“Ti travel…?” I murmured as I wiped my mouth with hydrokinesis and looked around with a weird sense of deja vu.
This… wasn’t the demon guy’s doing, was it? Although the na of his other racial skill might hint at sothing to do with ti travel, I didn’t think that was it. This content belongs to noᴠelfire
More like, this might have been the work of the Fate Weaver. Maybe even an actual feature of the Limit Break.
And then it hit .
“...There was no warning for death. Possibility of death.”
Only a warning for trauma.
Did that an that respawning was a core feature of the trials? That you could just keep throwing yourself at the trial and dying over and over until you finally passed it? That, as long as you didn’t enter a red door, you were guaranteed to eventually pass the trials if you just kept trying?
But… doing that involved repeatedly dying.
I shuddered.
Only an insane person would voluntarily keep jumping to their death over and over like that. This wasn’t like a video ga. I actually felt all the pain that ca with death.
No wonder it had warned about long-term trauma then.
Still, ignoring the horrifying groundhog day potential this had, the fact that I was back here ant that I had another shot at this. I had to do it right this ti. I couldn’t waste it.
Because if I failed again, I would die again.
I wanted to throw up.
I… didn’t have to go right away, right? I could just… rest a bit. I’d taken my ti getting to my apartnt building the first ti around, so I probably had a mont to spare before sothing inevitably forced the issue.
Also, hadn’t I wanted so ti to properly think about a strategy against the guy? I could do that now.
Yeah.
No need to rush headfirst into death.
I slowly backed into the alleyway again and then plopped myself down on the dirty ground with a sigh.
Part of just wanted to sleep with how ntally exhausted – despite my topped up Ether and Intra reserves and not even feeling sleepy anymore – I felt, but I knew I couldn’t do that. Not now.
...Not with that fucking red door right next to that I just noticed.
Scew you, red door.
Burn in hell.
...Anyway.
Strategies.
I’d taken his air skill, which was nice, but he still had a ton of other skills to work with.
His lightning traveled very fast, but I could dodge it if I saw him pointing at . The ice had proved annoying but nothing I couldn’t break or go around. The damn confusion attack was a serious issue and I really wished I had more to counter it besides just Mind Shield. Then he had the extrely dangerous fire… as my torso had demonstrated.
I closed my eyes and let out a shuddering breath, trying very hard not to think about it.
Then, the illusions. Those, I could counter relatively easily as long as I recognized them as illusions and with Abyssal Domain, that shouldn’t be a problem.
Lastly, there he had his racial skills.
The black and white mode skill, Eversion, sounded quite powerful even if I didn’t know exactly how much regeneration and power increase it granted. The obvious way to counter it was to use Rend when he was in black form and physical attacks when in white form, but beyond that, I couldn’t think of much else.
Then we had Feathers of Narnia. What kind of skill was that? It just conjured up extrely weird and confusing illusions. It had confused so much that I’d completely forgotten to use Abyssal Domain.
It was… weird.
Weird for a racial skill?
Well, I wasn’t really sure. I only had a sample size of three, but I had to agree with chat – racial skills seed to mainly be power amplifiers. Eversion buffed Ether and Intra-based skills in a bit of a roundabout way, while the Strear skill… Well, ignoring the social aspect, from a purely video ga point of view, it helped with gathering information, figuring out plans, and making decisions.
But both of these skills felt like they were supposed to be supporting the use of other skills.
Feathers of Narnia? Felt a bit too different.
Unless the confusing illusions wasn’t the skill itself.
Jeofffff: Im just saying it was like he combined the two skills
Jeofffff: confusion and illusions
Yeah. That was a possibility.
And when I thought about it – and I really didn’t want to think about it – just before I’d died, I saw his arm covered in a sowhat solid fire.
A combination of his black ice and fire?
Maybe I was overthinking it, but to , it seed that…
“Feathers of Narnia is a skill that combines skills,” I murmured.
Now that sounded pretty damn scary.
But the scariest part?
I couldn’t sense it when I’d used Skill Snatch. Not that nor Eversion.
Did that an that Racial skills couldn’t be snatched? Probably. Well, at least that ant that Strear could never be taken away from … hopefully.
I heard slow clapping above .
I froze and then slowly craned my head up.
The demon guy – in his black form – stood there, on top of the building I was leaning on, staring down at .
“Good job figuring it out. Ah, I guess I wasn’t very subtle, was I?” He chuckled. “Feathers of Narnia can temporarily combine skills. That’s not all there is to it, though.”
“...What else does it do?” I asked, trying to totally calm and compose despite the fact that not only was he here, but he also rembered our fight.
aning that even if I could die and retry over and over, I couldn’t save scum my way to victory like I’d hoped.
He gave a wry smile.
“Now that would be telling, wouldn’t it?”
I grimaced.
Silly for thinking I would get a break in the final trial.
I sighed and closed my eyes, relaxing my body.
In the anti, I reached out with my stolen wind skill – I ought to at least look at its na and description soon – and subtly gathered a ball of wind right behind him.
Then I shoved it into him, making him stumble and fall into the alleyway I was in. A split second later, I shot my eyes open and fired off an empowered rend as he flapped his wings to stabilize himself.
It hit him and he turned into a ragdoll as his eyes rolled back.
I used the chance to get up, get out my axe self, switch to Flaguard, channel as much regular and black fire as possible into the axe, and then jump to intercept his falling body.
