The Soul Anchor lines were the first problem Constantine assessed properly.
None of the Adventurers moved to press their advantage immediately, which told him something important—Edric hadn't deployed the anchors expecting a straightforward capture.
This was containment first, combat second.
They wanted him stable before closing distance, which meant the anchors alone weren't sufficient for what they were trying to accomplish.
He tested the binding's tolerance while keeping his expression neutral. The spiritual suppression was precise—it dampened ability initiation within a fixed radius around his anchored position, not in a blanket sense. Hollow Sense was down. Ghost Step was down. Phantom Grasp was gone the moment he reached for it. But the suppression targeted initiated abilities, not the foundational nature of his form.
He was still a Wraith.
And a Wraith's intangibility, in its most basic expression, wasn't a Skill.
It was a Class Trait.
He pushed the distinction and felt the anchor lines strain rather than hold completely. Not enough to break—they were too precisely constructed for that—but enough to confirm that the gap existed. The anchors suppressed ability initiation. The passive structural qualities of his Class sat slightly outside that suppression layer.
Edric registered the test immediately.
"Engage."
The Rank 4 Adventurers moved in pairs from two angles simultaneously. Mira and the archer from the left corridor wall, Gareth and a blade-user from the right. The spacing was deliberate—too wide for a single response to address both pairs, positioned to force a priority decision between simultaneous threats.
Constantine chose neither.
He dropped through the floor.
Not a Skill—just the base expression of Wraith physicality that had existed since the moment of his Class Change. The anchor lines stretched as he descended, thinning but not breaking, and he had approximately three seconds of partial mobility before they recalibrated and snapped him back upward. He used every one of them. Through the floor, sideways through four meters of solid stone, back up into the corridor at a point behind the left-side pair. The lines went taut and reversed his momentum, but the left pair had already moved from their original positions, and the recalibration pulled him into open space rather than an occupied zone.
Not clean. But the geometry was different from what Edric had set.
Gareth's hammer arrived from his right before he fully reoriented. He caught it on the Veil of the Death Lord—the robe's negation absorbed the energy component, but the kinetic force still transmitted at partial strength and cost him a Level. The archer released in the same moment. He phased partially, enough to catch the anti-spectral broadhead on the outer edge of his arm rather than through his chest.
Level 96.
Three minutes of sustained exchange confirmed what he had suspected at the end of the first minute—he could survive individual hits, but he couldn't create offensive windows with twelve meters of anchor geometry constraining every repositioning attempt. Edric directed the formation from the corridor's rear without entering the engagement himself, and his adjustments were precise enough that Constantine's available space was narrowing incrementally with each exchange. He was being herded, and the herding was working.
Level 88.
He accepted the conclusion.
'The anchors are keyed to my spiritual signature. If my signature changes fundamentally enough, they won't recalibrate fast enough to adapt.'
He opened the Class Advancement prompt.
[Advance Class: Select One]
[Shadow Specter]
{Enhanced concealment and assassination capability. Stealth and evasion reach their apex.}
[Soul Lord]
{Supreme spiritual authority. Command over lesser Undead and enhanced spiritual manipulation.}
[Litch]
{Supreme arcane power. Physical and magical resistance reach maximum tier. Immense base strength. Phylactery formation grants resilience against destruction.}
He chose before he finished reading.
The transition was faster than the Ghoul-to-Wraith change and considerably more violent. His form restructured from the inside out—the semi-translucent Wraith physicality condensing into something denser and colder, the floating quality of his existence replaced by a presence more like a fixed point of extreme density than a drifting spectral form. Robes assembled around the condensation. His hands, when he looked at them, were bone—long-fingered and faintly luminescent, cold green light running through the joints.
The anchor lines failed simultaneously.
Not broken—dissolved. Whatever signature they had been keyed to no longer existed in the dungeon's spectral field, and the absence of a recognizable anchor point collapsed the entire binding geometry at once.
He stood upright for the first time in four minutes.
[Class Change Complete: Wraith → Litch]
{Warning: All externally acquired Skills have been lost. System-integrated Skills retained.}
His Skill list contained two entries.
Miasma Emission. Subspace.
Twelve Skills, gone.
He opened the Shop immediately.
[System Notice]
{We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience, Host! The System Shop is currently undergoing emergency maintenance and is temporarily unavailable. We appreciate your patience! :)}
Constantine stared at the notification for exactly one second.
Then he opened the Gacha.
[System Notice]
{Host, the Gacha is also under—}
The notification cut off mid-sentence.
The Gacha interface loaded normally.
He understood what had happened in the same moment the interface appeared. The System had committed enough of its interface authority to lock the Shop thoroughly against a Litch-class user, and that commitment had thinned its coverage across the rest of the interface. The Gacha had been left with less governing authority than usual—and less authority on a component he had consistently refused to touch for the entirety of his time in this dungeon meant it was almost certainly the last input the System had anticipated.
He spent every System Point except fifty.
[Gacha Result: Death Coil (Active Skill) — Wraps target in condensed death energy, immobilizing and dealing continuous damage. Scales with Level.]
[Gacha Result: Lich's Proclamation (Active Skill, One-Time Use) — Releases a zone-wide burst of supreme death energy that ignores all resistance layers. Single use only.]
[Gacha Result: Bone Fortress (Active Skill, One-Time Use) — Erects an instant bone barrier absorbing all incoming damage for a fixed duration. Single use only.]
[Gacha Result: Soul Consumption (Active Skill) — Absorbs the soul energy of nearby enemies and converts it directly into Level restoration.]
[Gacha Result: Spectral Staff (SSR) — Amplifies all death-magic output by a fixed multiplier. Phylactery Formation Rate increased while equipped.]
[Gacha Result: Veil of Nullity (One-Time Item) — Nullifies all binding and restriction effects on the user for thirty seconds.]
[Gacha Result: Revenant's Draught (One-Time Item) — Immediately restores user to full Level integrity. Single use.]
He equipped the Spectral Staff and looked at Edric across the corridor.
"My turn," Constantine said.
He activated the Veil of Nullity.