Round 137

Jeane's crimson eyes flash with calculation as she assesses Halie's corrupted arm pulsing cold fire. "You say the corruption is 'contained' but I see the tendrils spreading under your skin, building architecture inside you—this isn't simple infection anymore, it's colonization." She maintains her twenty-meter containment radius around Silra despite the arcane strain building in her own flesh from proximity to downstairs corruption.

Halie meets Jeane's gaze with steady blue-grey eyes despite the horror of her situation. "I hear you loud and clear—this is a gamble with consequences I'm fully aware of." She gestures toward the walls with her uncorrupted left hand, where the fungal tendrils have indeed stopped their coordinated assault. "But tactical retreat here means Silra loses her arm and we lose our strongest fighter at exactly the wrong moment when every hand needs to be functional downstairs."

She continues, voice tight but controlled: "I've studied this corruption more closely than anyone: it spreads through magical exposure, specifically divine magic interaction. The walls learned from my last burst—see how they're breathing in unison now? That's not natural stone behavior." Her corrupted right arm pulses rhythmically, cold fire licking along the tendrils visible beneath her skin. "I need another thirty seconds to document the spread rate and transmission vector properly before my mind starts degrading."

Jeane's expression hardens further at Halie's words. "Documentation is all well and good until you lose consciousness and we have to drag your corrupted body back upstairs while the walls finish crushing us between them." She gestures sharply toward the ceiling above. "The grinding noise is getting closer—we have minutes, not hours, before this passageway collapses entirely."