Travelling through shadows was always a strange experience. Even though it was near instantaneous, Arthur always experienced a slight delay while in the shadow realm. As heightened as his senses were right now with his elevated stats, that delay felt even longer. Arthur saw more. For the first time, he was able to see the shadow realm in greater detail—a place of darkness and silence, and at the edge of his vision, twisting masses of pitch black that seemed almost alive.

  Before he could focus on anything, Arthur was thrust back into the real world, about a metre away from where he’d intended to land. He’d been aiming for the joints at the base of the Wyvern’s wings, but it made sense that such a powerful creature had defences against teleportation-type skills. At least it had defences against skills from someone like him. Arthur, however, had a little trick up his sleeve.

  Maybe Wyvern could stop his skill, but could it do the same to Wovan, an Ender class entity? Arthur mentally communicated his orders, even as he thrust his spear forward. His Soul Splinter didn’t fail to meet his expectations. A purple-blue portal appeared in front of his spear, its mirror forming a fifth of a metre above the Wyvern’s wing joint.

  Arthur’s thrust was picture perfect. Had Issania seen it, she’d have had nothing bad to say. It was to his great surprise, then, that his attack did such little damage. Instead of a piercing flesh and crunching bone like he’d expected, Arthur’s spear penetrated a half inch into the Wyvern’s body before abruptly coming to a stop. Arthur then learned exactly what a mirror affinity was.

  Fifty percent of the damage Arthur had managed to inflict was reflected back at him, still tinged with the exact same affinities contained in his strike. For the first time, Arthur learned what it meant to take damage from his soul spear. Arthur was about four times more durable than the Wyvern. The attack that pierced scale and flesh when reflected hardly left a mark on his skin. The soul damage, however, was a different story.

  Arthur’s soul was far from average. Enhanced as it was by his titles and his latest skill, he more than matched the Wyvern in durability despite being almost two hundred levels below it. The returned soul damage still stung like a bitch. It felt like someone had taken sandpaper and rubbed his skin raw. The pain was incredible relative to how much damage he’d actually suffered. It was no wonder that monsters got so angry when he hit them with his spear.

  Arthur's opening salvo lit the fuse of the battle, and everyone exploded into motion. Samuel swore at him and threw an orb of mirror magic at his head. Arthur ducked the orb while Maverick used the momentary distraction to slam the butt of his axe into the elf's collarbone. The giant man winced as the damage was returned to him, even as he launched a wild haymaker.

  Arthur’s eyes widened in realisation. Fighting a mirror mage of Samuel's calibre alone was almost impossible. You couldn’t kill the man unless you were certain you’d survive the same killing blow. Case in point why Maverick hadn’t tried to decapitate the corrupted elf instead of settling for a subpar strike. What an incredible affinity, Arthur thought enviously. With his durability, Arthur would have been invulnerable if he had it. That was all the time he had for thinking before the battle caught up with him.

  The Wyvern’s neck shot forward like a giant snapping turtle, and Arthur only just managed to get his spear up in time. He swung the weapon like it was a baseball bat, hitting the Wyvern beneath the jawbone. Even then, the monster momentum meant it still crashed into him at speeds surpassing sound. Arthur was punted away like he’d been shot from a cannon, right until he shadow stepped back to the ground.

  Shadow stepping didn’t neutralise your momentum, so he’d stepped behind the Wyvern, facing away from it. Stealing a page from Samuel’s book, Arthur had become a mirror mage of sorts, using the Wyvern’s attack to become a cannonball that shot him right at the monster.

  170 kilograms travelling at the speed of sound crashed into the Flood Wyvern’s left leg, cracking scales and pulping muscle. The monster roared in anger and pain, even as Arthur winced at the sudden ache in his thigh.

  Now that attack had certainly done a lot of damage. Before Arthur could find his feet, the mother of all lightning bolts struck him, millions of volts of electricity all at once. It burned his skin, tore through muscle and tissue and blew out his eyes. It was a wonder he hadn’t just exploded.

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  The Laws at play meant that Arthur’s Water Shell was near useless at returning damage, and the defence it did offer had done nothing in the face of such power. It seemed Arthur had grown complacent. Just because he’d gotten the drop on the Flood Wyvern, he’d thought he was its equal. The monster had corrected that misunderstanding. Arthur fell bonelessly to the ground. The smell of cooked flesh made his mouth water, which was disgusting to say the least.

