At a certain point, falling doesn’t get faster. The only way to get faster was to pull yourself downwards faster– gravity had already maxed out.

  Alas, pulling herself faster wasn’t something Viviana could do. Firing grapples and trying to retract them at this speed was just useless. By the time the grapples reached the wall and started retracting, you would’ve long since sped past the point they were useful.

  It was a little awkward, free falling while being chased by a bunch of Ferric Meridian breach knights.

  The thrill of descent had long since wore off. The elevator was the same, dark, boring tunnel all the way down, and they all felt like they were falling for ages.

  Bena wasn’t having fun at all. Thomas looked like he wanted to throw up. Lucian was nonchalant as usual. Viviana initially flailed about, trying to get used to free fall, but she learned quickly.

  Viviana turned herself around during her freefall, noting all the breach knights just a bit away from her. Too far to do anything. Well, actually, she did have a projectile attack.

  I wonder how fast this will go. Viviana conjured up a lightning spear, throwing it upwards at the knights. Huh, she thought. Just as fast as normal. Which is really fast.

  The spear smashed into one of the breach knights, completely surprised and not prepared to dodge. The attack paralyzed them, causing them to flail about, colliding into the other falling breach knights and eventually into a wall.

  Viviana winced as a metal clang reverberated down the elevator shaft. Pieces of breach armor broke off. Something like that wouldn’t injure a soulbound, but would certainly hurt.

  With her chaos caused she turned back, wondering just when they were going to stop falling. At some point they had passed platform ten. Not long until platform fourteen. Uh, how exactly were they supposed to stop?

  Nearly a minute later, Adam, just slightly ahead, fired up some sort of device. “Aim for the platform!” he yelled. Viviana could see it now– platform fourteen, outlined in glowing lights. With no other choice, Viviana had to trust in Adam’s judgement. He wouldn’t let us all fall. It’ll smash his armor. If we’re this deep, the dungeon will become more and more system blessed. It might even kill us.

  Adam’s device whirred to life, scattering glowing particles all around that latched onto everything. A mass inertial dampener?! Just how rich is this guy?

  Bena screamed. Thomas screamed. Lucian semed to have an idea what was going on, but had a nervous expression on his face. Viviana bent her knees and braced for impact.

  The platform was just a second away. And then they slammed into it. Adam’s device whirred and clicked, and a massive cartridge was ejected, blowing hot steam into the elevator shaft.

  It was absurd. The fourteen mile fall felt like a hop from a foot up. Everyone was alive. The knights were coming. Bena was kissing the floor, thanking it for ‘solid ground’ or whatever. Viviana hauled her up, forcing her to continue moving. The knights were already on their tail.

  Viviana looked up to find them a couple meters away. Yet for some reason, they were falling slower. She looked at the elevator shaft. This time, it wasn’t fourteen miles long. It was fourteen stories. Viviana could see the top where they came from easily. She remembered Thomas’s words now. Terrarium three is non-euclidean.

  She looked back down the platform they landed on, and into the tunnel. The mission objective was there.

  The entire group began running, heading down the hallway and deeper into the complex. The sound of jumpboots hitting the metal floor echoed behind them. Ferric Meridian breach knights.

  Bena threw up while she was draped over Viviana’s shoulder. Viviana winced as warm vomit soaked her back. Still, Bena started shouting directions without being told. This was her part– navigating the newly excavated caverns that Ferric Meridian dug, completely unknown to outsiders to the guild.

  Bena flawlessly shouted directions from over Viviana’s shoulder, leading Landsknecht and Adam’s team deeper and deeper into the dungeon. Corridors and turns whizzed by as they activated jumpboots and grapples, moving through the tight corridors with speed. Then, they found it. Door 6B.

  One of Adam’s men pulled out a depth charge, attaching it to the door. They yelled “clear!”, causing everyone to scramble backwards. An explosion rang out, and then the door was open.

  The breach knights behind them were getting closer and closer.

