Qianchun, Qiu Sheng, and the others sprinted through a pitch-black corridor, a stone throat swallowing their breath.

Every underground outfit built halls like this, a choke to turn invaders into slow-moving prey, while secret doors let their own slip out like rats into side burrows.

They had no such door now, only this reeking, endless tunnel, and behind them came Void Wanderers with teeth shattered like broken shells.

The Wanderers weren’t a real threat; Qiu Sheng’s lightning couldn’t finish them, but each bolt seared them half-dead like meat left too long over coals.

The ones roasted by lightning bled out a rich, savory smell, a street-stall sizzle in the dark; no wonder Lu Jin’s dossier said they were edible and mouthwatering.

Thanks to Qiu Sheng holding the line, they’d made it far, but before Cantata Two their attack-grade Mana had a hard cap, and the swarm just kept coming like locusts.

Sensing the fatigue in Qiu Sheng’s group, the Wanderers stopped going after Lu Jin and Lu Shi, then turned like a school through a strait and poured into the narrow passage.

They dropped all defense and ran, a wind of panic at their backs, while behind them countless Wanderers opened well-deep mouths and rasped teeth like wet saws.

Their bodies whipped and cut the void, leaving echoes like torn silk, a ghost tide chasing their heels.

Sheer numbers forced the pace; a path that took ten minutes before was devoured in a few, and they reached a cave mouth where sunlight never pooled.

The opening climbed straight up like a dry well, and going up was a thorny climb.

If Qianchun’s Mana still flowed like before, she could have floated one or two up, but now she could only make herself feather-light, nothing more.

Frustration hit first, then the thought: she wasn’t even the pink-haired heroine who could pound the floor and cry; all she could do was shout, “I can’t do anything.”

Even with the cheat code typed right, the author wouldn’t flip on god-mode; the line felt like yelling into a locked sky.

She swallowed it and moved anyway, telling Qiu Sheng the plan: she’d dump every drop of Mana to send the strongest body and hands up first.

Qiu Sheng agreed without chewing on it; the height was tight for her alone, but with Qianchun’s push it was a sure thing, a nail hammered to the board.

With Qianchun’s lift, Qiu Sheng’s feet skimmed the stone, then golden lightning burst under her soles and shoved her into the air like a rising spark.

Heat-haze bent the air around her, and she shot an arm up and clamped onto a metal edge, special plating that sizzled but held like iron frost.

After that it was a climb, all grit and fingers, but with Qianchun easing the weight, each pull felt light as paper.

Qiu Sheng reached the lip cleanly; Qianchun listened to the tunnel’s drumbeat growing close, then glanced at Zhang Jialu and Xia Qingqing, both a league weaker.

“Go first, Qiu Sheng,” Xia said, calm like a held breath; she knew Qianchun wanted to help, but the three of them weren’t Qiu Sheng and couldn’t copy that ascent.

It was a good call; individually the Wanderers weren’t tough, and even a swarm would need time to strip them to bone.

“Before you go, push some rocks down!” Qianchun shouted, voice sharp as flint.

Qiu Sheng caught the intent; they withdrew halfway to dodge the fall, and Qiu Sheng worked fast, sending stones thudding down until a little hill rose like a cairn.

Then she didn’t look back and bolted for the Twelfth District branch, a streak in the dark.

The three pressed their backs to the rock pile; Xia and Zhang clicked through magazines and rounds, the metal count like rain on a tin roof.

Qianchun watched the corridor that pulsed with a muffled heartbeat; she snapped a glow stick, green as swamp-light, and pitched it down the throat.

Thunk—luck or aim, the stick cracked against a hidden Void Wanderer’s skull and washed it in sickly light, dragging its body out of the void like a fish from ink.

No wonder the noise had dropped; they’d slipped into the void again and circled fore and aft, and the fall had likely crushed a heap of them.

Even the rocks smelled pickled in corpse brine, the stink salted into stone.

