The soul-seeker shuddered as Skarm impacted. It tried to whirl on this new attacker, but Levi took advantage of its momentary distraction to step forward into its reach and stab upward with a Beast Bite. The attack cost a lot of mana to sustain, but as long as he maintained the bite it would serve as a grip very few creatures could break out of. At least until they were higher level than Levi himself.

Now with two holds on the eye, one from the shadowy tendril trailing from its back now wound around his arm and held tight, and the another from the sword driven up into its underside, Levi could turn it in any direction he wanted. The soul-seeker's lightweight nature and ability to float freely through the air were no longer advantages as Levi swung it down and slammed it to the floor.

“Straight ahead of you, Skarm. Tink, let me know when it gets into taming range. Gordon? Head toward me.”

Skarm gleefully leapt atop the trapped soul-seeker and set to work, clawing and screeching. Tink hummed in assent, and Gordon slowly walked toward Levi’s voice.

“There. Stab downward. I can’t hold it much longer.” Levi’s mana was draining fast with holding the Beast Bite, and the tendrils around his arm and body squeezed tighter and tighter, costing him stamina to resist the pressure.

The second soul-seeker drifted lazily around the group in a wide circle, staying well clear of Levi as though worried it would suffer the same fate.

Then the remaining sprites and glitterlings all flew down to converge on the scene, finally abandoning their hiding places to try to free their master.

Just as he'd hoped.

Levi released the Beast Bite, pivoting to stomp on the point where the soul-seeker’s tendrils connected to the back of its eyeball so he could switch to slashing the smaller defenders out of the air as they swarmed around Gordon and Skarm. The boss writhed and lurched, doing its best to throw him off, but its lightweight nature was once again proving detrimental. It may be dangerous in its element, but with proper counters it wasn’t the hardest boss he’d faced.

Glitterlings fell, though Skarm’s health dropped and Tink’s plummeted nearly to empty before he retreated. The sprite landed on Levi’s chest to recover, clinging to his armor with one hand, the other raised protectively in case any glitterlings slipped past Levi’s guard.

But this wasn’t like before. There were barely twenty glitterlings and sprites combined. Levi deftly fended them off, even with the soul-seeker doing its best to trip him up. He dropped one after another. Soon the false shimmer of the air dissolved entirely and the room was laid bare fully once again, the final sprite falling limp to the floor.

Skarm squeaked and patted the obviously furious eyeball pinned to the ground, gesturing with his other hand.

“Alright Gordon, you’re up.”

“Dismay.”

Skarm grinned pointily and resumed savaging the soul-seeker with his deadly claws. It didn’t take long until he stepped back again.

“Gordon.”

“Dismay.”

Something grabbed Levi around the throat. He’d not exactly forgotten the other soul-seeker, but had become engrossed in the current conflict and been less than attentive to its movements, writing it off as an insignificant threat without the ability to do any major physical damage. Stripped of their fear inducing powers, they really weren’t very strong.

He sheathed his sword, even as the other soul-seeker bucked in a sudden burst of movement, finally succeeding in knocking him off balance as the second soul-seeker yanked on his neck in the same moment.

Levi twisted in its grip, reaching back with his free hand to grab one of the second’s tendrils and anchor it down like he was with the first. If one soul-seeker was good, two would be better.

It lashed out with its remaining tendrils, slashing across his face and shoulders, leaving thin bleeding traces as it snapped against his skin like a whip. He noticed suddenly that this one had thinner, more solid looking tendrils, less wispy and translucent than the other. Its attacks were doing notably more damage than its not-so-identical twin. Levi couldn't do much at present, as both hands were occupied with holding onto the two soul-seekers, but he wasn't alone.

"Tink?"

The mirror sprite hovered into the air, but before he could strike, another tendril whipped out straight at Tink. He dodged aside.

The whip-thin tendril didn’t stop, but swerved to slam instead straight into Shadevine.

The fragile minion’s health dropped immediately to nothing, his grip on the Destruction tokens and lens going slack as he slid limply off Levi’s face.

Darkness. Smoke. Fire.

Levi stood balanced on the side of a lightpost, shortsword hanging limp in one hand, his other gripped around the crossbar. He stared out across the ruined city, past the hundreds of huddled refugees and helpless civilians, a few at level 20 or 30, none remotely strong enough to be of help. They stared up at him with hopeless eyes, knowing they were dead and that he would not be able to save them.

He knew it too, a deep emptiness gnawing at his soul, the certainty that he was going to do his very best and it would never, ever be enough.

