The bolt howled as it flew towards John. It took the shape of a human skull, formed from dense, bright green energy, surrounded by a darker mist. Barely, he jumped out of the way. Behind him, the magical projectile exploded into a cloud of smoke and a material similar to bone. Like shrapnel on a solid metal plate, the pieces slammed and ricocheted against Particle Skin.

John kept a calm mind and his eyes on the numbers, even as the massive claws of the mummified kraken horror closed in on him from both sides. He stared at the distorted face of the eldritch beast. Something like an elf was at the centre there, stretched and with an overgrown, grinning maw, like a mixture between a serpent and a great white shark. The dry, stretched skin bore the mark of a few arcane and fire attacks. John had tried to make the creature flinch before. Unsuccessfully, as could be expected from a corpse animated by the will of a lich and the souls of the damned. Still, John had to try and find a way to maximize his dodge chances.

When there was no other option, there was only Magus Step.

The hands slammed together, now in front of John, the shockwave almost ripping him off his feet. Skitterstep bought him a moment of time, before Arkeidos could aim his next attack.

Standing atop the head of the creature, using a protruding ridge to place his right foot forward like a conqueror who looked over his victorious army, Arkeidos rode the beast as if neither gravity nor momentum were a thing. Both hands raised, he conjured two spheres of necromantic mist and unleashed both in a cone.

‘Can’t even wait for me to turn visible,’ John thought and ran as fast as he could. Magus Step stacks and his mana were both precious, allowing him to survive an encounter that he had not even a ghost of a chance of winning. ‘Forcing the summoner build into a 1v1 with the final boss and his pet, horrible game design.’

Despite the joke he told himself to alleviate his mood, John was far from relaxed. So far everything had gone according to plan. Normally that meant that he gave himself a solid 95% chance of winning. Problem was that the plan this time around had been a concession to the circumstances and that he had to rely on his own combat aptitude.

The kraken horror turned towards John, its form curving in the air like a squid in water, a metaphor made doubly apt due to its tentacled lower body. Its claw dragged over the floor, in pursuit of the running Gamer. Gradually, it caught up with him. There were no places to hide on the roof of the Eternal Fortress. The flat stone top was of such absurd scale, over a kilometre across, it could be counted as a plain in and of itself.

Only two physical barriers existed between him and his enemies and they were his doubles. The Mandala Sphere flew towards the lowered arm, parts of its surface bearing blueish black spikes. Compared to the unknown leviathan, the sphere was no larger than a marble. Still, when the spikes slammed into its arm, launched by the enchantment, the kraken’s limb was delayed just enough for John to dive to the side.

The stone was hard. Not one to excel at physical activity, being surrounded by a fair amount of physically active haremettes, not to mention his constant combat experiences, had at least taught him how to roll properly. Swiftly, he was on his feet again.

He ran and the kraken coiled, its long neck blocking the path. Arkeidos jumped off and walked at John with swift, heavy steps. A salvo of necromantic blasts forced John to swerve, while he looked through the Mandala Sphere and the Creator Puppet’s eyes for the best route to escape.

“You are smiling,” Arkeidos observed.

It served no advantage for John to respond; the Emperor would not cease in his advance for a casual conversation anymore. They were both acting in pursuit of victory. Regardless, he could not help himself. Not like he had anything better to do – he was very capable of focusing on three bodies, his survival, and a bit of banter. “Want the scientific or the spiritual answer to that?” he asked, while trying to circle around Arkeidos.

“I am intrigued by both, choose your order,” the tyrant declared as he took a large step forwards. His right fist came barrelling down at John, forcing him to use another Magus Step. He got one of those every ten seconds and the delays between waves of attacks were rarely large enough to rely only on it.

Worse, Arkeidos had long since picked up how to optimally react.

A wave of noxious green exploded out around him, engulfing the entire area in necrotic energy. Compared to a direct hit, it was a manageable amount of damage, but it still caught him even while the invisibility of Skitterstep covered him. All around him was the unliving dome of the kraken horror, arms, head and tentacles cutting off every escape route. The only remotely good news about the confined space was that Arkeidos did not have his mace to take full advantage of it.

“Starting scientifically then: by facing a fight like this with a mixture of seriousness and joviality, I block the flight instinct. It prevents my reflexes from taking over rational action.”

“Interesting. I never feared anything, so such a path was never necessary for me.”

