Chapter 211

Matt’s AI spun up as he poured both mana and willpower into its activation, hoping to process everything going on in the chaotic melee around them.

There were several factors that made this task substantially simpler than trying it elsewhere.

First of all, his AI didn't need to account for each person's own AI and then try to predict what combat solutions it would put out, thus creating counters ad nauseam. Though, that was a Minkalla benefit and restriction as a whole, rather than being floor specific. With it blocking most of the others' AI, Matt’s only needed to predict what each person would do on their own, which helped simplify things a great deal.

Mind Over Matter also changed things in its own way, making things at least slightly easier. Mages dominated on the floor, as the lack of physical bodies or weapons meant that fighters had a hard time accomplishing much without prohibitive mana or willpower expenditure. Anyone with a weapon Concept would be able to strengthen their incorporeal weapons into something usable, and making a weapon manifestation was even achievable for a normal person on the floor. But Susanne would likely be one of the most capable fighters on the whole floor, given her Concept specialization.

Three seconds after his AI started processing with nearly his full mana generation, Matt sent out the results.

Their best option? Punch through all the opposition and kill the boss as soon as possible.

Not exactly something they needed an AI to tell them, but it did come with some helpful information and the framework of an actual combat plan.

Acting on the information, the four of them floated to the right, where there were two Empire kill squads trying to take down an equal number of Federation fighters.

Ideally, they could assist the kill squads and then exit through the boss ruin nearby, relying on the kill squad to hold off anyone and everyone who would want to prevent someone from leaving the floor.

Easy.

Except they needed to not give away their Matt, Liz, and Aster identities any more than they already had.

Harder.

And they needed to do all of that while not being forced to Tier up.

Difficult.

As they got close to the ruin in question, they were surprised by a team teleporting right next to them.

Spinning, Susanne cut one of the team in half before they even fully materialized, and a burst of flame scorched another who created an earthen shield a second too late, trapping the heat inside with him rather than blocking it.

Matt slashed out with a [Wind Cutter] that sank deep into the hasty shield of emerald flames that a melee-looking woman had raised. The next moment saw her try to rush him with a newly-manifested sword made from emerald flames, but he forced her to parry his barrage of [Fireball]s long enough for Susanne to cut her down in two swings.

With a pulse of will, Matt sucked their looted gear into his ring, then noted the amount of Genesis Energy they had gathered and calculated that into their projections.

They were about three teams away from having enough for the exit reward, by his estimation, and they’d likely get that while en route.

Casting [Bulwark], he led the charge and blocked a stream of exploding arrows that slammed into his shield the moment they came around the corner and into the line of sight for the next ruin.

Before the shield fully fell, Matt reinforced it with his defensive Concept and kept moving forward, even as his vision was obstructed by the series of explosions from the dozens of arrows that were lodged in his [Bulwark]. With his spiritual perception spread out, he didn’t even need his sight and was hardly hindered by the attacks, but he pinged Aster to keep a watch out with the mirror, just in case the arrows were a diversion.

A good measure, as the attacks were only meant to block their vision while a melee fighter moved in close with a mace manifestation. They were invisible to the group's spiritual perception, but were perfectly visible to the mirror's illusion piercing abilities.

Susanne moved forward and took a position right by the right flank of the [Bulwark]. The moment the man came around with a [Dash] infused lunge, she was ready to meet him blade to mace.

If he was just fighting a single Susanne, he might have been fine. But when the second copy of Susanne peeled away from the main body, he was unprepared, and lost his off-hand trying to block the unexpected strike.

Seeing the man's shock, horror, and surprise at seeing Susanne create a duplicate with her manifestation, Matt was reminded that most non-immortals couldn’t do what Susanne did with her Concept. Though, Mind Over Matter certainly helped out those who were close.

Still, he wasn’t weak, and managed to preserve his life long enough to disengage and try to retreat.

Try… and fail.

A flower of flame blossomed behind him, rippling with cold as the air around him froze.

