The ground collapsed like a rotten lung.

One moment Gael was crossing blades with Old Banks in the bedroom, the next he was plummeting down in a storm of splinters, dust, and furniture legs, the floor giving way like soggy bread. He hit the tiles with a graceless thud, rolled once, and then found himself in the middle of the grand foyer surrounded by startled guests.

The guests didn't panic, though they did scatter, skirts swishing and cloaks flapping as they formed a wide berth around all nine of them who'd fallen through the ceiling.

"... Lovely evening," he muttered, spitting dust from his mouth as he crawled onto his feet. "Do ignore the falling debris—it's part of the nightly entertainment."

Before the guests could work up the courage to panic, Old Banks burst through the debris next to him with surprising poise for an old man who'd just crash-landed through the ceiling. The old bastard barely staggered. But Gael, drunk and bruised and with a head full of buzzing bees, staggered twice before lunging forward again, cane in hand.

He sheathed and unsheathed his bladed cane in a single motion, coating it in a faint shimmer of golden venom.

Round two, old money.

Old Banks hefted his cross-shaped greatsword with both hands, his expression somewhere between irritation and amusement, and their weapons met in a crash that rattled the chandeliers.

Gael grimaced mid-parry. His limbs felt heavy, his reflexes dulled. He felt… sluggish.

Something was wrong.

Can't just be me being slower and weaker than him, right?

Mid-swing, the first thing he did was take a look at the old man's status.

[Identification Complete]

[Name: Bancroft Veydris]

[Grade: B-Rank Wretch-Class]

[Standard Class: Beetle]

[Passive Mutation: Sclerotized Shell]

[Brief Description: The user has evolved chitin plates across most of their body, which have fifty percent of their inherent toughness]

[Swarmblood Art: Sclerotized Concentration]

[Brief Description: The user can concentrate bioarcanic essence into their skin and bones across their entire body, increasing their toughness by twenty percent]

[Aura: ~1,100 BeS]

[Strength: ~6, Speed: ~4, Toughness: ~4, Dexterity: ~4, Perception: ~5]

Not very strong, then. It's just a Standard Beetle Class with high toughness and no speed.

What's wrong with me?

[// STATUS]

[Name: Maeve Valcieran / Gael Halloway]

[Grade: F-Rank Blight-Class]

[Advanced Class: Umbrella Wasp]

[Passive Mutation: Umbral Eyes]

[Swarmblood Art: Purging Umbrablood / Umbrablood Covenant]

[Aura: 1812 BeS / 1213 BeS]

[Points: 21 vBe / 1 vBe]

[Strength: 6 / 6, Speed: 6 / 4, Toughness: 6 / 4, Dexterity: 5 / 4, Perceptivity: 5 / 5]

[// MUTATION TREE]

[T1 Mutations | Scent Latch Lvl. 4 / Miasma Mantle Lvl. 3]

[T2 Mutations | Basic Tarsagrip Lvl. 4 / Basic Repository Lvl. 3 | Basic Chitin Lvl. 4 / Basic Chitin Lvl. 4]

[T3 Mutations | Basic Vision Lvl. 3 / Basic Vision Lvl. 2 | Basic Setae Lvl. 3 / Basic Setae Lvl. 2 | Basic Spiracles Lvl. 3 / Basic Spiracles Lvl. 3]

[T4 Mutations | Basic Oviclaws / Basic Vespaclaws | Basic Vespascent / Basic Vespascent | Basic Vespawings / Basic Vespawings | Basic Abdomiflex / Basic Tarsagrip]

The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

Goddamnit.

I only have four in speed?

His attributes and mutation levels were barely higher than they'd been a year and a half ago. He really shouldn't be surprised, though—they'd hunted around fifty Myrmurs in that time, but five went to Old Banks for his continued patronage, thirty went to the members of the Saint's Hands to help them establish their power, and the rest were scattered between Evelyn, Liorin, and a few other men with classes who they wanted to keep close to the clinic.

Someone somewhere said it was better to have an army of strong men than to have a really, really strong man. Gael subscribed to that belief. As a result, he himself was barely stronger than when he'd beat the shit out of Lorcawn.

… Oh well. I guess I really am drunk, then.

But what about her?

Is she also bumbling around like an utter fool.

From the corner of his eye, through the dust and fractured beams, he caught the other fight blooming.

Maeve had climbed onto her feet alongside Fergal and his five goons—no, they were the Five Fingers now—and already, they were tearing across the foyer like rabid saints in a stained-glass window. Their spider claws and umbrella clashed at speeds that made Gael and Old Banks' duel look like pensioners arguing over bread rolls.

He paused mid-swing. Old Banks paused too.

The two of them watched as Maeve and the six jumping spiders blurred across the walls, flipped from chandeliers and balconies, and shredded whole banisters with each strike.

"...Youngsters these days," Old Banks muttered, wiping dust from his lips. "So fast and lively."

"Mm. No respect for furniture," Gael agreed.

They went back to fighting.

