I looked over the twenty-five elves arrayed in front of me. I quickly divided them into four categories. Melee, ranged, mage, and fuck-if-I-know. There were four with shield and sword combo, then another four with long two-handed spears. Clearly melee. Then there were another four with bow and arrow, four with an assortment of pouches, ropes, nets and other vicious things to throw at me. Those were the ranged ones.

Finally, there were four people with no weapons, I classified those as mages, while there were another four that only had a shortsword, which was not drawn, and a shield. They were classified as fuck-if-I-know, the same for Ayda. Ayda had a staff, yet I felt it was the most dangerous weapon fielded against me.

“Remember, if you kill anyone, you’ll be killed yourself,” the giant officiating the sham of a fair fight reminded us.

“Yeah, yeah,” I said. “If I knew there were this many pretty ladies on the losing team, I should’ve demanded they became broodmares for me. They aren’t good for anything else.”

“I’m going to make you eat those words when you’re a slave,” someone who looked like a younger version of Ayda shouted.

“Of course, when I’m done with them, they can never go back to the puny elven males. I’ve heard it’s a racial trait that you got small dicks,” I drawled with a yawn. “I mean, whenever I’ve ploughed one of my elven sluts, they’ve always screamed ‘Oh, it’s so big, so much bigger than any elf I’ve ever seen. Give it to me!’. I’m not trying to cast aspersions, I’m generally curious.”

“I’m going to kill you!” someone roared and suddenly an arrow was flying in my direction.

Before I even reacted, a giant tree, I mean club, landed before me, absorbing the arrow that was meant for me. It belonged to the officiating giant. He growled at the elves, “Honourless cur, attacking before the start of the fight. Normally, it would forfeit the match.”

“Great, my work here is done,” I said and started walking away.

“However, Lord Karth was vicious and with little honour himself. So Lady Ayda, choose three more elves to exclude from the match, along with the honourless cur,” the giant’s word stopped me.

“Great, you really want me to lose, huh?” I asked the giant.

“No, but you don’t belong here, you’re a liar and an all in all unpleasant man, so I don’t mind seeing you get what’s coming to you.”

“I can accept that I guess,” I said with a shrug. “Tell me when the match has started.”

I drew my first weapons, the sabre and one of the daggers. I was bouncing on the balls of my feet. For this fight, I had actually taken off my boots. Likewise for the shirt. The only thing I kept on was the weapon harness and my pants. The dagger I normally carried in the boots, were moved to the belt so I was not missing out.

Ayda sent out one spearman, one sword and shield carrier, and one of those with all sorts of throwing stuff. It was the most balanced choice for her. It was also the most irritating one for me because I had really hoped for more ranged people to be excluded, or maybe even a mage.

I had not wasted the extra time that the delay afforded me. I had spent it gathering mana, preparing to unleash as soon as we started. I decided to temporarily disarm myself. I stabbed the sabre into the ground so it would be quick to remove. In my left hand, I held all three daggers ready to be thrown and unhooked the first of my axes for my right hand. I was not going to keep them long, they would be used to decimate the elves’ fighting force, hopefully.

The moment the giant let the fight start, I threw first the daggers and then the hatchet. Since I could not kill them, I went for painful humiliation. Because of the training I had been doing with Ethan my links had become much stronger, enabling the daggers to curve to a larger degree than before. I had targeted the males without shields. An archer and two of the throwers were hit by the daggers in their groins, filling the glade with painful shrill screams.

The hatchet followed less than a second later, heading for a collision course with Ayda herself. They had not been lax in their attacks either, and arrows and daggers flew in my general direction, forcing me to drop low.

With my left hand, I drew the sabre from the ground, and spun to the side, still crouched low, to get clear of the stone spike erupting next to me. The reason I fought barefooted was to more easily detect tremors in the ground and also use my magic to pinpoint the spots where stone or earth magic was used.

