Fighting a Scarseeker and Scarthrall at the same time, especially when one was clearly far stronger than me, was obviously not ideal. However, I had a very clear advantage. I had fought so many of them now, I could draw on heaps of experience. I was not dying to them.

  Illumination Aspect turned my whole body into a radiant lamp with Imbuement. Zoltan hissed and stopped his charge, his skin sizzling and smoking ever so lightly where the light touched him.

  But where he had been forced to stop, the Scarthrall held no such hesitation.

  Naturally, Zoltan had overridden any doubts and hesitations he might have had with the single imperative to kill me. That was all the undead Scalekin could focus on.

  Thankfully, he was much easier to beat back. He was smoking and burning under my facsimile of sunlight, and it still did create an ingrained reaction from his body to protect itself. I took full advantage, swinging my mace in hard.

  The Scalekin staggered back but quickly righted himself. One blow wasn’t going to be enough. With a snarl, he charged me again.

  This time though, I made sure to channel Granular Control. When my mace connected for the second time, the brittle spikes I had grown out at the striking hammer head embedded themselves into the former Claw’s body. Immediately, I focused on Infusion next, driving the attraction of gravitation force on the broken bits—and thus, on the Scalekin—very high.

  I grinned hard as the Scarthrall was crushed to the floor at the sudden weight.

  My sense of accomplishment lasted barely a second. Movement caught my eye, and I turned just in time to see Zoltan taking the fight seriously.

  He had coated himself with blood, a tactic I was familiar with from the time I had fought Glonek. It was safeguarding him against my burning light. Which was why he had zero trouble lunging forward with his fist flashing in at a pace that caught me off-guard.

  I barely raised my own forearm in time to defend myself. Though, calling that defending was generous.

  Zoltan’s blow connected with a lot more force than I was anticipating. I could feel the bone in my arm cracking at the impact, a jolt of hot pain lancing through my limb to paralyze my spine for a moment. Not that it mattered. His Power was so high that, even with my raised Vitality, I was lifted right off my feet and sent flying backwards.

  The terrific agony in my arm made me fail to land properly, and I rolled backwards, worsening my forearm’s condition. I bit through it and got to my feet. Just in time. Zoltan was relentless.

  At least I was prepared enough to try and block with my mace this time. The indirect force still staggered me a bit, but at least I hadn’t suffered direct damage.

  I concentrated hard. Fighting toe to toe against a superior opponent who was well into Gold most likely wasn’t going to leave me intact for long. I was barely managing to block his strikes, which were so strong that they were bending my mace out of shape.

  Which is where my Agility Augmentation finally firing gave me the opening I needed.

  I jumped back. Zoltan had been expecting me to continue holding my ground, and I had seen in his eyes the intention to overwhelm me with pure, brutal force. Something he knew I would fall to in time.

  After all, why would anyone bother with any sort of sophistication against someone so much weaker?

  But my sudden withdrawal took him aback. I got the space I needed. The space that allowed javelin-like spikes of hardened mana strands to emerge all around me via Reflexive Mana, centred on my body. If Zoltan saw it, he ignored it completely and simply continued his overwhelming rush.

  He never reached me. As soon as he got close enough to trigger one of the mana strands, I was immediately shifted to my right.

  Even then, Zoltan almost caught me. His lunge was that fast. I just barely caught his eyes widening at my evasion. It was pretty easy to tell that he was significantly more offended by the fact that I had dodged him than the fact that I had gotten enough space to counter with a powerful mace swing that sent him staggering back.

  Even better, my blow had cracked his hardened-blood armour and left an opening for my Illumination to seep in and start burning him alive.

  Of course, Zoltan recovered quickly, the blood armour regenerating long before I could leave any real permanent damage.

  “Hmm,” he said, his eyes re-evaluating our scuffle. “You’re peskier than I thought you would be.”

  I created more space between us, while also making sure not to get too close to the fallen Scarthrall. He was croaking out as the light imbued into the floor continued to eat away at his body. “What in the world do you think you’re even doing here, Zoltan? Running around with a bunch of crooks to take your revenge on us? Is that what a noble does nowadays?”

  That struck a nerve. His brows twitched, his whole bearing shifting to one of greater aggression. Greater intent to kill. “You are the cause of all this. You. And you think to mock me for the things your actions have forced me to partake in? I see Hamsik has corrupted you well.”

  “If that’s supposed to be an insult, you need to raise your game. Hamsik is a thousand times better than you. He knows not to take stupid decisions when things go badly. He knows that his family name is important, regardless of his feelings about his actual family members and acts accordingly. He—”

  “Enough. You don’t need insults. That would be a waste of time. You just need to get your blood drained into the earth like the common, dirty, maggot-ridden, pus-breathing, walking infestation that you are.”

  Alright, that insult had been a lot better. One couldn’t deny Zoltan could improve his efforts upon receiving feedback. “Ironic how you say I don’t deserve insults and then proceed to insult me with the most long-winded cuss I’ve ever heard.”

  Zoltan growled. Then attacked.