They didn’t have Lu Shi’s dark-sense, that hunter’s feel for threats in black water; with the sound gone dead, their eyes found only stone and tunnel.

The ammo count was ugly—under a hundred rounds total, three or four dozen shots each at best, like sand running out in a narrow hourglass.

Qianchun’s rounds were custom; since the orphanage job she’d hardly touched them, and today she’d only packed a few for bad luck.

The enemy hid like eels, and bullets were finite; even perfect marksmen punching hearts every time wouldn’t walk clean from this net.

“Do we just blindfire and pray we hold till Lu Jin, Lu Shi, or Qiu gets back?” The worry rose first, then the act; she fired into the empty dark.

The crack snapped the air, and both women glanced over; “Just a test,” Qianchun said, smoke curling like a ghost ribbon.

Miss—thick as the swarm felt, the spacing was wider than she’d guessed.

Had they left, or were they statues in the void, waiting for patience to fray or magazines to go dry?

Xia and Zhang sent a few into the dark; a couple shots hit meat, dull thuds that proved the swarm was still coiled and waiting.

Elsewhere, Lu Jin and Lu Shi finished their local pack; the things weren’t endless, and most had likely drifted toward Qianchun’s beacon of noise.

They had to hurry; three candles would gutter fast in a storm.

“Careful!” The warning hit like a knife; a danger-sting lanced Lu Shi’s nerves, bright and sharp, the kind only Cantata Two could make.

She yanked Lu Jin aside, and a Void Wanderer showed itself—bucket-thick, over five meters long, a face whiskered with thin tendrils, scales glinting like damp slate.

The fight and the dead had called it; it circled above them like a slow vulture, then turned and chewed into its kin with terrible calm.

“It’s eating its own?” The thought was bitter iron; they’d bled plenty of strength on the last wave and didn’t want this fight now.

They gripped processed Magic Stones, and with a Formation woven by Night Frost’s nominal master, they pulled Mana fast and clean, like drawing water through silk.

They only hoped the ugly ribbonfish would savor its meal and chew slow.

It didn’t; those razor teeth ripped flesh, and in three bites the meat slid down like rain into a gutter.

Lu Shi remembered bones topside with neat, flat tooth marks; this had been the artist.

Lu Jin loaded, steady as a metronome; if it twitched at them, it would taste Mana fused with gunpowder and heat.

Dead-fish eyes stared out of that skull; after its snack, the Wanderer drifted a few lazy circles, hunting for more corpses like a gull over dead water.

Finding none, it fixed on them, and Lu Jin squeezed; muzzle fire drew a narrow red line through the dark.

The copper-bronze round drilled its head and boomed, a flower of force; with her Mana behind it, that round could punch through steel plate.

The creature spasmed, hopped twice, then went still, a lump of shadow on cold rock.

“Down?” Its scalp had split, white bone showing like chalk, and the round sat wedged against the skull.

“No, it’s still alive!” Panic licked first, then motion; they fell back fast, boots scraping stone like dry leaves.

The Wanderer felt its prey’s realization, so it dropped the act and sprang up, soulless eyes locking on them like cold moons.

It knew its prey was cunning and strong; without a trick, the plate might turn and eat the knife.

And they thought the same back at it.

Ugly or not, Void Wanderers were edible; even Cantata Two specimens had been tested—non-toxic and delicious, a storm of flavor.

The only real sting was the stubborn Abyssal Aura clinging like smoke to wool, a pain to scrub but not impossible.

A Magic Maiden could even eat small amounts without cleansing, like sipping spice straight from the jar.

Their other flaw was rarity; records had only one or two sightings, a nest at most, and Cantata Two-grade were as scarce as snow in summer.

They sold for a sky-high price, meat like gold leaf.

Now Lu Jin and Lu Shi were both Cantata Two, and it was only one fish; who would eat whom was still written in mist.

But before that question, Qianchun had just thought of a neat way to save ammo and tag every lurking Wanderer.