“The daod must have sealed the mine…” Eres could suppress her curses but not the ire in her expression. “If we try to break out by force, it’ll trap us in this dead end before we can. We have to kill it.”

  Eres turned her irritation towards Banda. “If you had fought like you normally do, we would have been free.”

  “We would be dead.” Banda utterly rejected her misplaced confidence.

  Her face tightened in disgust but gave priority to her contemplations. “...the elemental can’t know where we are at all times, or it wouldn’t give us this break. It must be making use of the mormoles’ ability to detect intruders, and go to where the most activity is. The Daod gets mana for its mine and the mormoles get to eat. Mutual coexistence… We use them to lure the daod.”

  “That is not a good plan.” Banda objected. He had already thought of that. “It travels through the ground. It will find us before we can leave.”

  “We’re not going to leave.” Eres snapped. “Get it through your head that the only way out is to fight.”

  Banda’s scowl deepened. She was being even more unreasonable than usual. This could not continue. She needed to see sense before it was too late for them both. And if took another loss to the elemental, then he would give her what she wants.

  “Fine. We fight. But first, we learn the routes of the tunnels.” Banda laid out his terms. A lesson would be pointless if they did not have a path to escape.

  Eres seemed like she would say something, but instead she held her tongue and withdrew a Mana Crystal to start recovering her aura. “Then lead the way.”

  ---

  Banda peered around the corner as he walked to the center of a space connected to three paths. They had not even explored half of the mines by his guess, but he had memorized enough paths to ensure their escape. That was enough.

  He gave Eres a glance, and her Avatar immediately struck the ground with its shield. Soon enough, the daod appeared in a swirl of rock and soil.

  It barely had time to bellow before she blasted it with her newly created Flawed Giant Palm Blast art. The fractured daod recoiled then struck back an Earth Spike, but it crumbled harmlessly against the shield she stood on.

  The avatar itself hunched over to guard her with its own body. Earth Spikes from above followed with enough force to budge the avatar slightly but they too failed to pierced its armored body.

  A stone smashed harmlessly against the daod’s face. Several more followed as Banda circled round, but with the ineffectiveness of each, the daod turned back to Eres. And Banda cracked its head with a runestone.

  Eres raised her hand, but the blast that followed collapsed in on itself and imploded uselessly. Banda lowered himself to lunge again, but his instincts flared and he burst away as fast as he could.

  Aura surged and cracked from Eres’ hand. A massive blast of golden light struck like thunder, fracturing the whole room of the tunnel.

  The daod struggled to rise, its broken body already starting to repair, but a giant spear pierced it straight through. Flames ignited to its droning wails. Its raised its hammer but its arm crumbled to dust and the rest of its body followed.

  A cloud of brown dust floated in the air, but a core did not appear. Instead, Banda watched as the dust whisked itself away down one of the tunnels.

  “After it-!”

  Banda snatched her into his arms before she could finish her words, and rushed towards the sealed exit. He did not know what the daod was doing, but it did not mean to pursue them. That gave them time.

  “What are you doing?!” Eres yelled.

  But Banda ignored her complaints. He set her down next to the wall and clenched his fists into iron. The first punch cracked the wall. The second cracked it further. And the third broke through a layer of the solid stone.

  A barrage of blows crudely dug through the wall. The sealed off wall ran deep, but his fists broke through it quickly. Though perhaps not quickly enough.

  He did not know how much time he had before the daod returned, but he did not intend to find out. He punched and punched, breaking further through with each passing moment.

  He was getting close. He could feel it. Escape was near.

  The dull clang of stone on stone reverbed in his ears, and the hard stone above crashed down on the crude tunnel he had made. Banda’s feet slid across the ground as he just barely managed to dart out, and he looked behind.

  The daod swirled into form from the ground, but to Banda’s surprise, the mass of glittering brown dust also appeared. And the daod struck the dust with its hammer.

  It pulsed, then swirled with soil and stone from the tunnel into the form of another daod.

  Each bore half of a dark brown jewel on their foreheads, and each let out low droning bellows of mockery. There were two of them, each could restore the other. And now they were trapped.

  Banda whipped a stone at one of them, but the daod blocked with its hammer. The other raised back its own, and Banda’s eyes widened.

  He rushed to Eres’ side, but the two daods struck each others hammers and an earth spike that formed from thin air pierced Eres through her gut.

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  Banda’s movements heightened in intensity as he snatched her up and made a break for the mines. A stone wall closed off the rest of the tunnel before he could leave, and he was forced to dodge a relentless bloom of stone spikes.

  One of the daods chipped the ground with a wide swing, unleashing a blast of stone. Though the avatar’s giant shield blocked them all.

  “Mines…” Eres said weakly through her grimace.

  Banda darted closer as she forced herself to raise a hand. A Flawed Giant Palm Blast shattered half of the wall and Banda broke through the rest.

  He raced over the walls around the mormole horde lying in wait and sped deep into the mines. Further and further until he was sure he had lost them all, Quickly, he set Eres down and saw that her condition had grown even worse.

  Her face was pale and dark bags had formed under her eyes. Dark blood continued to soak into her clothes and Banda knew how dire the wound was.

  The earth spike was large enough to pierce through most of her gut. He imagined most of her organs there were damaged, if not entirely destroyed. She would not last long like this.

  “Pull out the spike…” Eres spoke up through his panic.

