…Erdis’ PoV…

“Sir, do you have a moment?”

Embers fly out of my nose when I sigh and turn around, my most trustworthy spy waits for me at the entrance of the room. The wiry Dragonewt’s clothes, a set of thin leather armor enchanted by our best craftsmen, can somehow perfectly hide a dozen of poisoned knives and various weapons.

I glance at my daughter resting on the bed next to me. What I see makes my heart ache. She’s barely recognizable under the mass of bandages covering her damaged body. Our healers had to put her in an artificial coma. If they didn't, she would start to tear her own body apart to remove the pieces of metal that are still growing inside her.

“What is it Krosi? I hope you have good news.”

The spy respectfully lowers his head, “Of course Sir, I wouldn’t dare to disappoint you when you trusted me with such an important mission.”

“Then speak.”

“We’ve been stalking the target for a few days now, and I can confirm he’s not under any protection from the Wolfheart, or anyone for that matter.”

At least that bitch knows her place… Not that it’ll save her though, I’m going to purge those dogs to the last one once I’m done with this insect.

“The target doesn’t seem to be aware of our presence, and hasn’t done anything of note other than moving to a rather isolated mansion at the outskirts of town.”

This doesn’t make much sense to me, why would he make our job easier? I’m sure that this bastard knows we’re coming, so why isn’t he preparing for our attacks?

“Are you sure he’s done nothing of note? Maybe it’s a trap…” I ask.

Krosi nods, “I’m completely sure Sir, other than buying a cheap defense array for his property John Thomson has done nothing. I’m not sure what he’s thinking since the kind of defensive system he bought could be destroyed by anyone worth their salt in less than a second.”

Hearing that name makes my blood boil and I almost destroy my cane in a fit of rage. This Outsider nearly killed my daughter with vile, disgusting weapons that were most likely supplied to him by the Wolfheart. I know how that bitch works, and it's likely that she was frightened by our growing power. So she organized this whole debacle with the lich and recruited this man as a disposable agent to kill my daughter.

But he failed.

Instead, my beloved Alza has to suffer a fate worse than death and is likely to be crippled for the rest of her life despite our best efforts to save her. According to our healers, even a single speck of metal could turn into massive spikes that will tear her organs apart. So they have to cut her open and remove the largest pieces of metal from her insides, every day.

I grind my teeth as I look at my sleeping daughter, rage coursing through every fiber of my being. The Wolfheart took my left leg, and now they tried to take my daughter.

So I will not stop until every single one of them is dead, even if I have to burn the Council to the ground.

“Proceed with the plan, and send all the Black Claws.”

The Black Claws is a secret unit under my direct command that specializes in undercover assassination and infiltration missions. I handpicked each member of this unit so I know that’s they’ll succeed no matter how hard the mission is.

“All of them?”

“Are you deaf?!” I growl at the kneeling man, “Recall any Black Claw from their current assignments. I want John Thomson’s head no matter the cost! Now leave me be.”

Krosi nods before disappearing in a puff of smoke.

…John’s PoV…

“Fuck!” My pained shout echoes in the empty halls of my new house, I grit my teeth until the red-hot metal splinter embedded into my arm disappears.

“And I thought this one would work…” I throw the remains of the failed prototype to the side.

This is the fifth one today…

I thought that developing a new version of the Shield Glove would be easy but I couldn’t have been more wrong, each time I solved a problem another one appeared.

At least it’s getting better since the previous iterations just exploded…

And I don’t mean a small explosion since more than half of my house got destroyed by the first few prototypes. Of course, the Rewinder helped erase the damages but it's still disheartening to know that the Glove doesn't work.

I don’t even know why it’s exploding, according to my sketches everything should work as intended…

I sigh and sit in front of a desk covered in sheets of paper and weirdly shaped pieces of metal. It’s been four days since I moved into my new house, and I have been experimenting ever since. Of course, I already took care of setting up defenses in a form of a ritual circle hidden under a large rug in my entrance hall.

The salesman said that I could handle most threats, so I hope he wasn’t lying… because it was expensive.

But let’s focus back on the present; I’m currently working on a tool to improve my mobility. At first, I wanted to experiment with enchanted boots, but the runes for increasing speed were too complex. So I racked my brain for another solution, and that’s when I remembered the ritual Riley had used to invade the lair of the necromancer.

If I couldn’t move faster, I could just teleport.

And, as it turns out, the ritual Riley used existed as a spell and even as runes. Sadly, the runes were overly complicated and required a ton of mana.

But I wasn’t discouraged and tried to use something I found out during my previous tests. Using a single rune to do everything was all fine and dandy, but they were too hard to engrave. So I broke the rune down into multiple smaller ones and mashed everything together with wires.

