We rushed each other. I was done being passive. Sure, the boost I had received from Sacrifice might still not be enough to take down a creature like this, but I for sure wasn’t backing down. I hadn’t grown as strong as I had, I hadn’t survived as long as I had, to just fold over when I faced seemingly insurmountable opposition.

  The crack of our collision made my eardrums thrum. Where the monster’s ramming, clawed fist crashed into the aura of the Swarmlord around me, my mace smashed into my opponent’s metallic carapace.

  It was satisfying in an extremely heady way to see that we both got flung back. No surprise at all that a direct blow from the monster had sent me so far back.

  What was extra enlivening was how much Power I had been able to generate.

  “Surprised?” I asked. The monster was still for a moment, almost as if it was coming to grips with the fact that I wasn’t going to be easy prey. “There’s more where that came from.”

  With a horrendous shriek, it attacked again with relentless brutality. Now I was starting to see the real capability of my opponent. The clawed fists rained in way, way faster than I could respond.

  That was what my aura was for. The holographic energy in the shape of the armoured beetle around me cracked as piece after piece of it fell off, limning the world around me with white fractures bleeding sparking energy. But I was safe. I was surviving, no matter how powerfully the monster struck.

  Which gave me room to slam my mace in with as much Power as I could muster in my arms, turning up the weight of my weapon moments before impact with Infusion.

  That forced the bug back for another moment. A tiny bit of reprieve. With a shriek, it launched itself at me again.

  In that little moment I had received, I knew I wasn’t going to get another opportunity like that. The monster was too strong, too irrepressible. It had already destroyed at least fifty percent of the armoured aura wrapping me. Another exchange like that and I’d be flat out dead.

  And yet, I still charged straight at my enemy.

  Just before our collision, I channelled Gravity with Field Manipulation. A sudden bloom of powerful gravitational forces made the monster stumble. That was all the opening I needed.

  With the monster’s aim now awry, I could hammer in with as weighty a blow as I could manage with my focus spread. My mace smashed right onto its head. Once again, I was able to summon enough force to send my opponent staggering, even if the wound was minimal at best.

  And was already being healed with the dark threads. I cursed.

  Two could play that game, though. Mana Heal was taking care of the injury at my waist, thanks to all the extra mana I was generating with Power’s Mana Injection.

  Mana exhaustion was trying to claw up my body. Thankfully, Threaded Reinforcement just meant that the threads infused in my body came alive, turning into strands of electrified steel.

  Continuing to engage my opponent in a straight physical battle wasn’t going to be good for me, though. I cast Gravity Orbs with Manifestation, the ground breaking around me with Field Manipulation letting the orbs turn into little planets. The monster was about to charge me yet again, but I had been casting for a while now and the orbs were ready.

  I fired the orbs with more Field Manipulation, each one rocketing at the creature before it got a chance to launch itself at me. And it still did so. Despite the huge, misshapen spheres of broken rocks crashing against it, the monster didn’t relent, shooting straight at me without pausing once.

  Cursing again, I leaped straight up, barely evading thanks to Reflexive Mana. So much for using my Aspects to blast it from range.

  Unstoppable, the monster rushed into the air after me too. It had even corrected the little drawback I had noticed earlier. Even if its natural flight was slower than its ability to move on ground, it didn’t need to fly if it simply used its feet to shoot itself up like a cannon.

  A quick use of Infusion had dragged me back to the street. I had barely noticed its bent legs as it had dropped to its haunches.

  At the same time, I was already channelling Flare with Manifestation and Concentration as much as I could. The monster had halted its upward momentum with its wings, but I was trying to force it upwards, keep it in the air, all with a Field Manipulation plus Siphon. While it struggled against my anti-gravity, I aimed all the Flare at it.

  A blistering storm of heat surged upwards like a volcanic eruption minus the lava. Even though I was on the ground, I was immediately awash with sweat. I had a feeling I had never manifested that much—

  The monster tore through the heat with its own Aspected storm. A waterfall of Netherthreads had burst out of the creature, thickening into an avalanche of shimmering dark tendrils that crashed down upon all the heat I had conjured.

