“Frick. Another deviant. Am I going to have to kill ten increasingly powerful deviants, to the point that the fifth one can kill me, if it weren’t for my absurd luck?” I murmured to myself.

I pulled out Autarch’s Defiance with a sigh. I jumped over a building, which was quickly knocked over by the raging deviant. We continued the parkour for about an hour, which was when I remembered why Autarch’s Defiance was so good.

I swung it right at the deviant’s head. It flinched.

Before the deviant knew what was going on, it felt a pain in its leg. I had just put a broadsword right into the space between two leg scales.

I jumped backwards, crashing into the wall of the dimension.

The deviant turned around.

“Uh-oh,” I said, knowing the killing intent enmating from it all too well.

It bit the broadsword, shattering it to pieces. One scrap hit me, chipping my armor.

“Why are you biting the sword like Share Khan?” I asked, hoping the Jungle Book reference would throw it off.

Unfortunately, it didn’t.

It barreled right at me, making me remember the porcupines for a second.

I jumped out of the way, leaving a costume with a sword inside in my place.

It jumped right into the costume, shattering the sword. I noticed that one scale on its chest had been chipped off, creating a strategic weakness. “Oh well, I hope you enjoy the hole in your plating,” I taunted. I then threw a few daggers at a splinter of the broadsword that remained, chipping off another scale.

“Haha, who has better armor now,” I asked.

That was the final straw for the deviant. It charged at me, swinging its claws with wild abandon. I ducked, sending the deviant barreling after me, knocking down a building.

I jumped on its back and brought my sword up. All my killing intent seeped into it. The deviant noticed too, rearing like a horse. “What, deviant? Why are you acting like a horse?” I taunted.

I had studied deviants with Fesoul when I was training that decade ago, and I knew all except babies had a rage mode.

I was trying to activate the mode and cull it by forcing it to commit self-harm by standing on its weaknesses, while chipping away at its scales to make its self-destruction easier. It would also take advantage of the under-developed frontal lobe. I knew I couldn’t do it with the older deviants, but survival is one step at a time.

My gambit worked.

It started growing and turning red, not stopping until it was red as a stop sign and as large as an Airbus A360.

I stood on its wing, hair billowing in the wind. I started to stab my sword into the wing. It started trying to bite me, but I ran around until it bit off its wing. I kept doing that, until it was only left with a head, chest, and stomach.

I started to channel energy. It was a slow, arduous process, in which the deviant managed to bite off my hair, but it finally bore fruit.

The deviant started to rot from inside.

“Rot away, dead body. Death is imminent. You will die.”

That was it for the tribulation. It fell to the ground with a thud, clearly dead. I put its body in my inventory and started another round of slaughter.

The anomalies were getting marginally harder each time, but it would take until the ninth or tenth round to harm me. I could even just sit back and let the edges of the scales kill the anomalies, but that wouldn’t work in the fourth or fifth round.

After the soul tribulation, which was easy, there was another deviant.

Tween Spatial Deviant: Gold: Level 3

The spatial deviant, the terror of all spatial anomalies and spatial masters. This young deviant is only level three, but that does not mean it is weak. A deviant can easily tackle higher-categories due to its impressive attributes.

40,000,000 Gold-category health

700,000,000 Gold-category mana

1,000,000 Gold-category defense

500,000,000,000 Newtons

35,950,000 KPH max speed

The monstrous attributes of the deviants were actually starting to worry me by now. I unleashed my aura, making a small earthquake.

I held up Autarch’s Defiance. I channeled mana into it, trying to scare the deviant.

A huge portal appeared. I didn’t go through, but the spatial anomaly whinnied. I held my sword level.

I charged.

I was so swept up in the glory of the moment, I didn’t realize the thing behind me.

Spatial Minion: Bronze

This minion is the doing of a young deviant, having 1/8 of its attributes. It will always obey the deviant.

Its fangs pierced my back. In the moment, I was glad I no longer had a nerve in my spine.

It tore its fangs out, leaving a huge hole in my back.

I weakly turned around, sword extended. I felt that the hole was getting poisoned by something in it.

I spun around, tearing a huge chunk of flesh-and my right hip bone out.

I was trapped in a death embrace. I did, however, have a tool for that. I jumped straight up.

I hit the roof of the dome, briefly blacking out from the pain. When I was roughly three hundred meters from the dome roof, which was five kilometers in the air, I pulled out my heavy weapon.

Diamond Dominator

This three-meter hammer, made from pure diamond, is the heavy weapon used by The Autarch. The wielder of this weapon must have incredible strength, like The Autarch.

I started somersaulting, my vertebrae hurting like it had never hurt before. I pulled out of the somersault.

I raised the hammer above my head, yet another vertebrae breaking with an audible snap created a burst of pain.

The Diamond Dominator fell.

No one can escape the fetters of mortality, and these Spatial Spawns were no exception. For them, mortality came in the form of a giant diamond sledgehammer descending from above.

Boom!

The explosion kicked up dust, creating a sandstorm for miles. I heard the dying sounds of the deviant. The good news, the deviants were dead.

As for the bad news, well, a chunk of my hip, starting at the spine, was ripped off. It slowly wiggled back, but I knew I would probably be filled with sand if I didn’t do something.