This method is surprisingly effective. I already had several artifacts that could make two portals appear side by side, and I even managed to hook up an Interdimensional GPS to enter coordinates into an artifact.

But everything is not as good as I would like; I can only create fist-sized portals that are an inch apart. Otherwise, the spell takes too long to charge and fizzle out. The stability of the portals is also questionable since the random objects I threw into them either never came out or were deformed beyond recognition.

“Why is everything so difficult?” I say to no one in particular while holding my head between my palms.

Then I feel a sudden pressure at the back of my head, and everything went dark.

I blink a few times until I realize I’m back in my bed, and it’s early in the morning according to the alarm clock on my bedside table.

What happened?

Well, I am pretty sure I know what happened since it’s a familiar situation. But I can’t recall doing anything that would cause my death.

Maybe one of my prototypes got unstable and exploded? That never happened before but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was the case…

“Oh well, I should be more careful in the future then. And it’s not like I lost something important since the prototypes I had to test today were all garbage.” I mumble to myself as I get up from my bed and head to the bathroom.

I then go to my kitchen once my shower is done and eat my breakfast before entering a large room in the back of the house that I transformed into a workshop. I call it a workshop, but it honestly looks more like a landfill. Heavy machinery and pieces of metals are randomly strewn around the room, and let’s not talk about the numerous desks covered in piles of papers and failed artifacts.

Yeah, no wonder something exploded in there… I should clean up.

Cleaning up took a few hours, but I am satisfied with the results; I can finally see the floor! I already transferred most of the failed prototypes to an adjacent room and I’ll dispose of them later. Or at least I will try.

I should seriously look into artifact disposal. I don’t want to turn my home into a crater by accident…

I’m in the middle of sorting between the failures and the ones I somehow didn’t test since they either fell from a desk or got buried under stacks of drawings.

Now the sorting is done so let’s test these things out.

The first device I grab is a small steel cube, I rack my brain to remember what it's supposed to be but find nothing. So I extend my arm and close my eyes before pressing the control rune engraved on one of its sides.

A few seconds pass, and nothing explodes.

I open my eyes and tension leaves my body. Two green portals emitting the occasional sparks are floating on top of the cube.

“Green portals? That’s a new color. Let’s see how they work…”

My eyes scan the room for something to put into the portals, and I find a small pile of screws lying on a nearby desk. I grab a screw and throw it into the entry portal, causing the other one to become an oval and sizzle for a brief second before returning to normal.

Still not working… But maybe they work better than the other ones since not a single artifact I made has a 100% transfer rate.

The results were disappointing. Only four screws came out of the twenty I threw. And I had to stop using the cube since glowing cracks started to appear on its surface; it would’ve exploded if I didn’t notice the cracks in time.

This artifact is a bust, but at least I can learn from it since the few screws that came out were intact.

My shoulders slumps when I notice the rows of artifacts on the desk.

“How did I make so many and never noticed that they were missing? I hope they won’t explode…”

Fluttering paper takes me out of my stupor and I turn towards the noise.

What’s that? I didn’t leave any windows open… I hope it’s not one of my stacks of papers that collapsed, otherwise sorting through them is going to be a-

My thoughts are suddenly stopped when cold spreads through my body.

The last thing I see before collapsing is a blurry humanoid figure.

I stand up from my bed, covered in cold sweat and with a ragged breath.

What was that?!

I calm my breathing and close my eyes, the scene of my fast death replayed in front of my eyes.

Yeah, there’s no possible doubt about it, it was a person…

The implications are terrifying. If I was killed by a person, then that meant they were able to bypass my barrier…

And I can only think of one type of people who would do that: Scalebound assassins.

Shivers go down my spine when I process who my opponent is. I didn’t even notice him until it was too late, so his hiding skills must be excellent… And that meant my chances of beating him, even with the help of the Rewinder, are very low.

With Alza it was easier since we were confined to an arena, but now… he can move freely and attack from anywhere, and I have no way of detecting him.

“FUCK!” I punch a wall in frustration.

How can I possibly survive this?! None of my artifacts are even close to working properly! And my barrier was totally useless!

I punch the wall until I calm down and then sit on my bed to think things through.

“First of all, I’ll need this…” I open the drawer of my bedside table and pull out the phone hooked to a button before turning it on and strapping it to my arm.

I never thought I would need this so soon…

I adjust the straps on my arms and press the button a few times to make sure it’s working properly, and then grab my pistol resting on top of my bedside table. A smirk appears on my face. At least there was one thing that worked well, and it was my special growing bullets.

I had briefly experimented with them and they would now explode once they reached a certain size. Each fragment would grow and explode again, thus repeating the cycle.

