CHAPTER 730: A SHIELD THAT DRINKS NOISE

Steam still hung low like a thin curtain, catching the console’s glow and making the air look soft even when it was cold. The Brake Choir hummed under the stone—one honest note, the kind you feel in your ribs. Rodion widened the console; pale light washed the bone walls and made every edge clean.

Mikhailis clapped once. It was not loud, but it was clear.

"Alright—let’s see the whole team."

He pointed as he spoke, counting like a bricklayer who liked his work neat.

"Necro-ants, approximately four hundred. Workers, two hundred twenty. Soldiers, one hundred twenty. Nurses, forty. Wardens and artisans, twenty." His finger moved to the next line. "Chimera variants all green: Scurabons, Slimeweave, Hypnoveil, Crymber Pair."

He lifted a brow, playful but steady, and kept the cadence.

"Tamed undead on our leash: Reliquary Sentinel, one. Ossuary Hound, one. Gate Warden, one—symbol-held, no voice. Choir Wights posted as door staff. Mortuary Moths: bagged and sleepy." He tapped his temple. "Specialists: Regent Riftborne Necrolord, Archivist Wretch, skeleton pairs as couriers—with backs shown."

The words settled the room. Even the ants shifted into position like the numbers had told them where their legs should be.

He finished with the short rule they had said so many times it now felt like a small prayer.

"Food before orders. No living puppets. Backs shown. Prime-step."

Thalatha’s hands went to her straps and buckles. She did not fuss; she checked. A firm tug here, a palm press there, a last smooth along a patch he had fixed earlier with a stitch he still felt proud of. She breathed once, long enough to set the pace in her chest, then nodded.

"No speeches," she said. "We finish this."

Mikhailis gave her a quick smile, a fox choosing not to joke today. "No more prep," he said, and his voice changed—from clerk to duelist. "We challenge the boss."

No flourishes. No showing off. Move like work, not theater. Elowen would approve. Lira would click her tongue at my hair, then fix it without asking. Serelith would ask me to stab her a little—later, not now. Cerys would roll her eyes and pretend not to watch. Focus, fool.

The console redrew the world. The stair-plate throat opened into a lift-engine cathedral. Choir Rings stacked like pale crowns. Bell ribs made a hard halo overhead. Mirror vanes, half-dulled from earlier, waited like folded fans along the walls. Three anchor clusters glowed faint inside the bone plate, as if the floor wore hidden buttons and dared them to press.

Rodion: Threat suite live—Bell Cone (area shock), Mirror Burst (gaze punish), Chain Swarm (vent adds), Gravity Pulse (local lift/shove), Echo Reprisal (punishes rhythm). Recommendation: anti-pattern gait. Reward mode: non-repetition, prime-step.

"Looks like a backstage," Mikhailis whispered. "Only the stage can kill you."

Thalatha did not waste breath answering. She lifted two fingers, and the formation flowed like a habit the body loved.

Frontline slid forward first. The Reliquary Sentinel took point, the coffin-door shield tilted a hair to drink the room’s noise. Beside it the Ossuary Hound padded low, chain ring muffled under marsh cloth. The ring looked silly in that scarf, but the silence it gave was beautiful.

Midline stacked tight. Thalatha in the center, chin level, eyes cutting to call prime-step with small hand cues. Mikhailis half a step left, leash line open, shoulders loose. Hypnoveil moved low and dull, edges smudged. The Regent Necrolord walked like a candle hidden in a sleeve—present, controlled. Scurabons stayed light on their feet, knives tucked. The Archivist Wretch lifted stylus like a sacred thing, waiting for the stone to speak.

Backline settled with quiet purpose. Workers carried nets, resin jars, calcium sap. Nurses counted with tiny shoulder twitches. Skeleton pairs adjusted their straps and turned their backs to any brood mouth they passed. The Crymber pair—one heat, one frost—stood at rest like punctuation, ready to make meaning.

Rodion: Anti-pattern bar armed. Green safe-dots placed. Orange no-arc zones broadcast. Win condition: dull mirrors + eat cones + break pulse → expose core seam → single clean finish (capture symbol or shut).

"Game on," Mikhailis said, soft enough the dust didn’t bother to react.

The Ascensorium Heart felt the room change like a court sniffing new petitioners. Light built behind the mirror vanes, greedy and bright.

The first attack came like a scold from a proud teacher. Mirror Burst. Wide. Hungry. It wanted eyes.

Hypnoveil dropped its mantle. The corridor turned boring, like a hallway in an office where nothing fun had ever happened.

Move: Dull Curtain (L1). Effect: glare hunger reduced by 30%.

Workers stepped in at once, palms open, bodies calm. They smeared resin on the inner vanes. One touch. Stop. Two touches. Longer pause. Half touch. Stop. The spacing looked odd on purpose. Even the pauses had no repeating length.

