The Kharnidd hurled large quantities of detritus into the room, burying the enemy under a deadly barrage. Its eyes flashed in triumph and a modest amount of chagrin as well. When the Enhancement orb ran out, Hars would need to recover the old-fashioned way, which would leave It significantly vulnerable. It was still in a difficult position, and It would need to meet up with Its allies elsewhere in order to survive. But at least It had defeated Its hated enemy.

  As It thought that, Hars realized something else. An energy signal was coming from the pile of rubble that had buried the human, and it struck fear into the Mentalist’s heart. The signal was different from before, more fiery, and much stronger. Hars only had a few milliseconds before the pile of rubble exploded and a white figure shot out of it with the force of a rocket. A flaming sword came down in a vertical strike on the Hars’s barrier, sending It hurtling backward in a blinding flash of light. A spiderweb of cracks burst into existence on the bubble shield’s front, and the Kharnidd realized with a chill that the shield likely would have shattered had It not managed to Overclock the ability at the last moment.

  Hars took control of its flight before it could crash into a wall, zooming back through the corridors and away from the ivory menace. Unfortunately, the fighter was right on its heels, his legs blurring as he shot after Hars at eye-melting speed. The Kharnidd threw everything it could find at the terrifying enemy, but he just raised that accursed flaming blade again. Rocks, metal, cable, all of it was diced up with a few flashing cuts, only slowing the enemy down for a few beats before he continued on like nothing had happened. The lights to the facility had gone down once more after Hars had buried the human, and the onset of darkness accentuated the light of the shining white terror bearing down on it.

  The duo zig-zagged through several different hallways before eventually coming to a modest-sized square room that had already been somewhat destroyed. Hars let out a grunt of frustration before picking up a massive rectangle of basalt and hurling it at the human. The man neatly divided the block of stone in two with another vertical strike, passing through it without losing a step. His legs glowed yellow, and he appeared in front of Hars with a single leap, lashing out with a powerful kick. The attack sent Hars flying upward at a diagonal motion, severely cracking his shield and sending him tunneling through a large tract of rock. The shield eventually shattered, but Hars kept going, crashing through the rock with Its own body before flying into a new room.

  While Hars was battered and bruised from that whole ordeal, It refused to go down so easily. With another flex of Its Telekinesis, the Kharnidd sent a slew of rubble flying back into the hole from whence It came. It had sensed the enemy running up the tunnel after it, but that debris should stall him somewhat. At the same time, Hars flew upward and backward, putting as much distance between Itself and the man below as possible. It had finally been given a stroke of good luck in the terrain It was given with this new room. It was a gargantuan vertical rectangle, with several stories of balconies on either side of the wall leading up to a high ceiling. It was the perfect place to demonstrate Hars’s power. Now, all the Mentalist needed was resolve.

  As it flew upward, Hars retrieved two more Enhancement spheres from Its dimensional storage. Hardening Its will, It shrank both items and popped them into Its mouth. The subsequent rush of power was as painful as it was electrifying, the searing energy flowing through Its veins and suffusing Its body with an overwhelming heat. At the same time, the fighter burst into the room, but Hars was already moving. It reached out all around Itself, reveling at how easy it was to strip stone and metal from the walls and hurl those projectiles down toward the human below. It continued flying upward while peppering the fighter with a titanic barrage.

  The enemy countered, slashing through everything Hars threw at him while manifesting wings and rocketing upward. The fighter cut through two flying balconies in a single swing while veering to the side to evade an enormous boulder, spinning and weaving to the best of his ability while staying on course. Hars, for Its part, continued upward toward the ceiling, beginning to pull rocks down from there and hurl them at the human. With the twitch of Its fingers, all the smaller debris in the room started spinning in a vast tornado. Countless pieces of metal and rock flew toward the fighter, trying to restrict his movement. These were frequently turned into hot slag by the man’s flaming sword, but even that remaining slag was often picked up in the psychic tornado and sent rotating around the room in long streams of white heat, threatening to crash back into the enemy again. The room’s ambient temperature increased, and Hars eagerly watched the human falter as It rained down boulders at him from the sky.

