"Oh, so that’s how we’re doing it?"
Orson blinked, then couldn’t help laughing.
The bizarre machine life didn’t just throw his signature fire spell; its slowly reknit fra was now draped in a War Supre robe. No set bonuses, looked mostly costic, but the way it moved had so real Archmage swagger.
Especially the opener: flick the fringe, twitch the staff, cast. Exactly like him. The thing really had studied the church of Mage.
A black sunburst six-pointed sigil flared. A dark-as-ink fla dragon slamd down.
"Magic elents?"
Orson’s eyes thinned. "No. They’re converting so other energy into elental output."
"The area is enormous..."
Darulunina stared up, stunned. The instant the dragon hit, its elental body billowed to several tis size, its coverage almost a hundred ters.
"Great. Dragon-curse conversion."
Orson frowned. He’d assud too much. The thing had no set effects, but the runic socketing on its staff was very real.
"Let guess, you can’t call a Supre Soul Disc clone."
He dropped into Chaos Lord, and a Chaos Orb punched through, shattering the dragon. He knew that spell too well. Breaking the dragon was when the trouble started.
A heartbeat later, it showered into volleys of fireballs, a carpet-bombing rain. Heat boiled the snow where they fell.
Orson’s face stayed cold. He still only used basic attacks. A dozen Chaos Orbs fanned out in midair, forming a lattice and popping the fireballs early.
Fire vs. fire.
A blast of wind. Then silence.
It didn’t last. The machine-Archmage’s eyes flashed red. The mountain lurched. The floor heaved.
"Co on."
Orson’s gaze tightened. He knew that feel.
Hades’s Grasp arrived on cue.
A titanic elental hand burst from the ground and clenched, trying to crush them all in a single fist.
"Get behind ."
DoomBringer’s King-rank voice rasped. His long white hair blew out as he stepped and grew, his body elongating, bone-white plate knitting over his fra as a knight’s form took shape. He walled the kids in with a curved barge shield, pounded the elental arm to fragnts, and hustled them back.
A flicker. Steel rang.
Estrella flinched cold.
Orson was suddenly a Chaos Sword God, the chaos blade spitting tongues of fire as he intercepted a kill shot.
Another undying unit reassembled. Its mimicry had chosen Orson’s rogue form.
They didn’t leave space to think. Six undying rose. Their fras were Fireborn, but the faces were Orson’s.
A pressure bled out that wasn’t God-tier, but was sothing else entirely.
Cold. Dead. Alien eyes without a hint of humanity.
They were pure machines of slaughter. They served destruction alone. And their read on the battlefield was brutal. One glance and they’d flagged the threat. They mimicked Orson’s six different forms.
He glanced at the nearest heaven entrance. Untouched by the fight. Safe enough.
"Get inside the Eightieth. DoomBringer, you lead," he said without turning.
The old King held Orson’s look a beat, then nodded once, heavy.
"What about you?" Darulunina blurted, fear spiking.
Orson’s mouth ticked. He shook his head. "It’s been a while since I stretched. I hope to—"
"Hope to live? You will," Darulunina said through clenched teeth and tears. She hated that she was weak, that she couldn’t help him at all. It hardened sothing in her. Even with a single class, she would claw her way up.
"Stay safe. We’ll be waiting," Caelum said, voice low.
Fireborn were simple and straight. If they couldn’t help, they wouldn’t drag him down. They turned and ran with DoomBringer for the gate.
"Don’t die, chief. If you die, I... I won’t," Nuhachit bawled.
"Shut up. If our chief dies, it’s an honorable death. The highest honor of Firevenom," soone sobbed.
Orson’s scalp prickled. "I said I hope these counterfeits give a workout!"
"Wind’s too loud, chief! Don’t die!" Nuhachit yelled back.
Orson covered his face and breathed in through the nose. "I am calm. I am a mountain."
No wonder those brats ate Darulubus’s switch daily. They really were begging for it.
Die? Insulting.