A spatial fluctuation started to ripple out from his armor, but Matt threw his Concept at the space around the man and commanded the world to hold itself together, which prevented the fluctuations from breaking space and teleporting the man out.

That was all the time Susanne needed for herself and her copy to flit out from the cover of the [Bulwark] shield and cut the man down.

Grabbing the body, she pulled it behind the wall that was Matt’s shield and started stripping the man, looking for the spatial item. As it turned out, it was a necklace with a small gemstone that pulsed rhythmically to an unseen beat.

They were able to close a quarter of the distance before Matt stopped moving forward and started injecting more mana into his [Bulwark] to reinforce it, on top of activating the [Mana Shield] spell he enchanted on his blade. As he strengthened his defenses a mage pointed a glowing white staff at them that screamed danger to his senses.

A lightning bolt the width of a tree cracked out with a sound, as if the world itself was splitting in half.

Even with his reinforcements, [Bulwark] exploded on impact, and Matt had to empower [Cracked Phantom Armor] as much as he could to block the spell, as well as activating his newly-developed Concept armor. Despite taking the brunt of the blow, Matt’s armor still shattered, and it left the front of his ‘body’ scorched and broken to match.

How exactly that would translate to his physical body, he had no idea, but it wasn’t registering as fatal to his AI, so he ignored the pain as he cast [Fireball] as fast as the spell could reform in his spirit.

As the stream of seemingly weak spells flew across the distance, Matt started using [Fire Manipulation] to change their trajectory mid-flight, according to the path his AI predicted would be the least expected.

Liz wasn’t sitting still, and Matt felt her Concept flex in an unfamiliar way. He suspected that it was her bloodline empowerment Concept ability. He was proven correct as a pair of [Fire Bolt] talismans flared with more power than usual, then immediately raced forward and targeted the melee fighter that was closing in on the Empire Tier 14 squad.

The other team wasn’t sitting idle while he was piecing together [Bulwark]’s skill structure in his spirit , thanks to it being forcefully destroyed by the lightning spell,, and another rain of arrows started streaking at the four of them.

Matt and Aster deflected those projectiles with [Air Manipulation] and Aster’s [Cross Wind], and he noted how they also exploded off in the distance, which told Matt that was probably the only enchantment on the opposing weapon, and the only way it could be used on this floor.

With that bit of information, his mid-fight analysis changed, and he sent the new information out to his team. In response, Susanne flicked out to the side before speeding forward like a fish after just entering water.

Knowing she could handle herself, Matt started casting [Flamethrower] and allowed Liz to take a portion of the flames for her own use, while also casting his own [Fire Bolt]s through the obscuring flames.

Using his model to predict everyone's movements, Matt kept most of his spiritual perception focused behind them in case of another ambush.

Thankfully, nothing happened, and they quickly got into melee range despite only a few of them being able to use melee attacks, thanks to their weapon Concepts.

That would have been foolhardy, if not for the fact that Liz could use her blood to subtly reinforce her spear and use the deception to her advantage.

Susanne was a whirlwind of steel as her blade changed shape and form through her Concept weapon swaps. She displayed the various weapons she had absorbed, and used their respective enchantments to great effect as she quickly battered down the archer's defenses. That was in spite of the opposing archer's team rushing in to try and free their teammate, but the Empire death squads were already en route to intercept.

Once Aster was close enough, she cast [Winter's Harvest], and an aura of frost appeared as the enemies' strength, mind, and regeneration cultivation were restricted and used to boost everyone she considered allies.

If that wasn’t enough, she doubled up with [Kar'tan Greets his Foes] to restrict their movement, along with her natural treasure, Heart of Winter, which drained power from everyone to empower herself.

The instant boost to her allies and weakening of their enemies changed the pace of the battle, and the ten of them quickly cut down the enemy death squads.

Even as Genesis Energy rushed into his spirit, and they had a clear shot into the next ruin, Matt knew things wouldn’t be so simple.

Because everyone else on the floor had seen that they were now unencumbered with a boss ruin behind them, and like crabs in a bucket, no one would allow anyone else to leave if they weren't on their side.