  They continued running, using their grapples, and their jump boots to speed down the corridors, but Viviana soon realized that the breach knights were going to catch up. They had to stop for a bit to deploy the next depth charge, and then Adam and his team would have to suit up for a dive into an underwater section of the dungeon.

  “Lucian, take Bena!” Viviana shouted. “Thomas, I’ll entrust you with the charge!”

  Lucian nodded, taking Bena from Viviana’s arms and slinging her over his shoulder. Thomas caught the depth charge in midair when Viviana threw it. Then she turned. Okay. Just one squadron of breach knights. How bad could it be?

  “Don’t die, Viviana!” Lucian shouted, speeding forward. Thomas gave her a nod of the head, and they left her to stall the breach knights.

  Dying isn’t part of the plan.

  Viviana opened her status and placed two points into MIN, alleviating her mana consumption somewhat. She had used her [lightning spear]s a couple times already, so the extra mana would go a long way.

  Viviana looked back down the corridor, which now seemed a lot shorter than it was for them. How is this possible?

  Then VIviana saw the breach knights. One of them was holding a strange, morphing crystal in their hands, turning and twisting in impossible ways. Viviana watched as the tunnel shrunk around them, pulling her closer and closer to the knights. They’re manipulating the properties of the dungeon!

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  I can use this. If they’ve got an item that gives such an advantage over the environment…

  Viviana accelerated, forcing herself forward with the fastest combination of her skills. Simultaneously grappling forward, activating [flash step], and boosting it all with [lightning trap] enhanced jump boots. She shot forward like she was fired from a cannon.

  Viviana flew down the tunnel, her speed corroborated by the tunnel shrinking. Not only was she fast, the distance she had to cover was rapidly decreasing.

  Viviana was already upon them. She swiped for the crystal…

  And missed. The breach knight had dodged out of the way. Several breach knights continued down the path, while a couple others stayed back to deal with her. She couldn’t tell what they were thinking, but sending only three was blatant disrespect.

  The breach knights attacked simultaneously. Skills fired off. A dash, an enhanced version of strike, even one that seemed to create platforms in the air to jump off of. Viviana weaved, dodging and trading a single [flash step] for all their abilities. Her [flash step] was just too fast and created too much distance.

  Viviana’s grapples screamed as they attached themselves to the walls, flinging her around but keeping her feet close to the ground. Being airborne in a fight versus a grounded opponent was suicide. Sure, grapples made it easier to maneuver in the air, but the instantaneous acceleration of a [dash] kicking off the earth allowed quick direction changes and angles of attack that being airborne took away.

  So Viviana stuck to her advantages, fully aware that the ground was her domain. She blew past the three, not even opting to fight, lunging for the crystal again. This time, without her hands, but with a blade.

  The lead breach knight reacted, pulling out their blade to cut. Viviana leaned at the last second. Blood sprayed as Viviana’s arm was slashed, rendering it completely useless. But Viviana had cut off the breach knight’s dominant arm, freeing the crystal. Viviana caught it in her teeth.

  [Geometry Manipulator]

  [Contract - shorten the distance between two points]

  [Expand - lengthen the distance between two points]

  [Mana recycler- this object automatically stores surrounding mana and consumes it upon use]

  [Only usable within this dungeon. Sufficient proximity to the dungeon core must be maintained]

  As soon as she bit it, Viviana gained the instinctive knowledge necessary to use the artifact. She activated [Expand], instantly extending the distance between herself and the closest opponent. She watched as one of their attacks now struck empty air, space stretched between them.

  Viviana immediately started moving, now with full control of the battlefield in her teeth. She shortened the distance in the hallway and [flash step]ped forward, bringing both her opponent and her blade closer in a sandwich maneuver. Viviana was already fast, but shortening the distance she had to travel made her frighteningly dangerous.

  [You have slain a level 7 soulbound.]

  [+8 exp]

  [You can distribute (1) stat point.]

  She rushed forward, shortening the distances in front of her and lengthening the ones behind. If she wanted her blade to connect, the world warped to make it so.

  And, now with the artifact, she could stop the other breach knights from catching the rest of her team. Viviana concentrated, activated [Expand], and lengthened the hallway to an impossible degree. The breach knights stopped running. They realized that without the artifact, Viviana would stall them forever.