This would be his last fight. And he wasn't sure any more that it was worth fighting.

Purple fire lit up the distance, the creature striding among the blue-flame demon elites like a giant among infants, the massive warriors taller than a man barely reaching its knees.

No... their knees.

Four distinct hues of purple fire, four distinct calamities each capable of annihilating the city and everyone in it single handedly.

Four creatures so strong that even from this distance the system returned an indecipherable wall of gibberish when he glimpsed them. [Vorish the Scythe, level ??????] and a whole page of nonsense below. [Qzirxdar Bloodstorm, level ??????] [Mevliar the Devourer, level ???????] and, striding a half step in front of the others, Geyavir Chillblood, ice crackling around him in fluctuating waves.

Even miles distant Levi could see them all clearly, could make out the individual armies each led and strode among.

Hundreds of elites, ranging from slender and agile to troll-like bulk. Regardless of their size and shape, each of the blue-flame-wreathed demonic elites required a dozen high level fighters to bring down.

Thousands of warriors and imps, clad in green or golden fire. Each one an even match for someone of Levi's strength, capable of demolishing a city and tearing through civilians like hot water through snow.

Uncountable hellhounds, surging ahead of the main strength of the army in an unbroken sea of crimson fire and obsidian black.

He couldn't even see where the demon armies ended. There was no landscape beyond them, no distant mountains on the horizon. Nothing but a violent rainbow of fire and death moving like the unstoppable tide straight toward humanity's last stronghold.

He'd fought overwhelming odds before. Never like this. Always before there had been an end in sight, an escape route, something.

Now, he turned to stare to the east, to the west, to the south, and each was the same as the north.

All ten demon lords were here, entirely surrounding the city. Closing in. Levi turned his gaze nearer, then, searching for his fellow warriors. They were gone. No one remained to fight but him. All he saw were the helpless and weak. Cowering. Huddling. Eyes devoid of fear or hope turned up to Levi as he searched among them for anyone, anything—

His stamina ran out and Levi lost his grip, slipping from the lamppost. He fell. Down, down, down. The ground twisted beneath him to swallow him whole. Reality warped itself around him, dropping him into a dungeon beneath the city.

The last dungeon. Their only hope for growing strong enough.

(It wouldn't be enough. He knew that, yet what choice was there?)

Levi saw the low-level ogre pack guarding the entrance hall, only seventy or so, and all under level 120.

He was running forward, unable to stop himself even as he he realized his own stats were gone. Reduced to almost nothing. Barely a hundred mana, stamina and health hardly better. No weapons. No armor.

His charge faltered as the ogres loomed larger, their armor clinking and creaking ominously.

One stepped forward and towered over Levi, one foot extending to crush him into human paste.

Ice stabbed him through both legs at once in a storm of blade-sharp icicles, a sea of them filling the space around him as the sudden halt to his momentum sent him tumbling toward them. He reached out to catch himself, impaling his hands instead of his face, bloody ice running all the way through his arms and out the other side. The tips of three icicles pressed against his chest and throat, but he’d caught himself on time and they did not break the skin.

Then the ogre’s foot came down, driving him down onto the sharpened ice. A hundred bladed icicles stabbed through every inch of his body. One eye was punctured leaving him half blinded; three icicles perforated his throat, another stabbed up through his mouth. His health trickled steadily down as it struggled to keep him alive, and he wished it wouldn’t.

Blood pooled beneath him and in its surface he saw reflected the grim face of Geyavir Chillblood, the demon lord of ice and cold, striding across the room and systematically impaling every cowering survivor who’d escaped the slaughter above.

One by one. Reveling in each death.

The blood rose higher and higher as Levi watched, threatening to drown him, the images dancing across its surface vivid in clarity as the Demon Lord finished with the last of the human resistance and turned at last back to Levi.

Something tore down his face like invisible claws, somehow hurting far more than being impaled through every part of his body. Levi blinked against the sensation, his mind stuttering as he tried to process the conflicting information he was receiving. He saw nothing change, the icicles hadn’t moved, yet--

Darkness. Sudden and absolute.

Yet with the darkness came memory and awareness, the false scenario fading from immediacy as the immediate precursor came back into sharp mental focus. Something pressed against his face, blocking his view completely. Some...one?

Right. The boss fight. How had he forgotten?

Levi shivered at the vivid reminder of the overwhelming power of the soul-seekers’ gaze. He’d grown complacent, convinced he’d neutralized them completely. Once more, if not for his minions, he’d have been lost.