The problem with the doppelganger, Lukas mused, was that it was only half stupid.

It was not terribly skilled at combat. No, if anything, it fought out of sheer reflex. The failsafe had been constructed based on a copy of Lukas’s soul architecture, and installed on the aqāru matrix. Adding in a couple of other attributes from the previous failsafe, the aqāru was able to generate a fully functional aqāru copy of Lukas Aguilar that shared all of his skills, all of them amplified by the relatively infinite energy reserves the crypt had at its command.

But the moment he employed trickery in the fight, the doppelganger failed to match up with it. For all its duplication, it was far from being able to develop his own perception, combat awareness, and creativity, something no skill could install in a system. This meant that it was prone to literally breaking down whenever its strategies fell apart. And when one thing went wrong, other things went wrong, until it would be buried under a mountain of its own mistakes. The issue was trying to get it to make that first mistake. It tended to happen most often when it thought it had a certain victory and stopped to gloat. When it wasn’t certain of victory, it tended to do things like…dissolve into the liquid and instead send a hundred aqāru spears at whatever the threat was.

Such as what was happening now.

Lukas raised a fiery sword, a testament to his Metamancy and Pyromancy, and dashed toward his counterpart, with Shatterpoint Intuition guiding the trajectory of his blows. A wall of aqāru spears rose in defiance of his statement and shot at him, every single blade aiming for a lethal part of his body.

It took every iota of his strength and agility just to deflect them all.

“Bringing spears to a sword fight? That’s overly rude even for you.”

The failsafe grinned back, an expression of simple joy, but its eyes showed there was nothing behind it but a malice so deep it seemed to seep out into the air and make the world darker just by existing.

“This body isn’t fighting. It is simply a weapon to carry out Extermination Protocol. Why would you expect it to play fair?”

Lukas smiled slightly. “Oh I don’t know. I didn’t exactly ask the crypt to pick me as your role model, but you did pick up most of my worst habits without learning the good ones.”

The doppelganger tilted its head.

“Oh, come now. You copied my soul architecture. I got a backdoor into the crypt’s, or should I say, your awareness. You’re attacking the yokai territory right now. A good plan, but bad timing.”

One of its arms morphed into a large broadsword before going up in flames.

“And while you can craft a blade and put it on fire better than me, fighting with it isn’t a skill you have. Unless you’ve somehow managed to kill and add Ryu to your collection, you’re frankly no match for me.”

He inwardly smiled at the mindless rage in the doppelganger’s eyes. Addition of the human mind might have granted it a flexibility of thought that monsters didn’t share, but it brought its own share of negatives with it.

The doppelganger raised its sword—or, he supposed, its hand—with all the grace and subtlety of a butcher going at a carcass as it came in with an overhand swing. The technique was childish, pitiful, but the speed of it was undeniable and the power impossible. Mana, lifeforce, Kinetomancy—any defense he could manage would be blown away with a single blow, cutting him in half.

Which is why he let his own sword dissipate into motes of energy, and relaxed himself. The trick was to be at peace within himself and let oneself sway in time with the motions around him. Inanna had said that the technique was originally based on the ebb and flow characteristics of water, but lent itself easily to Kinetomancy, which was the manipulation of motion itself.

Closing his eyes, and devoting the entirety of his perception to Seismic Sensing, Lukas sidestepped to one side, letting the fiery blade pass harmlessly past him, and before it had time to even register it, five pairs of fingers slammed at different points of its metallic body.

The doppelganger erupted in a splash of aqāru and fell down to the floor, only for another copy to rise up and take its place. It let out an annoyed grunt and came for him.

Lukas opened his eyes and sighed. “This is no fun when you get angry.”

As if on cue, a dozen serpentine necks, ending in deformed razor-lined mouths, rose out of the floor and lashed out. No two were alike: in one were a dozen smaller snapping jaws, in one there was a perfect khorkhoi-replica, and then there were those that had a sharklike feel. All they had in common was that they were large enough to bite his head off, if not gobble him entirely before crushing him to sticky paste. Twelve of them striking at the same time was probably enough to kill anyone.

Or so one would think from looking at them, anyway.

Lukas taught them better.

He charged, ducking under the first head, stabbing it with a fire lance upward through the maw, dragging the lance along its neck and splitting it open in a single smooth motion, black ichor flooding out with each step. He leaped and spun in midair, his lance swirling around him, and the next two heads found themselves cut free from their necks entirely to hurl out and land on the floor. He landed lightly, grabbed one of the remaining monsters by the head. Invisible hands yanked it forward until it was literally in front of him while his right hand came down from atop, chopping the head off in one neat strike.

