No time to wonder or assess, Hiral took his Seeker’s Unmaking in both hands again—his regeneration having healed enough to give him use of the second arm again—then dashed into the fray. Solar energy clones peeled off him to sprint in different directions, though none of the constructs coming his way seemed in the least bit distracted. That was fine, Hiral had other plans for them anyway.

  Clones off and running, Hiral turned his full attention on the three ‘smaller’ constructs coming his way, with the much larger Raze overlooking them all. It could’ve been just Hiral’s imagination, but something about the faceless head of the Raze looked surprised Hiral wasn’t dead from the smash he’d taken. Thanks to a whole lot of Rejection, Impact, and Decrease.

  Hopefully, he had a few more surprises for it up his sleeve, another burst of Rejection rocketing him forward. With all the buffs he currently had in place, his attributes were through the roof, his Atn and Combat Suite practically predicting where the constructs would move before they realized it. The angles—and his path—came to him in an instant, and then it was his Dex’s turn to deliver.

  Leaping to the right, the Seeker’s Unmaking severed two crystal arms reaching for him, before his right foot landed on an extended thigh. Attraction kept him in place to spin and mule-kick from that position with his other foot. Impact, Increase, Breaking, Expansion, and Piercing wove together to strike with the power of an S-Rank, point-blank ballista. Crystal shards exploded from the back of the construct, a hole big enough for Hiral to reach through, running front to back.

  Not that Hiral stopped there, the momentum of his spin pulling him around to bring his greatsword down in a powerful overhead chop. Black and white energy tore down into the shoulder, then beyond, splitting the construct nearly in half before Hiral was gone again. Appearing practically right in front of his second target, a stab, a twist, two cuts, then a Gravity Bomb in an open wound put down that construct.

  Hiral got to the third before either of the other two hit the ground, spinning like a top with his sword extended. Removing the head as he passed—along with two more layers from his rotation—he hit the ground and darted toward the Raze.

  Only, he found himself in front of three entirely whole, twenty-foot constructs—the Raze towering behind them—and his angle of attack was off. Six shoulder cannons glowed for an eyeblink before spitting their payloads in his general direction. Not directly at him, but the spread of the six blasts was far too coordinated to be random. As it stood, only one would hit him, but if he moved anywhere, it would be directly into one of the other blasts.

  At least, that had been their plan, until Hiral Exchanged.

  Two-hundred feet off to the side, one of Hiral’s clones took the shoulder-cannon blast to the head, easily dispersing it, but it had served its purpose. While the energy of the clone floated away like so much solar smoke, the Seeker’s Unmaking hacked into the Raze’s ankle like a it was a particularly stubborn tree that needed felling.

  Even after the blade passed unhindered through the crystal, white and black energy eroded the edges, completely removing the crystal it touched from existence. Hiral’s weapon brought oblivion to anything it touched, and he’d already flipped his wrists to bring the sword back across for a second strike.

  All he hit was a smaller golem that appeared directly in front of him. Blade striking it in the torso between its two arms, the crystal parted before his sword to tear out the opposite side, at the same time the construct’s fist slammed into Hiral’s face. Dulled by the damage reduction from Concentrated Domain of the Sun+ and his own field of Rejection, the punch didn’t take his head clean off. It did, however, hurl him back to slam into a wall of crystal not fifteen feet distant.

  Spread-eagle from the force of the impact, Hiral held his weapon in only one hand, and swung it across at the two constructs charging his way. The one on the right took worst of it, shoulder and chest splitting before one of the hands caught Hiral by the arm. While his blade could cut anything it touched, his arm didn’t possess the same quality. And, even with his massively enhanced stats, the construct was stronger.

  That left him exposed to the third and final construct coming his way, fists and claws poised and ready.

  Hiral Exchanged, appearing in the distance behind the Raze, and turned to see how…

  The punch to his gut blew the wind from his lungs—along with the thoughts from his head—and slammed his back into the wall behind him. His right arm, held tight by a construct, couldn’t do anything as a claw tore across his chest.

