The creature charged.

Toward the bearer — F6 active in the interior was the most threatening presence the creature could process at this moment, and its threat‑assessment system prioritized it absolutely.

Davan in its path.

[F5 — Dominion Field — barrier — everything that remained]

Not to hold for twelve seconds.

To hold for as many as he could.

The creature against the barrier.

The barrier gave way faster than before — 34,200 HP from a bearer against 912,400 HP from a creature, the equation was worse than before.

"One." Giving way.

[Davan HP: 34,200 → 22,800]

"Two." The bearer with F6 concentrated all available degradation inside the creature — the heat that the Fragment read as structural disorder converging on the point of greatest accumulated damage.

[Davan HP: 22,800 → 12,400]

"Three." The barrier at ten percent.

[Davan HP: 12,400 → 4,800]

The barrier collapsed.

The creature came through.

"Now!" shouted Davan — the first time in the fight he had raised his voice.

The bearer with all the degradation concentrated and F6 at the maximum that three years of integration without formal training had produced.

[F6 — Maximum Concentrated Entropy — compromised interior — twelve pulses of degradation channeled]

And Davan from the ground with 4,800 HP — activating [F5 — Dominion — everything available — creature’s interior].

Not a barrier. Not area suppression. All of F5 on one point.

[F5 + F6 — direct combo — compromised interior — maximum degradation]

The light that emerged was not the BOOM of the previous exchanges.

It was something closer to an implosion — the creature’s interior collapsing under the simultaneous pressure of Dominion and Entropy at the point where the system no longer had enough coherence to resist.

[Second creature — F5+F6 combined damage — interior collapsing — maximum: 412,600]

[Second creature HP: 912,400 → 499,800]

The creature’s exoskeleton lost coordination — the plates on the right flank falling, the right rear joint zone giving way, the interior lacking the structure to keep the external system in normal operation.

The creature on its knees.

First time in the fight.

Davan on the ground with 4,800 HP.

The bearer standing with 39,100 HP and F6 still active — reading the creature’s interior, seeing exactly what remained and what no longer remained.

"Still four hundred ninety‑nine thousand eight hundred," said Davan from the ground.

"I know." The bearer looked at the interior. "But the regeneration system can no longer sustain the exterior. The compromised interior is using all available resources just to keep itself coherent." Her eyes on the creature trying to get up. "If the interior fails first, the exterior collapses."

"How long?"

"Minutes." The bearer activated F6 in continuous degradation mode — not a pulse, a constant flow toward the compromised interior, Entropy finding the point where the system had the least to give and taking exactly that. "But we don’t have minutes."

"What do you propose?"

"One last combo. Everything we have left. No reserves."

Davan looked at his 4,800 HP.

Looked at the bearer with 39,100.

"If it fails—"

"It won’t fail." The bearer. Not with calculated certainty. With something simpler. "The interior is at its limit. The system can’t absorb another direct combo." 𝑓𝓇𝘦ℯ𝘸𝘦𝑏𝓃𝑜𝘷ℯ𝑙.𝑐𝑜𝓂

"Sure?"

"No." The bearer, for the first time in the fight, completely honest about the uncertainty. "But it’s what we have."

Davan got up.

His knees trembling — not from fear, from being at 4,800 HP after fourteen minutes of fighting a level‑200 creature.

"Alright."

---

The creature stood up.

Slowly. Its physical limbs recalibrating, the system trying to compensate for the compromised interior by redistributing what remained of its resources toward basic movement functions.

Davan and the bearer moved toward the right flank — the hole in the exoskeleton now larger, the surrounding plates unstable, the interior visible as dark depth through the opening.

The creature reoriented toward the two of them.

Without its former speed. Without its spiritual limbs extended — the system had no resources to sustain them.

Only mass. Only 499,800 HP of something that didn’t know how to surrender because it had never needed to learn.

"When it charges," said the bearer.

"When it charges," confirmed Davan.

The creature charged.

Neither of them dodged.

Toward the hole — both moving toward the point of least resistance instead of away from the threat, the inverse logic that had taken fourteen minutes to establish but that was now the only logic that made sense.

The creature three meters away.

Two.

One.

[F5 — Dominion — everything — compromised interior]

[F6 — Entropy — everything — compromised interior — fourteen minutes of degradation]

Both Fragments simultaneous on the same point with everything available.

No reserves.

No Plan B.

BOOM.

The entire corridor collapsed half a centimeter — not structurally, but on the magical plane, the impact of two Fragments at maximum on a compromised point creating a wave that the Guild’s detectors three kilometers away would register as a significant‑level anomaly.

[Second creature — F5+F6 combined damage — interior collapsing — no reserves: 521,400]

[Second creature HP: 499,800 → 0]

The exoskeleton fell apart.

Not dramatically. Not with an explosion. The plates lost the coherence that the internal system had been sustaining and fell to the corridor floor as material that had just remembered gravity exists.

The interior — whatever had been inside — dissolved on the spiritual plane with the specific signature that F6 read as the definitive end of something that had once had structure and no longer did.

The corridor was silent.

The walls with the marks of fourteen minutes of fighting against something level 200 — cracks, craters, sections of the ceiling collapsed, the floor with damage that hadn’t existed when they started.

Davan on the ground.

[Davan HP: 4,800 → 2,200]

The final combo’s shockwave had cost the last available resources of the Dominion field.

Breathing. Each breath with the specific effort of someone who had been using a Fragment at maximum for fourteen minutes and felt exactly what that meant in the body.

The bearer standing.

[F6 Bearer HP: 39,100 → 18,600]

Looking at the remains on the corridor floor.

The remains of something that had started with 1,800,000 HP and that F6 had degraded from inside and F5 had collapsed from outside until there was nothing left to collapse and nothing left to degrade.

The bearer looked at that.

And smiled.

Not the big smile of victory. The small, genuine smile of someone who faces a problem that seemed to have no solution and discovers that the solution existed — it just required fourteen minutes of understanding exactly how what you have works.

Davan gasped on the ground.

Without taking his eyes off the creature’s remains. Without the energy to move his head elsewhere yet.

"We did it," he said. His voice with the effort of someone who had 2,200 HP and was still talking anyway.

The bearer looked at the remains.

Still smiling.

Davan, without turning his head, his eyes still on what remained of the second creature:

"Do you have a name?"