Slowly, I began to move this body and this machine, both of which creaked in the same way with every motion. I tried to fly toward the exit of the fissure, but my thruster was destroyed, so I was forced to walk—crawl—my way to it.

  Once outside, I could see the devastation caused by our battle and by Horaizon’s fall. The once fertile, gigantic forest was burned and shattered. Huge chunks of the massive ship lay scattered everywhere, still burning in an apocalyptic spectacle. Even so, they paled before the gigantic crater left by the impact of the main body, which had erased nearly half of the enormous mountain that had once stood proudly and now looked so fragile.

  “At least no village was located near the Mountain of Demons,” I sighed in relief.

  But that relief didn’t last long, because from among the flames emerged the last of my enemies, whose appearance made me hold my breath.

  It looked truly demonic. Its body was covered in cracks from which fire escaped. Its face was shattered, crumbling to pieces, while its eyes, filled with rage, stared at me madly. One of its arms had been torn off, and the one that remained had lost all its armor, held together only by thin metals that made it look like a skeletal hand. Its enormous sword was covered in flames that struggled to devour the limb, and despite that, its claw clung to it, refusing to let go as he stumbled toward me.

  Faced with that nightmarish sight, my heart filled with fear. My enemy looked like a horror dragged straight out of hell to come for me. In contrast, I was at the end of my strength. My unit could barely continue. My storage was almost empty. My Sovereignty had collapsed, leaving my mind worn down. The ruby circlet had burned out, leaving me piloting once again as nothing more than a man. I could no longer count on being rescued. Horaizon’s final move would already be considered a miracle, one I doubt will ever be repeated. This may be my last battle, and even so…

  “Well, looks like I’m not the only one who’s been beaten to hell,” I said with a smile.

  That's right; we were both far from our best, but the difference was that it could regenerate. Every breath I took brought me one step closer to the grave.

  “I won’t get another chance like this, and I’m not going to waste it,” I said as I stretched out my hand and a rift opened in the space beside me. “Let’s hope my hypercube still has something left.”

  At that, I saw the armor halt its advance—until now it had seemed unstoppable—and watch me cautiously. I paused when I noticed this. It wasn’t the first time it had happened during the long fight: somehow, every time I opened my hypercube, they kept their distance. Naturally, I assumed that, not knowing what might appear in my hands the next second, they chose not to rush me. That’s what I would have done. But somehow—whether because of my experience with my Sovereignty, or because my mind didn’t feel quite normal at the moment—that fact now struck me as, at the very least, strange.

  I decided to close my hypercube without taking anything out. The armor watched me suspiciously, but still resumed its march. I placed my hand behind my back at an angle where it shouldn’t be able to see it and opened the space again, causing it to stop once more and glare at me in irritation.

  Strange. There was something there. They could also have taken the opportunity to attack me before I could grab any weapon, taking advantage of my distraction, but either the thought never crossed their minds; or it was never an option.

  My head began to throb. Damn it, even thinking hurts. Why would anyone fear my hypercube? It’s just a suitcase connected to another dimension so I don’t have to carry all that weight.

  Wait a second… could it be that…? If so, that would explain a lot, but… I’d have to run a rather risky test.

  Pain flooded my mind as the tension built, until at last I made my decision.

  “Ahh, I’m going to do it!”

  Every second I delayed, my enemy would grow stronger. Besides, I was no longer in any condition to think clearly.

  “I’ll have to bet my life on this hunch,” I said as I pulled a hilt out of my space, leaving the weapon itself inside.

  It seems I have a bit of a penchant for dangerous gambles. I should probably stay away from casinos.

  Seeing me act so strangely, the armor didn’t know how to react, and without giving it any more time, I leapt toward it, still keeping the weapon inside the hypercube. With no other choice, it raised its gigantic flaming sword, ready to split me in two.

  The entire fight would be decided in this single move.

  “I hope I’m right,” I whispered a final prayer moments before we collided.

  At last, we met in midair. Its blazing sword was rushing toward my torso at terrifying speed. I had to block it, or it would be game over for me. I hesitated for a moment, but finally made my decision. Gritting my teeth, I ignored it and slashed quickly with my hilt toward its bony limb. Seconds before its sword would have cut me in half, my weapon—still inside the dimensional space—passed alongside his limb, cutting upward. Or at least it would have, if it had had a blade. The limb, as expected, remained intact, untouched.