The entire exchange had taken two seconds at best.

The surrounding aqāru bubbled and then another dozen or so monsters rose up from the floor.

“You know,” Lukas said conversationally, “I didn’t really hate you until just now. But my word, you’re such a bitch I just can’t help it.”

The battle waged further.

Every time he hacked into its metal flesh, more would proliferate and cease the wound.

Every time he incinerated an entire “body,” a new one would take its place.

Every time he managed to surprise it, the doppelganger would adjust accordingly and learn from it, careful not to make the same mistake twice.

Lukas became increasingly dissatisfied as he slashed and parried and burned his opponent. Yet no matter what he tried, it all ended the same way. There was simply no way to kill it. But there was something about its behavior that struck him as odd.

It wouldn’t let him help the others. Or get even remotely close to them.

“And why do you think that is?”

Simple. It had his skills. And the longer it was fighting him, the faster it would get to perfecting his style. But if he switched places with the others, it would lose that advantage and have to fight them in a fair fight. That said, he was sure he could take both Banksi and Tanya together if he really went overboard and was willing to lose his life in the process. This monster, on the other hand—it might not have his trickery or his deviousness, but its power was more than a satisfactory compensation. And it was its ability to adapt to Lukas’s style in real time that was downright alarming.

“Hardly. You’re fighting an omphalos. Its ability to gather information and skills overwhelms you by several orders of magnitude.”

The failsafe raised both hands and unleashed a shaft of white-hot light in his direction. Lukas didn’t have time to think, but some part of him knew this game. He could feel mana surging within him as his ley lines synthesized way more mana than he ever had.

The other part of him—the part that he was sure was him—viewed these tactics with alarm. The doppelganger had the advantage of being made out of aqāru, making him just as fast as he was, with twice the power and strength. Not to mention he could be regenerated in an instant, and had absolutely no distractions.

But the omphalos in him didn’t care about that. It simply saw the crypt’s omphalos as a challenge. It was running on the cold logic of numbers. Assimilation of the crypt’s omphalos into itself would grant it a boost that was magnitudes above its own, as well as resources that it would never gain otherwise. Not to mention this vast anomaly around him could serve as a micro-world where it controlled everything.

Its personal domain.

And the best way to do that was to amp its own Host’s power and faculties to be able to match the crypt’s failsafe. That was probably the only reason his omphalos was throwing so much power at him.

And if Lukas played along with that idea, his doppelganger was going to spill his guts across the ground. More literally, it would destroy his body, and transfer his consciousness into itself, ridding Lukas of his rationality and turning him into the murder-hobo that Tanya had gotten a little taste of earlier.

A murder-hobo that had all the power of two omphaloi, and a domain in which his rule was absolute.

So screw being the Base Host, he’d fight this battle as Lukas Aguilar. Before everything else, he was a human.

In his world, humanity didn’t have any schema. They didn’t have quantified Potential or Level Ups. They couldn’t play with the elements like they were toys. But what they could do was solve their problems using their own ingenuity: their ability to improvise.

And improvise, Lukas would.

“What you are contemplating is dangerous.”

Can’t say that until I’ve tried, right?

Dodging the next blow, Lukas jumped back by several steps, glaring at this monster who seemingly refused to kill him. Not because of mercy, not because of respect, and certainly not because it couldn’t.

It was keeping him alive simply for the failsafe to achieve completion. Every second it remained alive, the crypt drew more information from Lukas’s Soul. Every second he failed to end it, the failsafe was getting closer and closer to becoming a more complete duplicate. And until the process was over, this doppelganger would keep playing this game of cat and mouse.

His current skills would not hold.

But he knew what could.

“I’m surprised,” said his doppelganger, casually walking toward him. It had even dropped those faux daggers, not that it had any real need for them. “I had expected you to attack more fiercely. Where is that viciousness you used to strike down my previous failsafe?”

“Your failsafe, is it? And here I thought you were just the puppet.”

There was that grin again. It was almost enough to give him a complex. “A lot of things are achieving completion tonight. My failsafe will become your exact duplicate, and I will have you. I will become more. My army will absorb the spirits, and then I’ll have them. And then, I will overwhelm the predator, and then, I will have her. Once I’ve accomplished all that, I will be free.”