His arms ached. His vision doubled, then tripled. He grit his teeth and pushed harder through the haze in his head, but Old Banks matched him strike for strike. Every blow rang like a church bell mocking his hangover.

Then, from the whirlwind fight at their side, Fergal suddenly seized a flower pot off a shattered pedestal and hurled it at Maeve. She sidestepped it neatly—which meant the pot slammed directly into Gael's ribs.

"Fuck—"

The impact hurled him sideways through the nearest set of windows. Glass shrieked, wood splintered, and then he was airborne, flipping gracelessly into the banquet hall. He tumbled across tables, scattering noodles and boiled organ dumplings before finally sliding to a stop at the foot of a pillar.

Dozens of guests stared. Then they shrugged and went back to their feasting and stomping dances.

Gael lay there, groaning, blood trickling down his temple. He raised his cane half-heartedly to toast the crowd. "Don't mind me. Just… redecorating."

The chandelier above trembled again, and moments later, Maeve also came flying through another window, umbrella first, shards raining around her like silver confetti. Her back cracked the tiles with much more force than his landing as she rolled to a halt beside him.

They lay there for a breath like two saints nailed flat to the tiles by bad luck and worse masonry. The banquet band—bless their oblivious little souls—didn't miss a beat. Someone cheered. Someone else laughed. Eventually, Gael rolled onto his elbow, and Maeve dragged herself up beside him, shaking plaster dust out of her hair.

"... Get your fight out of my way," he wheezed, levering himself onto a knee. "You're blocking my duel."

"Don't tell me what to do," she snapped, scowl sharp as a scalpel. "Did you listen when I told you not to add colorful paint to the new symbiote elixir bomb prototypes?"

He opened his mouth to produce an excellent counterpoint—something about artistic vision and public health—but she was already hitching her dress a few inches to show what lay beneath: trousers saturated in an obstinate carnival of dyes. Pink, blue, plague-green—the colors had colonized her like a jubilant fungus.

"I can't wash this out," she growled. "I tried spirits, I tried lye, I tried praying—"

"That's because it's a good scientific endeavor," he countered. "Imagine: paint bombs that double as elixir-delivery systems. We could mark the infected and cure them in the same breath. We'd make Bharncair a more colorful place… well, not that it isn't colorful enough, but—"

Fergal flung a table through the window, and Maeve barely hesitated, dragging her umbrella up to cleave the table in half.

Splinters rained down in applause. She didn't even bother deigning him with a response before hurling herself back at Fergal and his Five Fingers, and then the seven were off to the walls again, dashing so quickly his eyes spun just looking at them.

So he turned around just in time as the main doors groaned open. Old Banks stepped through into the banquet hall, and without preamble, he pitched his greatsword high, tearing through a chandelier chain. The chandelier snapped and came screaming down, hell bent on crushing Gael.

Tch.

Gael clicked his tongue and flicked out his right hand. His giant hungry flower bloomed, lunging upwards to seize the chandelier before he flung the chandelier back at the old man.

"Catch."

Old Banks didn't dodge. He let the thing smash into his chest, shattered metal bursting across his body, then flexed once. Chunks of iron and crystal fell apart, clattering to the floor in ruined petals.

The old man strode forward through the wreckage with bare fists raised, a scowl crawling up his lined face.

"I have never been too keen with weapons," he said. "No toys. No tricks. Fight me like a man, just you and me."

Gael blinked. Looked left. Looked right. The music still played, though most of the dancers had frozen mid-step, their eyes now completely fixed on him. Even the Rot Merchants had stopped mid-swindle to watch, waiting for his answer.

His reputation was on the line.

… Which meant jack shit.

"Fuck no."

He laughed and clicked his heels together, and the entire hall shrieked as every windowpane shattered in unison. A cicada's death-cry poured through the chamber, sharp enough to slice marrow, while glass shards rained onto plates of noodles and puddles of cheap broth, hissing like applause.

Maeve snarled from across the hall, still hacking at Fergal's claws. "Not indoors! You'll rupture their ears—"

"You're one to talk!" he shot back. "Didn't you drop half the damned ceiling on the crowd not five minutes ago? Hypocrisy has a beak, apparently!"

She scowled and returned to the blur of her fight, while Fergal tried to brain her with what remained of a chair. Old Banks, though—ah, the poor bastard. The shriek had gutted him. The old man clapped his palms over his ears, his face blanching. Age was cruel, and the old baron's hearing was already brittle.

That was Gael's cue to lunge in with his blade. He dragged the edge across Old Banks' unguarded in a single, drunken arc—and then the old man grunted, knees folding, before he pitched forward on his face.

… Gotcha.

Gael swayed, panting as he dragged himself over to the fallen old man.

With a grunt, he knelt, yanked the jangling key free from the deadweight of Old Banks' belt, and rose again.

Maeve and Fergal's fight continued off to the side, but Gael's eyes drifted to the foyer where—amid a sprawl of broken pedestals and dirt—the fallen bedroom vault loomed. Its square, bronze bulk sat among a graveyard of shattered pots and trampled plants.

Finally.

It's mine.

He staggered towards the vault, a wicked grin taking over his face.

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