We waited for the roar of the lightning to settle before we emerged, seeing a scorched and pockmarked landscape. We observed the battleground, trying to find anything that could help us in the fight with the third Boss. But the Boss in question didn’t give us much time to think, its giant head turning towards us.

  “So, uh…” I hesitantly started, “Do we actually have any plan so I can actually get close enough to do my thing, I mean, how are we going to prevent it from killing me?”

  Second readied into a stance with their weapons, “We’ll find a way.”

  “Great, or we could just ask it nicely to die, I suppose.”

  Second frowned, “I don’t think that’ll work.”

  I sighed, “Great, we're going to die.”

  “Don’t worry, Jacob; Apology. But it’s as Second said, we will find a way; Statement.”

  I grumbled to myself, but didn’t say anything, letting go of the Moon Silk connecting us.

  Then the boss attacked us, swiping at us with its tail charged with electricity. Second shielded against the blow, taking it for us, their feet making trenches in the dirt as it slid a few feet. And when it became a pushing match between the two, Second lifted a weapon and started attacking the tail.

  It wasn’t much damage, but it made the Eel back off, floating back into the sky, preparing a small long range attack. But we weren’t defenceless, I sent my only remaining flying minion, Huggin the Storm Raven, to attack along side Urg.

  Huggin clawing at the Boss, partially resistant to any electricity it used against them due to their affinity with storms and therefore lightning, but that went both ways. So they were stuck in a physical match, which the Boss would’ve easily won. Being easily twenty times Huggin size, if it wasn’t for my Dimensional Mudskippers teleporting around and delivering payloads of exploding poisonous dart frogs. They couldn’t do much except slightly wound the Boss and give a meager amount of poison, but they were annoying as hell, making the Boss give them undue attention.

  Allowing Huggin to attack more often, and give the third and fourth helper Urg time to give well placed shots from their piercing water jet. And Second to fling their weapons, then call them back like Mjornir by tugging on a blue strong connecting them. Urg had to be conservative with their shot since they had a limited supply of water, especially without Munnin around to fill up. And they seemed to be preparing a spell, a large sphere of roiling and frothing water above their head, taking a slightly yellow hue.

  But the boss soon realized that this wasn’t going in their favor, so they switched back to more physical attacks. Trying to go after Second, who again tried to block it, but not without help, this time my Anteaters joined Second. Diverging most of the lightning damage away from Second due to their near complete resistance to that energy.

  And any damage that did occur, I healed away with the butterflies, but they were slowly being whittled away by occasional accident and intentional attack. Also, the butterflies were mostly preoccupied with healing Guppy at the moment, since he was hanging on death's door. And he’d been able to tank the giant lightning attack and survived without a resistance, so he was definitely going to be of help when he got off his ass.

  But for now, we were in a stalemate, none of us could really injure each other, and it was only a matter of time before the Boss gained enough MP to do whatever that bullshit attack was. That was the case until the Queen emerged from the surface in a familiar rumble, the earth once again cracking and rearranging monumentally for the dozenth time today.

  No princes, soldiers, or workers followed her into battle, since I had her make her colony stay still for as long as they could, so they didn’t mess with anyone. But that wouldn’t last long, so she didn’t waste time launching a giant blade of gray energy towards the Boss.

  And it was correct, she couldn’t, and she couldn’t figure out a way to attack a flying opponent in her blind spot. But the Boss wasn’t fighting her, it was fighting me. So when the Eel flung its head down to bite, I had the Queen go against every instinct it had and roll over, exposing the carapace of its weak belly.

  But the Eel wasn’t aiming for the belly, it was aiming for the back of the head to sever, which was now the front of the head, where the Queen's mandibles were. The Boss tried to get out of the way, but its momentum was too much for it, and it landed directly into the Queen's jaws.

  The Eel struggled to get out, but the Queen wrapped it in a bear hug with its legs and attacked it with point blank Energy blasts. The Boss wasn’t idle either, retaliatingwith lightning shocks and wiggling out of the weakening grasp of the Queen.

  But she wasn’t the only one on the battlefield. Second and my Anteaters held it down as well while I rained Lunar Scale Dust onto it from above. Finally breaking into its soul from above, three Domains opposing my will, but they were minuscule compared to me.

