Short summary of the last chapter:

Spoiler :

The boss battle started, and Voice stalled for a while to make EDI and Wolf weaken. After using just about all of his traps and triggers, he eventually decided it was time to face Wolf one on one.

Also, let me know if anything is wrong with the chapter! Be sure to comment and rate!

Wolf seemed to use some potion to boost himself. Wolf raised his weapon, and charged. My completion of technique thief increased to 20%. I smiled as I ran towards him.

Using my inspect showed me where each of his attacks were most likely to hit. With my buffs I was easily able to make my weapons go to those spots.

With only one person attacking, I was able to focus solely on blocking Wolf’s attacks. My body easily flowed from one position to the next as I continuously blocked Wolf’s attacks.

The constant flow of undead spewed forth towards EDI. Even though she was attacked, her body stayed there. Her health should have already dropped to 0 though…

I didn’t have much time to think about it though. Wolf kept up the barrage of attacks, and I kept up the large amount of blocks.

With every attack my arms grew just a bit more heavy. Even at a quarter of his original stats, Wolf seemed to have a higher strength and dexterity than I had.

I was starting to get worried after the first ten seconds of furious battle. I was being pushed back even with Wolf’s massive detriments.

After a few more seconds Wolf finally landed a hit on me. His trident-like weapon flew forward as it bypassed my twin blades.

It stabbed directly at my chest. I tried to throw myself backwards, but he was too fast. I could feel the mana in my buffs vibrate as he struck.

With that one attack I was thrown back a dozen feet, and lost 125 hp. I only had 12 left! Even so much as a light blow from Wolf would now kill me.

He looked at me with a hint of something in his eyes. It wasn’t fury, or even anger. It looked like he was about to kill a wounded dear to take it home.

We walked closer, aiming for the killing blow. Obviously he was confident of his victory. Actually at that moment so was I.

I had no way to get out this situation. I shook my head bitterly. I could possibly use the mana of the other types of mana to shoot myself outwards, but then I wouldn’t have enough to do anything else.

I had no choice though. My mana dropped so close to zero it no longer amounted to anything, but I was able to fling myself away.

Wolf would not let me go. He instantly followed. His breath was ragged. His hp was dropping too fast for him to be able to easily kill me. He knew that if he didn’t do something quickly it would put him in a dangerous position.

EDI’s POV

As the battle progressed around EDI, her body did not move. She was stuck there, hanging in between the balance of life and death.

She would have been easily killed, but something in the dungeon seemed to pull at her soul. The force kept her tethered there, unable to leave.

The poison cloud, the boiling water, the bone fragments. All of it caused immense pain, and even greater hp drain.

By all rights she should have been dead. However, she remained. She was conscious of the battle going on around her, and even of the undead charging fearlessly towards her, but she was helpless to do anything.

It was as if the entire dungeon had focused in on this one moment. As if Kretchof used all of his boss power he had been storing up to force her life to continue for some reason.

When the undead got close enough to touch her, she heard a voice. It was deep, and emanated a powerful, ancient, aura.

“Youngling. You have assisted my master. I have borne witness to this. You shall be spared, because I know he would wish it. You must thank Master Wolf for this in the future. However! You shall not intrude upon the battle between men.”

Her eyes looked over at Kretchof and he smiled. A decaying, fetid smile.

“Master does not know this, but even I am incapable of using the majority of my power here at this moment. It was rash, but I did something I was sure Master would be proud of. You shall see it soon enough.”

A cold dread filled her. Wolf was the dungeon’s master? That would explain why he had them split up. He was able to easily get past the obstacles, but her group was decimated.

She seethed with anger at the thought.

Of course the master Kretchof spoke of was Voice, but she did not know that. He had even said Wolf since Voice instructed him to only call him by Master Wolf. Kretchof also wasn’t allowed to call out to him, or indicate him in any way other than by the pseudonym Master Wolf.

Kretchof didn’t need to speak to EDI, but honestly he was bored. His master never paid him much attention, not that he felt he deserved the attention of one so great. But he only had his subordinates to speak to. So like any good villain, he began to speak about the most crucial parts of his secret plans to the protagonist.

He spoke about things even Voice didn’t know, because he assumed Voice did know some. He also kept some info hidden as a form of surprise.

EDI couldn’t respond, so was forced to simply listen to the creature continue. She couldn’t even voice her anger at the thing.

“You see, all of the monsters in this room are powered by my mana. At this time I haven’t found a way to exert more than 20% of it. I know the cause, but can do nothing to stop it. If I had a way the defense, hp, even the intelligence and speed of all of the creatures in this room would be far superior.

