Once again, time seemed to freeze.

  Sam stood there, dripping with sweat, blood, and who knows what poison, acid, and whatnot, his clothes and armor doing their very best to stay in one place while the demon, the Shadowed One, stared at the spot where the leader of the Silent Step vanished under Sam’s spell.

  Then the demon mechanically – and very slowly – turned his head toward Sam and continued to stare. Then, it turned its head back to the still slightly smoking spot and missing stonework.

  This repeated a few times before the demon seemed to come to terms with Sam’s action, and settled on simply glaring at Sam with a glare that was several magnitudes more severe than anything Sam saw today.

  “You…should…not…have…done…that…” the demon spat, his breathing becoming heavier and heavier, soon looking like a bull ready to charge, straight from a cartoon. There was even a slightly blacker smoke coming out from where Sam suspected its eyes may have been. “I…have been tolerating your…amusing antics, mortal. However, this…This is too far. You have… halted my ascension to this plane. You and your little friend had attempted to thwart me, but this is but a momentary setback in my grand plan!” As the demon began to monologue, its voice became louder and louder until it was basically bouncing off the walls, causing dust to fall from the ceiling.

  Sam couldn’t help himself. “But we did thwart you…” He pointed out, in a way that some would say was rather unhelpful in the current situation.

  A moment later, he was blinking out some kind of explosion out of his eyes and crawling out from under a bunch of rocks that fell on him when he impacted the poorly abused walls of this ritual hall.

  “Owowowow…” he muttered as he staggered into an upward position. Thankfully, the strike came so fast, his hand was still gripping his sword.

  Clutching his stomach, he glanced at his health and mana bar and couldn’t hide his wince. That last one seriously depleted much of it. His mana was rapidly regenerating, but he knew he wouldn’t be able to survive more than one of those. Without even looking, he summoned his gathering mana and unleashed three beams of void in the general direction where he remembered the demon to be while trying to make his hands stop shaking.

  AAAARGH

  Apparently, one of them hit as the demon let out a roar, and by the time the answering surge of darkness sharpened to a deathly degree, he was already moving. Well, more like stumbling, but he still managed to dodge the attack.

  “Ugh…” he grunted, hoping his Mana Scale absorbed the part that clipped him. Then, he finally had enough energy to look at the demon.

  Two of his three attacks visibly took out parts of the wall, while the last one managed to catch the demon at his side, leaving a rather sharp circular hole in it, which, while slowly regenerating, was still there. He smirked, knowing very well that the monster had lost most of its anchors, and most importantly, its batteries. The demon was probably using up what mana it managed to gather before Sam and Tim cut it off.

  Narrowing his eyes, he unleashed another batch of Void Blades, and he watched, satisfied, as the demon actually dove out of the way. Still, one or two managed to cut into the shadowy body, leaving clean empty spaces, making the demon look more and more like one of those paper snowflake projects before you unfold it.

  Using the momentary pause, he refocused on the mana in the air, and was happy to see wisps of disgusting mana escaping the body the cultists had crafted for the scheming demon. Yet, it was still on the mortal plane, still being able to send attacks that were as thick as tree trunks at Sam, who had to desperately dodge around, making sure he wouldn’t be hit by any of them.

  And when he had a momentary opportunity, he fired back. He sent blades of void, attempting to pincer in the demon, only for the gaseous body to suddenly turn razor thin and tall enough to touch the ceiling. He sent beams of nothingness, erasing errant parts of the demon, only to receive wave after wave of black liquid into his face, only protected by his impressive passive defenses against diseases and impure contaminations.

  He left behind clones, filled with void bombs, as the demon tried to strike him down with enlarged hands, filled with a fury of a being who was most definitely thwarted from having their plan to come to fruition.

  All the while yelling, cursing, and generally telling Sam what the demon would do to him when he finally caught him. Sam mostly tuned the demon out, occasionally catching a few snippets that made him want to fight even harder.

