They edged down the mouth of Aklatia’s old site, like ants along a scar. Thank heaven Lu Jin and Lu Shi had cleared the path, or the pit’s throat would’ve held them for hours.

Lu Shi snapped a special glow stick. It cracked like a green star and fell into the hole. No traps stirred. Lu Jin and Lu Shi dropped first, Qiu Sheng a heartbeat later.

Qianchun moved light as mist. Wind cupped her palms and lowered her gently. Qiu Sheng’s palm-lightning flared, a coin of light in ink, and they snatched a brief map of shadows.

Unease pricked Qiu Sheng before she acted. Her fingers found a switch in the dark. No light answered. Too many wars had chewed the power here. They’d lean on her lightning if needed.

Her lightning burned bright but shaved only a small island from the dark. Even that sliver felt like a thread of warmth in a winter cave.

Truth was, the real scouts were still Lu Jin and Lu Shi. Night vision whispered to them; strength sat easy on their shoulders.

“Ah—!”

After a dozen careful steps, Zhang Jialu screamed. Lu Jin, Rosefire Pistol in hand, rushed over, eyes sharp as flint. “What happened?”

“It’s soft. Under my foot…”

Qiu Sheng’s lightning peeled the dark from her boots. Bones lay twisted like fallen scaffolds. Plump white grubs chewed the last flecks of meat, fat glints in a coal seam.

One palm-sized worm had wandered to her heel. She crushed it. White and green filth burst out, a nasty flower splashing from the center. The stink hit like rot in rain.

Zhang Jialu gagged, fear pinching her throat. The worm and the pale bones made her stomach cave. She wasn’t built for this kind of night.

Qianchun breathed out. Wind swept clean the mess around Zhang Jialu, like a gentle broom in a shrine. It helped a little. She couldn’t do much more; her Mana would soon run dry.

Her “gift” was a feeling more than a right. The Magic Stone granted it. Without the stone, the feeling thinned. Training kept the thread from snapping, but it frayed all the same.

Blade had said it straight: Magic Stones or contract beasts are bridges to Mana. Lose the bridge, and you lose speech with the river. Qianchun felt her link fade, day by day.

“Thanks…”

Xia Qingqing hauled Zhang Jialu up. The team slowed their steps, letting fear settle like dust.

Lu Shi took point. Lu Jin guarded the rear. Between them, First Symphony felt a hush of safety, the way lanterns hold a lane at night.

Those fat white grubs weren’t Monsters. They were cleaners of rot, soft engines that don’t bite humans. Their protein beats beef five to six times. Danger still pooled elsewhere.

And that danger was why they had come—to scrape threat from bone and floor, to rinse this ruin of its hidden teeth.

Ahead, a room’s lights still flickered after months, little moths of light in stale air. The grid here might still be alive.

Lu Jin and Lu Shi dropped night vision in sync. Flicker stabs at night eyes like flashbangs. Pain lives in that strobe; raw sight is kinder.

The place looked like a data hub, a nest of numbers. No wonder the power held. Data here felt like gold behind glass.

HQ had ripped the treasure already. The mainframes hummed empty, their bellies bare. Only intermittent power kept their old hearts beating.

“No issues here. If you need a breather, take it.”

The space wasn’t big or small. They’d only combed a third of one level. Light was the leash; with it, they’d sweep two floors in an hour.

“This quiet is frightening.”

Lu Jin brushed dust from the doorway. She laid clean paper for a seat. Lu Shi glanced, then sat without fuss. No worms here, just clumped gray ash. Dust shaken; problem solved.

Lu Jin agreed. The quiet felt wrong, like silence after a scream. It was quiet beyond belief.

“Look—this isn’t a worm bite.”

She turned her back to the flicker and sparked her night vision again. Her power was born of dark; this place was home turf. She tapped the void, and a shattered skeleton slid flat before Lu Jin.

On the only intact bone, Lu Jin saw a smooth bite, ten-odd centimeters long, polished like river stone. The Monster wasn’t huge. They’d still treat it with caution.