Lukas raised an eyebrow, feeling like the failsafe had told him something vital.

“Free from what?”

“Oh, human,” it chided. “You’re still in the dark? Has your progenitor not told you?”

Lukas stared at it hard. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Something ugly flickered in that smile for a few beats. Then it shook its head and made an exasperated little sound. “Nothing you will understand, and nothing I am willing to explain. Now come!”

“This isn’t a conversation I ever expected to have with you,” Lukas admitted, “And please, stop smiling so much. It’s disturbing.”

Its grin widened, and as it did, its right arm turned into a massive blade as it dashed at him. Lukas parried it without even looking. The weapons locked again with a clash of metal and thunder, the colliding lifeforce kicking up sparks. The two of them leaped backward as one to break the lock, and Lukas cursed under his breath, knowing that fighting it at a long range would be far more difficult.

Which was probably why it did that.

The doppelganger was his reflection. It shared his traits, his positives and his negatives. Its style reflected his strategies and his flaws. So if he could use a strategy that went against his own self then it could probably work. And for that, he needed the right weapon.

Or rather, the right monsters.

Luckily for him, he had a lot of monsters in his arsenal.

Hundreds of different images flashed across his mind’s eye in less than a second. For someone who had never done this before, Lukas was amazed at how intuitive the process was. It was like exercising an old, unused muscle. With conscious effort, Lukas mentally parsed the monster prototypes to find the one most suited to the task.

Most of them were discarded preemptively for their lack of versatility in the fight. His thoughts lingered on neothelid, a monster with extreme poisonous abilities. But there was no point in trying to synthesize poison and char his own mouth. Like every prior option, it was discarded as he moved on.

Orocoran—reptile with innate mana-sensing skills. It made his current ability look like pocket change, but it wouldn’t be very useful in this case. The thoggua was discarded for similar reasons. The kirin—extreme speed through lifeforce discharge. Useful, but not what he was looking for.

These wouldn’t work, Lukas realized. It was true that the doppelganger wouldn’t be able to copy the monsters, but it didn’t need to. It already had copies of those monsters available to itself. Hell, he had seen aqāru-versions of them being raised in droves.

The crypt had given birth to those monsters. It knew them better. He could use the neothelid’s skills, but the crypt could raise a dozen neothelids out of the metal to attack him. Not to mention that doing so would also unveil all those unique powers in front of Tanya and the rest.

The yokai prototypes weren’t useful either. Their powers centered around Metamancy and Possession, neither of which would be of much use in this fight. The kasha’s Pyromancy could aid him, but not enough to make any substantial change. No, the only thing remotely useful would be the marid—

Lukas froze.

—and the previous failsafe.

His doppelganger had mentioned in passing how it had gotten fragments of information from its previous version. That made sense. Unlike standard monsters, the crypt would not create multiple variations of its guardian, its failsafe. There was only one.

And Lukas had stolen the previous version from it.

“You know what? This experience of ‘fighting thyself’ has been pretty educational.”

He put the blades back into his waist.

“Let me return the favor.”

Activating Monster Prototype DRANZITHL

Initiating Consciousness Shift

Enact.

…

…

The tides turned almost instantly. It was now a losing battle for the crypt’s guardian. With Lukas’s tinier form, the dranzithl had too much energy to release. Too much harm to cause. Too much power to annihilate.

Yet, the guardian came at him-it anyway.

It had forgone its strictly human form and upped its game. Two hands became four. Two legs twisted to become eight, forming a spideresque body. Enormous mass of aqāru protruded out of its body in the shape of horns and claws, all of them aiming to crush him-it down.

Inanna had been right. The dranzithl was a creature of art. Its skills, its power—they were exquisite. The ability to cause Decay required taking ordinary lifeforce and coalescing something so dense that the giver of life became an exterminator. Add that to the nigh-infinite regeneration and he-it had a walking, breathing murder machine at work.

And the doppelganger was feeling it.

A head-on strike with morphed limbs ended up shattering them.

Long-range attacks were incinerated in a burst of white death. If Lukas still had some rationality left, he’d have wondered what it was about Decay that made it bond so powerfully with flames, forming something that could be roughly described as Corrosive Light.

The crypt’s failsafe, now no longer his doppelganger, pivoted toward him-it, morphed its forelimbs to form blades, and leaped into the air.

Eight feet. That was how far it jumped, and it had come effortlessly—it could have done more. Lukas-Dranzithl knew exactly how much force it had pressed against the ground with when it had left it, exactly what angle it jumped at. His-Its awareness of the entire anomaly around him-it was proving to be a most useful trait.