  His runes and buffs did what they could do to lessen the damage, and instead of getting his entire rib cage—along with his lungs and heart—ripped clean out, he “only” suffered inch-deep-and-wide gashes. Blood splashed to the side in a wild shower to paint the crystal road before a sledgehammer-like punch caught him in the side of the skull, snapping his head in the other direction.

  Another claw came, this one with the fingers extended straight like a knife, to stab into his gut. Half-delirious from the pummeling, concussive punch, Hiral reacted instinctively, pushing back with his runes against the curved claws just starting to pierce his flesh.

  “RAAAAAAH!” he roared insensibly, his Eternal Domain flexing and causing a sphere fifty feet around him to vibrate. At the same time, his runes strained against the limb trying to impale him.

  With the power and momentum of the strike, the claws were an inch deep before Hiral could react. At two inches, they slowed, the pain of it lancing up and down Hiral’s left side. At three inches, the claws stopped. Held by a runic combination of Attraction, Rejection, Connection, Decrease, Piercing, and Impact. Restoration kept the wound from tearing further, and Hiral took a breath past the pain.

  Head lifting, time slowed thanks to his Runes of Time Dilation and Time Contraction, he met the eyes of the construct. Then he shouted a second time, and released a pure wave of Rejection, Increase, and Expansion from his Edicts.

  Simple and raw, the explosion hurled the two constructs away—tearing the clawed hand out in the process—and Hiral dropped to the ground two feet below him. Blood poured from the two wounds—the crimson burning off on contact with the white energy of his coat—and he placed one hand over the deep gouge on his side.

  Ahead of him, the three constructs—whole again, of course—rose to their feet under a barrage of RHC blasts from his domain. Taking the second where he wasn’t getting assaulted, Hiral’s sensory domain gave him a picture of how the fight was going.

  The short answer was not well. Hiral wasn’t the only one sporting bloody injuries. The party was losing this fight. With every second that passed, the Raze’s strange ability was pulling things further and further in their favor. No matter how decisively his party won their short exchanges, the constant resets took their toll.

  Even as Hiral realized that, his head snapped in Seena’s direction, the woman hurling flaming spears, fireballs that exploded into spheres fifty feet wide, and even lashing out with a fiery claw to hack off a crystal leg. Around her, she birthed an inferno of destruction, even the crystal itself melting before her might. It wasn’t enough.

  No sooner had she reduced her three targets to little more than puddles, than they leapt out of the walls of flame all round her. Fires burned across their bodies from passing through the bonfires, but it wasn’t enough to slow them, and twelve fists and claws raced in her direction. Seena’s hands jerked up, her flaming-lily defensive ability encasing her in an instant to block the assault.

  In the next second, she stood outside the defensive ability, and a wide tail swept around to crash into her side. Launched sideways like she’d been fired from a catapult, she passed through the flaming hell she’d created to catch her shoulder on a jutting piece of crystal. The snag had her flipping end over end, and crashing to an inglorious stop nearly sixty feet away.

  Hiral’s heart had nearly stopped at seeing her take the blow, but she was back on her feet with barely a hand wiping blood from her nose to show it’d take a lot more than that to keep her down.

  Too bad the enemy had plenty more to throw at them. And Hiral was out of time, the three constructs coming at him again. They’d shrugged off the sphere of Rejection and Impact he’d hit them with far too quickly. Leaving Seena to her own devices—she could handle herself—Hiral launched himself at the constructs coming his way.

  Claws of Separation formed on his fingers, while Hundred Handed+ stretched from his back, claws of their own growing. It still left him… short-handed—ten to their twelve—but it would have to do, and he dove into the melee. The new spectral arms gave him a reach he didn’t have before, the limbs able to stretch and slash in a way his natural appendages never could, but they weren’t quite as effective as the sword had been.