  Banda hesitated. She would die from blood loss within moments if he did that. But he caught notice of the look in her eyes, the fire that still burned with resolve.

  He hesitated no more, and ripped out the spike as cleanly as he could. Eres failed to stifle a groan of pain, but an intricate glass vial appeared in her hand.

  She drunk the red liquid, and white mist steamed from her gut. Her flesh and organs started to regrow until the hole in her stomach healed completely.

  Eres sat in silence for a while as the color started to return to her face. “...you’re not cut out for schemes.”

  “You-”

  “I know.” She cut him off, and fell silent for a few moments again. “Hey… How about we work together gain? You be my strength… and I’ll be your guide.”

  Banda paused for a moment, but only a moment. Things had not gone well since they were together. But they had gone even worse since they acted apart. It would be best if they did what they were suited for, and covered for what the other was not.

  “Yes.”

  Eres smiled at his response, which almost turned to a chuckle as she rose to her feet. “Changing my ways because of some glorified thug on the first floor… Embarrassing.”

  Despite her self-deprecating words, her smile was wide and her eyes held within them the blinding flare of life.

  “We need to kill both of the daods before one can revive the other.” Eres spoke boldly. “Let’s make this mine work to our advantage. I can prevent one from reviving for a while. Can you kill the other alone?”

  Banda looked back with regained resolve. “Yes.”

  ---

  A loud crash rang out through the tunnels, and the mormoles stampeded towards it. Eres stood ready with her Avatar, and wielded its golden spear to stab and slice at the beasts, taking some care to knock their bodies around deliberately.

  She had chosen a narrow part of the mine that funneled the beasts just enough for her spear and shield to handle them. Mormoles were not durable creatures. They could not stand up to her Avatar. But their numbers were starting to pressure her back.

  Finally, the two daods appeared, and Banda immediately battered one away with a barrage of runestones. The other turned to him, but Eres wasted no time.

  Her red spear cloth now with flames of gold set the mormole corpses alight. The burning ring of fire imprisoned the earth elemental with her in the makeshift arena, and sealed off the horde.

  It tried to leave through the ground, but the process was slow enough that a thrust from Eres’ spear threatened the thought from its head.

  Bellows of rage were followed by a hammer of Earth Spikes, but Eres used her shield and Avatar to weather them. She controlled her flame cloth to harass the daod, and waited patiently within her guard.

  Banda clenched his fists into iron and raised them in Monstrous Feral Form. Savage blows battered the daod as he strategically dodged its attacks and made use of runestones to prevent the use of its hammer.

  He had the upper hand clearly, but each of his hits did little damage and each swing he dodged was only just barely. It was a narrow line between victory and death that he walked, but he remained in the danger with nothing but the goal in his sights.

  His movements sharpened. Instincts heightened. Savagery deepened. The durability of the daod was not equal, so he found the weakest points and struck at them.

  The thin point of the daod’s arm fractured, then fractured deeper, and fracture more still until it finally broke off.

  The daod thrashed its hammer recklessly in response, but that only made things easier. Banda hunted ruthlessly, and broke off its other arm.

  A fist slammed into its face and sent it crashing into a large cluster of manastone. It tried to rise but Banda was already upon it with a relentless barrage.

  His iron fists started to crack and his muscles started to tear, but still he pummeled the daod without rest. Cracks spread over its body of stone faster than they could repair. The daod was stronger but Banda struck in ways that diminished its strength.

  The strain on them both swelled to a breaking point, but the daod broke first. A last heavy fist shattered the elemental into a cloud of dust, and that dust rushed towards the circle of flames.

  The other daod bellowed in a rage and slammed its hammer down to bury the golden flames in a wave of earth. It charged towards the dust and swung its hammer before the two could reach it. But a runestone sent the swing wide and another struck its face.

  Eres thrust her spear which the daod was forced to block. And Banda got close. But that was only a feint to lure its swing. As Banda dodged away, Eres’ spear grazed its shoulder as it just barely managed to dodge.

  Two more runestones struck it off balance, and Eres blasted it with a clean release of Flawed Giant Palm Blast.

  Caught helplessly between two barrages, the daod slammed its hammer down to create a dome of earth to protect itself. But Eres had left her spear inside. She flurried her cloth within to turn the stone shelter into a blazing furnace.

  Agonized bellows droned from within. The daod destroyed its own dome and fled. But Banda was waiting for it with perfect timing. He punched the daod back and Eres pierced through with her spear, igniting it whole in a golden blaze to finally destroy it for good.

  Both the daod and the cloud of dust trembled. They swirled together into a glowing brown crystal which dropped to the ground along with its monster core.

  Eres smiled brilliant at him as her avatar faded away. “There’s nothing we cannot overcome.”

  Banda found himself staring back. Her golden eyes were more radiant and beautiful than the sun, her smile just as captivating in its tyrannical purity.

  He felt his body become lighter, and the clouds that loomed in his mind start to subside. He was not a helpless child anymore. The Beast was not here. Otto was just a human. A mortal who could die by his hand like all the others.

  “Yes.”

  ---

  They exited the mine with little difficulty to a deserted entrance. It seemed the others had left once most of the exterminators were lost, though that wasn’t any of their concern. They did not need any others.

  Banda’s eyes sharpened as he sensed someone approach them as soon as they left the exit. A bearded man with dark lines over his eyes. The one who had been watching them in the mines before.

  “Good… you’re still alive.”