  A quarter of his stored healing ether was used up in an instant, and Arthur groaned as he felt his torn muscles knit themselves back together. The two seconds the healing took, however, were far too long to remain idle against such a foe, and Arthur was struck by another lightning bolt, undoing all the recovery he’d just paid for.

  Experiencing all this while being functionally blind to the world was horrifying, so he focused the healing energies on his eyes first. They healed just in time for Arthur to see Esmerald's draconic head fill his vision. Arthur’s muscles hadn’t healed, so he could do nothing as the Flood Wyvern bit down on his right arm. Arthur’s durability meant the teeth barely penetrated an inch into his flesh. The Flood Wyvern’s magical abilities were the stuff of legends, its physical abilities not so much.

  Maverick had specifically warned him of the Wyvern's breath attack, and Arthur was about to experience it point-blank. He could already feel the gathering energies in the monster's mouth, dissolving his clothes and blistering his skin. Arthur was running out of options here. With his body momentarily out of commission, there was very little he could do.

  One of Wovan’s bodies had climbed onto the Wyvern's back. Arthur could tell she was about to employ her meteor-suicide technique, but it wouldn’t be fast enough to help him. Arthur did the only thing he could think of. With only seconds to work with, Arthur tried something he’d only theorised about, a strategy far too specialised to be used in most scenarios.

  For the first time ever, Arthur used Armaments of the Soul to produce something other than a spear. Using the skill again while his weapon was still summoned strained his soul a little, but worked nonetheless. Arthur formed the energy into two dozen small blades, all of them positioned over his right hand, directly in the centre of the Flood Wyvern’s mouth. Arthur had seconds left before the monster blew up his arm, so he returned the favour, ten thousand ether dumped into the shadows covering his arm. Arthur braced himself.

  The shadow bomb exploded, launching daggers made from his soul at subsonic speeds. The makeshift shrapnel pierced through Esmerald's tongue—it shattered teeth, eviscerated throat tissue, and pierced half a foot into the monster's skull. Arthur groaned in pain when the reflected damage struck him. His soul felt like it had just been put through the blender, and the vision in his left eye grew dim. It seemed he’d hit some important stuff with his attack.

  Arthur's near-miraculous regeneration had finally run into a problem it couldn’t deal with. He’d just damaged his soul, and quite severely at that. Blood dribbled from his lips. His mouth was a mangled mess, his throat jagged flesh like he’d tried to swallow broken glass. Arthur didn't have time to worry about his pain, though. His attack had disrupted the Flood Wyvern’s breath attack, not nullified it. The energy still had to go somewhere.

  The monster’s mouth had opened a fraction with Arthur’s attack. Drawing on reserves of energy he didn’t know he had, Arthur drew his hand out half a foot, overexerting scorched muscle that hadn’t healed yet. The energy gathered in the Flood Wyvern’s mouth exploded.

  Arthur’s vision went white. His ears popped, and the oxygen in his lungs was set alight, burning the organs in an instant. The part of his arm still in the Wyvern's mouth disintegrated to the bone, before bone too broke. With nothing anchoring him in place, Arthur was sent flying through the air, his body the fastest thing the Daggerfall mountain range had probably seen in millennia.

  Worse than the pain of losing his hand, however, was the spiking agony lancing through his skull. Soul damage was not forgiving. It didn't heal and didn't get easier to deal with. It wasn’t something you could just get used to as time passed. Arthur's head felt like parts of it had been replaced with burning ice, like they simply didn’t exist anymore. His left eye, in particular, throbbed with a pain he could hardly describe.

  170 kilograms of Arthur Ward slammed into a deepstone mountain. The mountain lost, 250 square metres of it exploding into gravel and dust. A moment later, the sound of the collision echoed throughout the mountain range. It sounded like the heavens themselves had collapsed down to earth, a prelude to the cataclysm that would see the world destroyed. Arthur grinned a bloody, broken smile. It was the sound of his preparation, his bull-headed stubbornness insisting he invest every available stat point into Draconic vitality.

  It was the sound of his survival.

  He could not say the same about his opponent. Seven seconds later, vision returned to his right eye. The once mighty Flood Wyvern, majestic ruler of the Haadran skies, had been laid low. Its jaw had been blown off completely, and there was a gaping hole in its throat, two feet wide. Esmerald’s left eye had been destroyed, and a part of the monster's brain was visible through the injury. Arthur’s smile grew wider as the relentless rain began to ease up.

  Esmereld, master of storms, had been felled.

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