  Torture wasn’t possible in the game, and the emergency logout would send him back to the real world before the lowered pain transfer would even start to cross the line, but the in-game consequences – the debuffs, loss of experience points, items, or even skills – would be hard to recover from. Especially with Sam’s status. Losing those things, right now, would more than likely spell doom for his guild and, in turn, his company.

  It wouldn’t mean he would become destitute, as he made sure he had money put away in accounts and interests that had nothing to do with the game (and were future proof, per his memories) but still. As a gamer, he wouldn’t be able to live with himself…

  Thus, he fought even harder.

  Honestly, with the amount of maneuvering he had to do, it felt like he was pretending to be a five-year-old high on concentrated sugar syrup as he bounced around the hall that was slowly transforming into a shapeless hole in the ground, filled with rubble.

  “STAY STILL, YOU MAGGOT!” the demon yelled, holding out its hands and letting all its fingers (fourteen of them, seven on each hand) elongating and creating a weird web of deadly obstacle in front of him, causing Sam to duck just in time to feel a few hairs on his head sizzling away.

  “Only if you promise that we become friends!” he yelled back, using the movement to spring forward, running under the web of fingers and launching another pulse of void straight at the ‘legs’ of the demon.

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  At this point, he was pretty sure that the demon had enough fuel to go until Sam’s had run out, so he was only making sure that the demon was focusing on him while Tim found the last anchor. At least, Sam hoped the last anchor.

  ‘I don’t think I would survive if there were more than that…’ he mused, while doing his very best not to become Swiss cheese.

  An incredibly long minute later, the two of them, man and demon, stood across from each other, on perhaps the last intact patches of smooth stone floor, surrounded by walls that were collapsing as the ground around the basement floor was no longer being kept at bay by the ancient stone, Hills of stone debris and a few bodies of shadowy lesser demons (or weird mana constructs) that the Shadowed One summoned to distract Sam with.

  The only intact thing on Sam’s body was the armor created by the transformed Lucky, but even the loyal familiar was starting to look scruffy. Everything else was in tatters…

  Thankfully, the demon was in a similar situation. The body, so strong-looking previously, was riddled with holes that were releasing dangerous smoke. Honestly, it looked like someone found the eraser tool and used it on the demon’s body, but after every use, they randomly changed the shape of the tool.

  The only thing that was without any damage was the head with the two malicious red eyes that were looking straight at Sam as the two of them took deep breaths as two types of exhaustion crept on them…

  “Mortal…I shall destroy you!” came the threat from the demon as he raised one fist and shook it at Sam, rather feebly. “There is nothing you can do that would destroy me! Accept your defeat, and I shall be merciful in my punishment!”

  Sam replied that the only way he thought was acceptable.

  He gave the demon the finger.

  “What’s that? Is that the signal of your surrender? I’m not well-versed in your kind’s communication!” the demon inquired, bewildered, causing Sam to blink. It was just so out of left field…

  “You don’t know what that means?” he asked in disbelief, exhaustion momentarily forgotten.

  The demon looked at him, then snorted. “Of course, I know what it means, mortal! I was just fucking with you!” As it was yelling, it raised a hand, which shifted into a blade and launched itself forward at Sam, who only had a moment to shake the distraction off and raise his own sword to clash against the monster.

  They danced through the rubble, sword meeting sword, clashing as they tried to dominate each other while making sure they expended as little stamina and mana as possible. At least that was true for Sam. Based on his senses, the demon still had enough energy to throw around all those spells willy-nilly. Why it choose to engage Sam in a sword duel, he didn’t know…

  “It won’t work, you know…” the demon whispered as their swords hit each other, a grin on their face. “No matter what your friend does, there is no way that they would be able to–”

  Sam didn’t know what the demon wanted to say, but it didn’t really matter much as it was interrupted by another pulse, which was thankfully the last one. Before his very eyes – more like before his Mana Sense – Sam watched as the mana in the body of the demon began to unravel much faster than previously, as if somebody found a small thread in their jumper and began to pull and pull and pull…

  The red eyes of the monster widened, and it snarled. The voice that came out of the body was very different. It had an ethereal quality and distance to it, as if whatever was controlling the body was leaving.