Just like that, they had become public enemy number one.

Good thing they still needed a little more Genesis Energy, because they were going to gather it in spades.

The first wave consisted of three teams. Two obviously from the Sects and one from either the Republic or the Federation; their spirits didn’t give anything away.

Knowing he had to go all out, Matt cast [Hail] in front of them with its maximum range and then sent the max mana the spell could handle, creating a near wall of ice which he and Aster immediately grabbed and started throwing at the enemies.

Sadly, what had been an amazing tactic against monsters was less effective against humans. Burst of flames melted the ice in front of one of the Sect teams, while a wall of earth grew out of the ground and into a tunnel to protect the opposing team. Meanwhile, the final Sect team seemed to just ignore the ice as it passed around them, despite his and Aster's best efforts.

Dropping a portion of his power over [Ice Manipulation], Matt used [Earth Manipulation] to squeeze down on the team who was trying to tunnel under their ice storm.

He only felt one burst of Genesis Energy from the team as the other earth mage pulsed his power and pushed Matt’s own manipulation skill back, but Matt didn’t contest the man in a struggle.

Instead, he redirected a stream of ice into the mound of earth and let it build up, hoping to slow the group down as much as possible.

At the same time, Aster was throwing more and more ice at the fire mage team, which was effective at slowing them down, but didn’t stop their advance.

That didn’t prevent the third team from running through the ice storm like it wasn’t there.

Honing in on them, Matt didn’t have an answer to exactly how they were preventing the ice from hitting them. They weren't intangible, they weren’t redirecting the ice, and they weren’t illusions.

It was as if all the ice was just by them, despite Matt and Aster’s efforts to redirect it, which screamed some kind of luck or probability Talent or Concept.

And the easiest counter to those abilities was removing any chance for escape for the Talent to effect.

With only a quick message to Aster, he gathered a large amount of hail and brought it towards the team in a tight mass, while holding everything on a steady trajectory, only letting go the instant that Aster cast [Shatter] on the mass of ice.

Instead of a single chunk of ice or a large amount of medium sized ice chunks, the team now had to deal with millions of razor sharp fragments of empowered ice rocketing at them like an icy cone of death.

A [Water Bubble] appeared to wrap the team up, but it was a poor choice.

Aster took advantage of her control over ice and winter to flash freeze the ball of ice, and then expanded the ice until they were encased in a pseudo mountain. None of them died, despite Matt trying to squeeze the ball of ice down to nothing, as the water mage inside seemed to have a degree of control over ice as well, and with their range advantage, they were able to defend properly.

But that left them with one team to defend against. The fire mage Sect team.

Except, instead of it being a three versus three, it was a one versus three, as two other Empire teams assisted them.

Spells raced back and forth, but seeing that they were winning, Matt turned his attention back to the earth mage team, which was trying to burrow deeper underground.

A mix of [Earth Manipulation] and [Create Water] overrode the ground beneath him, turning it first into a slurry of conceptual water and earth, then into outright mud. With his own [Mud Manipulation], Matt was able to gain an advantage against the earth mage’s efforts, locking them beneath the floor and forcing them to struggle to use any earth spells.

Then, using the gap he created to reach them with the mud, he cast [Flamethrower] at the ground and started melting the earth into lava, which he sent at the team who was just dealing with the mud. Normally, dirt or mud couldn’t melt into lava, but the floor’s semi-physical nature helped him out and made the interaction work.

Once he had them surrounded, it took him nearly a minute of squeezing to overcome the earth mages' defensive advantage and wipe out the entire team.

He was turning to attack the water mage team when, seemingly out of nowhere, a forest started to grow out of the ground and tried to entangle everyone from the Empire side.

Using [Wood Manipulation], he tried to halt the spell. That bought enough time for him to cast [Flamethrower] and spread the flames around with Liz’s assistance.

Except, while the wood charred, it didn’t burn like it should have, and kept growing new shoots instead.

Checking his AI and seeing it had the same analysis of the situation as he did, he cast [Cracked Mana Trap]s and filled them with lightning mana. When they exploded, the traps stunted the wood spell’s growth long enough for the Empire fighters to pull back into the boss ruin.