"Three still down. Thought you called yourselves undying."
He curled his lip. These machine lives had at least a King NPC chassis, but he didn’t know their ceiling. Copying skills live, even stealing operational patterns, that was nasty. Which ant the stronger their source, the stronger the mimic.
He’d just awakened six-shift and needed grind reps. If these things had wrecked three quasi-gods, they were qualified as whetstones.
"Co on, then. Make it fun."
His hand found the Supre Arcane Blade. He hadn’t really fought in over a year. He didn’t know if he was rusty.
He’d gained sothing else, though. A calr core. No anger, no joy, no manic surges. Still water.
With that spine, he could beat any system. Even six copies of himself.
He moved. Eyes flashed. He vaulted, Chaos Orbs drilling the priest-mimic in a test volley.
A black bulk flashed in, the knight-mimic bracing the priest with a giant shield.
Dragon Bastion.
The knight’s HP doubled on the spot, climbing to a ridiculous eight hundred million. Orson’s tide of orbs hamred past the threshold and still carved two hundred million off.
"You’re rooted. What do you do if I go behind?"
Orson smiled and broke into rogue. Black light cinched tight and then he was a shadow with a drinking knife.
He was behind the knight in a blink. The blade drove for the notch below the skull.
Three arrows whispered down, perfectly predicting his prediction, curling to hit his back.
"They saw that coming."
His brows flicked. The dagger flipped from right to left. He twisted at the waist, shedding the arrows by a hand’s breadth and taking a more vicious angle for the kill.
A sword sang. A killing arc fell from above. The warrior-mimic had rotated into him.
"Nice teamwork."
He dropped the rogue and shouldered the chaos shield into the strike, then ramd the golden war halberd into the knight’s chest.
Deathblow, 490 million.
The number was obscene. Orson still sighed. If the setup had landed in rogue, it would have bled. With hemorrhage running to full max HP, that unit would have been a corpse.
The real surprise ca a beat later. A huge green number popped above the knight.
Dragon Revival, 240 million.
Sowhere in there, the unit had swapped into the Dragon Halberd stance. It had eaten the hit with a talent buff and then pumped itself for a massive heal.
"Shared comms. Shared execution. Zero practice needed to stitch tactics."
Orson’s face lost the last hint of play. He flipped back to mage. Chaos Orbs blew apart their forming net.
"I bring combat craft, you bring black tech?" He clicked his tongue. The seal made it a slog. No active skills, only basic attacks and passive kit perks. Inelegant.
"Try brute force."
His smile went crooked. He snapped to rogue, the speed spike buying distance. The mimics ca too.
They were his forms. Their movent stats were his movent stats. Mage and cleric were slowest, rogue the fastest.
Orson’s glow pulsed as he began hard-swapping between mage and rogue. Rogue to kite, mage to shell the backline.
Rogue mirrors could keep up. Their backline could not.
Crit 18 million.
Crit 19 million.
Maim 66 million.
Heal 4 million.
Heal 6 million.
The cleric-mimic’s staff blurred. Heals fell like rain. Under sixty-one tis crit modifiers, they ant nothing.
Orson ran them ragged along the Eightieth’s breadth. It was huge. Five or six kiloters of kite runway was nothing. A monsoon of Chaos Orbs erased the horizon, a no-fly zone that hamred the enemy’s rear.
In under thirty seconds the knight-mimic, still trying to wall for his team, staggered and blew apart into a field of scrap.
"Awaken, Absolute Frost Prison."
The machine-mage’s voice cracked the air. Ice armor crawled over it. Cold roared outward.
"Ridiculous. S-class too?"
Orson flinched, bracing to break it. The ice ring rushed out about two kiloters... and then stopped dead.
"Chassis overload. Unable to read enemy Orgod Artifact secrets."
"Chassis overload. Unable to correctly resolve enemy Orgod firing range."
"Chassis... anomalous energy detected. Possible Divinity crystal fragnt resonance."
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