  So my domain had gone passive as the other two Domains attacked us, and I could do nothing about it. No, I could do something, run. Again. So I pulled out of the soulscape, feeling a pain inside my core as I tore away from Terras Domain, the physical world forming around me again. Seeing the Eel rage inside the Queen's grasp, and rip out with a roar, its attention turning towards me.

  I flew away, beating my wings as fast as they could go, but it wasn’t fast enough. Little fingers of electricity licked against my carapace, even those small attacks bitting away huge chunks of my HP.

  And I saw its maw widen, a spiny forest of teeth ready to chomp down on me. But I had one of the dimensional Mudskippers take me into its pocket dimension and teleport away from the attack. Emerging alive, but unsuccessful in shaking the Boss off my tail, or well, abdomen.

  So we kept running, but the Mudskipper quickly ran out of MP after only two more teleports due to carrying me, something that was much bigger than it was used to. So I quickly stole the skill through a thread of Moon Silk and teleported out of the way, feeling the hard enamel of the teeth scrape against me just before escaping.

  When I emerged, I felt disoriented, having no idea where I would end up, unlike when I was controlling the Mudskipper, whose instinct would tell me. So I had to take a precious moment to reorient myself, only barely noticing the Boss had found me.

  So I rapidly teleported away again, the two of us repeating this for a while as we tried to find a way to end this. I was quickly running out of MP repeatedly using this skill, and my minions were having a hard time following orders to help me since I was focusing on not dying, so the instructions were incomplete messes.

  And in turn, the Eel was getting better at attacking me, more and more close calls happening, the Boss patiently waiting to kill me. And eventually it paid off. It had gotten to me faster than usual, and I had taken too long to reorient myself before escaping.

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  Its teeth slamming into each other, my backside stuck in between them like a scrap of food. I tried to get out, but I had run too low on MP to use on the expensive teleportation. Then I felt a jolt, and my already blurry vision turned undecipherable when motion scrambled it beyond recognition, feeling the body of the Eel slam into the ground.

  Its jaws released me, and I splat onto the ground nearby. Without hesitating, I summoned the few remaining butterflies from Slip Away to heal me. I had dedicated most of them to the others, but I was brought back from the brink of death, though I could barely walk and couldn’t fly.

  When I recuperated enough, I checked out what happened. And saw a giant glob of frothing yellow liquid that Urg created earlier, covering the Boss, dissolving its flesh in puffs of vapor. The Boss wasn’t taking it ideally, though. It thrashed around on the ground, trying to wash it off into the dirt.

  But any liquid that fell off flew up into the air and became part of a cloud that just rained it back down, the cloud seemingly following the boss and releasing acid wherever would be optimal. But it wasn’t going to kill the Boss, the liquid was quickly dissolving away, the rain cloud visibility shrinking in just a few seconds.

  So while it was distracted, I took my shot and flung some Lunar Scale Dust towards it, feeling the last of my MP go into the act. Then I found myself in the realm of Domains, shooting towards the Boss, but I was pulled back, feeling the Hand of Bug Jacob stop me at the last moment.

  “And what the hell do you think you’re doing, getting yourself killed, us killed?!”

  I turned towards them, giving them a stink eye, “Doing the last thing I can.”

  “You’re not the only one in here, you know, I kinda like living.”

  “Well, you’re going to die anyway, right? Like, Terra is going to send me back; I was the contestant. They’re just going to rip us apart, even if we won, aren’t they?”

  “I would rather take the choice that means I’m most likely going to die, then the one that means I'm definitely going to die.”

  “Well, that’s going to happen if I do nothing. In here, I might be able to do something. Out there, everybody is on their last leg, and the boss is far from dead. Like you said, I would rather take the choice that means I’m most likely going to die, then the one that means I'm definitely going to die.”

  They scowled at the familiar words, but their expression softened, realizing this was going to happen. Then it hardened again, a fire behind their eyes, “If you’re doing this, I have a plan. But you’re not going to like it.”

  I crossed my arms, gesturing for them to keep going.

  “Remember when you suggested splitting our core so that we could independently control our Domain. Well, I was thinking that one of us could take all of the domain and distract the defences while the other did the work.”

  I chewed on the inside of my cheek, “We’ve never done it before, mainly because it’s suicidal, and that’s taking another risk on top of an already risky plan.”

  “Might die, or definitely die, which one?”