“Yellow, Silver, and team two, start killing through the ruin while we protect the rear. We should earn enough Genesis Energy by fighting through. We just need to get out of here.”

With half of their manpower leaving the front line, even as more teams came at them, Matt still didn’t hesitate to send Liz and Susanne to the monster front and start killing.

His reasoning was twofold.

First, Liz’s fire was more useful against monsters who tended to have weaknesses that Torch’s precision-based pyromancy could exploit. Second, Susanne, while useful for the ability to attack in melee range, needed to get close, and things were devolving into a spell slinging match.

While that was a situation Matt excelled at, he still needed space.

This was a mage’s floor, and a mage’s battle.

His approach was much the opposite of Torch’s, if he was being honest. Not much finesse, but when it came to sheer mana spent, none could match him.

Pausing for a moment as he filled then drained his mana stone reserves to recast [Bulwark] at its maximum size, Matt backed up into the cleared portion of the ruins while Aster summoned a [Snowpack] golem to add a new body to their efforts.

Like its original spell, the golem was an impressive defensive wall, an immobile semi-humanoid save for its ability to gather itself into a ball and roll forward. Still, it was absolutely massive, and was more than capable as an animated defender, giving them momentary breathing room.

Not one to let such an opportunity slide, Aster cast [Frost] to empower ice skills and then [Snowbank] at her golem, giving it more and more material to build its body with, while infusing it with her Concept to further empower the living spell.

The twenty feet tall ice golem intercepted a team containing a man with an appearance halfway between an earth golem and a dryad, and Matt suspected that he was responsible for the trees around them. Seeing that their own ice golem would keep the man occupied for a while, Matt turned his attention to the fire mage team that Liz had been previously engaging.

He didn’t directly attack their barriers, but he did send a [Wind Cutter] their way as a feint, following it up with an [Earth Spear].

The spell combo wasn’t nearly as effective as he had hoped, and while one of the Sect mages went down, they got right back up with only a hole in their chest that seemed to slowly close as a healing spell hit them.

Trying an alternative tactic, he cast [Jolt] twice in rapid succession, which pierced through the wall of flames but didn’t do more than injure the fire mage, who was also quickly healed.

But that distraction stopped them long enough for Matt to cast a series of [Cracked Mana Trap]s that he hid behind a wave of earth created by [Earth Manipulation].

Casting another useless series of [Wind Cutter]s at the approaching team, he smiled as the lead melee fighter stepped on the first mana trap.

As it went off, the metal mana he had infused the spell with ripped out in ribbons of cutting fury, like a high tension cable that snapped under too much pressure, and ripped through both the fire mage and healer.

It didn’t kill either of them outright, but it did stop the roaring flames for a brief moment, and that was all Aster needed to send a wave of hail at them, which shredded and pulverized the team before they could recover.

Genesis Energy flowed to them like the confirmation of a job well done, but they didn't have time for congratulations.

Even as they killed one team, another four appeared at the edge of the ruin, trying to prevent them from exiting.

Seeing that, Matt simply retreated slowly while settling into a holding pattern.

Between himself, Aster, and the Tier 14 team, they managed to throw enough spells at the enemies to make rushing them down nearly impossible. To facilitate their retreat, he focused on Susanne and used his championing Concept to send her a portion of his abilities.

While most of the boost was ineffective on this floor, it did help empower her mind and senses enough to take riskier openings in her fight.

Thus empowered, she was the tip of the spear that punched through the winged rhino monsters in the ruin.

Liz was keeping busy, and was using a short, controlled burst of flames to protect Susanne's flank to cover her blood spells, secretly killing any monster Susanne left alive in her wake. Ideally, they wouldn’t expose her as a blood mage after having worked so hard to kill almost everyone who saw her use blood spells in the earlier floors, but Matt knew she was ready to burst out with all her power if needed.

Most shouldn’t notice it as too out of place, but a small portion of the monster's blood was clinging to her, and Susanne was giving Liz a small but ready supply of material to work with.

