Ileot Swacc was forced to make his decision when he saw Vualla begin to treat his duplication’s body with basic first aid and healing Skills. He was already furious enough that he hadn’t thought it necessary to check for a duplication for himself in the projection; it made him mortified. So despite the fact that it seemed inevitable that this version of himself would suffer the same fate as the original, Ileot could accept that. Such a fear was a familiar entity in his heart. Ileot was already swearing vengeance when he realized that wasn’t what happened.

Vualla had begun to heal Eliot.

Which could only mean one thing; she had a much more sinister plan in store for him.

When he realized that, Ileot had felt a deep, primal fear of the unknown that overwhelmed all of his carefully prepared contingency plans. It was a type of fear that he didn’t even feel toward the Nether King itself. A fear that he could only feel toward the sister that had internalized his lessons in the projected world and became something worse than a monster.

She was a monster that wore a face he once loved.

But Ileot Swacc was also furious at this latest betrayal of expectation. And that anger provided him with a very satisfactory and direct solution. Burn the rest of the liquid Aether in your position. Kill them all. The Nether King, the Vualla’s, your own duplication… just erase them all from existence. Bury this meaningless karma, once and for all.

The plan came with high costs; he would be extremely weak afterward with no more hidden tricks. Burning liquid Aether had the effect of pushing away System Aether in the surrounding area, so it would be hard to recover much strength. Especially with the Nether Rift gradually spreading to cover their position.

But even so… it was the only hope Ileot found. He was prepared to bet everything on it.

I want this all to be over. I want to just… rest, finally.

So Ileot began to slowly gather himself, preparing to unleash a blast of incandescent energy that would burn all the reserves of liquid Aether that he had managed to carefully create in his three thousand year existence. It pained him to do so, but Ileot dearly wanted freedom from that constant fear that had dogged him all his life. He was tired of needing to look over his shoulder and avoid the looming threat of the Nether Kings.

He was tired of wondering if karma was a real thing or just a boogyman used to scare children.

His Aether began to burn and his attack took shape. First, he held a small orb of white lightning, but as he rapidly condensed his power that small orb grew to a bonfire. Soon it was a river of liquid, sparkling white fire that flowed around his body. It snapped and cracked, melting the surrounding stones as Ileot looked across the widening gap toward the dwindling island on which the fighting was occurring.

From here, the sound of Nether King’s ongs were almost distant. It was the crackle and snap of white lightning turning to fire that filled Ileot’s ears with a roaring cacophony.

As Ileot built up more and more momentum he carefully split the power he was gathering into two different forms. The first was a more violent and unpredictable form that was probably three-fourths of his power. It formed the frothing river that spun rapidly around him, growing in size every moment. And then there was an extremely condensed, piercing tongue of white flame that was the other fourth of his power. It was a seed, slowly sprouting in his right hand.

His power continued to build as he examined the battlefield. The river of fire and lighting grew to the side of a large building around him. Panting, Ileot couldn’t keep his hands from beginning to tremble. Finally… after so long… it will all be over… All I need to do is just-

Everything was under his control. He held the tightly leashed power in his hands that would allow him to seize his destiny. This was the key to his future. All he needed now was the perfect opportunity.

Just the thought made Ileot’s heart tremble. Fear surged up from the depths of his heart, frigid and grasping. What if he missed that chance? Yet he had now lived for three thousand years. No matter how exciting his last few hours had been, no matter what shocking things he had learned, he still had enough presence of mind to ignore the fear.

I can grasp this chance. It’s the last step. After that…

So Ileot waited, with the fear constantly whispering that he would miss this chance. It was a constant distraction. Lord Miln and Lady Iellaya began struggling against the Nether King and switched their focus to eliminating the Nether Heralds. As he saw the change, Ileot considered striking. But he stayed his hand, creating a feedback loop with his energy around him.

The building of white lightning and fire had grown to a mountain. The larger energy grew increasingly violent while that seed became a concentrated tongue of flame that was almost unmoving. Yet as Ileot considered the attack that he was slowly creating within his right hand, the hairs on the back of his neck stood on end.

When the moment came, Ileot did not miss it.

Through the hazy of fear, anxiety, and reverberating battle, he found his chance to strike pretty easily. Because for a split second, the entire battlefield was stunned into stillness by the long shadow cast by the image of Randidly Ghosthound. That vast network of glimmering golden roots stretched outward without any apparent strain and everyone stared in wonder. The vast image was so self-evidently powerful that not even Ileot could believe what the boy had managed to accomplish. His mind almost denied what he was seeing.

Truthfully, everyone froze except a single individual; Lady Iellaya used the moment of hanging time to position herself next to one of the golden roots, with Lord Miln and the Nether King in front of her. One hand went to the root and Ileot watched in fascination as she absorbed a portion of the golden light and unleashed a devastating attack that pinned Lord Miln and the Nether King together for an extra second.