  Crashed down upon me.

  The monster hammered down with a meteoric blast, the tendrils flying behind it like the tail of an eldritch comet. Its impact cratered the ground. I had to use more Gravity to prevent the raining rocks from caving in my head.

  Though the huge burst of Flare I had called up incinerated a good chunk of the black tendrils, my attack didn’t get them all. It definitely hadn’t even touched the monster either.

  I realized, belatedly, that this was probably well beyond even the Swarmlords I had Sacrificed. This thing was leagues above any of the monsters I had fought so far.

  Case in point, even its shrieking was levels above anything I had heard from the rest of the Blight Swarm so far. My ears were one good yell away from falling off the sides of my skull entirely. Seriously, couldn’t these bastards rampage around without contributing to noise pollution?

  I was moving back as fast as my empowered legs could carry me. Even that felt a little too slow.

  It was the rest of the tendrils I kept my eyes on. Those things weren’t going to die down anytime soon. If anything, they were waving around with a life of their own, lashing out at everything, daring me to come close like I had done earlier on in our fight and subsequently get eviscerated. Good thing I had a perfect counter for it.

  The monster charged across the ground. I didn’t dodge this time. Instead, I met it head on.

  With Reflection turning my whole body into a glowing mirror.

  Even then, even after my Illumination Affix’s ability to bounce back the Netherthreads, the collision still sent me reeling backwards, my armour perforated in a dozen places. But I was still grinning. I had managed to reflect back nearly all the threads that had struck me.

  That had made the monster stagger back too, crying out as its own tendrils had turned against it. Not only that, I had smashed in my mace once again, using Granular Control to inflate the head and embed tiny chunks of the hammer head into the monster’s body. And the most important part was that I had managed to Sacrifice some of the reflections in all that chaos too.

  [ Sacrifice

  You have Sacrificed 1 [Minor] Affixed Reflection of an Aspect. Windfall bonus activated.

  Reward: Reflected Affix categorized as Lightshade. 10 casts of a temporary Affix— Lightshade —assigned under Illumination Aspect.

  Casts remaining: 17 ]

  Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

  At this rate, I wouldn’t even need to learn Lightshade as an Affix for real. I could just stock up on cast after cast by Sacrificing the Netherthread reflections.

  The monster righted itself with a growl. Our last contact had sent the tendrils into a frenzy. But I grinned. My opponent couldn’t use its best attack because I could just reflect it right back.

  Not that it was going to stop this monster. With another roar, it charged me down, faster and more furious than ever before. The dark tendrils rotated around it like a saw-wheel, tearing up the ground as it rushed at me. I barely managed to evade with Reflexive Mana, Reflection taking care of any of the lashing tentacles.

  I swung my mace as it rushed. It was definitely a big blessing that my brain was fast enough to think ahead. Because I wasn’t just dodging. I was channelling Lightshade even as Reflexive Mana just barely managed to make me evade the worst of the monster’s blow.

  My enemy crashed into the swinging afterimage of myself. The collision was perfect. It wasn’t fatal. It wasn’t even that damaging. The monster was just too powerful. But the light making up my Lightshade afterimage was like the Ignition Charge of Illumination itself, where the light bore the effects of my other Aspects with it.

  The motes exploding all over the monster’s body were imbued with both Gravity and Flare. Tiny dots of gravitational force ripped across the monster’s torso. Miniscule bombs of heat burst through the wounds, scorching, annoying, distracting.

  Giving me the opportunity to quickly right myself from my evasive manoeuvre to swing my mace in as hard as I could. The Infusion-weighted impact sent the monster staggering.

  And it still did next to no real damage. What the fuck was this thing made of?

  As the monster righted itself, it tried for a wholly different tactic this time. The tendrils lashed out again, but at the world around me instead of at me directly.

