Juno lunged.
His sword scread through the air, black tendrils wrapping tighter around his forearm like a demon’s leash. He drove the cursed blade into the shimring body of the towering woman—Sasha, the dungeon’s ultimate core.
The weapon struck her torso with a sickening squelch.
But didn’t pierce.
Instead, it halted. As if he’d ramd the blade into solid stone.
"What?!" Juno’s eyes widened, disbelief spreading across his bloodied face. "This isn’t... it’s not liquid—!"
He leapt back instinctively. The surface of Sasha’s semi-translucent body rippled as if disturbed, but she didn’t react in any other way.
The sword he’d cleaved demons, trolls, and worse with had done nothing.
Juno spat on the floor. "You think you can mock with illusions? With tricks?!"
His breath ca faster. Rage gathered in him like a storm.
The tendrils along his jaw thickened. Dark, vein-like roots snaked across his cheeks, pulsing violently with every beat of his heart. His eye—now glowing like a molten ruby—twitched as he raised the sword again.
"I’ve burned mountains," he growled, low and guttural. "I’ve shattered dungeon cores! You think you’re different because you look like a woman?!"
Sasha tilted her head—no malice, no judgnt. rely observation. Her body shimred again. The glow on her skin pulsed like ocean waves under moonlight.
Then she moved.
Her foot didn’t step—it glided. The air itself bent as she neared, as though reality couldn’t quite hold her in one place.
Juno roared and t her with a downward strike.
CLANG!
The shockwave from the impact rattled the dungeon halls.
Sasha caught his sword—caught it—with her bare hand. No damage. No reaction. The tendrils on Juno’s weapon hissed and shriveled at her touch.
He jerked backward in shock. "What the hell are you...?!"
Sasha didn’t speak. She simply extended her hand.
A ripple of force lashed out.
It struck Juno dead-on and sent him crashing backward into a tree growing unnaturally inside the dungeon. Bark cracked. The black veins from his armor shot out and skewered into the stone to stop his montum.
"GAH!" he snarled, struggling to stand. "No more gas!"
He twisted his wrist.
The tendrils around his sword extended like spears. A dozen black lances scread toward Sasha.
They struck her, this ti aiming for her head, torso, and joints.
But again, nothing pierced.
Instead, the lances dissolved on contact, as if Sasha’s skin was a mbrane of anti-corruption, nullifying his cursed magic on impact.
Juno froze mid-breath, heart hamring. "That’s... impossible."
Hidden, crouched on a ledge carved into the upper roots of the dungeon, Shennong watched in breathless silence.
His body was low, his aura suppressed. But even then...
Juno’s head snapped toward him.
Eyes locked.
He sees ?
The cursed knight didn’t speak—he simply raised his sword.
The tendrils on it twitched.
Then he swung—not toward Sasha, but toward Shennong’s hiding spot.
A dark wave of corroding energy exploded from the blade.
Trees, moss, and stone withered and died in an instant as the energy passed through them, roaring straight toward Shennong.
"Shit!" Shennong clapped his hands together. "Lunamarite Formation: Wall of Eleven Moons!"
The dungeon floor split and rose—eleven gleaming white-blue barriers of dense lunar stone forming in an instant.
The wave struck.
BOOM!
One wall crumbled. Then the second. Third.
The corruption pierced through ten before stopping at the eleventh with a shuddering groan.
Shennong, panting, sweat streaking his brow, stared at the cratered aftermath.
He looked at his still-smoking palms. "Ten lunamarite walls... and it still almost broke through..."
He swallowed hard.
"How the hell am I supposed to parry that sword?"
Below, Sasha had already placed herself between Juno and Shennong’s position again—ensuring the knight’s focus never strayed back.
"Thanks, Sasha," Shennong muttered, watching.
But he knew better.
That wasn’t Juno anymore.
The man down there was changing. Each movent fed the curse inside him. His human presence was fading—replaced by sothing darker, feral, unthinking.
His attacks were no longer strategic.
They were instinctive.
Fueled by hatred.
"Mandira..." Shennong whispered, closing his eyes for just a mont. "You better get here soon. This bastard’s not even human anymore."
The fight below raged on.
Juno unleashed another flurry of attacks. Black tendrils burst from his back now, like skeletal wings. Every swing of his blade sent waves of rot crashing against Sasha, but she stood like a lighthouse in a storm—her hands fluid, graceful, catching or redirecting his strikes like silk.
Still, for all her strength, Sasha didn’t fight to kill.
She fought to stall.
To buy ti.
Shennong noticed it imdiately.
"She’s not trying to hurt him. She’s trying to keep him away from the inner core..."
More evidence that she knew how dangerous Juno’s sword truly was.
A jagged spike of corrupted energy slamd into the ceiling near Shennong, sending debris falling beside him. He didn’t even flinch this ti.
Instead, he pulled a small, rune-etched stone from his pocket and whispered into it.
"Mandira, do you read ?"
No response. The stone remained dark.
He scowled. "Still out of range..."
Then—movent.
His eyes snapped to the dungeon entrance. Far in the distance, outlined by bioluminescent root-light...
A figure.
