He didn’t bother trying to go back through the attic and down the stairs. Instead, Hirrus leaped off the roof to the alley behind the building and ran back around to the front.

The front side of the building had been attacked. Right next to the front door was a large opening, the edges splintered. There was no sign of the attacker, so Hirrus rushed inside, activating Mighty Guard as he went.

If he was going to get blindsided, he needed to survive what was to come.

As soon as he entered, he felt an affliction take hold. A debuff. It was called Akatosh Grip, and reduced his attack speed, movement speed, casting speed rating, and cooldown reduction rating. The applied multiplier was small - he could counteract it with a few buffs - but it would still weaken him.

Its source wasn’t immediately apparent - no energy blast struck him first. But nearby there was a tall woman in purple leather armor, and on the floor at her feet a small ring glowed. Crackling lines of energy like the hands of a clock emerged from her feet, one of them ticking quickly around, while the other moved slowly in the opposite direction.

She wasn’t alone.

A burly woman in angry red splint mail had Kamar pinned to the wall. Kamar was visibly injured, but alive. The woman in red armor was pulsating with an angry orange glow, and as Hirrus watched, Kamar’s eyebrows singed to smoke.

Behind them was a spindly-looking man in gray plate armor. It looked wrong that such sturdy armor had been fitted to such a thin and lanky frame, and even with those defenses, as soon as the trio caught sight of Hirrus, he quickly moved around to put the others between him and Hirrus.

“You,” the woman in purple leathers snarled, narrowing her eyes at him.

“We were just talking about you,” the woman in red armor said. In contrast to her fearsome appearance, her tone was smooth and calm. “This man was just about to tell us where you were.”

“He wouldn’t have hesitated to,” Hirrus said quickly. “This man has no love for me. Let him go, and he would be more likely to be on your side than mine.”

“You can’t trick us,” the woman in purple snapped. “Why would we give up our hostage?”

Despite that, the woman in red turned and threw Kamar away, hurling him against the back wall. The man in gray armor quickly ducked around her, looking to avoid being directly exposed to either Hirrus or Kamar.

“Why would you do that, Juri?” the woman in purple snapped. “It gave us the upper hand to have a hostage!”

“No, it didn’t,” Juri said calmly. “Use your head, Orlina. I’m more useful to you with both hands free than stuck here pinning down a man who is no threat at all. And we’re not here to play power games and make demands. We’re here to kill him.”

“Orlina?” Hirrus asked, his voice small. “Juri?”

He looked between them.

They had completely different faces and voices - and, apparently, Arcana suites - than the Last of the Strong officers of the same name.

He shook his head. “I killed them only days ago, and someone has already laid claim to their names?”

“You don’t need to know the details,” the lanky man said, his voice surprisingly deep for someone with such a narrow chest. In an overly dramatic gesture that somehow employed his whole body, he pointed at Hirrus. “But we’ve come for our revenge. And this time, you can’t pick us off one by one.”

“Who are you supposed to be, then?” Hirrus asked. “Fidelis?”

“Oof,” the man said, putting a hand to his chest. “I’m not sure what offends me more, that you don’t remember me, or that you might mistake me for him.”

“Watch it,” Orlina snapped. “You know he’s watching us right now.”

“Let’s just say that last time, when you killed me in my bedroom, it wasn’t an ending,” the man in gray armor planted one hand on his hip and held his other hand up as though adjusting the brim of a hat, despite his helm being a brimless skullcap. “It was only to be continued…”

“Jesus Christ,” Juri said, shaking her head. “You’re the worst kind of weeb.”

Hirrus didn’t know what a “weeb” was, but he’d only killed two people in their bedrooms. One of them had been Juri, who was the woman in red armor.

That meant there was only one person the man could be.

“Clive,” Hirrus guessed. As soon as he said it, he realized he should have known. The peculiar manner of physically posturing was very reminiscent of the man’s behavior in their first encounter. “Though this time, I suppose it’s you who is approaching me?”

The smile that spread across Clive’s face reached nearly from ear to ear. “I can’t beat the shit out of you without getting closer,” he said, gleefully.

“Can you not, right now?” Orlina snapped. “We’re here to murder him, not turn him into a meme.”

Hirrus didn’t know how these three had returned, but that was very obviously Clive. It meant he had quite the fight on his hands.