As I spun back to face the elves, I was drawing the first dragon. I quickly took in the situation. The staff that Ayda was holding had suddenly turned into a shield, which had blocked my hatchet. I found out what group to classify those shield bearers by. They were freaking healers.

The archers still on their feet were flanking, preparing to fire more arrows at me, while the thrower had thrown a net at me, while also moving to the side. The melee fighters were approaching me straight on for the moment, while the mages seemed to be preparing whatever spell they were going to cast.

Since one of the healers was without a patient, I felt bad for him, so I let the dragon rip at the approaching melee warriors. While I felt the archers were the bigger threat, they had started circling in different directions, so I could not hurt both at the same time.

The dragon roared, flames erupted from its mouth, and the lead balls tore through the shins of two of the approaching elves. As soon as I had fired, I immediately dropped the pistol and rolled forward, dodging the incoming net. I used the momentum from the roll to stand up and continue at great speed towards the elves.

As I ran, I pulled the other dragon and started releasing some earth magic in front of me, in the middle of the still-standing melee warriors. They sprang to the side, probably fearing I was forming some spikes for them. I did not.

Instead, I formed a few steps to allow me to take the high ground. I was up the steps and jumping over the head of the melee elves before they recovered their wits, but by then it was too late. I was already in the air and got a clear firing line to the mages.

So at the apex of my jump, I pointed the second dragon in their direction. A moment after the dragon had roared, all of the mages were hit. Mostly superficial wounds, but hurt nonetheless. I also created a link with little mana in it, between my weapon harness and Ayda’s weapon, so I always knew where she was before I landed.

To get out of range of the spearmen behind me, and because it was almost certain death to remain stationary in a fight against more than one enemy, I used the momentum to keep moving. Straight towards where the throwers had been gathered. The healers were still working on the two downed throwers, so the remaining one threw some sort of pouch in my direction.

I reacted instantly, summoning up my wind magic and slashing out with my sabre as I continued to move ahead. When my sabre met the pouch, the pouch burst apart, releasing some sort of whitish powder. The elf that had thrown it revealed a large smile, but as soon as he saw what I was doing with my magic, it slipped from his face.

Yathanae and Siphanien had warned me that some of the royal guards liked to rely on powder and poisons thrown in pouches to fight their battles. It would seem I had met some of them. Which was why I had picked wind magic as one of my four magics.

With the wind magic I had released earlier, the powder was caught in the air and sent to the sides and behind me, opening a path for me to rush through. The elf fumbled with another pouch, but before he could do more damage, I had run him through his stomach.

I made sure to keep the momentum going, pushing him and my sabre into the healer behind him. The healer got stabbed in the left arm. Since I could not kill anyone, I applied some healing magic to the elf as soon as I started pulling the sabre out of him. The sabre had severed his spine, just as I had predicted it would.

It was easy to put small repairs on his body, ensuring he would not bleed to death internally, or externally. I felt the pressure from Ayda’s weapon grow stronger when it suddenly came very close. I reacted immediately, by turning around with a spin. A small ping sounded, as my sabre rebounded off the staff that was now a spear. Entirely made from wood, but looked dangerous, nonetheless.

The staff turned spear, was deflected to the side, so it went wide. Ayda was still standing where she had stood when the fight started. The staff had just turned into an ever growing spear. It was clear to everyone that she was shaping her weapon with magic.

I drew my last hatchet and was preparing to send a burst of stone spikes at a nearby healer. However, I was interrupted by a sudden impact and pain across my lower back. The impact was hard, lifted me off the ground and continued to pull me towards Ayda. A quick glance showed that the spear had turned into a scythe and was digging into my back as well as sending me towards Ayda as the shaft shrunk.

Luckily the blade was not too sharp, because of the prohibition against killing most likely, so instead of cutting me in half, it was only lightly cutting into my back, after having cut through my weapon harness. I immediately sent a burst of healing magic to counteract the damage it was doing and chopped down hard with my hatchet on the shaft.