I arched my back, gripped my axe so hard that my knuckles turned white, and then swung the thing over my head, perfectly hitting the demon in the chest with a bang.
We exploded and I found myself careening backwards and into the street filled with faceless people.
I crashed on top of a car and bounced before steadying myself with Featherfall and falling to my feet.
Then I froze.
The faceless people were all running around in panic. The driver of the car I’d crashed into had exited his car in a hurry and began running away. I could hear sirens in the distance...
I hadn’t sunken in back when I’d fought the guy at my apartnt building since it lacked people for the most part, but our battleground was my city.
“Chat, this isn’t real, right? Please give a confirmation,” I begged as I glanced around with dread.
Again, so people said yes and so said no. I had no idea who to trust. Part of thought the ones saying yes had to be trolls, but… I couldn’t be sure.
Then the earth shuddered and my eyes went wide as a shadow blotted out the sun.
The demon guy stood there, sohow towering over the city as he looked down on with a wry grin.
I shot Rend at him.
He opened his mouth to say sothing but got hit by the Rend and stumbled… but didn’t disperse like the other illusions.
What the hell?! That was real?!
The demon raised his hand and it lit ablaze with the familiar black fla.
I tensed but listened to my instincts and dashed to the side, hoping to avoid the inevitable giant fireball of death.
But to my shock, when the hand finally heaved and tossed the black ball of doom, its salvo flew at a random building instead of .
I stopped in my tracks once more and stared as the building exploded into black flas. People ran out of it in wild panic, so burning, so–
I looked at the demon in horror as he prepared another fireball.
“Stop it!”
He just smiled at .
“They aren’t real.”
What the fuck, man?!
I didn’t know whether I could believe that or not, but watching him terrorize people – no matter how fake they were – felt wrong on a visceral level.
I clenched my fists as fury filled my veins.
I whipped out my gun self and on a whim, tried to load it with Demon Queen Flas and the air skill.
And just like when I’d sohow managed to use Armor Break with Rend, it worked.
I fired off a sharp black fireball at subsonic speeds and it pierced the demon’s head, though not before he lobbed another fireball in a random direction.
His giant headless body swayed for a mont, then stabilized, and then regrew its head.
How was this fair?!
His restored face grinned at .
“Ah! That’s good! Keep it up!”
I returned the gesture with a furious scowl.
He was goading , I knew. But I couldn’t help it. The previous two trials had ended when I’d done sothing insane and borderline suicidal, and since I apparently couldn’t die here?
I conjured up my axe self and dashed forward. Then, using a combination of my integrated ninja sandals and the stolen air skill, I leaped straight at the dude while charging my axe self with all the fire and brimstone I could muster.
Then a giant object ca from my blind spot and slamd right into . I could feel my bones crack at the sudden impact and let out a strangled scream. A split second of whizzing through the air later I felt another impact from the other side and then the world turned black.
…
I vomited as soon as I returned from the dead void.
I’d died again.
Fuck!
But I had no ti to dwell on that. I had to move before my opponent got here again.
I ran out of the alleyway without even wiping the vomit from my mouth.
But then I froze once more.
I hadn’t looked up when I’d co back, but maybe I should have. Then I would have realized that all the damage we’d caused with our fight in the previous loop hadn’t reset.
The car in the middle of the street still had a dent in it, the black fire still covered that one building, and people still ran back and forth in panic.
Was it real then?!
What was I supposed to think here?!
I stifled my frustrated confusion and forced myself to move.
I headed straight for the nearby tro station I sotis used and didn’t hesitate in jumping down the broken escalator even as my mind ran at a thousand miles per second, trying to figure out how to beat that damn demon guy.
What the hell even was that gigantification supposed to be? I hadn’t seen any such skill when I’d used Skill Snatch, so it had to be one of his racials.
He had said that Feathers of Narnia could do more than just combine skills, hadn’t he? So, what? It could also make him giant? Sothing about that didn’t seem right…
I lit my hand on fire to light my way and jumped onto the tro tracks, only slightly concerned that a tro might ram into .
The giant air attack that had cut up the whole street. Could that be sothing similar? Like… maybe not only did the racial skill combine skills, but it could also hugely empower them sohow? But if that was the case, then what exactly was the unempowered version of that gigantification…?
...Illusions, right? He had played for a fool, making think it real by sohow defending the giant form from my Rend…
No, but, he had also thrown a huge black fireball and had slapped from the air. How the heck had he done that if the big body was supposed to be an illusion? Had those also been so forms of empowered skills?
My surroundings shook and a mont later, I heard a loud crash from behind . I sneaked look down the tunnel but couldn’t see anything, so I turned back forward and kept running.
A mont later, there was another crash and the ceiling in front of suddenly ca crashing down.
I reacted instantly by forcefully stopping in my tracks and using my tentacle to springboard back, just in ti to avoid the collapsing ceiling.
With dread pooling in my gut, I saw the figure of the winged demon float down into debris with a wry smile.
“Ah, I forgot to ntion, but I have a third racial skill.”
Seriously?!
“But you know this one. In fact, I got it from you.” He chuckled. “You were right, you know? This… John is very good at scouting.”
I stared at him, my mouth agape.
Because what the fuck?!
He had Strear?!
How–
What did he an he ‘got it from ’?! Had he stolen it?! I’d thought we were supposed to be friends! Or colleagues or sothing!
“Ah, well. Better luck next ti.”
He pointed at and his right wing glowed red.
Shi–
The following surge of black lightning completely drowned the whole tunnel.
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