The words that left the half-shadow's mouth came with a pressure. It felt closer to a strange presence than being weighed down, but it felt a lot more intrusive. Like they were being watched by a great being. Strangely, both Arden and Sya felt rejuvenated. Their exhaustion washed away, and the stinging pain of their injuries faded. The blood stopped leaking, and their wounds closed.

  “You feel that?” Other-Arden said. “This place is brimming with Life’s power. No one will die here without the authority of Life or Life’s Agent.”

  He cracked a smile.

  “But don't think I'm merciful. I need a lot of life energy to use Life’s authority. So to create a feedback loop of life energy, I need to use Life’s authority.”

  One of his threads snaked its way along the ground around Podren, collecting the many different chunks of his destroyed arm. With a whip-like motion, the pieces of Podren’s arm were thrown everywhere, staining everything red. Greasy, red, tumorous nodes grew from the wall, the ceiling, and the floor. Everywhere a piece of Podren was thrown, a tumor sprouted from its place.

  They grew at a disturbingly quick pace. Polyps on the horrifying masses bubbled with disturbing noises that were worsened with the subtle undulations of the tumors themselves as they grew much larger than even the worst malignant tumors. In only a few seconds, the cancerous nodes were half the size of a person.

  Other-Arden laughed.

  “It's fitting that this will end the same way it began. With a paradox.”

  Arden dismissed his remaining Bone Talon into his inventory. Thankfully, only one of them was destroyed. So long as the other spent enough time in his Soul Cluster, it would be repaired. Unfortunately, he still didn't have a Soul Cluster. He was still mundane, completely and utterly with the supression of his Legacy. Instead, he drew two swords from his inventory, and held them both in his human hand, as the shadow consuming his left side was not physical.

  “Don't flatter yourself, killer,” the husk said with a frown, pointing his own sword at Arden. “It takes an incredible amount of skill to dual wield correctly. You're not good enough. And even if you were, that’s not how you dual wield swords.”

  “Who said I was going to use it?”

  Arden threw the second sword to the ground right next to Sya. She didn't hesitate to pick it up. When Vera disappeared into her stargate, she took her Satellite with her, leaving Sya without any weapon. Even if she was pretty much untrained, she needed a weapon. Neither Arden nor Sya hesitated. As soon as they were both armed, they rushed in to meet their opponent, their swords closing in from different angles.

  With a half smirk, the doppelganger effortlessly redirected one of the swipes and blocked the other. Even against two people, his skill was more than enough to surpass that disadvantage.

  “Two on one is a little unfair, don’tcha think?” the husk mocked, spreading his arms wide. “Let’s level the playing field a bit.”

  As soon as the words left the shadow husk's mouth, the tumors growing from the room burst, letting loose a coppery stench of rancid blood and rot. The viscera that flew from each greasy red pustules started coming together, held together by thin green strands.

  One by one, the clumps of meat became organized into humanoid figures standing at waist height that lumbered their way towards the husk, aiming to aid it in the fight.

  Arden swiftly disengaged from the husk to fight off the approaching swarm, but as he did, he felt a sharp pain on the side of his head, and the world seemed to get a bit quieter.

  Arden gnashed his teeth and cupped a hand where his ear had previously been, he felt no slick blood, only a cold empty sensation. Arden watched as his missing ear appeared on the side of the shadow's head. Arden ignored the foreign feeling where his ear used to be as best as he could. He wanted to break away from the husk and focus on the small army, but whatever the husk had done had made it stronger, and Arden was unable to manage the power disparity. Arden wasn't alone though. Sya also recognized the threat of the tumorous soldiers quickly advancing, and moved herself between them and Arden’s battle.

  “I've got things covered, here!” she yelled. “Focus on killing that thing!”

  Arden responded immediately, continuing to throw attacks at the shadowy figure, which only laughed menacingly as his sword passed harmless though its dark form. The shadowy husk laughed and lunged forward with no care for its body. In a beat, it was in front of Arden, swiping towards him with its dark claw. The green smile widened as Arden struggled to hold back the hand with his sword. Whatever the doppelganger had become, it was now stronger than before. Arden attempted to match its strength, but the moment he did, he passed through the husk. As he came out of its back, Arden felt a sharp pain in his own back. The husk looked at him and gave a low whistle.

  “Gotta be careful there, killer,” the husk taunted. “You’ll lose a part of yourself if you keep trying to kill your shadow.”

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

  The husk turned around, exposing its back to Arden. It didn't feel threatened at all, and Arden felt rage at that fact, which was only amplified when he saw the patch of his skin on the shadows back.

  “Your body is bullshit!” Arden called out as he dodged out of the way of the husk’s attack.

  “That’s coming from you?” the husk asked as its claw swiped down where Arden’s arm just was. “The one who carried, wasted, and abused Beyond’s Legacy?”

  Dodging was the only thing he could do. If he met an attack head on, the husk would win, claiming more of Arden’s body for itself. Attacking the husk was the definition of futility, as it didn’t take any damage with its nature as a shadow.