While they were distracted, Hirrus powered up Carchian Verve. The immense power boost would bring this fight to a swift conclusion.

Juri shouted in alarm and charged at him.

Hirrus immediately saw a problem.

The cast time of Carchian Verve was being increased by the Akatosh Grip debuff emanating from Orlina. He wasn’t going to have time to stack up very much power. Fortunately, Fleetness of Tonner had no cast time at all, and so the speed debuff would not affect it.

He would just have to hope it was enough as Juri rocketed towards him, as if propelled by an Arcana.

Juri slammed into Hirrus bodily, carrying him through the hole in the front of the building and out into the street. Her arms wrapped around him, hefting him off the ground before she slammed him on his back. Hirrus only took three thousand damage from the attack, but the slam inflicted a debuff on him, sapping a small amount of his TEN, which would make him more vulnerable. At the same time, the pulsating red glow coming off of her singed him for another one thousand four hundred damage.

It was a negligible amount, but clarified that this was going to be a fearsome brawl.

Every little bit would count.

Fortunately, being flung outside meant he was temporarily outside of the reach of Orlina’s debuff. Before getting back on his feet, he activated Terminus Grip, Iron Typhoon, and Ravening Burn one right after another. The tremendous damage bonuses - as well as the attack speed - were the best he could get out before Orlina rushed out of the building, the aura applying once more.

Juri grabbed Hirrus by the ankles and yanked with a triumphant laugh, spinning him twice before flinging him against a nearby lamppost. The iron post bent under the impact, and Hirrus suffered another two thousand damage. He landed on his feet, this time, though, and his weapons were in hand before Juri could close the gap again.

“I’ve got to get me one of these,” Juri said, looking down at her hands.

Hirrus wondered what she meant. Her new form seemed much larger than her previous appearance. It seemed she was enjoying the extra muscles.

Or perhaps just the Arcana that had come with it.

Hirrus lunged forward, but Orlina raised a hand. A shimmering purple barrier the same color as her armor materialized in front of Hirrus. Instead of getting into position to Rapid Rip through Juri, he slammed face-first into the semi transparent wall.

Lashing out with his weapons, he found it impervious to damage, the blades sliding off it like bare fingers on a glass window. Perhaps Civilization Buster could break through it, but with Akatosh Grip afflicting him, he couldn’t spare the time to cast it before Juri could close the distance and grapple him once more.

“You can’t kill me this way,” Hirrus observed, hoping he could taunt one of them - particularly Orlina - into making a mistake.

“That’s not our job,” Juri said in a playful sing-song tone. “We’re just here to control you. You’re too much of a handful for any one player, so both of us only have control and sustain.”

“Unlike all the dead in your wake,” Orlina said, face twisting into a satisfied sneer, “we fight smarter, not harder.”

“We hold you,” Juri said, hooking a thumb over her shoulder back at the building. “He punches.”

Clive stepped out into the street, and thrust a hand out towards Hirrus. A blast of silvery energy that looked like a cloud of spinning blades shot across the space, passing through Orlina’s barrier and striking him in the shoulder. The attack did well over five thousand damage, and the bladed projectile returned to Clive’s outstretched hand, enveloping him in a spinning bladed barrier.

“We aren’t here to trade blow for blow,” Clive said. “We know that’s not possible. I know better than anyone how that Cosmic Barrette works. We just have to keep our speed up, and your speed down. We don’t feed you free healing, and I just keep throwing haymakers.”

His other hand came up, and a glowing blue field of energy started to bubble up around Hirrus. It didn’t do damage, but it reduced his movement speed. As he moved to get out of it, the field grew stronger and stronger. It seemed to not have any cap, making escape more and more impossible with each passing second, forcing Hirrus to use Rapid Rip not to attack, but only to reposition himself out of the energy field.

Hirrus moved to run around the edge of the semitransparent barrier. Before he reached the edge, though, a glowing red beam shot from Clive’s hand, spraying the ground right in front of him along the end of the wall. Hirrus thought he had avoided the attack, but as soon as he stepped over the space where the beam had gone, he saw that the ground there was glowing.

The glow erupted in a fiery explosion, dealing eight thousand damage to him.

“Go ahead, keep struggling,” Orlina said, brandishing a cruelly curved Katar. “Useless as it may be, we won’t have any fun killing you if you don’t make us work for it!”