  “Don’t think you won today, maggot. Don’t think that means anything. I’m in every shadow, in every corner, in every forgotten place. My ascension is inevitable!” Then the body of the demon seemed to freeze, the gaseous state turning into solid obsidian, freezing a demented grin on the monster’s face. “And here is a last gift for you!”

  Then, with a great pulse of mana, the obsidian body shattered into many tendrils that headed directly at the walls, ground, and ceiling, completely avoiding Sam.

  It took Sam a moment to process what was happening. His magical senses were trained on the departing presence of the demon, while his body was feeling the shakes that seemed to shudder through the remaining parts of the hall.

  “Shit!” he exclaimed just as pretty big part of the ceiling began to fall opening a small hole toward the floor above them. ‘Fucking demons…’ he cursed inwardly as he sheathed his sword and began to look for a way upwards.

  His first instinct was the stairs, but as he turned, he saw that they were turned into dust and mortar by the obsidian tendrils, leaving a gaping hole in the construction. Even then, he could have used the walls to kinda parkour himself upwards with some clever stone manipulation, but then the building shook again, creaking and groaning, and a veritable waterfall of stone and soil began to fall toward him.

  Cursing again, he jumped back into the destroyed hall and saw that even there, the debris kept falling. For a moment, he considered hunkering down and trying to survive the collapse and dig himself out later, but then he began to feel heat coming toward him.

  Flames of the color of the deepest green, coming from some hole that was opened up by the collapse.

  ‘Those do not look healthy…’ he cursed, then with a heavy sigh began to jump upward, using the falling debris as launching pads, while simultaneously dodging whatever was coming down. However, as he ascended, so did the building began to fall down faster and faster. Within seconds, he had to use void magic just to be able to avoid being blinded by the storm of dust, all the while green flames covered the bottom of the rapidly filling hole under him.

  Glancing at his mana bar, he saw he only had a few seconds before he was forced to stop doing everything he used to stay alive. Then, as he looked back up, he saw something different.

  Instead of the gray and brown of stone and soil, he saw black dotted with whites.

  The stars.

  It was only a small hole, but it was still a goal.

  With renewed hope, he dug deep, not even minding that he would be suffering from a nasty debuff, and began to jump from stone slab to stone slab, reaching with his hand while the very wind increased his jumping height.

  Stone and debris hit him, but he didn’t care.

  There was only one thing on his mind. Reaching that small hole that was rapidly crumbling into a bigger hole.

  Jump. Jump. Dodge. Ignore the rock that hit his shoulder. Jump. Jump.

  Lucky turned back into shadow, exhausted beyond belief, but still wanting to lessen the burden on his master.

  Another jump and he was in the air, only a few feet separating him from the edge of the hole.

  However, there were no holds or surfaces to launch himself forward. His mana tank was empty, hands stretching to their limits, hoping to catch the edge and prevent himself from falling.

  For an eternity, Sam looked up at the stars, knowing full well that no matter how he stretched, how he willed, he wouldn’t be able to reach salvation. He was just a moment and a mana too short.

  He watched as his fingertips brushed against the coarse material, then for a moment, at the apex of his jump, he felt weightless, before he felt gravity reasserting itself.

  He closed his eyes, knowing that he would be dying here. True, it was a game but it still felt shitty…

  Then a jerk, and he felt as if his arms were almost ripped out of his sockets. Then his body slammed against the wall, but miraculously, the falling feeling vanished.

  Opening his eyes, he saw that another hand was holding his own.

  Following the hand, he looked up to meet Tim’s eyes, surrounded by a tired face, dirty and sporting a few wounds. Sam also noted that his friend's clothing (at least as much as he could see from his position) was as much destroyed as his.

  Sam found that only one thing came out of his mouth.

  “You are missing an eyebrow!”

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  Character Sheet

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