  Viviana thought of increasing the distance between everything by as much as possible. Then, she couldn’t get hurt by the breach knights, and the breach knights would have to travel a far, far distance to reach Adam and the rest of the Landsknecht. Yet Viviana could sense the mana in the artifact. There wasn’t much left. She wouldn’t be able to perform such a massive increase in space.

  Even so, she had to stall the breach knights while Adam and his team did their thing. What better way to stall than murdering them all?

  The breach knights pressed something on their arms, and smoke grenades shot out of hidden projectile launchers. No matter what the smoke was made of, so as long as it wasn’t system-recognized, Viviana wouldn’t take damage. But dealing damage was not the goal.

  Viviana winced as her vision was filled with smoke. The corridor made the smoke unable to disperse easily, so she expanded it, trying to disperse it into the air. But that just wasn’t how the artifact worked. It didn’t create anything, it just simply stretched space itself. No air was created, and thus no smoke dispersed.

  Then she realized she couldn’t activate the artifact without line of sight. She couldn’t push away or pull something closer without seeing it. She tried to increase the distance between the smoke and herself, but that didn’t work either. The smoke was already there.

  Viviana ducked as a sword swooshed directly above her. She realized the inherent advantage the breach knights had. Their helmets. Viviana couldn’t see through the smoke, but the breach knights had all sorts of vision systems built into their helmets. Finding her would be trivially easy.

  So Viviana pushed her mana outwards, hoping to scan for fluctuations that meant someone was there. Then she [flash step]ped forward, fired her grapples blind and used her jump boots. With no way of detecting the enemy except short-range mana sense and hearing, Viviana ran in a zig-zag pattern, hoping she wouldn’t take much damage.

  She felt a blade, and a skill, fly towards her. She heard the whistle of grapple hooks cutting through the air and the crunch of them embedding into the walls. She kept moving erratically, not bothering to counter attack.

  A blade found its mark, sinking into her leg. Painful, but shallow. Not enough to slow her down.

  She tore herself out of the smoke cloud, swinging herself around to face it. There was no time to even think about what had happened. Viviana raised her sword as six armored breach knights walked out the cloud of smoke, swords drawn.

  “Viviana Adler-Stern,” one of the breach knights said. “I was told you did good work for Fortuna Fuerewache. Why are you here, acting against Ferric Meridian?”

  He wants to talk? Fine. The longer I stall the better. And I can get my injuries to heal without disturbing them by moving so much.

  “Her contract is over,” Viviana said. “ So then we took another one.”

  The breach knight shook his head. “To what end? You have offended both Ophidian Pact and now us. Acting against us will put you at a disadvantage in the future. Are you so sure of throwing away your opportunities? For both yourself, and the people who work for you?”

  “I am not. I will not join a guild after I graduate. I am only here to seek strength. And those that work for me are not so weak to be concerned about the guilds in the academy. Their accomplishments against the likes of you will be enough for their futures.”

  “You will regret that, Adler-Stern. You cannot play the mercenary game for long. You’ll have to pick a side, or the guilds will chew you up and spit you out. At least if you’re a part of them, they’ll spend a longer time chewing.”

  “I’m not a chew toy, guild affiliated knight. I am Viviana Adler-Stern, founder of Landsknecht, the people of this land.”

  “This land is the guilds’,” the breach knight said, sighing. Despite his helmet, Viviana felt his gaze. It wasn’t aimed at her eyes, but to the hidden camera she kept next to her grapple system. “I know you’re recording. I hope you don’t edit your death out of the montage.”

  The six breach knights all lunged forward at once, simultaneously flanking and grappling and thrusting their swords forward. Viviana activated her new artifact, increasing the distance between all the knights and herself, but decreasing it for one knight in particular.

  Viviana had no qualms admitting that she was dead here. Completely outnumbered, out geared, and out levelled. Even so, I’ll take down as many as I can. Each one of them’s like seven experience points, after all.

  I better get a feat recognition.