  Some picked up rocks to chuck at me, while others used said debris to create a strange amalgamation of rocks that looked terrifically like it was some sort of club. Not one, not two, but half a dozen of the truck-sized clubs rose into the air, waving about with fatal threads, seconds away from crashing into me

  I managed to dash away, before leaping straight up. Once again, I blessed Reflexive Mana for letting me stand toe-to-toe against far superior foes.

  The ground where I had been standing a second ago got smashed to dust and smithereens.

  A rock smashed in from behind. A Gravity Orb, rather. Flecked with deep-purple Gravity, it shot in like a cannonball to crash into the monster.

  All this while, I hadn’t ignored the rest of the battle, nor had I forgotten about my artificial sprite. While I had kept the monster busy for some time, I had commanded my sprite to infect a distant area with Gravity threads, and there, I had created more misshapen balls of rock with Manifestation and my gravity Affixes.

  Sure, it was straining my mana channelling capacity, but I could still rely on Threaded Reinforcement.

  The monster could barely defend itself. Apparently, dodging wasn’t in its vocabulary because it wasn’t using its superior speed to evade. Instead, it used the bits of the earth it ripped up with its tendrils to try and bat my shots away.

  It wasn’t just my attack raining on the monster. Now that there was finally some distance between me and my opponent, the soldiers and guards who were free joined in as well. Spears of sparking red energy fired in like scarlet missiles. Yet another person was firing a blast of ice, a little too close for comfort. Soon enough, the monster was occluded within a cloud of sparking, twisting dust.

  I swallowed. Breathed heavy. Surely this had to be it. I would have added my Flare to the mix too, but the way constantly using Threaded Reinforcement was making me numb all over, I didn’t want to strain it any further. Actually, now that I had a little bit of freedom, I could try for another tactic.

  “Watch out!” came the panicked shout.

  Less than an eyeblink later, a storm of dark spikes erupted from the dust cloud. I was in the middle of cursing, my hand still reaching for my dimensional storage to pull out another mana potion, when the monster shot out.

  It was a reflex that threw me to one side. Not Reflexive Mana. Apparently, I was running so dry, even passive Augmentations refused to work correctly.

  Which was the main reason I got hit. Badly.

  A short scream ripped free from my gullet as I bounced against the ground. My glowing body had reflected the lashing black tendrils from the monster, but they were accompanied by a physical blow, one that crushed my armour and did much the same to my shoulder.

  I tried to roll through the pain, to get to my feet before I was crushed. The monster’s tendrils were flaring around like a living halo of darkness. I’d be ripped to shreds. Worse yet, I had no real way of defending myself. Once again, it was screaming at me, its shriek trying to drill a hole through my eardrums.

  Then a storm of dark liquid, a very different kind of black compared to the one the monster used, landed in front of me. Rippling, liquid, inky black.

  “Why in the Pits are you wasting your time here?” Revayne growled as she almost single-handedly hauled me back up. I staggered in place like a stringless puppet when she let go.

  “That thing,” I said. “It’ll wipe us out from behind if we don’t stop it.”

  Her Aspect of Escapism had created a bind for the creature, but it was ripping through without huge difficulty. But at the same, the bindings seemed to be growing stronger somehow, regenerating, thickening, and multiplying as they annoyingly held our main enemy back. For the time being.

  “I’ll take it away,” Revayne said. “I got here as fast as I could after I heard one of the Blightbringers was here.”

  Well, now I knew what the bastard was called. Fat load of good that would do me. “You can’t. It’s way too strong. Probably well into Opal—”

  “Unfortunately, none of us have a better idea. Stick to your own plan, Ross.”

  A part of me didn’t want to leave even now. A part of me had no wish to leave thing unfinished. A part of me was afraid I’d be leaving Revayne to die, and it would come after me just to be a pain in the ass later on.

  But the plan came first. I had already sacrificed the temple, sacrificed people of Ring Four I had left behind.

  Wounds to my pride were nothing in the face of that.

  But at the same time…

  I had dropped my mace at the last blow, but that was fine. “One opening,” I told Revayne after swallowing down the mana potion. The Aspects I needed were already manifesting on and around the hand of my good arm. Flare glowing orange-hot, Illumination shimmering into blinding intensity, all wrapped up with blistering violet threads of Gravity.

