Chapter 2007

Xershi stood and watched the two figures float in the sky. The brutal struggle left him transfixed and with a dry mouth. His face smiled while his hands tightened to fists. He wished to be a part of the final clash, even though he knew he shouldn’t interfere.

Right now, the Ghosthound

burned

, both with wafting surges of combusting air due to the temperature, but also with ghastly spectral flames. The combination made it almost impossible to make out the details of his form, aside from his shape. He twisted and writhed, energies blurring the limits of his body.

He jerked his spear deeper into his target. Blood gurgled out around the shaft. The ineffective armor screeched as it scraped against the weapon. Drum roared and flailed to push the Ghosthound away. His voice showed the beginnings of panic. “You are a mad man. If you kill me, the entire Sonara will turn against you!”

Above their two figures, their images fought in the sky. That insurmountable raised its poleaxe, wielding the weapon with short brutal strokes. Its shouts resounded in the sky, pressing back other images. But one by one, a murky darkness, a massive golden tree, and a vicious creature with sharpened fingers lashed out at the image. Their combination kept it on the defensive, unable to pry apart the two physical bodies below. In terms of individual power, the Ghosthound’s manifestations were less potent than Drum’s image. They just barely kept the other image at bay.

But at the heart of Drum’s image, a beating heart of black poison quivered. From the inside, his Aether was being eaten away by the Nether that the Ghosthound seemed to inject into his foe. Xershi concluded that all the rumors about him were true; the young man had a monstrous amount of resources at his disposal. Any one of his individual abilities was impressive, but it was flabbergasting when gathered in a single individual.

No wonder even the Don found this man vexing,

Xershi thought.

Drum drove his fist against the Ghosthound’s stomach, earning not a single reaction for his troubles. Perhaps the extended silence from the Ghosthound revealed how genuine his intent to kill him because Drum’s eyes bulged even further. “I’ll make you regret the day you challenged me. Damn you and your word to hell-- I will

slaughter

you. Shred your images and leave the waste to fertilize my next brood of orcs-”

His hand snapped out and seized upon the Ghosthound’s neck. Between them, the spear had become a pulsing conduit, forcing more Nether and image fragments into Drum’s body. The Ghosthound reached up and peeled Drum’s grip from his body, tearing the armor and leaving his opponent’s fingers a broken mess. His right arm reached out and steadied himself on Drum’s shoulder. His left lifted and then snapped forward in a brutal straight.

Fist and helmet generated a dull thwap.

Drum’s helmet crumpled. The crunched concavity that resulted made it clear that his nose and cheekbones must have been shattered in the brutal strike. His image flickered briefly, giving the Ghosthound’s three images more time to scrape and damage their target. All pounced forward to take advantage of the wavering attention. The area infested by Nether began to swell. Black veins swam outward and spread the damage.

“Pah! Y-y-you…” Drum’s voice was muffled and oddly whistling. “You are… just like me. You will… die for something like this… Fuck…!”

But despite his bold words, his image had begun to fray underneath so much strain. Xershi’s skin tingled to see Drum falter. Obviously, violence occurred regularly within the Sonara. But it ended up being one of the safest places in the Nexus, because everyone knew everyone had a powerful faction behind them that had nurtured them and gathered the materials to get them to Tier III Citizenship. Too many citizenship coins were required for anyone to fluke into them, even after three thousand years.

For the rich and affluent factions, this was a method for their youth to expend their energy. And a failed trip into the Sonara only meant that the endeavorer would return ten years later, exhausted and disappointed with their mediocre results.

Drum’s image began to shimmer with one last burst of resistance. The warrior raised his poleaxe, that simple object so bright and perfect it seared itself into Xershi’s gaze. But around it circled dark shadows.

