fox carving, then let fire roll out to burn Blood and body to clean ash.

She slumped against a wall and let Mana trickle back, slow as dew.

The Crimson Gold lines faded from her limbs. Beneath those layered patterns lay torn flesh. Her hands trembled as she drank a potion. The effect was slight, a candle in fog, but better than nothing.

What a brutal fight. What grade of Manager had she been? If the next Managers matched her, Night Frost was as good as dead.

In the fight, she had struck a deal with the Black Dragon’s spirit. It would lend power. In return, she would loosen some of her mental chains on it.

Between slow erosion by the Black Dragon and a clean death, she chose life. Mind-wounds, at least, might be mended.

She had just taken some things from the woman and from Senior Wang: a water-element jade pendant—she could pour Mana into it, but the effect was poor—and the woman’s miaodao.

Night Frost wouldn’t use it well, but the steel was excellent. If she had a Spear or a long polearm, her strength would rise again. For now, the saber would do to clear a path.

She rested for half a day. No one came to this floor. Odd. Were they not alarmed that a Manager had died? Did they not know?

The silence felt wrong. Were people here so stripped of humanity?

With those doubts coiled tight, Night Frost stepped into the twelfth floor. The instant she crossed the threshold, the scene inside slammed into her eyes. Her pupils tightened to points.

She swore, from that moment on, she never wanted to see what lay within again.