“No,” Vadim rasped, the word tearing from his throat, raw and unexpected. A flicker of something close to genuine emotion, a rarity in his soul-swapped existence, coiled in his gut. These weren’t mere tools; they were the only things that had stood by him, absorbed blows meant to end him, followed his every impulse without question. To sacrifice them, to *choose* one to be consumed… it felt like a betrayal.
He scanned the glowing carvings, parsing the etched script for an angle. The Epitaph Interface, for all its cold finality, was ultimately a mechanism, and mechanisms had exploit points. He remembered the initial summoning, the link, the way lesser thralls were bound. *Ownership.* The Interface had always referred to his legions as *his* creations, *his* property.
[TRIBUTE PROTOCOL: CHAMPION INTEGRATION. SELECTION REQUIRED IN 00:01:57]
The countdown began, a stark red overlay now pulsing at the edge of his vision. Panic, cold and sharp, began to prickle. He couldn’t lose Dragos. He couldn’t lose Mirela. Not like this.
“Borys,” Vadim barked, his voice tight. “You’re a summoner now.”
Borys, who had been nervously picking at a loose foil scrap on his jumpsuit, nearly choked. “Me? A… a summoner? No, no, I’m a logistical expert, a strategic analyst! My talents are in *avoiding* direct engagement, not… not raising the dead! That’s *your* whole schtick, Grave… uh, Vadim.”
“Shut it,” Vadim snapped. “I need you to take temporary ownership of a… a proxy. Fodder.” His gaze landed on an undead grunt, one of the faceless scouts he’d conjured to scour the tunnels. Its calcified fingers twitched, sensing his intent.
[SUMMONER PROTOCOL: TEMPORARY CESSION INITIATED. TARGET: BORYS KASPAROV. SELECT ENTITY FOR TRANSFER.]
“Yes! That one,” Vadim pointed at the reanimated sentry. “Borys, you have to accept. Think of it as… high-stakes pet-sitting. For exactly five seconds.”
Borys stared at the rattling bones, then at Vadim, mouth sagging open. “Pet-sitting? This thing could tear my arm off! And what’s with the ‘high-stakes’? You’re not trying to, like, transfer the whole necromancy thing to me, are you? Because I’m allergic to dark magic, probably. I get hives from spooky stuff.”
“Just accept the transfer!” Vadim roared, the timer now showing less than a minute. “Now! Or we all die.”
Reluctantly, Borys held out a trembling hand. A faint, sickly green aura, a pale imitation of Vadim’s own power, briefly enveloped his palm. The construct shimmered, its link to Vadim severing before snapping onto Borys.
[ENTITY ‘SKELETAL SKIRMISHER 7’ NOW UNDER TEMPORARY CESSION TO BORYS KASPAROV. DURATION: 00:00:27]
“Good. Now, Borys, hand it over,” Vadim said, dropping his voice. “Tell the Interface to surrender it. Now!”
“Give up… my pet?” Borys whimpered, blanching. “We barely had time to bond! What do I even say? ‘Please take this spare bag of ribs instead of an S-rank?’”
[TRIBUTE PROTOCOL: IMMEDIATE SELECTION REQUIRED. 00:00:10]
Vadim grabbed Borys by the front of his foil-wrapped jumpsuit, shaking him. “Just *think* it! Project the offering!”
Borys squeezed his lids shut. “I surrender this summon! Don't obliterate me! He was a good boy!”
[TRIBUTE ACCEPTED: SKELETAL SKIRMISHER 7 (PROXY OWNERSHIP: BORYS KASPAROV).]
[CHAMPION INTEGRATION PROTOCOL BYPASSED. PROXY SACRIFICE DETECTED.]
The borrowed thrall didn’t crumble or explode. Instead, it simply faded, dissipating into motes of dim, grey light that were instantly sucked into the massive gate, vanishing without a trace. A beat of absolute silence hung in the air.