  Ah, crap. I had been hoping to buy more time by keeping him talking. The cracks in my chest were growing bigger and bigger, connecting to all the other threads I had infused within me via Threaded Reinforcement. It wouldn’t be long now before the mana implosion occurred.

  And then all hell—or all Pits in this world, rather—would break loose.

  As it was, I once again had to rely on my Agility Augmentation to survive. Beating Zoltan back Power versus Power and Vitality against Vitality wasn’t going to work. His absolutely had to be higher than mine. In hindsight, I should have asked Hamsik about it.

  Though, predicting that I’d be fighting Zoltan Kalnislaw at the bottom of a dungeon would have been next to impossible for past-me.

  Zoltan was warier of my counterattacks now. I found it impossible to land a blow on him like I had during my first use of Reflexive Mana. He was too fast, too good at evading.

  I thought I’d have an advantage as the one to likely possess more recent combat experience, but I had to remind myself this was a Scarseeker significantly older than Glonek. In fact, my first Scarseeker enemy’s memories had revealed that Zoltan was at least as old as Glonek’s own father, if not older.

  This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  Hard to take that at face value with the way Zoltan acted all the time. Maybe Scarseekers matured at a different rate than humans.

  But the point was that we were at an impasse. I was no more making headway on actually hurting him than he was on landing a blow on me. Reflexive Mana really was busted.

  So, of course, Zoltan decided to up the ante.

  He had been adding another Aspect to the mix. I assumed it was either Aspect of Aetherblood or something quite like it. The same kind of Aspect that Vandre used to imbue his manipulated blood with magic. But unlike Vandre’s Aspect, Zoltan’s Aetherblood was significantly more powerful.

  The vampire facing me created droplets of blood out of thin air. Droplets that then began moving and sparking with little bolts of pure black lightning.

  At least they were easy enough to fend off. No matter how hard he targeted them at me, I could always keep Field Manipulation active to throw off said targeting. It was also obvious he was well out of practice at aiming his Aspect. I knew he had to be rusty at something.

  Even the fact that the lightning-imbued blood droplets didn’t dissipate easily wasn’t a problem. Fields of repulsive force were throwing them high up to hover harmlessly over me.

  Zoltan glared at me during a brief pause in the fighting. “You’re insulting me.”

  “By trying to survive?” I shook my head. “Just because you’re too weak to defeat me doesn’t mean everything I do is an insult aimed at you, Zoltan. Pluck your head out of your ass.”

  His fangs were bared so much, I almost felt like he was going to rip his own head off and chuck it at me just so he could score surprise-points and bite me that way. “This farce has gone on long enough. I should have ended you from the very beginning. It pains me to admit that I’ll need to do this, but perhaps carrying your impaled corpse aloft will make for a good statement.”

  I frowned. What was he talking about now?

  The answer came the next second. Zoltan held his hand out. Threads of crimson mana swirled around his fingers before hardening and extending, quickly reshaping into a long, tapering, pointed weapon. A lance shaped like a drill, gleaming like it had been carved from rubies just like the vampire’s eyes were, and of course, sparking with pitch-black lightning.

  “Now you’ll die!” Zoltan crowed, his whole body wreathed in the same dark electric sparks. “You’ll burn, impaled on the pyre of my Icon of the Bloodlance!”

  I cursed. An Icon. I had never faced one of those before, not in combat. Seeing Hamsik’s strange firearm in action and having one aimed straight at my heart were completely different experiences.

  Encased in a red aura wreathed with the dark thunderbolts, Zoltan rushed me down.

  Like before, I used Reflexive Mana to dodge. It felt like he was even faster now with his Icon active. I did succeed in evading the blow, but not fully. Not as I normally did. As Zoltan charged at me, his lance extended the powerful, sparking aura in its wake.

  It was this aura that crackled over me, this wake that had me flying backwards, my whole body jerking under the electric shock. I forced myself to get back up as quickly as the wounds allowed. A charred smell clogged my nose, but I ignored it as best as I could. I had to focus. The little injuries I had suffered were nothing. Mana Heal would take care of them.

  “Like the taste of death, worm?” Zoltan asked, head held high so that he was looking down on me.

  “You dumbass,” I muttered.

  I flashed my Illumination Aspect with brutal intensity, my face momentarily turning into a flashlight that would have made lighthouses jealous.

  Zoltan screamed as his eyes immediately started sizzling. So far, to ward himself against that blinding effect, he had regarded me from beneath a cap constructed of blood, making sure his eyes didn’t behold my glowing form directly.

  But now, his hubris had gotten the better of him. I thought about rushing in to take advantage of his blinded state, but sightless wasn’t the same as defenceless.

  As proven when his Icon levelled at me again. Then fired a bolt of crackling dark lightning at me.

  I was already moving as soon as the lance had been aimed at me, so the bolt just barely missed.

  But that basically settled it. Before, I might have been able to put up some sort of fight against Zoltan. The impasse had worked to my favour. If I desperately needed it, I could have Sacrificed the remains of the Scarthrall—almost dead now—and raised my strength that way.