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  The man cut through one, then two, then three boulders in quick succession, wings glowing as they gracefully swung him around two more square rocks. The thrusters propelled him powerfully as he stabbed through a sixth projectile, carving a small tunnel through the attack and continuing to shoot upward before two more boulders crashed into him on both sides. They were cut through in a heartbeat, but they’d curbed the man’s momentum. With another flex, the Kharnidd took control of many of the pieces of rock that the man had either destroyed or evaded and brought them back up to attack him from the rear. Simultaneously, It continued to send projectiles down from the ceiling, ensuring that the human was now under fire from all sides. The room became a tapestry of flashing emerald and glowing ivory, all on the ebony backdrop of the subterranean rock. The whole world rumbled with noise, sirens blaring in the distance as the rest of the facility recognized that what was happening here was jeopardizing the integrity of the entire underground cave system.

  Hars didn’t care. It had become a walking corpse the moment It had consumed those two additional Enhancement orbs. If It sat down and did nothing, and the human somehow decided to ignore It, Hars would die off eventually. Each activation of Its power brought it closer to death, the Mentalist’s blood boiling from each Psionic twist of Its fingers. This was a pure suicide play, a final decision to bring down this enemy at the cost of Its life. Such a death, in Its mind, was far better than surviving the disgrace of defeat. Not that It even had the ‘luxury’ of the latter, since the enemy had possessed the upper hand ever since obtaining that power-up. Between going out like a bang or dying like a coward anyway, there was no choice.

  Even in the face of the Mentalist’s resolve, the enemy’s power was daunting. His sword was suddenly rimmed with a bright yellow, bringing it flames to even greater heights and allowing him to destroy the debris surrounding him in an enormous flash of light. However, even that mighty strike only delayed the inevitable as Hars gathered plenty more ammunition from the environment, the brightly glowing natural weapons crushing inward on Its enemy. The rumbling only grew louder, as several hallways began to collapse in on themselves, the Kharnidd laying on the pressure. The human now appeared to be in the center of a spinning ball of green and black, crushing him and further constraining his movements. Hars felt Its consciousness begin to waver, having grown numb from the pain, and It knew that this ball would not come anywhere close to destroying the human. The white devil’s shields were simply too strong for something this paltry, but that was no matter. Hars only needed to hold him down with it.

  The Mentalist flew even higher up into the abyss, steeling Its resolve for the final time before fully setting Its life ablaze. Holding out both hands, It began charging the Annihilation Ray.

  There, underground, an emerald sun was born. It instantly began melting the rock around it, adding fiery lava to the already chaotic environment. Hars’s skin burst into green and orange flames both from the surrounding and the internal heat. Its bones crackled and expanded with indescribable pain. Hars’s hands were already vaporizing, the rest of his arms beginning to follow suit. Still, It held onto Its focus for a few more microseconds, single-mindedly pouring energy into the attack. The power remained in Its control, building up faster than it ever had before, and Hars triggered Its Overclock just before letting it all loose. The beam screamed downward with the shriek of a burning atmosphere, heading straight for the opponent even as the Kharnidd’s body started turning to dust.

  Then, the Ray was met with Daniel’s counter.

  Unbeknownst to the Kharnidd, Daniel had changed tactics immediately when it began charging the Ray. He’d used one final swing of his sword to dispatch some of the debris around him and switched the sword to a spear. He got into a one-handed stabbing position, aiming upward toward the source of the burst of Psionic energy. Stabbing forward, he activated the Heavenly Armament’s ultimate function:

  Heavenly Pierce

  A beam of white plasma, ringed in yellow light, shot from the tip of the spear and up toward the oncoming green laser. The laser itself was much larger, but the plasma punched through its center with ease, travelling upward and dispersing the Psionic Capacity as it did. The attack fully annihilated the Kharnidd’s body, but it continued shooting up and past the dying Xenos. That plasma pierced the bottom of the ocean floor, causing the water to boil and part before the beam reached the air and touched the sky. Many kilometers away, a few men looked over and noticed the flash of white lightning as it soared into the heavens. The clouds were pierced, the fiery light blowing massive holes in the fluffy creatures before it finally fizzled out. The clap of thunder and the roar of rushing water could be heard far and wide as the atmosphere rushed back together to fill the open space. The Kharnidd’s last thoughts were of disbelief and confusion before everything faded to black.

  Down further below, Daniel burst out of his rocky prison and continued traveling upward. All that remained of the Kharnidd’s body was a single green jewel, still glowing with power as it tumbled into Daniel’s open hand. He stored it away and took stock of his situation. The world around him was still blazing hot, and he knew for a fact that water would likely be rushing down through the hole in the ceiling that he’d just created. It would probably be smart to avoid that. Daniel started taking evasive maneuvers, but he was disturbed to see that the rumbling around him was not stopping.

  The whole facility was coming apart at the seams.