“Outside of this room I can freely command the inhabitants, for the most part but inside it my power is limited. Funny isn’t it? One would tend to think it would be the other way around. It is all for the sake of Master Wolf. Anything he wants, I will do my best to oblige.”

He continued to rant as EDI was forced to watch Voice’s battle. At first it seemed like he completely held the upper hand, but now it was as if the tables suddenly turned. Wolf now held the advantage.

She had no idea the Voice had not very much mana to start with in this battle. Nor did she know that he held so many martial skills. He seemed intent on destroying Wolf, until Wolf landed a single hit on him that is.

Any spectator could see that Voice had taken a huge hit at that point. EDI was worried about him. Even though they were supposed to be enemies, she still wanted to be friends with him.

But she had seen his personality profile. She knew that he was not one to forgive easily. When she started this endeavor she had planned to gift him her points. But Wolf would not allow it. He made her sign a soul binding contract.

The contract forbade her in any way seeking death or helping competitors to be better than she or Wolf was. She couldn’t find any flaws in it.

She was now forced to watch as Voice tried miserably to flee. Wolf struck out with his cross-spear one last time. A vast array of seven colors swam behind it. She had seen this attack once before. It had ended with a hole drilled through a hundred feet of mountain stone.

After that she stopped being able to hold her eyes open. She could only exist there in blankness.

Eventually, Kretchof stopped speaking. In an instant I felt a rumbling. Suddenly I felt myself moved to another plane.

Voice’s POV:

I had no mana to flee. Even though Wolf was being drained by the plants here, he seemed to be able to beat me. That one wound he inflicted was being healed by Sol, but not fast enough.

I now regretted not choosing my original idea in this game. Had I an army of healers, then I would be invincible. Even if the army was a tenth of the size of Wolf’s army.

It wasn’t in me to give up though. I would fight until I couldn’t fight anymore. Wolf’s weapon came down on me, hard. A violent explosion of mana spewed forth from the end of it. As if a rainbow were decrying my death.

I raised my swords up to attack him at least. His health was in critical condition. I sent out Moro as an act of desperation. Moro shot out, and entangled Wolf’s feet.

Wolf gazed down at whatever had caused him to trip, and neatly presented me a small portion of his unprotected body. As I stood, I slashed at his left elbow.

Following the perfect arc that inspect showed me, I was able to penetrate it. Wolf howled in pain as my blade sank into his flesh.

I recalled Moro, and faced Wolf. His spear had missed me beautifully, as did that rainbow patterned attack. Wolf jumped back several yards, and looked at me.

He seemed to be judging something. His eyes flickered to the side of his screen. I guess he had his health displayed there. As soon as he did, he frowned.

“Voice, it looks like we are going to have to finish this soon. My hp is getting pretty low. How about you just lay down and let me slit your throat?”

Wolf plastered a fake smile on his face. I could tell his hp had only had 140 points left. That was just 1.3% of his massive health pool of over 10k. So in twenty seconds he would die of poison. All I had to do was make it.

I instantly came up with a plan for my victory.

“Come at me bro!” I used an old-school slang to provoke him.

His eyes flashed. He obviously realized what I was doing. “*Sigh* Now I know I lost my temper earlier, but this is no way to provoke me.”

He gave a derisive look at EDI, before readying himself. “I have only a bit of time. Let’s finish this Voice.”

He brandished his weapon in a dazzling display. A burst of fire shot from the tip. I let it hit me. The ability he used was based on mana! All of his abilities had mana infused in them!

I realized I had a wicked smile. I quickly concealed it as the attack hit me. The mana from the attack seemed to actually force itself around me instead of attack.

The mana couldn’t escape the power of my crystal though. The earth mana crystal absorbed the fleeing mana, leaving me hit with only 50% of the total power.

That wasn’t all though. With the effect of mana magnet, the mana coming at me bent to my will even more. I was able to quickly absorb a total of 75% of the mana before being hit by the attack.

I now had 85 total health, thanks to Sol’s efforts. The attack Wolf sent at me had lost a lot of power from when he first released it. It came at me with only about half of its original strength. With me absorbing 75% of that, it only hit me with 12.5% of its total power.

I was instantly knocked down to only 15 hp. He’s that powerful!? His original attack would have done 8 times that! 560 damage? That’s too much!

For a non-mage to be able to cast a spell that powerful was insane. I didn’t know why his abilities were so powerful, but I was betting it had something to do with the type of warrior he was.

Maybe the class one chooses gives them special abilities that use mana? That is actually common in a lot of games.