Tall, hair fluttering, robes trimd in imperial sigils.
Mandira.
She was finally here.
Shennong smiled faintly.
"It’s about ti."
He pushed himself up and wiped the blood from his lip.
"No more waiting."
He leapt down from his ledge and landed silently on a lower branch, closer to the battlefield.
Below, Sasha had encased Juno in a do of thick, jelly-like armor—trying to trap him.
But the cursed knight scread, and the tendrils from his sword exploded outward, shattering it like glass.
Chunks of Sasha’s form retracted, reforming with each blow.
Still, she didn’t slow. Didn’t tire.
Didn’t stop.
And Juno?
He looked worse—and yet stronger.
The black tendrils had rged entirely with his body. His armor no longer existed. It had beco part of his skin. His sword pulsed, alive with malevolent hunger.
His mouth opened—but no words ca. Just a guttural growl.
Shennong clenched his fists.
"He’s almost gone. That thing inside the sword... It’s eating away at him."
He paused.
"Maybe it already ate him."
Mandira was still too far to intervene yet.
And Shennong couldn’t engage—not now. Not while Sasha was doing her job.
He crouched again, running a hand over his forearm where his runes began to glow.
"Hang in there, Sasha," he whispered. "I can’t break that sword—but you can stop it."
The fight below reached another crescendo.
Juno raised the sword overhead.
The very walls of the dungeon began to warp. Stone twisted. Roots caught fire. A purple-black sphere ford at the blade’s tip.
"DIE!" he roared.
The sphere detonated outward—a shockwave of entropy that disintegrated anything in its path.
Sasha dissolved montarily into a translucent mist to dodge—but even she was shaken.
Shennong flinched.
Even Mandira stopped moving—still outside the chamber, her eyes wide in shock.
But then... as the wave cleared...
Sasha reford, rising slowly, gracefully.
Her chest glowed.
Not red, not black—but pure, soft white.
A healing pulse radiated outward.
It didn’t harm Juno.
Didn’t stop him.
But it slowed him.
The black tendrils recoiled slightly, confused. Disoriented.
Shennong narrowed his eyes.
"She’s not trying to hurt him... She’s trying to remind him."
A mory. A tether.
Juno blinked.
Just once.
And in that brief mont, his sword dipped. His posture slackened.
A flicker of clarity.
A na, perhaps. A face. A ti before the curse.
Shennong saw it too.
And saw it vanish in an instant.
Juno roared and struck again.
"Damn it," Shennong whispered. "That’s all we get?"
The shadows danced. The dungeon groaned.
And Mandira—finally—crossed the threshold.
Her voice rang out like a bell:
"SHENNONG!"
She raised both hands, magic bursting from her fingertips like a fountain of stars.
Shennong stood tall.
"It’s ti to get back into business."
Shennong’s eyes narrowed as he whispered, "Mandira’s here. Ti to move."
He glanced at the core—Sasha—still locked in combat with Juno. She was buying them ti, barely. Juno’s strikes had beco more violent, each swing of his cursed blade sending out waves of corruption that twisted the dungeon walls, turning moss to rot and crystal to sludge.
Mandira didn’t speak as she approached. She simply raised her staff, began a long, slow chant, her voice weaving ancient syllables that resonated through the chamber. The air began to hum.
Shennong moved.
He sprinted low and fast, ducking behind crystal outcroppings and lunamarite formations, dodging the occasional shockwave from Juno’s berserker swings. The corrupted knight didn’t notice—Sasha’s luminous form kept his full attention, slipping and striking like water made flesh. Still, Shennong’s every step felt like walking on a blade’s edge.
His goal: the sword.
And the crystal core sealed into the dungeon’s heart.
They glowed together, like twin stars—one black, one silver-blue—just behind where Juno fought. The sword pulsed violently with each strike, almost as if it fueled him... or fed on him.
"I need to separate the sword from his influence," Shennong murmured. "That ans holding it directly. No magic tricks."
A suicidal thought, but he had no choice.
Mandira’s chant rose in intensity behind him. Symbols began to spiral through the air around her, forming a containnt seal that shimred with raw magic. It would trap whatever essence lay within the sword—but only if Shennong could hold it in place.
He erged from behind a crystal, breathing hard, and locked eyes with the corrupted knight for the briefest second.
Juno shouldn’t have noticed him.
But sohow, he did.
The madness in Juno’s eye shifted. Just slightly. Just enough.
Shennong lunged.
"NOW!" he shouted.
His hand clamped around the hilt of the sword from behind—searing pain raced up his arm instantly, like molten nails driven into his nerves. The tendrils hissed, tried to crawl up his body, but Shennong held firm, sweat pouring from his brow, teeth gritted hard enough to crack.
Mandira’s voice thundered, the seal blazed with light.
"Hold it, damn you!" she scread.
"I am—!" Shennong yelled through clenched teeth. "But this bastard’s soul isn’t just cursed—he’s breaking apart!"
Behind them, Sasha let out a wordless cry, shielding Shennong with a sweep of her body as Juno howled and swung his fist—not his blade—at the one who dared touch his sword.
Shennong didn’t flinch.
He only held on tighter.
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