It felt like striking a large iron beam. A sound of wood breaking apart sounded, but to my astonishment, it was not Ayda’s weapon, but my hatchet that broke in two, and the haft was forced from my hand. Grimacing as I was only three metres from Ayda, I grabbed the shaft and poured wood magic into the scythe.

For the first time since I left the Hold, I had cut the connection to Emma. Night vision would not help me in a fight, and I had not gotten enough practice to shift other parts of my body to help me in the fight.

I had to pour more mana into breaking the shaft of the scythe than I thought, using almost fifty percent of my pool. Break apart it did nevertheless, and the look on Ayda’s face was priceless. A mixture of shock, confusion, and utter rage.

It was only for a split second that I managed to view her face, because of the sudden lack of force to keep me off the ground, sent me stumbling forward, towards Ayda. I slashed with my sabre, only half-heartedly, and it came to no surprise to me, when the now headless scythe turned into a shield, parrying my slash. The counterforce it applied did come as a surprise though, it was strong enough to force me to spin around.

I followed the slash up with a stone spike bursting up from beneath her, but I instantly felt a foreign trace of mana entering the spike, making it blunt and turning it into a pillar. Instead of stabbing through her foot, a stone pillar rose, raising her into the air.

It did not come as a surprise to me that she could use both wood and stone magic, because that was the defining feature of wood elven priests, and Ayda was the strongest priestess of the Wood Queen. According to Yathanae, she had a power rating of five. Ascended five that was. Meaning she had stronger magic than any human had ever achieved.

As I completed the spin and came face to face with her, I saw a sneer on her face as her shield had turned into a mace that was coming directly at my head. I managed to dodge to the side, and on the way, I grabbed hold of her foot for just a moment, before yanking her off the stone pedestal she was standing on.

A look of surprise flashed across her face as she tumbled through the air. However, she managed to recover, and instead of falling to the ground, she landed gracefully. Going one on one against Ayda the Immortal and not losing, would be a great accomplishment for any human, according to what Yathanae told me.

However, I was not going one on one with her, but all my focus had been on her. Not because I had forgotten about the others, but because if I did not give her every sliver of my attention, I would be unable to keep up.

That inattention to the others paid dividends. Three impacts impacted me from behind. One was a dagger penetrating my left wrist, forcing me to drop the sabre. The two others were a pair of arrows, each striking me in the back of one of my knees, completely shattering them. Unable to stand, I fell to the ground, supported only by my right hand, and ruined knees. The pain almost made me pass out before I instinctively suppressed the pain.

I had in the back of my mind registered that a large amount of stone mana had gathered in the area beneath me, but I had not been able to pay it any attention. The magic exploded, and thick columns of stone rose around me. With my dazed mind, it took me a couple of seconds to realize they had created a cage of stone.

The ground erupted beneath me and hundreds of small stone spikes shot up, striking the front of my body, except my face. The force was not enough to kill, they had barely penetrated my skin. Then the spikes started wiggling back and forth, ripping my pants and skin apart.

The pain was immense. It was a vicious move forcing me to spend the last of my mana to suppress the pain and heal my injuries. It was a finishing move that would ensure their victory.

A thin column of stone rose beneath my chin, forcing my head up, so I was looking at Ayda. She had a cold smile. “As you’ve condemned others to slavery, you yourself will now be condemned into slavery. Surrender, and the pain can stop. Your mana must have almost run out by now.”

“Never,” I gasped, as I felt the last wisp of mana leave my mana pool.

Ayda turned round to address the giants. “He has clearly lost, yet he does not wish to surrender. We ask that you acknowledge our victory, lest we are forced to kill him.”

“If you kill him, you forfeit your own lives,” the giant replied. “You might have beaten him physically, yet you have not beaten his spirit. Until he surrenders, you haven’t won.”

“Fine, you force us to do this,” she said and then back to face me and the elves gathered behind me. “Break his spirit.”

“Since he was so proud of his cock, how about we start with that?” one of the female archers suggested.

One of the female healers added with a giggle, “I actually understand why he was so proud, it’s bigger than most.”

