The gel-like orb sagged under her Crimson Gold Flame, melting like candle fat under a winter sun. Her head swam like mist over a frozen river; vision smeared; feet unsteady.

She burst out of the soft shell, yet the anesthetic seeped in like bitter smoke, blurring everything. No fish monster anywhere; the air held no tang of brine, no prickle of danger, only quiet like a drained pond.

The nearby pool was dry, a cracked mirror of stone. Up or down were her only roads, like forks in a cold stream. She shook her head, chasing dizziness like leaves from a path. She remembered stairs ahead, railings like iron vines.

She wanted a place to lean, a harbor against the drug, and a way to steam it out with flame. Her flame gathered like coals breathing; she squinted, eyes narrowed like blades, senses prowling the dark like a cat.

She filtered the anesthetic with the Mana in her Blood, sifting poison like sand through fingers. The world sharpened as the drug thinned, lines and shadows snapping into focus like frost etching glass.

The fish monster hadn’t left. He stood in a shadowed corner like a reef in night tide, watching her with quiet hunger. He didn’t strike while the iron was hot; he just watched, as if the trap from moments ago had never been set.

“Why didn’t you make a move?” Her voice carried the grit of suspicion, like gravel under snow. “Simple. I don’t think I can beat you,” he said, tone flat as still water. “You’re hurt and poisoned, but if I exploit that, something on you could kill me in an instant.”

He spread his fin-ridged arms, facing her like a priest before an altar, eyes holding a tattered pity for the world. “But I have an exceptional champion. I can’t let you go without introducing him.” His words rang like coins on stone.

Champion? Night Frost frowned, thinking the manager’s chatter had grown like weeds. Their group’s tempers were a patchwork quilt, mismatched yet stitched together. She almost respected the boss’s grim strength.

He pressed a button. The hanging reservoir slid back like a curtain, and a metal wall peeled open like a clam. From another wall, a huge glass vessel rumbled out, cradling a man Night Frost knew like a face from a bad dream.

He was the one who tried to blackmail her with cameras days ago. She and Senior Wang had beaten him and courted him as an informant. The fish monster manager took him away back then, and now he bobbed here like driftwood in a jar.

Half-transparent green liquid filled the vessel, bubbles climbing from bottom to top like ghosts, bursting into a foul stink. Even through the hood, the stench reached her like sour wind.

The man didn’t move. He floated naked, tubes speared into him like roots, identical to the specimens upstairs. The manager crooked a finger. The glass shivered like a pond in rain, and rage detonated inside the man like a buried mine.

He snapped open crimson Eye Orbs, ripped free of the hoses, and hammered the thick glass to shards with a single palm. His frame swelled; his hand bones warped like twisted branches. Blue veins bulged his skin, and blades sprouted from bone.

Spikes tore through his flesh like thorns, yet he felt no pain, only a blank storm inside. His back ballooned, his height lunged toward two meters like a tree in sudden spring.

Night Frost’s legs, wrapped in flame like silk banners, kicked out before his change finished, a thunderbolt from close range. He slammed back into the pipes, flew like scrap metal, and landed studded with glittering glass shards.

The fish monster manager stared, stunned, mouth open like a fish at shore. He glanced at Night Frost, then at the half-changed man. After a long beat, he barked, “You’ve got no martial honor! Who attacks during a transformation?”

Night Frost shot him a look like ice. This wasn’t some TV hero’s transformation with invincibility frames. No enemy waits politely for you to finish glowing. Magic Maidens gear up in under a second, a snap like flint.

His change took ten-plus seconds, enough time to die several times over. Blood trickled from the man’s chest and belly like thin rivers. He convulsed, the change stalled, yet his heartbeat pounded loud as drums.

She wondered what kind of Monsters the manager had tried to sculpt. His body was riddled, his life stubborn as weed. The manager’s tinkering felt close to what the Eye Orb had called gene work. Eye Orb was a titan of gene tech, a banner in that field.

The fish monster manager seemed cut from the same cloth, hands deep in forbidden growth. “Do you specialize in gene modification?” Night Frost shook the flames from her arms like rain.

She drove a Spear through the man’s chest, then another, pinning him to the floor like a moth on cork. Only then did she look back at the manager, gaze steady as a blade.