The gun also underwent extensive testing and I managed to pinpoint how much mana the runes could endure before they start cracking.

So I should be able to penetrate the assassin’s armor.

At least I hope so. Otherwise, I destroyed my fingers for nothing…

Having a firearm explode in your hand is not a pleasant experience.

And adding another explosion fuelled by crazed mana on top of that makes it especially unpleasant. The first full power test blew my entire arm off.

I take a deep breath to stop the painful memories from surfacing. Now’s not the time to think about that.

At least the upcoming fight will likely make it a pleasant memory by comparison, especially since I don’t have a shield.

Come on John, you can do it!

…Who am I kidding? My attempts at motivating myself are delusional. For fuck’s sake, I'm going to fight a magical assassin working for a family of hell-breathing lizards that hate my guts.

This guy can probably raze the entire town with a single finger. And what do I have to defend myself with other than a pistol that can fire bullets that are a bit faster than normal?

And, as if it wasn’t enough, I’m completely alone.

I can't count on Riley who still hasn't contacted me despite my messages. He's probably been ordered to stay clear of me, and I can't really blame him for that considering the situation… but it still hurt.

An hour passed, then two…

He should be here in a few minutes.

I wait for my assailants in the flat area behind my house. An open field should make it harder for him to hide, and make him easier to shoot. And I’m leaning against a wall so he shouldn’t be able to attack me from behind.

…Or he’s going to attack from the back by punching through the wall.

A sudden puff of smoke tells me that I’m wrong as a humanoid figure appears in front of me. I barely have the time to press the button on my palm before coldness invades my body.

This time I dodge the attack before it lands, but the hit still grazes my skin and paralyze me.

Fuck! Of course, his blade will be poisoned…

My regeneration flushes the poison out of my body just in time for me to press the button again.

I shoot at the charging figure as soon as I regain my senses. The bullet burns the atmosphere around it as it impacts the assassin, stopping him in his tracks.

The assassin’s face is hidden under a hood so I can’t tell his expression as he raises a short sword made of blue glimmering metal and disappears from my vision.

A stinging sensation spreads in my abdomen, and the next thing I see is the severed bottom-half of my body.

I click the button before the pain reaches my brain, and turn towards the direction where the figure will emerge before emptying my magazine. Sparks erupt from his armor and his subtle flinch tells me that he took damage.

Now the bullets should do their thing…

The assassin contorts once his arm starts to deform, but it’s already too late for him to…

He then suddenly cuts off his bulging arm that falls on the ground before exploding in a burst of metal, causing blue blood to rain on us.

Fuck! That wasn’t supposed to happen!

My assailant glares at me and swallows a pill, he grunts while bulging veins appear under his armor and spread all over his body. The purpose of the pill becomes clear when a brand new arm covered in black scales replace the severed one.

The Dragonewt rushes towards me while using his new limb as a shield. I fire as much as possible into the figure but he catches my bullets into his arm before cutting it off with a swift slash of his blue sword. I drop the empty magazine on the ground and grab another one, but the assassin reaches me before I can insert it into my firearm.

I can only watch as he turns into a blur and the familiar coldness of death spreads across my body.

This time I didn’t have the time to press the button, so I end up Rewinding to before the fight even started.

But it’s not like it mattered much anyway. I’ll lose no matter what.

My special bullets were supposed to make me able to fight the overpowered beings from the Hidden World. But my encounter with the assassin proved that I was sorely mistaken. They already developed a countermeasure against my one and only mean of attack.

There’s no point in fighting anymore, I can’t win.

I fall to my knee as a figure emerges from a puff of smoke.

Again and again…this never-ending cycle of life and death repeats so much that I stop counting.

But I can’t do anything.

Maybe ending it all now would be for the best? There’s no way I can fight this guy. And even if I finally managed to beat him, then the Scalebound would just send another guy, or just use one of their spells to nuke the area…

I look up and sigh, the peaceful blue sky and the chirping birds gives a peaceful atmosphere to this place.

There are worse places to die at…

I pull out my phone and my thumb hovers over the screen. Pressing this button will send a text to all my hidden phones, thus deactivating my Timed Rewinds.

Then I’ll throw away the phone strapped to my arm and I’ll be truly freed from this hellish cycle…

However, my hesitation is replaced by a primal fury, a deep-seated hatred that makes my limbs tremble.

I’m tired, so tired… I want this to end.

But doing nothing will not end this hell, and letting them kill me would only help them.

So I put my phone in my pocket and get up with new determination.

I’ll fight.

No matter how much I’ll have to endure, I’ll fight.

And I swear that I’ll remove the Scalebound from the surface of the planet.