Lukas-Dranzithl took two steps away just as the crypt’s failsafe came swooping down.

A burst of white death to the face banished it across the floor.

A part of Lukas-Dranzithl felt sick. He-It might as well be fighting against a blind opponent.

He sensed a miasma rise from the floor exactly five and a half feet away. Easily dodge-able, but he-it didn’t care. Thick blades impaled his-it’s abdomen, tearing all the way to his-its genitals.

Lukas-Dranzithl seemed not to notice.

Instead, he-it dashed across the floor, pulling out the blade from his abdomen, the wound healing at a miraculous rate, and bringing it down upon the failsafe. One, two, six, ten, twenty, fifty—it was not possible to strike so many times within a pair of seconds.

Lukas-Dranzithl seemed not to notice.

“You have an opening. Destroy it before it can turn the tables.”

Destroy it? There was no “one body” to be destroyed. No matter how much he-it killed, the crypt would quickly regenerate ore. The only option was to vaporize everything there in one single moment.

Something that was beyond him-it. So the alternative was to keep pushing it to the utmost limit. How much madness could it release at once? What was the absolute end point after which it couldn’t mutate any further? He-it needed to hit that point. Make it desperate. Make it draw up every last iota of power it could bring to bear against him-it, force it into foolish, untenable strategies.

“Good point. And what if it doesn’t have limits?”

Lukas-Dranzithl chuckled. It came out as a mix of cackling laughter and a noisy grunt.

Snikt!

Oh, look, more attackers. Lukas-Dranzithl raised an enclosed fist and brought it down upon the ground.

Space distorted. As did every single one of the metal-monsters the failsafe had raised to attack him.

All of Lukas-Dranzithl’s wounds healed again.

It wasn’t about strength or regeneration, or using endless amounts of lifeforce. At its heart, the dranzithl was a shapeshifter. A slime. Heteromorph. Something that had a body, but lacked a proper frame. Body parts and organs existed, and Lukas-Dranzithl knew how to use them effectively, but the concept of “slime” overruled every other concept related to its existence. All tissues were “slime” tissues, and slime could morph into anything. Lung to heart, heart to liver, liver to kidney, and so on.

All of it was slime.

It was this profound simplicity that made the dranzithl the most dangerous monster in the anomaly. Its ability with Decay only cemented everything else. And if he-it applied the concept of Slime to the aqāru metal, then one could almost say that he was fighting a—

“…So that’s how it is.”

The realization that flooded through him was so overwhelming that he didn’t even notice when Alpha Condition had deactivated, reverting full authority to him. To think that something so simple was there right before his very eyes.

“I’m an idiot.”

“Finally figured that out, have you?”

Lukas smirked, and instead, placed both of his palms against the smooth surface of the aqāru. The overwhelming Decay burst from earlier must have dealt serious damage to the monsters, and this was the time to deal the final blow.

The failsafe was just one large mass of aqāru made sentient and installed with a twisted, functional facsimile of himself. It was intimately connected to the omphalos and with every passing moment, the connection became deeper and deeper, but even so, one thing had remained unchanged.

It was still a monster, and as with the crypt earlier, Lukas did not need to actually kill the other person before trying to siphon him. Killing was just the safer option because it sundered the threads connecting the spirit to the physical shell.

“Mortal, you cannot take it. Not in the shape you are in. Siphoning a free soul is far, far easier than one latching on to a physical form. And this is the failsafe of the anomaly itself. It will be…”

Messy? Lukas grinned. Don’t worry. Messy is exactly what I’m looking for.

He couldn’t take it. But maybe the Warmonger could.

Ever since he’d gained the newest Protocol, he had felt the power of the omphalos within him, and held it back. He had felt the growing primal drives that were its power, its need to hunt and consume prey, to fight and protect its territory, to kill and expand. Its nature was beautiful violence, stark clarity, the most feral instincts and desires pitted against the world outside.

This wasn’t a creator. This was an invader.

A Warmonger.

But Lukas had fought against that drive, repressed it and held it at bay.

Until now.

His weariness vanished. Lifeforce and mana surged within him. Anomalous energy swirled around him like a protective cocoon. His fear vanished. Fear was for things that he was about to hunt.

It was time to kill prey.

He dug his hands and feet into the aqāru on the floor.

“Thanks for letting me in.”