  Instead of cleaving limbs apart at the barest touch, he only scarred and cut the crystal. Chunks got torn from chests. Digits were separated from hands. Long gashes got ripped down legs. None of it stopped the constructs, even with Hiral whirling through them like a dervish of S-Rank proportions. Dodging to the side to evade one thrusting claw, he Rejected straight up the length of it, dragging his clawed hands with him the entire way. Crystal peeled off the arm in long lines in the second before his Impact-laden knee slammed into the draconic chin. More colored shards splashed into the air…

  Hiral was back on the ground. Back beside the wall. He still had his Hundred Handed+ and his claws, but his position had been reset again. This time, though, he’d felt something. Just barely, in the fraction of a second before he’d moved, there was a pressure on his Eternal Domain. Something squeezing, then passing through to reach him.

  Was that the power the Raze are using?

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  He needed to know, so he could find a way to counter it.

  Dashing ahead, Hiral engaged the same three constructs again and again. Each time, they adapted to his attacks, forcing him to himself adapt. To change up the runes he was using. From cutting and clawing, he went to punching and kicking, to even try grappling. Every time he started to make headway, there was that push again, like something outside his Eternal Domain was collapsing on top of him. The power of it was on a whole different level.

  But if it was just about power, Hiral had options.

  Pulling his Edicts back from his offense and defense, he instead threw them into reinforcing his Eternal Domain. Rejection, Expansion, and Increase were easy to integrate. Restoration, Dreaming, and Sound took a little more work, but they fit too. Next came Impact, Time Contraction, and Time Dilation, and while they didn’t outright fight him on this, it took a little more convincing. They didn’t have the same natural fit with his ability the other Edicts did. Soon enough, though, they were in place.

  Through two more runs to distract the constructs—his Eternal Domain repressed while he worked—he finally got all his Edicts in place. Then he flared the ability infused with his Edicts, and leapt forward yet again. Like the Eternal Domain was suddenly in tune with his Domain of the Sun—itself etched with the Edicts’ power—and the Rune of Eclipse formed on his chest, reality around Hiral stabilized.

  A punch infused with the cocktail for resonating force slammed into—and through—the first construct he met. Crystal rippled outward from the impact-zone, while a three-foot-tall chunk exploded in a shower of shrapnel from the thing’s back. Holding the construct there, within his Eternal Domain, Hiral peppered the thing with a dozen blows from his fists. Four-dozen more came from his Hundred-Handed+, tearing the thing apart as he rode it to the ground.

  To his left, the second of the constructs moved to intercept him, arms up like it expected him to come straight for it.

  Hiral barely gave it a thought, lashing Gravity, Connection, and Increase to it, tying it to a spot very high up in the sky, then flexed his power. There was a snap as the construct got hauled into the air like it had been fired from a massive slingshot, and Hiral turned to the third one. Like the second, it came forward, arms up in a defensive position, blocking the worst of the RHC blasts coming from all sides. Over its shoulders, the cannons took aim and opened fire directly at him.

  Up went his hand, Absorption flaring in front of his open palm to swallow the blast entirely. Pain grew on Hiral’s arm, but his attention was entirely elsewhere, feeling something beginning to press on his Eternal Domain already. If he could just figure out what that was…

  Two more shots came his way—also absorbed—and he tsked at the interruption. Channeling the energy stored in the Rune of Absorption to his Seeker’s Crown, Hiral used the power to jumpstart a trick he hadn’t pulled out yet. A truly S-Rank Seeker’s Annihilation.

  Unlike his previous death beams, there was no charge up or swirling of power. One second, he was looking at the construct coming his way. The next second, a line of black and white, wide as Hiral was tall, connected him, the construct, the Raze’s left leg, and the buildings beyond. By the third second, all that was left was a perfectly cut hole.

  Oh, and the mushroom-shaped explosion consuming four city blocks on the far side of the city.

  Even as the construct simply crumpled, and the Raze toppled off-balance to the side, Hiral focused on the squeeze on this domain. With the Edicts empowering it, the power trying to worm its way through didn’t just pop his defenses. More than that, he could feel two separate powers trying to push in. One directed at him, and the other directed at the construct beneath his feet.