Then, a searing, unimaginable agony ripped through Vadim’s entire being. It wasn’t the familiar ache of a champion taking a blow; this was a thousand such blows, delivered simultaneously, directly to his central nervous system. His vision dissolved into a blinding white-hot static, his ears screamed with a high-pitched whine, and his very bones felt like they were being ground into a fine dust. He convulsed, dropping to his knees, clutching his head, every nerve ending aflame. His throat constricted, preventing any sound from escaping, but the phantom pain was a visceral shriek, echoing only in his tortured mind. It was the Interface's tariff, a savage reprimand for carving a detour through its terms.
“Vadim! What’s happening?!” Borys cried, his voice suddenly stripped of all comic relief, sharp with genuine alarm. He was at Vadim’s side in an instant, a surprisingly strong hand gripping his shoulder. “Talk to me! Are you dying? Oh god, you *are* dying, aren’t you? I told you this wasn’t going to work! The Interface hates cheats!”
Vadim tried to speak, but only a gurgling gasp escaped. He was blind, deafened by the pain, trapped in a screaming void. He could feel Borys’s presence, the warmth of his hand, a tether to reality. *This is it,* he thought, *the Interface is punishing the cheat.* He was being taught a lesson, brutally and efficiently.
“Hey,” Borys’s voice, though still tinged with fear, was softer now, closer. “Hey, listen to me. Breathe. Just breathe, okay? I know this is rough. I… I saw it happen, you know. The first time. The Rift magic, the weird shimmering. How could I not? I was hiding in the maintenance shaft directly above your old body when you… changed.”
The words, delivered with a strange, sober clarity, cut through the noise of Vadim’s torment. *He knew?* Borys, the paranoid idiot, had known *all along*? The sheer audacity, the unexpected depth of this revelation, was almost as shocking as the pain. It was a secret he’d kept, a secret he’d played dumb about, all this time.
Gradually, painstakingly slowly, the white-hot static in Vadim’s vision began to recede, replaced by blurry, indistinct shapes. The screaming in his ears faded to a dull roar. He could make out Borys’s frantic, worried face leaning over him, still holding his shoulder. The phantom agony was still there, a throbbing, dull ache that permeated every fiber of his being, but it was no longer incapacitating. He was still whole. He had won. At a cost, but he had won.
With a groan, Vadim pushed himself up, leaning heavily on Borys. His eyes, still watering, finally focused on the colossal Core Rift gate. The runes, no longer pulsing with a countdown, began to glow with a steady, emerald light. A deep, resonant rumble vibrated through the very foundations of the Spire, growing in intensity until it felt like the world itself was being torn apart. The massive, obsidian-black doors, each easily thirty meters tall, began to grind open with a screech of ancient metal that assaulted their ears.
Dust, thick and acrid, billowed out from the slowly widening gap, obscuring whatever lay beyond. Vadim coughed, pushing Borys back. As the dust settled, Vadim stiffened. It wasn’t a portal. It wasn’t a swirling vortex of energy. It was a cavern, vast and impossibly deep, bathed in an eerie, internal bioluminescence. And nestled within that cavern, coiled around a spire of crystalline Rift-rock that pulsed with raw power, was a dragon. Not a monstrous beast, but something ancient, primordial. Its scales were like obsidian shards, each the size of a shield, reflecting the dim light in fractured patterns. Its massive head, adorned with jagged horns and intricate bony plates, rested on its forelegs, eyes closed in what appeared to be a slumber that spanned millennia. Its chest, easily the size of a subway car, rose and fell with a slow, rhythmic breath, each exhalation a barely perceptible wisp of frost that dissipated into the cavern’s oppressive atmosphere. This was the source, the heart of Novagrad’s nightmare, a living, sleeping apocalypse.
“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me,” Borys whispered, his voice trembling, all pretense of bravado gone. “That’s… that’s a *Rift Dragon*.”
A new voice, cold and sharp as polished steel, cut through the sudden, horrified silence. “Indeed. A rather well-preserved specimen, wouldn’t you agree?”
Vadim whipped his head around. Stepping out of the deep shadows cast by the newly opened gate, her blade drawn and glinting in the faint light, was Zoya.