John checked the position of his doubles outside. The mist all around consolidated into a new necromantic bolt, screaming as it flew towards him. In order to retain his Magus Steps, he took the attack straight on. His MP went down below half for the third time in this fight. It had not yet fully depleted, the constant regeneration prevented that. It was only a matter of time until a particularly clean hit would change that.

“Never been afraid of anything?” the Gamer asked, continuing his retreat towards one of the kraken’s hands. “Not even death?”

“Perishing due to the rules of mortality was beneath me. I did not fear it; I was only disgusted at the prospect that I would end like all others, with so much glory yet unclaimed.” Arkeidos continued his menacing march, one hand raised, steadily blasting the Gamer with more magical attacks. “If you fear death, then why smile? Let me hear that second answer.”

John tried his best to respond between evading what was thrown at him. “No sense…” he started and immediately stopped, breaking out into a full sprint to get out of harm’s way. For ten metres, he charged in a random direction. The moment Arkeidos started aiming for where he was going to be, he stopped dead in his tracks. The bolt transformed into a weaker cone attack, catching him anyway. “No sense in hating a good challenge!”

“Indeed, there is not!” Arkeidos thundered back and broke into a sprint.

John had backed away as far as he could without being in reach of the kraken. Now he turned tail. His shoes hammered on the stone. The revenant rapidly closed the distance. The Creator Puppet stood stoically, peering past the hand of the eldritch monster.

‘Three,’ John counted the number of Magus Steps he had available. ‘Two.’ The fingers of the Emperor clawed at nothing. A brief moment of invisibility, then the hand of the kraken came at him. ‘One.’ It passed through where he had been and John was out from underneath the beast. ‘Zero.’

The Gamer teleported up into the air, his hand immediately finding one of the Mandala Sphere’s plates to hold onto. A magical blast flew past under him, the last of the series of attacks he had predicted. Now Arkeidos would chase him, while he flew away. He aimed to delay that for as long as possible.

Moving towards the head of his reanimated leviathan, Arkeidos was interrupted by the Creator Puppet. Charging in at a respectable speed and then smashing his fist against Arkeidos with considerable Strength, the Golden Boy was a threat. Not an incredible threat, the straightforward blow only caused a minor loosening in the bindings of Arkeidos’ leg armour, only an unignorable one.

John left a goodbye present for Arkeidos and his pet horror. An Unstable Arcana, created by Purgatory, bombarding both of the Gamer’s adversaries with waves of arcane energy and Mana Chains.

The Creator Puppet ducked under a first swipe, while the chains latched onto Arkeidos. Like the Golden Boy itself, the chains were only a minor inconvenience. Together, they made for a moderate inconvenience. Arkeidos attempted to get out of the range of the Unstable Arcana, which was the last thing the Gamer wanted.

Holding onto Arkeidos with both hands, the Golden Boy slowed him down. Simultaneously, that opened the golem up for a counterattack. Swiftly, a knee slammed into the Elementium exterior. The sheer force of the impact dented the material, but the structural integrity overall was retained. Arkeidos changed his strategy to dismantling one annoyance first, then getting out of range of the other.

John was left contemplating what to gain besides time and distance. ‘Should I go over the edge?’ he asked himself. Running away was a perfectly viable strategy for him. The location Arkeidos had chosen prevented it from being an actually implementable one though. There was no way John could survive the way down with his limited flight speed, not with that monstrosity at the Emperor’s beck and call.

While the Gamer still contemplated his options, Arkeidos caught the Creator Puppet by the neck. Much smaller and weaker, all the second double could do was bang his opponent’s arm while he was being raised up. Leaping out of the range of the Unstable Arcana, the Emperor had overcome what John had put in his way.

‘Twenty seconds bought, not that bad,’ the Gamer thought, satisfied with the return on investment. He furrowed his eyebrows when Arkeidos put his right hand to the Golden Boy’s chest and aimed the double at the Gamer himself. The question of what he was doing was swiftly answered by drumming words.

“All that’s great…”

John had just heard the first syllable of the incantation, as he immediately started to utter one of his own. “The secrets of mana unlocked!”

“…stems from the powerful’s misery!”

A massive blast of noxious green energy turned the body of the Creator Puppet into various kinds of dust and continued practically unhindered outwards. A torrent of wailing humanoid faces filled the unleashed energy as it spread out in a massive cone. A version of hell had manifested in this world and was coming right towards John.