  No, that wasn’t quite right. The force of the squeeze wasn’t uniform. It was concentrated. Not like two hands pressed against the Eternal Domain and trying to squash it, but more like two fingers… because there were thick bands of some kind of connection already in place. It had only been seconds since he’d firing his Seeker’s Annihilation, but the pressure had bored into his domain.

  There, he could see the direct pipeline the reset was trying to follow.

  And, if he could see it, he could Separate it. Hand still up from using Absorption, Hiral flicked his wrist and visualized the space he would create in the connection. Once that was…

  The line didn’t cut. It didn’t even chip.

  Hiral reached out with another chopping line of Separation, plunging directly into the connection visible to his eyes. It rebuked him with barely a shiver. His eyes narrowed as he tried a third time. Same result.

  It’s not about power. Yes, it’s strong, but it’s not strong enough to have no effect. The feeling I’m getting, it’s like trying to cut an eternity. Like taking a shaving razor to fell a millennia-old oak tree. I can’t…

  The two connections slipped in during his second of distraction, depositing Hiral once again with his back to the wall. In front of him, the three constructs in perfect condition charged at him. They even got a whole two steps before a flash of light off to their right forced their attention in that direction.

  Really, more than a flash, it was the birth of a conflagration, Seena yelling as power poured out of her in an expanding dome of black-laced flames. Entirely consuming the four constructs closing on Seena from all sides, the eruption didn’t stop there, crashing past Hiral to claim the three he’d been fighting as well.

  Beyond that, even Hiral’s sensory domain couldn’t tell what was happening, Seena’s flames having devoured even that.

  Heat rolled over him, though a few runes made it barely more than a warm breeze, until the destructive dome passed by. In its wake, the crystal road had been turned into a steaming, melted mess. Any buildings that had been struck leaned to the side, resembling massive, used candles. As for the constructs, there wasn’t even a sign of them.

  She’d done…!

  A massive foot came out of nowhere, streaking for Seena like a boy aiming to score the greatest goal of his life. Still recovering from the exertion of the display she’d just put on, the party leader didn’t even see it coming. Only Ur’Thul did.

  At full size, the lich threw his body in front of his Mistress, the huge foot colliding with him just inches to the side of Seena. Bones broke with a sickening crunch at the impact, but even that willing sacrifice wasn’t enough. The sheer weight and power of the kick slammed Ur’Thul into Seena, both of their bodies bending before getting launched away at a forty-five-degree angle.

  Hiral poured enough Rejection into his launch, the crystal beneath him shattered. He had to catch Seena before she hit the building. He had to…

  A punch slammed into his side, right back where he’d started. With all the momentum he’d put into reaching Seena, it was his bones’ turn to break with a sickening crunch. Even as his chest collapsed and blood sprayed from his mouth, he could only watch as Seena and Ur’Thul collided with the wall of a distant, crystal building, thirty floors up.

  The crack echoed across the city, accompanied by an explosion of crystal and the stone beneath it. For just a second—while Hiral flew backward himself—he held out hope. It was bad, but not bad. Right?

  Two tangled shapes limply fell the thirty stories to crash into the road.

  “I’ll get her,” Laseen said, her movement ability on full display as she darted toward the fallen party leader. Out snapped her arm, tossing a healing needle in Seena’s direction. Unfortunately, a large, crystal hand clamped onto that arm. “Oh, shit…”

  The old vampire barely got the curse out before the construct holding her snapped its arm up, over, and then down again, smashing Laseen into the ground. Before the woman’s body even had a chance to bounce, the construct reversed the motion, hauling Laseen up and over to slam her down on the other side.

  Hiral hit the ground from the blow he’d taken, his own body twisting and careening sideways while his sensory domain watched Lasesen get slammed from side to side three additional times. When the construct finally let go, the vampire lay unmoving in a pool of her own blood, the crimson spreading at an unhealthy speed through the cracks in the crystals.