“You aren’t wrong,” The Ghosthound remarked. He raised his left hand and delivered another brutal punch, further flattening Drum’s face. It didn’t do much actual damage, but it was clear that it distracted the man and weakened his image. The light from the Poleaxe wavered. “I… shit. I know I’m similar to you. I’ve killed an entire race before, too caught up in my own selfish business to stop and reflect on my actions. I’m not an innocent. But the way you just squandered an entire culture-”

“Pah! What culture? They were spawned from my image.” Drum heaved in a wet breath. The warrior above seemed to realize what was about to happen and rushed downward. But a thick and gleaming wall of golden roots blocked its path. “Everything they ever accomplished was because of me. They made a deal and the time limit was over.”

“If they genuinely owed everything to you, why would you receive a power boost from stealing everything from them?” The Ghosthound asked. Drum swayed and didn’t answer. Clicking his tongue, the Ghosthound drove his dangerous hands into Drum’s chest.

A horrible crackling rose from the images in the sky as the struggles intensified. Roots curled up around the victorious image’s legs as it tried to force its way down to the physical forms. Its body was covered in long scratches from the sharp-fingered image. And now the darkness condensed around its head, drawing a milky event horizon and suppressing its influence even further. The gleaming poleaxe swept back and forth, but the three harrying images just avoided it. Gradually, the Ghosthound’s images were gaining momentum.

Drum’s breastplate survived the first blow, but the second ripped open the armor and revealed his flesh. Underneath the armor, the skin was curiously pale. The Ghosthound didn’t hesitate, drilling in and ripping out a bulging organ. More blood spurted out of Drum’s chest. The Ghosthound’s fingers tightened until the bulbous object burst and oozed around his knuckles.

Drum’s struggles became more frantic. His arms slapped and slammed against the Ghosthound. But everything was immovable. Nether surged in an unending flow, drowning him from the inside. Their bodies were locked in a strained embrace. His image tried to tear its way out of the blockade and failed.

The finale stalked closer. Xershi again had to suppress his urge to jump into the thick of the action.

“I refuse to die like this,” Drum whispered. Above, the roots had continued their assent and bound Drum’s image up to the waist. The darkness had completely buried his head. The scratches of the Ghosthound’s third image were in the area of the Nether infestation, giving it more space to expand. “I’ll give you one last chance. If I activate that ability again, I can-”

“When it comes to Nether, I don’t need you to show me a single thing,” The Ghosthound replied. He lowered his hands and gripped his spear. With a sharp jerk, he drove it even deeper through Drum’s body. The entire head of the spear bloomed from his back. The volume of Nether pumping between them increased. Black veins had spread all across Drum’s body.

The Ghosthound’s voice held a note of finality. “The First Authority: Seize.”

On an entirely different layer of existence, a vision manifested above the continued struggles of the images. A tall being sat on a grey throne, looking down on them all. It was a being of history and accumulation, the gathered momentum suddenly focused in a compelling point. To Xershi’s senses, it felt incredibly dangerous.

The being raised a creepily long finger and beckoned at Drum. Within the midsection of the image, that growing presence of Nether swelled even further. Then its twisted and condensed in a wrenching twist.

Rather than hearing, Xershi felt a resounding crack echo out from the armored man’s body; Drum’s figure contorted in immediate agony. It took another few moments before he was able to make out what exactly happened.

He… the Ghosthound… shattered Drum’s Class?

For a moment, Xershi’s mind went blank. Obviously, one of the reasons the Sonara was so safe was how difficult it was to kill individuals of this power. However, without a functioning Class, Drum’s interior Aether would turn on itself. Even if he could survive the fallout, Aether Sickness would soon arrive and complicate the recovery immensely. To come back from a broken Class might even be impossible.

It would be an agonizing death.

So fucking cool.

Xershi’s eyes glittered. The Ghosthound ripped his spear out of Drum’s chest and let the body fall to splatter against the collapsed ruins of his previous base. With blood dripping off the knuckles of his left hand, the Ghosthound turned to regard Xershi. His emerald eyes were bright and clear, while the rest of him was still obscured by those mixed flames. “Do you know much about the next ring? The defenses there?”