Turning back to the front line, Matt threw up a wall of earth with [Earth Manipulation] before recasting [Hail] once more to give Aster and himself more material of their own to work with.

As they were dealing with five teams at once, he didn’t concentrate on killing, but rather slowing them down as much as possible while taking any opportunities to wound them that he could.

With [Bulwark] as their frontal shield and seeing how reliable it was, the Tier 14 team stopped focusing on defense and started moving onto the offense, unleashing their own spells and trusting Matt to keep them protected.

Despite all of that, the distance between them and their attackers slowly started to shrink, until the point spells were hardly formed before crashing into defense layers. But Matt kept their retreat as slow and as steady as possible while also preventing any team from flanking them.

Just as they were crossing into a relatively untouched portion of the ruin, Matt launched his own counter attack.

A dozen [Cracked Mana Traps] filled with earth mana, which detonated into an impromptu stone wall within a fairly narrow part of the ruin.

It worked, and for a few brief moments, the seven of them were able to rest and catch their breath.

Before the Tier 14s had even finished refilling their mana, Matt felt the battering of his wall of earth and knew that it wouldn't last.

Checking in on his AI, Matt noted what it thought he should do and paused. It said that he should once more cast [Hail] and have him and Aster use the ice to slow down and weaken the enemies, but he had another plan.

Running it through a few test scenarios, he felt there was a decent chance of his latest plan working as he wanted, and he decided to roll the dice.

Without most items bolstering their defenses, the teams were wholly reliant on spells or Concepts for protection, and that had a fatal weakness.

Mana.

A set of armor would also have some degree of protection by the nature of its physical durability, even if it was just an enchanted robe.

But spells were different.

The moment his wall came crashing down, Matt activated his mana draining Concept and threw his willpower against the leading two melee fighters who had shield spells protecting them.

He initially wanted to dig into their spirits, but found, even with his relatively large reserves of willpower, that it would be an uphill battle.

So, he switched tactics and tried to drain their spells instead. He’d slightly hoped that Mind Over Matter may have empowered his drain enough for it to work, but the only thing it accomplished was to distract the melee fighters attacking him as they noticed his attempt.

Seizing the opportunity provided, he used [Earth Manipulation] to entomb them in the rubble of the former wall.

Their side's mages tried to fight his power, but both sides were so close, there was practically no range advantage, and he was able to use his raw mana output to crush the two melee fighters.

That seemed to give the attack some pause, as they hesitated in rushing through the debris.

One team of dwarves from the Clans didn’t seem bothered, though, and rushed forward, gathering the rubble together and throwing it at Matt.

Instead of fighting them directly, Matt deflected the rocks to the side and retaliated with a Concept-based explosion of force, following it up with a blast of repulsion.

The team was sent flying backwards, slamming them against broken rubble and impaling two of them on particularly jagged protrusions. As the Genesis Energy flooded in, Matt smiled.

They had finally reached the amount of Genesis Energy they needed to exit Minkalla with both the floor reward and the innate skill slot. The distribution wasn’t perfectly even, but they all had enough for the floor reward, and they could even out the rest once they were in the safe room. That shifted their goal firmly to ‘get out as fast as possible,’ and they summoned their final reserves of strength for the final sprint.

Matt and Aster both held their ground for a few moments as he once more cast [Hail], and used the massive amount of ice created to batter down their enemies, who struggled to push through the onslaught of enhanced ice.

All of Aster's new Concept powers empowered the ice, and Matt’s boon from the fourth floor combined to turn a generally harmless [Hail] spell into a powerhouse of destruction.

And time was all they needed.

Led by Susanne and Liz, the team of Tier 14s were nearing the boss of the ruin.

The exit.

Their goal.

Using his AI, he asked the team they were with, “Are you leaving with us or staying?”

His answer was immediate. “Staying if possible, but if there’s no way out, we aren’t going to stand around and die.”