All he could do in the brief moment he was given was to let go of the Mandala Sphere and save it from the worst of it all. He landed on the hard stone and was immediately engulfed. He didn’t try to run, as his vision was so utterly dominated by the storm of souls that he did not know where to run to.

John stared at his mana bar. It had just doubled in what it held, yet drained rapidly. Once it was emptied, a particularly strange phenomenon took place. Each second, he felt the souls gnaw on his flesh, decay his skin, and push him backwards, all of that only for a new tick of mana regeneration to insulate him momentarily. His HP gradually went down. Windows opened, informing him that his life was being leeched. Of barely any consequence, unless Arkeidos could share this healing around. Considering what Metra did elsewhere, highly unlikely.

With his health diminished to 25%, his quintupled MP regeneration finally overcame the gradually diminishing attack. ‘Now we’re on a timer,’ John thought.

The incantation he had just used had been for Secret of Mana. For the next ten minutes, nine after the conclusion of Arkeidos’ attack, his MP maximum was doubled, the Whisper of Mana considered maxed out (increasing MP regeneration by 400%), doubled the damage of Arcana spells (technically all of his arcane spells except Chains of Babylon) and at the end of it he’d get to fire one Skyfall (replacing Arcana Strike) equal to the mana expended.

John had no idea if he’d get to line up the conditions for that attack to hit. Most important in the current situation was that he got the bonus mana regeneration to keep preventing damage with. Issue was, if this fight did not end in the next nine minutes, his Max Mana and MP regeneration would be reduced by 99% for one week. One minute of that was enough to seal his fate.

Standing in the thinning out remains of the attack, manifesting as tormented expressions elongating as they drifted towards the sky, John was ready for the immediate follow-up by the Emperor. Instead, Arkeidos cast the head, the only piece remaining of the Creator Double, aside, to stare at John from a distance.

“Your form is inexplicable,” the lich remarked. “I felt your life enter me and yet there you stand, unharmed, unbothered. Glowing with newfound power.”

‘Sure, we can go with that,’ the Gamer thought, hiding the true extent of his expended resources behind his smile. He raised his hands, his skin shimmering silver and exuding a constant light. The surging of his power was visually impressive and in most other situations would have been a definitive fight winner. ‘Well, I can at least provide him with a reason to approach me with more care. Besides, I need to spend some mana the traditional way.’

John angled three of his fingers and cast Arcana Ray. With a deep buzzing sound, the silver stream of arcane energy cut through the air. Arkeidos leapt on top of the kraken horror’s head and took to the air.

Moving his hand straight upwards, it appeared like John did not even try to direct the attack towards Arkeidos. In a way that was true. John deemed the Emperor a relatively too small target to hit him by waving his hand around. At the very least, that gave ample opportunity to dodge and John wanted Arkeidos himself to suffer a blast of cautioning damage.

A fourth Aracana Ray shot into the beam from the side, launched from the Mandala Sphere. The impact caused the trajectory to angle from that point onwards. Suddenly, the attack hit the Emperor directly in the chest. John’s erudite mind was working overtime to keep the correct angles calculated. Even as Arkeidos moved, a mixture of changing angles by the Mandala Sphere and minute differences in the position of his fingers combined to keep the attack trained on the Emperor.

The chest piece expanded further and further, the bindings loosening, until John could spot the pieces of crystal adhered to the inside, like a mixture between an armour and a geode. “MAGNIFICENT! YOU ARE NOT SO WEAK AS I THOUGHT!” Arkeidos bellowed with excitement.

With a loud bell ringing sound, the armour collapsed back into its original shape. The strain was visibly transferred to his left arm, bits and pieces exploding from the whole. Visible damage, revealing some of the ghostly limb inside, yet nowhere near enough that John thought this a sustainable strategy.

The kraken horror was flying directly at him and, his mana reserves depleting, John made the call that this was as much of an offensive as he could muster. Magus Step saved him from the snapping yellow-toothed maw of the eldritch beast. John ran, to continue his delaying strategy. Vastly more mana at his disposal did not fundamentally alter his gameplan.

As he retreated, a boom so massive that he could feel it even this high up shook the tower. Sending the Mandala Sphere to investigate, he saw the true form of Nathalia break out of the fortress far below. She was still preoccupied with Jevaine, but it appeared there was progress there.

Any progress was good news to him.

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