He didn’t bother to hide. In District Twenty One, this wasn’t a secret, just a rumor with legs. “Not genes. Genes are too deep a sea,” he said. “I work with cells.”

“I transplanted diseased Monster cells into him. They devour and replace his own, birthing a new Monster from his body. But these Monsters need inhibitors, or they collapse on the spot into meat slush.”

He paused, eyes drifting toward his handiwork with a shred of pity, like a craftsman mourning a cracked vase. He had poured thought and hate into the man, teaching him to survive the cutting, only for Night Frost to flatten him in a breath.

“If it’s gene modification, you don’t get this problem,” he went on. “You bend the human toward Monster. There may be unknown side effects, sure, but at least you won’t get ‘no inhibitor, instant meat pile.’”

He knew Night Frost was strong, likely among the sharper blades of the Magic Maiden ranks. He himself had tweaked cells, gaining teeth and claws, barely half a Cantata Two, a poor echo of a song.

With the mad man joining him, maybe they could have stood toe-to-toe, like two rocks against a wave. But the man got pinned before his entrance, and the black inside her Crimson Gold Flame gnawed at his cells.

The Black Flame ate his Mana, and the Abyssal Aura bucked and collided, two tides meeting in a moonlit strait. Against all odds, those forces braided together, complementary like night and dew. Hard to say what monster Night Frost truly was.

If she grew stronger and wielded both flows with ease, whichever side she joined would crush the other like a falling cliff. He didn’t want to target her anymore. He’d made the man for kicks, small fun eclipsed by a larger carnival down the road.

The fish monster manager waved her off like a host dismissing a warrior. She could leave; he wouldn’t die for nothing. They had no blood feud. The only engine—fun—had sputtered out like a damp firework.

There had been some objective, something about a Key on her, something important, yet his mind had let it drift like smoke. He wouldn’t reopen the waterway. He’d smashed the lever like a rotten oar.

Night Frost would have to take the normal route from Fourteen to reach the exit, where the deputy boss waited. That one was metal from head to toe, a man turned machine, like a furnace given legs.

He wouldn’t let her slip out by the water and waste such a grand show. And don’t think you can melt the waterway gate, he added. That metal is mixed with fireproof stock, the company’s lifeline.

Letting an outsider burn it would be pathetic beyond words. Floor Fourteen is a fine battlefield. The metal there is laced with Obsidian Stone powder, hard as winter rock against any Mana.

The place used to be a bullet and explosive line. The Magic Era came, bullets got tricky, and they shifted the industry. Now it’s the mechanical modification center for that man, and he works alone, a hermit among gears.

“You can’t take the water route,” the manager said. “Head down to Fourteen. Beat that guy and no one will block you. He calls people trash and filth, but he hates you for killing that artificial human. His mouth is the hardest part of him, harder than alloy,” he snorted, words like nails.

He pressed another button. A passage opened beside the lowest pool like a mouth in stone. Follow it, and you’d find the man on Fourteen, waiting like a blade in a sheath.

“He swapped his heart for a furnace and plated himself in metal,” the manager murmured, voice a ripple in still water. “He doesn’t speak, cold as a sealed vault. When he moves, he never pulls punches.”

The whispers sounded like his own private monologue, yet Night Frost heard every syllable like bells in fog. He was warning her; for the sake of bigger fun, he didn’t want her dying at his gate.

He could have let her go early, but they were strangers in the same storm. Guiding her to Fourteen promised better amusement. Night Frost was strong, maybe not weaker than the man. Who’d win was a coin toss in rain.

If she won, big fun. If she lost, big fun. Either way, the fish monster manager felt no loss. Seeing the waterway sealed and the lever wrecked, Night Frost’s anger rose like steam. Another layer to climb.

She didn’t want another fight; Mana and stamina thinned like late autumn leaves. But the brief rest had helped, and strength returned like warmth to fingers.

She stared at the black entrance, a narrow corridor like a throat, same design as the last exit. The fish monster hadn’t lied. Night Frost kept her guard up and stepped into the passage like a shadow slipping indoors.

He waved open another door, revealing a pool, pipes feeding the first layer’s filters like veins. He lay back in the water like a floating log and watched recordings flicker on the computer like fireflies.

Soon the water turned murky, a clouded mirror swallowing light.