  “What?” she shot back. She was already rushing at the Blightbringer, her sabre of dark ink gleaming in the low light.

  “Just one opening.”

  She growled. Then she halted before she reached her opponent. The monster had freed itself from the earlier binds completely now, only to be immediately met with a tsunami of black chains erupting from Revayne’s upraised book.

  It was held down. For just a few moments. That was all I’d need.

  Concentration had gathered so much heat that I was burning my own hands, singeing the skin and slowly starting to roast the flesh underneath. Illumination had ensured that Reflection coated my makeshift spear-sword-thing, all shaped into one volatile weapon with Granular Control and Massless Interaction.

  On and on I gathered the power of my main Aspects, combining them all together into one volatile mix. Too much heat, too much brightness, too much energy stuffed into one location. My arms started shaking. My whole body was sending warning signals.

  I didn’t relent, just pushed out more and more mana, the air crackling at the sheer energy density. Everyone stared as the whole area was now awash with burning light.

  The cage of chains Revayne had constructed bulged.

  “Now, Ross!” she shouted.

  For a brief moment, I wondered if Revayne was capable of something of this scale. She was Opal, more or less, now.

  But as the Blightbringer freed itself with a piercing screech yet again, I focused entirely on directing the release of the overpowered bomb I had gathered together. The lance of my combined Aspects speared through the bursting mess of black threads and the monster within, erupting in a beam thicker than truck.

  Then the tip of my construct connected.

  The geyser of molten energy that unleashed at the impact cracked the air and turned my ears deaf. I’d have been thrown off my feet by the shockwave if I hadn’t weighed myself down with Infusion. As it was, my body felt like it had been struck by a battering ram.

  My eyes hardly noted the enormous stream of red, orange, and gold power erupted around the area, momentarily shading everything with overwhelming daylight.

  A brilliant blue screen was shading my poor eyes against the glare I had unleashed.

  [ Compound Aspect Discovered!

  You have combined your Flare, Illumination, and Gravity Aspects to uncover one of your Compound Aspects.

  Compound Aspect: Starburst ]

  [ Rank Up!

  Your Flare, Illumination, and Gravity Aspects have risen by one Rank.

  Spirit: Gold II

  Gravity: Gold III

  Illumination: Silver I

  Flare: Silver III ]

  No way. This was how I was getting my first ever Compound Aspect?

  I staggered when it finally ended. All the air had been vapourized by that blast. It was only when new air rushed in to fill the vacuum that I could breathe properly again and stand upright, surveying the carnage that my little act had created. A molten stream ran all the way to the now-cracked Ring Three walls, with a deep crater where the Blightbringer had been.

  A glowing crater from which a familiar shriek arose once more.

  “The fuck?” I muttered. “It’s still alive?”

  “Go,” Revayne said. “I can take care of the rest after you…” She shook her head. “Go.”

  For just a second, I hesitated. For just a moment, I was distracted. But I shook my head. I’d need to consider Compound Aspects later.

  Wishing her good luck, I got moving. She yelled at the other, somewhat shellshocked defenders to accompany me. Most looked reluctant to leave her behind against the Blightbringer, which was now slowly rising, but at a look from her, they got going too.

  The gate between Ring Three and Ring Four was abandoned entirely. I was comforted by the lack of blood. Well, aside from the trail Khagnio had left. They had been successful in leading the monsters on further into Ring Three. I needed to catch up.

  “There’s more of them behind us!” one of the guards shouted.

  “Good,” I said. “Follow the blood trail.”

  We ran on. Farther out in the distance, I could make out the screaming, the noises of battle, the boom of powerful Aspects exploding. Satisfyingly enough, the noises were loudest in the direction we needed to go. Perfect.

  There was the horrific shriek from the Blightbringer behind us, but that was to be expected. Much as my heart stuttered, I couldn’t spare too much worry for Revayne.

  I had done what I could for her.

  The air was thickening as we neared the Nether Vein. We had to be ready for the final stretch.