I Don't Need To Log Out

The pit was chaos.

Keldars rained from the rim like a storm of bodies, their snarls blending into an endless roar.

The Gamers held the center, their formation tight, their weapons moving in a blur.

Carole's magic pulsed outward, keeping the worst of the damage at bay, but there was only so much she could do at once.

"We won't last like this," Lei muttered, cutting down another Keldar that had lunged too close. "They're too many."

"They're not infinite," Pierre replied, blocking a blow and shoving his shield forward. "We hold."

Carole gritted her teeth, hands glowing with divine energy as she poured another pulse of healing through the group.

She could feel the drain already—her mana holding steady, but her mind starting to strain from the non-stop casting.

Then, something shifted.

A flicker of movement through the swarm.

Evan.

He'd disappeared minutes ago, vanishing into stealth to weave through the Keldars undetected.

Now, he was reappearing—barely visible for a blink—only to vanish again, his twin daggers slicing necks and tendons in clean, fluid arcs.

He wasn't just killing.

He was thinning the flow.

Every time a wave of Keldars built too high in one direction, Evan slipped in and broke their momentum.

It was like watching a shadow dance—unseen, unchallenged, utterly precise.

"He's cutting them off before they reach us," Zack said, breathless, as he took down two more Keldars beside him. "Smart bastard."

"And keeping them from clumping too much," Lei added. "He's forcing them into smaller bursts. I can handle that."

But even with Evan's help, the numbers kept building.

They needed more reach.

"Maria!" Carmen shouted over the noise, blood splattered across her robes. "It's time!"

Maria nodded, already raising her hands. "I was waiting for you to say that."

Together, they summoned.

Carmen slammed her staff into the ground, and a ripple of heat spread across the floor.

From the wave rose a molten figure—tall and jagged, a fire elemental with smoke pouring from its shoulders.

Maria called water and wind, combining them into a swirling mass of vapor and force—a storm elemental, its body twisting like a cyclone in human shape.

"Go!" Maria commanded.

The elementals surged forward.

The fire elemental swung a molten fist, shattering a dozen Keldars in a single blow, the heat of its body igniting any that got too close.

The storm elemental burst forward in a gale, wind slicing through flesh, lifting Keldars off their feet and slamming them into the walls of the pit.

For the first time since the battle started, the Gamers saw the pressure easing.

Zack let out a laugh as he spun through a gap in the line, slicing a stunned Keldar across the chest. "That's more like it!"

"Don't get cocky," Pierre warned. "They're still falling."

But they were falling into chaos.

Evan's sabotage had disrupted their coordination—if they even had any—and the summons were chewing through them in bulk.

Carmen's storm elemental swept a full quadrant of the pit clear, using gusts of cutting air to dismember anything in its path.

Maria's fire elemental slammed into the thicker groups, melting through armor and flesh alike.

Even Carole was getting more aggressive, launching radiant bursts between healing pulses to soften the incoming waves.

The group started rotating.

When one of them took a heavy hit or needed a breather, another would step forward. They moved like clockwork—years of gaming instinct mixing with one year of real combat.

Zack and Lei pushed further ahead, carving out a larger perimeter, giving the casters more space to maneuver.

Pierre remained steady at the center-front, his shield never wavering. Carole focused purely on reinforcement now, a steady beacon of golden light.

"We've got them on the run!" Carmen called.

The enemy was thinning.

They weren't falling as fast now, and the ones already on the ground weren't swarming as efficiently.

The pit, once crowded to the point of suffocation, was starting to open up.

And then—just like that—it stopped.

No more Keldars fell.

No more rumbling from above.

Only the sound of panting breath, blood dripping from blades, and the crackling of residual fire from Maria's elemental, now slowly dissolving into steam.

They stood there, frozen for a moment.

Waiting.

Expecting a second wave.

But it didn't come.

They were surrounded by corpses—piles and piles of dead Keldars, their black blood staining the stone floor.

The air smelled of burnt flesh, ozone, and sweat.

"We did it," Zack said, disbelieving. "We actually—"

"Don't say it," Lei cut in quickly, breath hitching. "Not yet."

But Carole was already smiling.

"We did it," she echoed. "And not one of us died."

The moment she said that, all of their bodies were covered with light. Each one had leveled up at least eight times.

Maria laughed, slumping slightly as her elemental vanished in a burst of sparks. "I thought I was done for three different times."

"Same," Carmen said. "Carole, you're ridiculous."

"I do what I can."

They all turned, finally, toward the rest of the pit. What had once been a death trap now looked… empty. Quiet. Safe.

But only for a moment.

Because as the silence stretched, they remembered.

Vlora.

They hadn't beaten him yet.

This had just been the opening act.

And sure enough—on the far edge of the pit, almost hidden behind a rocky outcropping—they spotted something.

A stone door.

Not large, but wide enough for someone to walk through. It was slightly open, and a faint, unnatural light flickered from within.

"An entrance," Pierre said. "He's down there."

"Figures he'd hide underground like a rat," Lei muttered.

Zack rolled his shoulders. "We could've skipped all of that if we'd found that first."

"Then we wouldn't have leveled up," Maria said, already moving toward it.

They gathered near the door, weapons in hand, eyes scanning the threshold.

"If we go in, it's not going to be like the pit," Carole said. "We'll be on his terms. Directly."

"We were already on his terms," Pierre said, voice low. "Now we're just returning the favor."

The group shared one last look.

Then, without a word, they stepped inside.