  Not that I wanted to. Getting the mana implosion to get going was my main goal. Sacrifice would push it off. The cracks had spread throughout me now, every movement making me feel like I was a haphazard mixture of sharp debris that would fall apart everywhere if I took a single wrong step.

  The Icon had shifted the balance radically, however. Now, even with amped up capabilities via Sacrifice wouldn’t be good enough. Somehow, that Icon was buffing Zoltan’s Attributes, possibly his Aspects too, the same way Sacrificing the Scarthrall’s heart would have done for me.

  I continued moving. My goal was mana implosion. I had fought off Zoltan for a while now. All I needed to do was survive just a bit longer.

  So I focused on that. I put every ounce of my concentration, my will, my focus on staying alive. On dodging and blocking and deflecting. No need for counters. No need to think about defeating Zoltan. No need for hopelessness because I would win in the end.

  It wasn’t a smooth endeavour. Several times, I got caught out by either a stray spray of lightning-infused blood or by the wake of the Icon that barely missed hitting me directly. I forced myself to work through the injuries. It helped that I was striking the columns, my Power generating enough mana through Mana Injection for Mana Heal to fix me right up, if slowly.

  Said columns were really what kept me alive. Our battle broke apart the ancient-looking pillars. Either I struck them down directly with my mace or with Gravity, or Zoltan’s fury shattered them.

  Upright or broken, they created a secondary set of barriers that Zoltan had to work past to get to me. If this had been an open field, I’d probably have been dead a few times over by now.

  Through it all, I could feel my mana core’s implosion inching closer and closer. My body was starting to vibrate like an overworked engine. The cracks weren’t satisfied with just taking over my body. They had now broken out over my skin. A webbing of fractures was painted on my hands and probably everywhere else I couldn’t see just then.

  Soon. Maybe another ten minutes, or five, or something like that. I’d—

  Zoltan’s Icon finally rammed through my guts as I failed a dodge. I had slipped on blood. Inert blood that was just lying on the floor. I had missed it entirely, or Zoltan had sneakily added it in at some point during our battle. Almost funny how such a little thing was what got me.

  Hot pain unlike anything I had ever felt exploded inside my stomach. I vomited out way too much blood, much of which sizzled and burned away as they struck the lance of hardened red energy. Even screaming was impossible as I lost my breath.

  Then I was impaled straight into the air, the torturous agony rising to a level that my consciousness was losing against. I could barely move my arm, could hardly find the strength to think, much less resist.

  A thunderous blast of the black lightning roasted me alive, and I did black out for a few moments. It was Zoltan’s ugly voice that dragged me back to my rapidly-dwindling life.

  “I told you!” His words came in warped through my ears. Maybe because I was trying to scream while he was talking. “I told you I’d eradicate you!”

  He threw me away. With the pain I was already dealing with, I hardly even felt the sudden ripping sensation of being flung off the Icon.

  I was flying through the air. Flying, and dying. Thoughts buzzed, dim and distant, time seeming to slow to a crawl in the middle of the air.

  No. I couldn’t die here.

  Just a little longer…

  I had to make it.

  Just a bit more time…

  Uproarious laughter tried to pierce into my ears, but my hearing was fading alongside my vision. My consciousness was fleeing. Dying.

  No. Not yet. I was so close.

  Just one chance, one opportunity…

  The ground was approaching, faster and faster. Zoltan’s Icon might not have killed me yet, but the collision would certainly do it.

  I was flying. I was flying.

  A distant memory sparked. I barely had any strength left, couldn’t even turn my head, but somehow, I dredged up the last bit of willpower I had left. I would not be dying here. As the collision with the ground and the rocks from the broken pillars arrived, as I reached them, I managed to fling out my fist in a punch.

  My hand didn’t get crushed at the impact. Nor did the rest of my body suffer anything too serious. My Vitality was high enough for such crash landings, even on jagged rocks, to not be too damaging.

  It still hurt like getting rammed by an onrushing train, though. Not that the pain registered against the agony clawing out through the hole in my guts.

  And then I realized my thoughts were clearing up just that tiny bit. Right. My plan had worked, if slightly. That last Power-driven punch had pushed out magical, lifesaving threads via Mana Injection, then Mana Heal was automatically addressing the most critical of my wounds.

  That was enough to regain just enough sense of self to realize I could use a health potion now. But Zoltan would expect that. He’d kill me immediately. So instead, I needed my real goal.

  The empowered Scarseeker was slow-walking towards me. Taking his sweet time. For all intents and purposes, I was dead. My consciousness was still fading, despite the momentary reprieve. But a different sort of sensation was taking a hold of me. A different sort of power. Zoltan reached me, talked to me, enjoyed the fact that I was suffering and unable to respond.

  Well, prick could take this for a response.

  [ Path-bound Core

  Core Primary Property: Threshold for mana implosion has been reached.

  Prepare for Mana Core Implosion. And Awakening. ]

  Zoltan’s eyes widened a split instant before an apocalyptic amount of magical energy erupted from me and wiped out everything.