Scurabons flicked moth-nets in clean arcs. Nets kissed the mirror faces and stuck. Inside, Mortuary Moths shifted like gray laundry and drank the light without drama.

Mikhailis watched the glare drop and forced his mouth to behave. Do not chase shine. Be boring. Be safe.

Thalatha’s hand cut the air, crisp and small. "Prime-step," she said. "Two, three, five."

Feet obeyed. No one landed the same way twice. No step lined to the last. The Echo leaned in, hungry for rhythm, and found none, like a cat bored by a toy that wouldn’t move the same way twice.

Rodion: No-clap zone active. Anti-pattern maintained.

A tiny side panel opened and posted the first numeric bruise.

Boss HP: 92% | Status: Glare-Dulled 1

The reply came from the bones above. A Bell Cone detonated from the rib crown, sudden and low, like a door slamming in another room.

"Up!" Thalatha called.

The Sentinel snapped the coffin-door high and ate the shock. There was a deep hum as energy slid into the shield’s guts like lightning finding a wire.

Sentinel Move: Cone-Eat. Energy absorbed: 78%. Vent window open.

The Sentinel turned a wrist, angled the lid, and vented the stored shove into a dead shaft on the left. The sound went there and stayed there. Nothing echoed. The room did not clap back.

"It’s super effective," Mikhailis muttered, because he could not help himself.

The Hound began to run a crooked pattern. Its chain wrote ugly eights on the plate. The muffled ring stayed meek under the cloth, and somehow the whole motion insulted the floor in the safest way.

Mikhailis sent permission down the leash line. It felt like opening doors in a quiet house.

Stand. Heel. Stage.

Sub-nodes answered, not with words, but with clean compliance. The Hound’s shoulders lowered another inch. The Sentinel shifted stance to match the new angle of threat.

Sub-node compliance within target. Bell stack reduced.

Boss HP: 85% | Status: Cone-Dampened

The floor hissed at them from both sides. Chain-mites poured from vents like a string of bad bracelets thrown at a stage.

"Break their lane," Thalatha said.

Workers spread in three threads and laid a smell-cord braid—mint, bone, glowcap. Three lines that crossed, split, crossed again. The swarm tried to choose a straight answer and found a polite argument instead.

The Hound dragged its figure-eight right across the entry. Adds tried to correct, then corrected the correction, and now every body was a little late to its own legs.

Soldiers dipped in only on the odd beats. Knives kissed knee joints, fast and small. There was no second swing. There was no performance.

"Only on the odd," Thalatha reminded, voice level. "No music here."

Slimeweave slid to two vents and capped them, wide palm first, then a careful press with the belly. Scurabons sliced the knees of two stragglers like you cut rope, then hopped out before anyone could teach them a rhythm they would regret.

Thalatha raised her palm, then closed it. "Half-beat retreat," she said. "Press."

They yielded a breath, regrouped on a crooked count, and stepped back in. The adds piled into a heap of their own momentum and became quiet parts, not threats.

Rodion: Add density reduced by eighty percent. Remaining trickle at 0.2 adds per second. Maintain non-repeating spacing.

Boss HP: 78% | Adds: neutralized

Mikhailis scanned the floor for the place that always existed in machines like this—somewhere you could touch once and rewrite a small part of the day. Rodion found it first and pinged the plate.

Alert: Yawn point identified at seam—one pebble resets micro-twitch. Do not double tap within five breaths.

Thalatha didn’t bother to look for a pebble. She already had one. Smooth, cool, the kind that liked to land where it should. A quick flick, wrist soft, like tossing a coin to a good dog.

The pebble tapped the tiny circle. Not loud. Not timid. Just correct.

The plate gave a small sigh. Mikhailis felt it in his ankles more than in his ears. The Gravity Pulse charge that had been building wobbled off its clean line and lost its confidence.

"Hold cone stance," Thalatha said.

The word "hold" landed in every body the same way. The Sentinel shifted half a step and dug in. Its feet found the shallow grip marks the workers had pressed earlier. Elbows tucked. Coffin-door angled to drink anything rude.

The Hound kept scribbling nonsense on the plate with its chain and muzzle. The path looked like a child’s bad drawing of a river. It was ugly. It was perfect.

Mikhailis watched the Hound go and felt his own shoulders loosen. Good dog. Keep the room confused. Keep me honest.

The air around the plate changed. Not a big change. A small, important one. The pressure underfoot lost that smooth push the floor had been building. The little wobble that Rodion had called "yawn" pushed through their boots like a quiet reminder.

Plate micro-twitch has reset. Gravity Pulse charge misaligned by 11%. Maintain stance.