Even as Ileot activated the powers he had created, he narrowed his eyes. The mountain of roaring energy around him stirred. Of course, she would be prepared. The Ghosthound is her subordinate… But the real question is how his image became so much more powerful than it was earlier…

Ileot’s power crackled and spat as he blasted it forward across the Great Rift and hit the other floating stone island. As the white lightning and flames spread outward, it became a huge wave of sparkling light that engulfed that island. It was a sea of luminous diamonds. It was a beautiful way to die. Ileot distantly felt Randidly’s image of the World Tree fade and his power began attacking the remaining combatants on the far island.

Ileot didn’t bother to protect those individuals who had been on the island, but neither did he attempt to focus any power on them; they were all secondary targets. Them being injured by the attack was a nice bonus, but Ileot would face Vualla only after the Nether King had been finished off. He would deal with one foe at a time.

After annihilating the remaining stone in the area and knocking away the other bodies, Ileot’s energies curved back on themselves and began to whirl like a tornado, grinding away at the Nether King’s exterior.

Bit by bit, its liquid armor was forced away. Ileot’s hand, the one holding the single tongue of horrifyingly condensed flame, spasmed as his eyes were trained on that figure. As its exterior is ripped away… only then…

However, it appeared the Nether King understood Ileot’s plan. Rather than letting him grind away at it and face its core, its body began producing quite a quantity of the strange liquid that functioned as its skin. It became a battle of endurance. Sighing, Ileot forcefully continued to rip those defenses away. More and more of his liquid Aether drained away. But the tedious game of chicken did give him a bit of a chance to reflect on what he had seen from Randidly Ghosthound’s image.

Very quickly, Ileot identified three factors as to why the image had improved drastically in power. But even after finding those three things, it was hard for Ileot to believe that these explanations really justified that overwhelming image that had stilled the entire battlefield.

Not even Ileot could deny it. The World Tree had been breathtaking in a way that shouldn’t have been possible. It had felt real.

The first reason Ileot noted, and perhaps the most understandable reason for the jump in strength, was that the Ghosthound fueled his Skill using liquid Aether. It would certainly explain an improvement, but it left Ileot with a lot of questions. Hed hadn’t detected any liquid Aether in the Ghosthound in their previous encounters. And given the horrendous difficulty in condensing liquid Aether…

Perhaps Vualla provided him some liquid Aether…? But no, that shouldn’t be it either…

Although explaining away the Ghosthound having liquid Aether by using Vualla was convenient, it was directly contradicted by the second factor in Ileot’s analysis: that the liquid Aether that was used by the Ghosthound was almost perfectly synchronized with his image. It had a multiplicative effect on the image’s potency. And if he hadn’t condensed it himself, that sort of synchronization would be almost impossible.

And honestly, the image and energy had been basically perfectly aligned. Ileot had never heard of liquid Aether taking so well to an image before, even if someone had spent a hundred years repeatedly refining a single drop for a specific Skill.

Ileot’s eyes narrowed as he maintained some attention to his current task. Luckily, the skin of the Nether King couldn’t keep up with him burning all of his liquid Aether. With every rotation of his energy around its body, its defenses were being sheered away. Slowly, Ileot Swacc raised his hand.

But it’s the third reason for the Ghosthound’s strength that is the most dangerous… Ileot hummed to himself.

Because the reason that the image had proliferated so quickly and so completely throughout the battlefield was due to the fact that it ran along the hotly contested divide between Aether and Nether. That is to say, that image could move seemingly freely between Aether and Nether. It could exist safely in either. Those cracks of space opened up by the damage the two energies did to each other were filled in an instant by that energy. Those cracks had become roads for that image.

In that way, the image had frozen the efforts of both sides. Because it was relying on the energies’ weights on either side to keep the other from acting to dislodge it. And it had worked.

For the duration of its existence, both sides had been helpless before it.

The Nether King’s defenses became so thin that the liquid covering its chest was more insubstantial that gauze. Ileot flicked his wrist and sent that small tongue of flame shooting forward. The timing of this was extremely important. As Ileot had noted earlier, the exterior acted as a defense, but also as a limiter on the Nether King’s abilities. Once that defense was breached, the Nether King’s capabilities would transform radically.

Which meant Ileot needed to inflict a deep wound before that transformation could be completed.

In a second, that tongue of white fire crossed the gap between the two figures and arrived next to the Nether King. Clenching his other fist, Ileot increased the ferocity of the swirling vortex of white lightning around the Nether King. That last bit of liquid Nether armor was evaporated by Ileot’s assault.

After the Nether King then… best to suppress the Ghosthound as quickly as possible. His powers are unpredictable.

OOOOOOONNNNNNNNNNNNGGG-

A reverberation at an entirely different level of volume shook the surrounding area as the Nether King’s core was finally revealed. Ileot smashed that core with that condensed tongue of flame and sharply cut off the noise.