“He stabbed me in the dick, I should repay the courtesy,” one of the males roared.

I ignored them, concentrating instead on the helpless feeling that was overwhelming me. This was exactly like the time with the Cardinal. I knew it was my rage that had helped me break through the barrier at that time.

However, now that I knew more about such things, I knew I could easily do it again. Since the remaining barrier was less powerful and stable than back then. The problem was that the moment I broke down the barrier, I would be consumed by the mana combustion, meaning it would be a useless manoeuvre.

Staring at Ayda, as the stone spikes painfully ripped my flesh apart, I remembered back to moments earlier, when I was holding her ankle. I had sent a burst of mana and one of healing magic into her body, out of idle curiosity to see how her body differed. Not only was she apparently immortal, but she was also the only one of Ascended rank I had ever met.

Even though it was just a brief burst, I had seen everything there was to see. At the time I had just filed it away for closer scrutiny, however, since I needed something to focus on, I might as well think about that.

Her mana pool had not been any different than mine, except that there was no barrier at all. However, the speed with which her mana regenerated was insane. It was instantaneous. Almost as if there were another source of mana that redirected mana to the pool as soon as there was any room.

That other source had surprisingly been her spine. While the mana pool did not have a physical manifestation it was still a part of the body somehow. Yet the changes in her spine was definitely a physical manifestation.

Some of her spine was not made from bone but from something akin to manacrystal. It started at her tailbone and went up to and including the T12. Each part of the vertebra contained more mana than the previous, with the weakest being the tailbone. The tailbone contained just as much mana as a mana pool did.

I knew I could not recreate the weird mana bones on my own, but maybe I could force my enigmatic saviour to take steps to save me. So when I felt one of the elves approaching me to start the torture, I thought to hell with it.

With the many hours I had tried to repair Mina’s barrier, I had gotten intimate with the feel of the barriers. When the elf cut my back and poured what felt like salt into it, I used the pain to harden my will, the small amount of mana I had regenerated erupted under my command.

Once more I formed a vortex in my mana pool, but surprisingly this time I did not gain mana from another source, the one I suspected to be my mysterious benefactor. Nevertheless, the vortex managed to break apart the remaining barrier with ease.

Just as the elf lay down another cut, the mana rushed back into my pool, just like last time. This time, with my greater tolerance for pain, my greater understanding and command of mana, allowed me to identify the place the mana rolled in from. Everywhere around me. It was as if someone had pulled back the veil and revealed that mana was everywhere around me, and now that the barrier was gone, the mana came pouring in.

“Ascension,” I heard Ayda scream. “Kill him!”

“Do, and you forfeit your lives,” the giant’s voice boomed. “Whether or not he survives the mana combustion is up to the Fates. Step back from him, and allow him to Ascend in peace, or face our wrath.”

As soon as he stopped speaking, the mana pool was full and like the last time, it was followed by indescribable pain. I managed to redirect some of the incoming mana to do various deeds.

The first was using wind magic to levitate off the damn spikes and into the air. The mana I used with my wind magic would have emptied my mana pool in a single second flat before, yet even though I used that much mana, more still came pouring in, more than I used.

I then healed my injuries, but it did not make a dent either. I started forming and destroying stone pillars, but no matter how much I did, it did not lessen the strain on my body from the inexhaustible mana source that was the entire world.

It was clear to me now that the barrier’s primary function was not limiting the power of magic. Its purpose was keeping a person from being overwhelmed by the abundance of mana around them. With no barrier, my body and soul was wide open to the worldmana. Somehow, I would need to recreate the barrier.

“Help me!” I screamed in pain, as my body started to break down. I invested all the mana I could into healing, yet it only slowed down the damage that the mana combustion was doing to my body.

Last time the unfathomable benefactor had done it on my soul, but this time she did not come to my aid. It meant I would have to do it myself. Which would leave me in the same problem as I was in before. Even with a full tank, I was no match for the twenty-one elves.