I decided that when this was over I was going to thoroughly examine the use of abilities.

My body hurt. The 25% pain made me want to scream, but I held it in. I could have lowered the pain setting, but that would give me debuffs if I were injured. If I kept the pain setting up, then my complete immunity trait would level up.

Before the flames had finished dissipating, Wolf had already shot at me. A fierce whirlwind surrounded him.

With a flick of my hand my sword flew in an arc towards him. The red lines on his body were scarce, but the lines in the air indicating where my weapons should go were detailed.

An exchange of blows happened. It lasted. One second. Two seconds. Five seconds. At that time Wolf moved back a step.

After five seconds neither of us were able to wound the other. With Wolf’s stats at a quarter of what they should be, and mine raised by over 30% and using inspect, we were similarly matched.

In another five seconds he would lose another chunk of health. He would be at .3%. He was obviously looking to stop this.

He quickly spun his weapon after he disengaged. Flames spit from it. I shook my head. I pumped as much fire mana into Drake as I could.

Drakey, daddy needs you to stop that nasty attack. Use the mana I gave you to absorb it all.

Even though Drake had no body, I could feel the anticipation. Drake was in my core anyway. Fairies can only effect a short distance outside of the body while they are inside, so I fixed that.

Drake, the multiple floating entities that it was, swam outside my body. As soon as Drake reached outside, the fire mana gathering on the cross-spear began to dissipate. It was swimming towards Drake’s ‘open mouth’.

Wolf looked shocked, then seemed to give up on the idea. Unfortunately he had lost another second on that attack.

I suddenly felt like I had begun to do quite a bit better, and very rapidly. The cause was the field though. With Wolf’s vitality and endurance dropping, he had less stamina and stamina regen.

Without those two things a warrior was next to useless. Every bit of stamina Wolf consumed made him weaker. Even if he had more than me, his rate of stamina consumption was huge.

With only 14 seconds of life left, he had to do something or he would perish.

Meanwhile I’m sitting over here regenerating 25 mana per second. After just those six seconds, including the fire mana I sent to Drake, I was almost at full mana again. Minus the mana the buffs cost of course.

We clashed again, every second I gained more mana. I sent it to the fairies, and had them do various jobs at controlling Wolf. I had SparrowHawk use the bit of wind mana I had to guide the wind mana from Wolf into its own mouth. That way Wolf wouldn’t have an easy way to speed up to me.

The metal mana I had was given to Golem. That way my swords would be a bit more sharp. I had tried before to take the metal mana of a weapon while someone else wielded it, but I couldn’t.

My only guess was that the metal mana god didn’t want me to. It would be a bit unfair to take away people’s only means of survival.

Since I could only use Golem to increase my own attack, that’s what I did. At least Golem hadn’t been using a lot of mana this entire time.

Every second we fought was one that made Wolf closer to death. During out battle Wolf cursed.

“If my group didn’t run into that host of snake-women we would have been able to easily beat this room. Damn! I had to use up all of our poison control items on that!”

Another four seconds passed. Wolf’s face went pale. His health dropped to only .3% of the total. It was still more than I had total though.

Wolf let out an insane yell. “AHHHHHHHHHH DIIIIIE!” Suddenly his movement speed increased many folds. He went so fast it was hard for my eyes to keep up with him.

Unfortunately my inspect’s ability to tell me where to attack was based off of my vision and other senses. The lines began to blur.

I blocked what I could, but SparrowHawk had to throw me out of the way twice. Even one hit would kill me. Two more seconds passed.

That’s when I noticed something. Wolf didn’t even try to defend. It was like he had entered into some berserk state.

SparrowHawk had to throw me to the ground in order for me to duck under one of his attacks. His cross-spear blurred, and headed for my neck. Taking my chance, I did the only thing I could think of.

With SparrowHawk’s help I created a small tunnel of sharp wind. I threw one of my swords into it. The tunnel aimed directly for Wolf’s neck.

He didn’t even glance at the sword, only concentrating on attacking me. With a sickening crunch, the sword pierced his neck.

That didn’t seem to stop him though. His cross-spear continued forward. Severing my head from my shoulders.

A roar emitted from Kretchof met my ears. I looked at him, a familiar lamia heart in his hands. Without quite understanding what was going on, I stared at him. He looked enraged.

Kretchof shoved the lamia heart into where his heart would have been had he been alive. The world shook. Everything seemed to blur and shift.

The disorienting scene didn’t just effect me. EDI shut her eyes, and Wolf… Wolf had the light in his eyes vanish moments before.

