Chapter 465 - 465: Naemarys' siblings in depths

Jolthar was lying against a massive tree trunk — or what had been a tree before the corruption had spent years transforming it into something that retained the shape of wood while being something else entirely. The trunk was perhaps eight feet in diameter, blackened and twisted, but structurally solid. Solid enough to carry two people above the ground level, where the worst of the shockwaves rolled through like tide surges.

Haryntha sat beside him, close enough that her shoulder was against his. Her hands were raised slightly, not in combat posture but in the sustained positioning of someone maintaining something that required continuous attention.

Around them, barely visible but perceptible to Jolthar's enhanced senses, a barrier shimmered — clean energy against the malevolent pressure that the ten-tailed entity was broadcasting in all directions simply by existing and moving.

The malevolence reached them in waves even through the barrier. Not enough to harm, but enough to feel — like standing at a distance from a fire large enough that you could feel the heat even where the flames couldn't reach you.

"How long was I out?" Jolthar asked. His voice came out rough, the edges of it worn down by what the Void Requiem had taken from him.

"Ten hours, approximately," Haryntha replied, not taking her attention from the barrier.

"You needed it. Don't apologize for it."

He hadn't been planning to, but he appreciated the preemptive absolution.

They watched the ten-tailed entity move through what had been the spire's surrounding territory, its passage leaving trails of absolute devastation.

It had come to the place where Jolthar was now resting. It seemed to be attracted by his energy signature. Haryntha told him from what she noticed.

The structure itself had partially collapsed, the void damage Jolthar had done to its foundation combining with the thing's casual proximity to bring down sections of the ancient corrupted stone. Nynthralls that had survived the earlier clearing scattered from the entity's path — even they, creatures built from malice, apparently had enough residual self-preservation to avoid being incidentally destroyed by something of this magnitude.

"What is it?" Jolthar asked.

"Something that shouldn't exist yet," Haryntha said, and her voice carried the particular quality of someone confronting information that challenged their existing understanding.

"Nynthralls evolve — you know this. Duke-class is a recognized tier. But what comes after duke-class is theoretical. Something that would require centuries more accumulation of malice and corruption beyond what the dukes represented."

She paused, watching another explosion of dark energy reach the clouds. "Apparently theory has become practice."

"These nynthralls have changed a lot and learned a lot too, in these past few centuries."

"Which means the dukes I killed were—"

"Feeding it, yes. The malice they accumulated over centuries, the energy they represented — when you eliminated them, that energy didn't simply vanish. It was absorbed by whatever was already developing in the deep parts of the spire."

Her tone was level but carrying the weight of someone recalculating.

"You may have accelerated something that would have taken decades more to reach this state."

Jolthar absorbed this without visible reaction. The information was uncomfortable, but arguing with it served no purpose.

He was pushing himself upright against the tree trunk, testing what his body had recovered, when movement in the corrupted landscape below caught his attention.

Not nynthralls — the movement patterns were wrong for that. Too purposeful, too coordinated, carrying the spatial awareness of trained fighters rather than malicious instinct.

People.

His enhanced vision extended, pulling detail from distance and sharpening through the corrupted atmosphere to resolve shapes into individuals.

A group of perhaps twenty, robed in the deep colors that suggested serious magic practitioners rather than simple warriors. They moved in formations around two central figures who were clearly leading — not just in position but in the quality of attention the others directed toward them.

The two leaders were young. The male, perhaps late twenties; the female, similar; both carrying themselves with the particular confidence of people who had grown up knowing they were significant and had spent their lives building capabilities to match that expectation. Their features shared enough commonality to suggest shared blood.

He didn't recognize them specifically. But the mana, the way their robes were marked, the crest visible on the equipment of those around them—

Naemarys clan.

He knew the clan's presence even without knowing the individuals.

The two leading figures were pressing against the ten-tailed entity with techniques that were genuinely impressive — the male throwing devastating strikes that landed with impact Jolthar could feel even at this distance, the female using something that looked like spatial manipulation to redirect the entity's tail strikes away from their group. They were capable. Significantly capable.

They were also losing ground, slowly but measurably. The entity was not retreating. It was not significantly harmed. It was absorbing everything thrown at it and continuing to move with the unhurried certainty that had characterized it in the spire.

Jolthar's weight shifted forward involuntarily.

Haryntha's hand came down on his shoulder immediately.

"No."

"They're going to—"

Even if they were enemies, they are humans and he didn't want to watch them get killed right before him.

"You cannot fight that thing in your current state and you know it," Haryntha said, her voice leaving no room for the argument he was building.

"You just used too much of your energy. Your reserves need hours to reach functional combat levels, not minutes. Going down there now means dying uselessly and helping no one."

"They're people."

"They're Naemarys clan members who ventured into the Dreadland Depths knowing the risks," Haryntha replied.

"And they're not dead yet. Watch."

He watched.

Because the second group arrived.

They came from the western approach, moving with a different quality entirely — not the aggressive forward pressure of the Naemarys group but something more measured, more settled into itself, the movement of people who were not urgent because they did not need to be urgent. An older man at their center, with clan members arranged around him in patterns that reflected genuine capability rather than formation for appearance's sake.