They finished resting and rose to move. A crisp clink of something knocking echoed from the black, like glass tapping glass in a cave.

Lu Shi drew her dagger. Lu Jin lifted the Rosefire Pistol. Their eyes swept the ink. Nothing moved; tracks hid under the breathing dark.

Lu Shi knew something was there. That sound wasn’t a ghost. If she alone had heard it, she might doubt. Lu Jin heard it too. The night had a pulse.

It wasn’t from Qianchun’s group. Unease thickened in Lu Shi’s chest. The dark pressed, restless and urgent, tugging her nerves like a tide. Danger edged closer, unseen.

She trusted that darkness-born sense. It had saved her many times. She chose. Her dagger cut the empty air. Mana pulled the shadows. The shadows sharpened into blades and bit the void.

Blood snapped open like petals. A thin red line drew itself across the floor in front of her, neat as a seam.

The space warped. A slender shape burst out, neither snake nor bug, a ribbon that drank the dark. It slid back to shadow, but Lu Shi’s senses outpaced its trick.

“Careful!”

Qianchun and Qiu Sheng folded around the others like wings. Lu Jin fired. The Monster took a few holes and shrieked, then dissolved into black again.

“It’s a Void Wanderer. Origin unknown. Hides and ambushes. Lives in groups. Edible.”

The word “group” tightened Lu Shi’s jaw. The dark kept ringing alarms. That first Wanderer hadn’t fled. It lay coiled in the ink.

Her hit earlier had luck in it. She hadn’t pinned the exact spot, only flushed it with a wide sweep. Luck doesn’t last. Mana doesn’t forgive waste.

Now it hid cleanly. She couldn’t fix its direction. Wide-area skills burn Mana fast. With a group species, lingering breeds trouble.

She started to turn when a bloodstained Monster surfaced from the team’s rear, sliding out of the void. It looked like a silver beltfish, but it swam through empty air.

That’s why they named it a Wanderer. Its teeth were sharper than any beltfish. They’d bite flesh like wet paper. Its size was small; it wasn’t the biter of that bone.

Dead-fish eyes made it look slow-witted, but it read the pack well. It slipped past Lu Jin and Lu Shi and arrowed for Zhang Jialu at the tail.

Xia Qingqing snapped her hand. A thorned vine shot from her palm. The Monster twisted fast and slipped the snare, a needle through cloth.

Lu Jin caught the beat. One bullet punched its skull like a nail. Lu Shi pried open its head, plucked the Magic Stone, and tossed the corpse into the Spatial Box.

“It’s edible anyway. No loss. Move. They live in groups, more are coming. We can handle it. You can’t.”

Lu Shi’s plan was clean. First Symphony would pull back. She and Lu Jin would clear the nest. Qianchun and Qiu Sheng agreed. Their strength wouldn’t hold against a swarm.

“To the branch. This is Lu Jin. Aklatia ruins, e104, 36. Large numbers of Void Wanderers. Lu Jin–Lu Shi team is clearing.”

Blade straightened, coffee cooling. One hand pressed her headset. The other tapped the keyboard like rain. “Copy. Maintain comms. Call reinforcements if needed.”

Lu Jin kept the line open. She raised the Rosefire Pistol. The rose and thorn on the barrel drank Mana. Bright roses seemed to bloom in the air.

“Sacred bell’s prayer, chapel hymn! Trial-fire recasts the holy rose. The rose’s heart becomes a seed of flame.”

A bullet blossomed midair. Flame unfurled, lighting a lotus of fire. Bells tolled in the bones. Fire-rain fell. The dark flinched and slid back.

Clots of fire smacked into Void Wanderers hiding in the ink. They writhed, thin bodies twisting in the blaze. Those unlit swarmed in. Lu Shi sliced them neat in halves.

They didn’t fear death. A few broke through the line again and again. Their sharp teeth drove at the Magic Layer, then snapped. The Magic Layer picked up two new holes.

Tooth-broken Wanderers turned and chased the retreating Qianchun and her group. At Lu Jin and Lu Shi’s feet, more Void Wanderers streamed on without end.