  I sighed, and we didn’t waste time, we located our core. The ball of TV static floating in a void of nothingness, with a gray and green strand attached to it.

  “So…” I said, “How do we do this?”

  Bug Jacob moved their wings up and down in a shrug, “It’s our core, we can pretty much do anything to it. So we rip it apart.”

  “Like with our bare hands?”

  “They’re not our hands, they’re the mental projections of hands, and that’s the mental projection of our Core, that can be mentally ripped apart.”

  “Ok,” I said, walking over to it and gripping the side, “You take the other side.”

  Bug Jacob grabbed the ball with their mandibles, and we pulled in unison, a faint pain resonating throughout my body, growing as we kept pulling. Then our core separated, the pain disappearing, replaced by a hollowness, like my organs had gone missing.

  I looked over towards Bug Jacob, seeing they had an identical ball, Terra's thread and Domain having disappeared from their ball. But the Systems thread had separated in two, connecting us through it, and I felt it pulling our cores together.

  I felt mine slip through my fingers, flying towards Bug Jacobs' core like two strong magnets were close together. But I was barely able to catch it before they connected again.

  “That was…” Bug Jacob started, “A lot less dramatic than I thought it would be.”

  “Yeah,” I replied, taking a breath, “But let’s not waste anymore time.”

  We wordlessly agreed and went over towards the Eels' core. I went first, attracting the attention of the Domains that made up its core. They ravaged me, and I made a token effort defending myself so they wouldn’t kill me, as Bug Jacob snuck up and made their first strike to dismantle the core.

  But it did nothing. Bug Jacob attacked again and again, but they had no power behind it, they had no Domain to enstate over it. And the Boss noticed, raising a finger to crush them, but I took the blow for them, and tried to connect us again so they wouldn’t die.

  But they pushed back, “No, we got to do this.”

  I wanted to argue but knew that would just waste time, so I said, “Then at least take some of my domain and get the job done!”

  “No, the same problem would arise, they would suck me in like you.”

  “Then what the hell are we supposed to do!”

  “I-I-I don’t know,” a tinge of fear appearing in their voice.

  My mind raced through possibilities, then I remembered something I had done in the past. I felt for my connection to Guppy and the Ant Queen, and when I felt the threads, I pulled on them, taking the Domain untainted by Terra or any of the other gods into my will.

  Then I shoved it towards Bug Jacob. They took a moment to realize what was happening. But didn’t hesitate for a second as they fashioned a knife out of the Domain and stabbed into the Boss's core. The gods' Domain screetching in pain, doubling their efforts to assimilate me, but Bug Jacob kept on stabbing as I protected them.

  Feeling the Boss's core crumble to our will just before I broke to theirs. Then I was back in the physical world, Urgs' acid storm having just disappeared. The boss half skinned alive, but healing, so I ordered it to stop and to freeze in place. Their will still warring against mine to take control of their body.

  But that didn’t stop my minions, the ants, or the other contestants from tearing it apart chunk by chunk. The final bloody blow was taken by Second of the Snow, two quick chops with their axe, and their head fell off, the system announcing.

  “Blue Bastard, Great Tyrant of the Southern Ocean.”

  I chuckled at the name of the boss I had helped kill, then I splayed out on the ground, the other two contestants finding and sitting beside me. Deciding not to talk to me as we took our breather, inevitably, we saw another boss spawning above. This time, two at the same time. Seeing this, I gave the other two a strand of Moon Silk.

  “So, do we have a plan; Question?” Urg asked.

  “I don’t think I could kill another one, much less two at the same time,” Second said, lying on the ground, looking up towards the bosses.

  “I have a plan, but you’re not going to like it…” I said, not confident in what I had in mind.

  “Really; Question?” They said with a hint of hope that was buried beneath a pile of aches and pains.

  “Do whatever you want,” Second said, waving a hand dismissively

  “Yeah, I think I agree with Second, Jacob. Do what you can. I don’t think I can keep going on like this. I’ve killed too many people, I’m just so tired.”

  I nodded, having all the confirmation I needed.

  I took control of their tired bodies with a use of Lunar Scale Dust, then I had the Queen cut their heads off. The System announcing,

  “Congratulations, Jacob Davidson. You have won The Great Debate.”

  It felt hollow, since I didn’t know if this would work, but I didn’t have time to contemplate as I felt Terra teleporting me to her.