  ‘Unless,’ Arden thought.

  Arden’s instincts were on fire. He couldn't afford even a single misstep. As the attacks kept coming, Arden kept dodging. Every attack carried with it the promise of death, but even under that pressure, Arden couldn’t dodge all of them.

  He did as best he could, but he could only avoid the fatal attacks that he was able to react to in time, most times by turning said fatal attack into a minor injury. A cut on his chin instead of his neck. A thrust attack that only reached as far as Arden’s nose instead of his brain when he threw his head back. More and more of his body was being replaced by shadows as the husk’s body was being replaced by flesh.

  Arden’s torso was covered in black streaks of shadow, and the husk’s torso was just the opposite. It had streaks of skin all over its torso, and a few on its face as well. It had taken most of Arden’s chest, along with his right arm. But that just made it a bigger target.

  The husk made a gash in Arden’s arm running from his right wrist to his elbow. Shadows flowed instead of blood, and his skin appeared on the husk as it grinned cruelly.

  Arden didn't hesitate, and grabbed the husk by its arm, now made physical from Arden’s body. Arden pulled the husk closer and drove his weapon into its fleshy chest. The blood that flowed from the husk’s wound was satisfying to Arden in a way that would likely be considered worrying.

  On the other side of the room, Sya was struggling against the many spawn birthed from the cancerous mass consuming the building. As soon as one abomination spawned, another would soon follow. Sya was relieved that, although they had numbers, they were lacking strength.

  Every slash of her sword resulted in more death for her enemies. She wasn't great with a sword, but an enemy like this was perfect for her. Numerous and weak. One of the creatures leapt at Sya, but was quickly decapitated, and fell to the ground, dissolving into meat paste that returned to the pustules allowing them to be born again.

  Sya was Blighted, and as such could not access her Status or inventory. Due to this, her sword that she had gotten earlier in the fight was the only one she had access to. After cutting apart so many abominations, it had gotten very dull.

  Sya nimbly avoided one of the creature's attacks, and quickly dispatched it, gasping for air. She was demonstrably weaker than Arden and Vera, but she refused to be useless to them. Even if her weak constitution held her back, she wouldn't be left behind. More and more monsters started flooding the lobby faster than Sya could take care of them. She began to be overrun, but she didn't falter. She had her own objective, and she couldn't stop until it was achieved.

  Another swipe of her sword, another broken mess of meat paste.

  She swung her sword continuously, never stopping. As she cleaved another abomination's head off, its viscera sprayed all over her. She ignored it and continued cutting away at the endless mass of biomass with only a single thought in her mind.

  ‘Don't stop!’

  For now, the fight between her and the army was a battle of attrition. They didn't have enough individual power to truly be threatening, but she also wasn't strong enough to completely stop them.

  One of the creatures leapt through the air in between Sya’s attacks. Before she could kill it, it threw a punch in her direction. In the half second she had to react, she blocked it with the edge of her sword.

  That was as far as the sword went. It held out longer than it probably should have, but it reached its limit after a defensive maneuver like that.

  When the monster landed its attack, Sya’s sword was destroyed, and its jagged metal shards exploded towards her face. She cried out in pain as her face was scoured by the many small blades.

  Acting on reflex, Sya stabbed forward with what remained of her sword. The sword now looked more like a dagger, but even with the drastic range decrease, it was enough to kill the creature that had hurt Sya.

  Sya raised a hand to her face, and felt where she had been cut, and felt the warm blood trickle down her face. It hurt like hell, but the pain was lessened on realizing that her eyes were still alright. She took stock of her broken sword and scowled. With her silver eyes surrounded by blood, she had the appearance of a wicked demon.

  “You think that's enough?” She growled. “Sword or no sword, I won't stop!”

  She wasted no time in coating her sword in her own blood. These creatures were cut from the same cloth as the threads, which were weak to her blight essence. The small monstrosities emitted gas expulsions reminiscent of roars from various orifices on their bodies, and seemed to become enraged from the sight of her blood. Sya pressed on. She rushed forward to meet one of the creatures, using both of her hands to slash down at it. Her broken sword bit down into the creature's neck, and it roared once more.

  “Just die!”

  She pressed down against the creature with her full body weight. She glanced around, wary of the others as she struggled with her current target.

  The creatures were trembling. Some instinct in them was telling them that her blood was something to be avoided at all cost. She turned her attention back to the one she was trying to kill. It snarled as the broken sword slowly cut deeper.

  As she pressed, the blood on her face dripped onto the creature. When her blood made contact, the creature's skin fizzled and it howled in pain as it flailed around, tearing itself apart with Sya’s blade still inside of it. It didn’t take long for the monster to be reduced to a foul smelling stain on the floor.

  More importantly, its biomass didn’t return to the tumors to regenerate.

  Sya felt reinvigorated by the turn of events and continued.