So I had to create a barrier somewhere else. That somewhere else was my spine it seemed. Maybe other bones could be used as well, I did not know. I could only use the only example that I had seen.

The tailbone had been the weakest part in regards to mana density. The sacrum contained twice as much mana as the tailbone. The L5 and L4 had individually contained as much mana as the sacrum. While L3 and L2 contained the double of L5 and L4. L1 and T12 contained the double of L3 and L2. It seemed like some sort of hierarchy.

Inundated with pain, I was starting to lose focus, for a moment, I lost control over my wind magic, and I dropped half a metre before I got it back under control. I was at my wits’ end. I knew what I had to do in order to survive, but I did not know how to do it.

I defaulted to my go-to method of brute-forcing it. What little willpower I had remaining, I used it to send mana from my mana pool to my tailbone. To my surprise, the mana disappeared as soon as it came in contact with my tailbone.

The mana, however, was still being refilled faster than I could channel it elsewhere. So I kept on channelling into my tailbone, desperate to survive because I needed to see my child being born. Nothing else mattered.

I was faintly aware that I was screaming in pain, my vocal cords frayed and should not be able to produce any sound, but unwittingly I kept healing them. How long I endured this process, I did not know, but it felt like several lifetimes.

First, the tailbone changed into the same crystalline structure that I had observed in Ayda’s body, but it did not stop what was happening, even when it was filled with mana. Then slowly the sacrum changed. Still, no barrier had formed, and I was starting to lose consciousness. Everything hurt so badly.

Then the L5 changed, quickly followed by the L4. Next followed by the L3 and L2. It was at that point I realized that it did not stop until I manually formed a barrier. If I lost consciousness, I would die. Desperately I started trying to form a barrier, though it had never worked for me before. I had no idea what to do, other than attempt what I had done with Mina.

To my utter surprise it worked, I was starting to form a barrier around the L2. However, before I managed to complete it, it was blasted into pieces as the L1 changed as well. I summoned the last wisps of willpower I had left and started forming another barrier.

This time, I succeeded, and the onrush of mana stopped. I immediately cut the wind magic I had been using and used what was equal to two entire mana pools’ worth of mana to heal myself. I also banished any fatigue in myself.

“Impressive, immediately Ascending halfway into the Fifth Realm,” the giant said with awe in his voice. “I don’t know if it’s foolhardiness or talent that allowed you to do so, but I’ve never heard of such a feat. Continue the fight.”

The look on Ayda’s face had turned ugly, but I did not care about that one bit. I was taken in by the changes in my mana and magic. The connections I had with Nathalie, Gudrun, Hilda, and Simone shone like bright lights in the night. However, I could also see fainter traces of lines, connecting with other people I had formerly connected with. The line to Mina, Saori, Mary, and Ilmadia. All of them had a line still connecting to me, but it was faint, dead. Inactive. There was also one running in the direction of my Hold, Emma.

With a simple thought, I took hold of these connections. Normally I would need to touch people to form a connection between our mana pools, or more precisely, souls. Yet, now I managed to grab hold of them from afar, without the slightest problem. Even Emma.

There was still a limit to how many I could have active at the same time, but that had risen from four to six. I kept the original four and added Ainsley’s metal and Mary’s fire magic to my repertoire. The magic felt more alive, more responsive than ever before.

Only two seconds had passed since the giant had said to continue the fight, but only one of the elves had taken action. The elf that had been cutting my back and pouring something in them, swung his sword at me, shouting on top of his lungs, “Die!”

Almost instantaneously, stone manifested around my left hand, and I grabbed the descending sword. With a thought, I used metal magic to turn his sword into iron dust. He gaped at me.

I revealed a predatory smile, before backhanding him with my stone hand. I let the stone disappear, and held out my right hand, immediately my sabre flew to my hand. As I grabbed it, I drew my one remaining weapon on my body, the shortsword.

Thinking this would need a flair of the dramatic, I summoned a pair of giant flaming wings. I looked at Ayda. “Let’s finish this.”