The spear he wielded disappeared up to the hilt. Leaving no trace of the metal. Kretchof suddenly appeared behind him, and forced his hand into Wolf’s chest.

I only knew it was Kretchof thanks to our connection as fairy and master. The thing before me looked nothing like Kretchof.

Instead of the semi-muscular, though thin, lich body, stood a hulking monster of eight feet tall. His thick rippling muscles would be the dream of any young woman. His hair flowed with colors made from pure mana.

If I had the time, I would have realized what had happened, but I didn’t. As it was I had to later play the scene several times in my mind to actually understand it.

I did eventually understand it though. The abomination I had created, that I thought was destroyed with the update, didn’t disappear.

The thing I’m talking about was of course the mana sucking stone. I had originally made it to deal with the gryphon, but tossed it aside after realizing its danger to me.

I didn’t know how Kretchof got it, but it didn’t matter. What happened when he stuck the heart inside his chest was unfathomable.

His body shot forward, even as the energy of the stone seemed to ravage his body, and coalesce around him. His body changed as he flew towards Wolf. Finally reaching inside Wolf’s body, he pulled out the still beating heart.

Wolf’s body began to collapse, but Kretchof pulled out the chaos heart. He sprinkled it with a bit of blood, and shoved it into Wolf’s still living body. The body began to disintegrate, but a multicolored figure soon began to emerge as the skin turned into dust.

All of this takes time explain, but happened in an instant. In less time than it takes to blink it was all over.

A moment later a massive *BOOM* rang out, as the entire cavern was imploded. Without even a second to think, everything went black.

After a fraction of an instant, I appeared in a familiar room. I looked around. Both EDI and Wolf stood beside me. The room was filled with ten large tables. Each table had ten chairs. It was the room I had first entered when I joined the competition.

Suddenly the room exploded in applause. I looked around. Many of the people in the audience seemed to know something just happened. I looked behind me, a gain screen replayed the events that just happened.

Deep in my heart I felt a tremor of fear. As if answering me, the man who exaggeratedly threw the envelopes sending us into the forest, showed up.

“Alright everybody, calm down, calm down. It was a spectacular dungeon fight. We all agree on that. Unfortunately no one saw what dear Voice0fReason here was doing. That is beneficial to all of you though. All data is monitored during this event. The computer monitored it, and anything it found close to what we told it that others would want hidden, will not appear.”

He rattled on for awhile, but after that relief I drifted off. I didn’t really care what he had to say. I thought over the events. I wasn’t sure who had won.

I clearly should have gained a lot of points for causing both EDI and Wolf to die, but would EDITOR acknowledge that I caused their deaths? It seemed unlikely.

I saw a blinking icon in the corner of my eye. I clicked on it, only to be astounded by the information it gave. After excitedly asking Kretchof, it seemed to be true. My eyes widened in amazement as I pushed the yes button very hard.

It all had to do with what happened after the explosion that killed all of us. The core of the chaos heart was activated. Even I, its creator, had no idea it had this function.

After Kretchof pushed the chaos heart into the body of Wolf, the body began to decompose. It revealed a much smaller version of the chaos warrior that Kretchof had been. After the being was born from the flesh of Wolf’s body, an energy wave burst out, causing the shaking and insta-death.

When the being emerged it was completely under Kretchof’s control. By sacrificing that bit of blood, it had unsealed the summoning on the multiple darkness fairies. The control exerted over them quickly landed on the chaos warrior.

That’s when the noticed started blinking for me.

A Quasi-Chaotic Lifeform has been created.Chaotic Lifeforms were once common place. When Solun was born, so were they. They rampaged and destroyed as they pleased. They created and built when they wanted. Nothing was outside their scope. One day an unknown being sprang into existence. It had the power to siphon off the Chaotic Lifeform’s power. The power would soon return however. The new being took their power, and created several beings from them. These were the Elder Gods. The Elder Gods came into existence, and the Chaotic Lifeforms perished. It was legend that a Chaotic Lifeform could be born anew, but none have been able to complete this. Until now.

Its powers are unknown. It is best to keep this creature hidden, for fear of the unknown being’s wrath.

Kretchof has selected a new Dungeon Boss.Kretchof wishes to relinquish control of the dungeon to a new being: Unnamed Quasi-Chaotic Lifeform. As dungeon master you have the right to veto this decision. Would you like to select Unnamed Quasi-Chaotic Lifeform as your new dungeon boss? The dungeon will change according to the final boss.

As soon as I saw that, I hit yes.

Find out, on the next episode of: DIVE!