  I waited for a result that never came. Looks like I was unlucky this time, I told myself, closing my eyes and accepting my fate.

  “URRRGH!”

  Instead of the cold embrace of death, a powerful scream rang in my ears. It was a bestial scream, like many others I had heard from these creatures, but it wasn’t one filled with rage or delight at suffering, much less a triumphant cry of victory. For the first time, I heard something from my demonic enemy that had seemed impossible until now: pain, pure, primal pain.

  Startled by this baffling turn of events, I opened my eyes and saw the blade that should have claimed my life flying through the air, finally burying itself in a nearby rock, while the creature writhed, clutching its arm, which, though intact, had lost all mobility.

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  “Damn it, what a wonderful feeling!” I said as I breathed again. “This is why I started my channel, why I spend hours researching on the galactic net, even if they call me crazy and laugh behind my back; this feeling makes it all worth it!” I burst into laughter after coming so close to death. “I WAS RIGHT!!”

  I pulled my weapon out of the hypercube to examine it. Slowly, a sword blade began to appear, an utterly ordinary weapon that had nevertheless achieved the impossible: cutting the untouchable.

  I quickly noticed the presence of a… substance? material? compound?—green in color—covering part of the blade as it shifted between tones and shapes.

  “Looks like you bleed too,” I said as I flicked the strange phenomenon off my blade with a deft motion. The substance splattered onto the ground, but before it could reach it, it underwent one final transformation, turning golden like nuggets scattered across the earth.

  My enemy stared at me in fury, now mixed with a hint of fear.

  “What’s wrong? Did you think I wouldn’t notice?” I mocked. “I’ll admit it took me a while to piece together the puzzle that is your profane existence, but the pieces were always there.”

  There was nothing in this universe that could explain the existence of a being so irrational: a body that regenerated in the blink of an eye no matter how much damage it took; golden armor covered in ash-like particles that made it look as though it were perpetually burning; a ferocity in battle as if it had no fear of death; and, on top of that, a corrosive effect that afflicted whatever it touched, turning them into soulless puppets, like it. Yes, puppets.

  “It must have been fun ending so many lives without ever putting your own at risk,” I said, clenching my teeth. “You were never really here, were you, damn you? I was barely fighting the shadow you cast in this dimension!” I shouted as I opened a rift in front of its shoulder and stabbed into it with my sword.

  Once again, its armor remained intact, yet it still screamed in pain as the hilt of my sword trembled, as if something were writhing on the other side. I finally tore it out of its body with a kick to the chest that sent it rolling miserably down a small ravine.

  “You know, the existence of Fourth-Dimensional beings has been theorized, but until now there had been no proof. Quite a rough first contact, don’t you think?”

  I shook the strange matter off my sword again, and it turned into gold once more.

  “So that’s what happens to a four-dimensional substance when it enters a three-dimensional one. Interesting. And that’s why you needed a stolen body to manifest on this plane. Even so, this dimension detected the error and you were being permanently burned,” I said as I went down the ravine. “Well, to be honest, you almost managed to fool me. Even if I had destroyed the body you control, you would have been safe; perhaps a bit furious, but intact.”

  At last I reached the bottom of the ravine, where I saw it scrambling to get away from my sword. I didn’t rush to pursue it; instead, I opened the hypercube in front of me and pulled out a hilt with a trigger, which I pulled. A moment later, I saw it suddenly collapse to the ground.

  “Perhaps you’re wondering how I can hurt you even if your body isn’t in this dimension,” I said as I began to walk forward slowly, since I was still damaged. “Did you know that humanity is one of the very few races in the universe that cannot control Ether with their bodies? Hell, we can’t even feel it. So to fight on the same level as other beings, we had to rely on our ingenuity and create machines to do it for us.” I started to approach it.

  I watched it struggle to stand.