  If the woman was even still alive at this point, Hiral couldn’t tell. Even her entry in the party window showed her health so low, it might as well have been empty. Still, it was Seena his eyes went to. She wasn’t in any better shape, the four constructs she’d battled already reformed and heading for where she lay unmoving.

  Hiral tried to push himself up, but his body wasn’t working like it was supposed to. “No…” he gasped.

  This wasn’t how it was supposed to go!

  The thundering steps of the constructs brought them in Seena’s direction with terrible speed, but it was another racing shape that Hiral locked on to. A hope, even if a small one.

  Wings tucked and the air practically bending around it, the Bond of the Hidden Prince sped in Seena’s direction. To Hiral’s crossed eyes, he could see the reset connection reaching out for the bird, only to pause when it exploded in a shower of cawing and flapping crows. Moonlit Murder.

  Like the reset-connection didn’t know what to do, it hesitated for a second before lancing toward the closest crow. As soon as it connected, the bird vanished. Another pause before the connection moved to attack the next closest bird.

  Already, it was a losing battle. The true power of the Moonlit Murder ability was that all the crows were real, but also, none of them were real. The Bond of the Hidden Prince could choose to reform from any of the birds, as long as one of them survived. With all of them out like that, it could pick whichever one it wanted. In this case, it picked the one that landed on Seena, splashing her with Waters of Frey as soon as it did.

  That still left four constructs charging in her direction, and the Bond had no real way to take care of them all by itself.

  Luckily, somebody else seemed to be fed up with all this.

  “ENOUGH!” Yanily bellowed in his Aspect form. He threw his arms back and spread his wings with a powerful Intimidating Roar, one that shook the city in every direction. If that was all he had planned, it wouldn’t have been enough.

  Good thing that was just the opening act.

  Solar energy poured out of the spearman like it was going out of style. High above, the clear sky filled with thick clouds, lightning and thunder pounding back and forth within them.

  “RAAAAAAAAH!” he roared again, no abilities with this beyond how it helped him flex his power. Lightning coursed across his body, charged the air around him, and ran the length of his spear back and forth. Around him, circular cracks formed in the crystal covering the ground and buildings, growing and spreading wider and wider, and then he was gone.

  A single bolt of lightning shot to the sky, striking the city-wide cloud up there. No sooner had it disappeared within the hanging storm, then it came back down, Yanily at its lead.

  Empty hand extended ahead of him as he shot straight down, he held Tempest Roar cocked back like he was readying a throw. Connected to the blade, hundreds of lightning bolts stretched and spread in the shape of a net building above the city.

  He struck his target—one of the Raze—with enough force the whole city felt like it dropped out from under Hiral. The crystal titan shattered as Yanily continued through it to hit the ground. As soon as he did, the net of lightning fell across Visionary. With it came another thousand lightning bolts.

  The lightshow lit up the city—the whole, damn world—in a way Hiral had never seen.

  It still wasn’t the finale. Yanily had one more trick of his sleeve. Shock and Awe.

  That had been a Skyfall, which meant Dragon Breath was coming next. Or, more accurately, a Dragonflight Breath.

  Across the battlefield, two-dozen, massive dragons’ heads took shape, and opened their mouths. From the searing white of endless lightning, the city went monochrome.

  Then the death beams came.

  Devastation tore through the city, swaths of buildings—and anything else in their way—vanishing as the breath attacks struck from random angles.

  “That’s our cue,” Seeyela said from right beside Hiral, and a pulse of teleportation brought him to Seena’s side.

  Pulling himself—despite the pain—Hiral crawled along the ground until he put his hand in Seena’s. She wasn’t moving. In his sensory domain, he vaguely noticed Laseen was nearby, and Romin’s normal-sized Onslaught form weaved between death beams, an unconscious Yanily in his arms. As soon as he arrived, another huge pulse of solar energy ripped out of Seeyela.

  “Sorry it took so long,” she said, and then they were all falling through a sheet of black that had unfurled right beneath them.

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