Xershi nodded. “Layers four and five are relatively undefended. Layer six is the only city in the Sonara, although I don’t know how well it actually fits that label. Four and five serve as training layers, allowing people who live in the city to take advantage of the image amplification without climbing further.”

The Ghosthound nodded slowly. “Good. Let’s… climb to the next level and then take some time to rest.”

*****

“Duulys, Duulys, I have a fun surprise for you!”

Duulys Ambar rolled over in his bed and yawned. His limbs got tangled in the expensive golden sheets and he struggled ineffectually for a bit before he collapsed into a defeated burrito. He pressed his face into his pillow and began to drift back off to sleep. But a follow-up shout put an end to that possibility. Duulys’s yawn turned into a groan as he recognized the voice.

“Mimic, you aren’t allowed in my layer, I’ve told you this. I’m going to kill you if you barge in right now.” Duulys grumbled. He idly wondered how he managed to make it past the defenses of his castle. Did he forget to imagine guards?

Despite Duulys’s threat, the door swung open. Mimic, dressed in his usual immaculate charcoal suit, walked across the plush red carpet with a silver tray with a teapot. “Now, don’t be like that. Aren’t we neighbors? Besides, I have this freshly baked banana bread.

At least

try it and tell me what you think, even if you don’t want my delightful surprise~”

Duulys leveraged his muscular torso up into a sitting position. He took a deep sniff, and sure enough, the air was filled with the rich and heavy aroma of banana bread. His desire for violence eased somewhat. Despite his obvious nosiness and fixation on Duulys, Mimic genuinely devoted a lot of time and Skill Levels to his baking. And if he came in here with a smile after their last interaction when Duulys had ripped off Mimic’s legs, his claims about news were probably true.

With another yawn, Duulys pushed himself off the bed and ambled over to the polished mahogany table on the far side of his room. Mimic had set down his tray and threw open the windows, allowing warm rays of sunlight to illuminate the cave-like interior of the room. Duulys’s dark skin shined with golden motes, as though he had been dipped in glitter. He slouched sideways into his chair and began stuffing the still-warm banana bread into his mouth. He spoke around his full mouth. “So, the news?”

“Do you remember Drum? That posturing pustule?” Mimic said excitedly. He sat down on the other chair. Instantly, Duulys’s turned a flinty stare in his direction; Mimic bowed in apology and stood, no longer touching Duulys’s furniture.

“Hoh? Ah, the armor guy. Likes to watch orcs fuck. Yea, I’ve been trying to find an excuse to kick him out for two hundred years,” Duulys swallowed his first bite and took a gulp of the tea. The flavor was lavender and vanilla, light and delicate. He begrudgingly admitted it was a good pairing with the banana bread. Mimic’s execution was officially categorized as delayed.

“Well worry no longer! Not only did he activate that little toy you gave him to steal his orcs’ lives, but it didn’t matter! A new arrival actually

killed

him. In single combat, from what I felt in the resonance from the conflict,” Mimic licked his lips.

That gave Duulys pause. He rolled his shoulders. Even if

he

disliked his subordinates, he didn’t appreciate free radicals wandering through his kingdom and setting fire to things that belonged to him. “Genuinely killed? Drum is dead?”

“Well, so far as I can tell, this individual crushed Drum’s Class. In the minutes that followed, Drum took his own life,” Mimic shrugged. “But-”

Duulys raised his hand and snapped his fingers. The entire castle around them popped and disappeared in motes of light. In a swirling reconfiguration, a massive platform appeared beneath them. A swirling maelstrom of golden energy formed around the platform. In the middle, Duulys Ambar, the owner of the Fortieth Floor of the Sonara, the highest settled ring before the area filled with Elhume’s experiments, sat on his stormy throne and looked at Mimic with an interested gaze. “Who?”

“Randidly Ghosthound.” Mimic enunciated clearly.