  “Anyway, one of the things we created was this hypercube; a space for storing objects that, guess what, is also outside this dimension!” I reached the golden armor as it tried to rise and shot both of its legs, sending it back to the ground. “Anyway, I noticed you kept your distance every time I opened it, so I figured you were both in the same dimension and that it worked like a door that allowed me to reach your true body. That’s why you wouldn’t come closer, damn cowards!” I planted a foot on it, preventing it from standing. “Well, it was more of a gamble, but it looks like I was dealt the winning hand, don’t you think?” I looked down at it beneath Cadejos’s soles.

  It was groaning miserably, far removed from the monster that had enjoyed hunting me and massacring this world’s inhabitants.

  “I still don’t know where you came from or who trapped you here—the Red Storm is an extremely ancient phenomenon—but you know what? I don’t care,” I kicked it and left it lying on its back. “Sorry for the long speech. It’s a habit I picked up making content for my channel; sometimes I even end up narrating in my head, you know? But anyway, it’s time to end this, isn’t it?” I opened the rift and placed it right in front of its chest.

  Before I could finish off this monster, a voice interrupted me.

  “Y?o?u?r?… w?h?o?l?e? u?n?i?v?e?r?s?e? i?s? a?l?r?e?a?d?y? c?o?n?d?e?m?n?e?d?,” it said—almost unintelligible, like a scratched record in a language you’d hear in dreams—through the shattered jaws of the golden armor.

  “So you can talk? Interesting. Maybe you think you’re some kind of doom, a harbinger of death, the great enemy who will bring destruction to my race; but let me disabuse you of that notion.” I took my sword and set it over the rift. “At this very moment, all across the Rim, humanity is fighting and stopping thousands like you: alien races seeking to conquer us, hostile Artificial Intelligences, diseases, curses, calamity artifacts; you know, an endless list. You’re just another monster in a long line of idiots who’ve tried to wipe out humanity, so I’ll tell you what we tell all of them.” I saw the being begin to make erratic movements.

  I began lowering my sword. It entered the rift and slowly pierced into an unknown being, while the armor started to tremble and let out screams of unintelligible sounds. I put all my weight into the sword to force it downward until I found myself face to face with those golden eyes.

  “Know your place,” I whispered, just before feeling something break at the tip of my sword. At that, the body finally went still, and the golden particles began to leave the structure, leaving behind only the utterly unrecognizable remains of what had once been armor.

  I yanked my sword out of the rift. It came out coated in the now-familiar substance and a few fragments of… crystal? Hey, that’s new.

  I won. I fought the abyss and emerged victorious.

  I stood there for a few seconds, savoring my victory, until suddenly my armor collapsed backward, ending up sprawled on the ground, completely motionless.

  “Ahhhhhhh, it’s finally over!!” I groaned from the ground. “Damn it, that bastard just wouldn’t die; I almost went down several times.”

  I complained tiredly on the ground. That fight might have looked like an incredible battle where I dominated from start to finish, but the truth is I was on the verge of passing out from exhaustion and pain several times. I had to move slowly and methodically, never stopping talking to keep myself conscious. If that monster had had one last card up its sleeve, the body lying there would’ve been mine instead of its.

  “I thought I wasn’t going to make it. What the hell was that? A being from another dimension? Give me a break; I’m just an engineer,” I complained inside the cockpit as I felt unconsciousness pulling me under. “I’m exhausted, like coming off a double shift with overtime, but at last I can sleep a little.” I closed my eyes.

  [No sleeping. Get up, Rob!]

  Suddenly, the Princess’s voice echoed through the cockpit, forcing me to open my eyes again.

  “But what the hell, Princess? Let me sleep a bit, don’t you know how this works? After defeating the final enemy, the hero passes out and sleeps for at least three days. I’m glad to hear you, but you can give me your praise and congratulations later, now it’s time to sleep,” I said as I turned off the radio and closed my eyes again.

  Silence returned to the cockpit, and as my exhausted mind sank into the land of dreams, the radio suddenly turned on again.

  [Don’t you dare fall asleep. I can’t believe you turned off the radio, get up already!]

  “Ahhhhh!” I forced myself to get up again. “All right, I’m awake! What is it? What’s more important than my well-earned rest?” I shouted irritably and exhausted into the radio.

  [It’s Alex. I lost his signal after he managed to defeat his opponent.]

  Alex?

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