It wasn’t a surprise, and he fed the confirmation into his calculations. His headache from running his AI on willpower for so long was rapidly growing beyond what he could stand, but he was so close. He could hold on a bit longer.

Currently, there were only two exits to the ruin before the boss chamber, and after calculating the odds he offered them their out.

“Both of you should leave at this next exit. We can take the rest of this ourselves.”

As Tier 14 death squads, they would need a lot of Genesis Energy to leave with the floor theme, even if they had no intention to take the floor seven exit reward, and choose something like the floor six one, and he didn’t want to punish them for helping their group.

And besides, he still had two final trump cards.

[Cracked Mana Spear] wasn’t linked to his real identity, after all, and his spirit, while not absent of spiritual strain, was in good enough shape he could sustain about thirteen seconds or so of a full-power attack before he outright collapsed.

Thirteen seconds of a beam spell powered by 2,560 mana every second.

More than enough to take out one final boss.

After explaining his idea to the rest of their team, Matt swapped places with Susanne and Liz and called for cover.

They were still a distance away from the boss and that area was full of monsters, but he thankfully had the perfect spell to clear out huge waves of monsters.

His final [Aurora Lance] array was going to clear the path for them.

Spells and the occasional arrow flew around and at him, but not a single one landed thanks to the combined efforts of the Tier 14 teams and his friends.

Thirty agonizing seconds later, he had the array ready and activated it.

The spell went off and seemed to freeze the world itself for a moment before, almost as an afterthought, the passage of the projectile flash froze everything in front of Matt towards the direction of the exit.

Statues of ice were all that remained of the monsters that had formerly barred their way, and the two Tier 14 teams that had assisted them split off, vanishing into the adjoining ruins as they crashed through the brittle bodies of what had once been a horde of enemies.

None of their pursuers followed them, as they were the lowest priority targets, but that left all the burden of a now desperate coalition of teams to the three of his teammates.

Susanne almost seemed like a wood chipper as her new spell [Mass Deflect] shredded hundreds of arrows and other wooden projectiles, Aster moved walls of ice around to block, and Liz pushed and pulled all of them with bits of blood while spending fire spells at their attacker, buying room for Matt to close in on the boss.

Their final obstacle was massive.

Fifty feet tall, thirty feet wide, and a hundred feet long, the scariest rhino Matt had ever seen loomed over him, making him seem like a mere speck of dust in comparison. Its hide gleamed like dull metal, with some portions being outright metal plates, and its horns shone black and gold, wickedly sharp and covered in runes so far away that they blended together into a single pattern. Aurora Lance had just barely grazed it, from what Matt could tell, given its frostbitten front leg.

As he approached, crimson light flickered along the base of its larger horn, and energy began pouring towards the top as the boss turned to look at the tiny ant that had disturbed its sanctuary.

But Matt had been an ant before. And even an ant could bite. Some bites were just bigger than others.

The world flexed to his will, and he launched himself into the air with an explosion of willpower, riding his own shockwave and flying straight at a crack in the rhino’s armor, where frostbitten flesh met a titanic plate of armor, just barely exposing the beast’s more vulnerable insides.

His mana flared and split into four streams.

The first went to his AI, keeping him informed as to the status of his teammates. Liz had taken a sword blow to her arm, but she was mostly fine and using her flames to great effect. Aster was low on mana, but was using what she had left to assist Liz and Susanne. Susanne was living up to her namesake of Queen, dancing like a monarch as she cut down every spell that flew at them.

The second went to [Cracked Phantom Armor], protecting him from the debris he was about to generate.

The third went to his gravity gauntlets, still empowered by the Heart of a Black Hole installed in his armor, and would keep him locked to the rhino even as it tried to shake him off.

The fourth, and by far the largest, was 2,400 MPS directed straight into [Cracked Mana Spear].

Matt landed on-target, and his world became blue light.

One second.

The air thrummed with power, and his mana spear burrowed into the rhino’s shoulder, tunneling upwards towards the beast’s brain. A ragged and burned hole opened in the beast’s flesh, and Matt followed it, restricting his repulsion until it barely covered his armor, and he absolutely devastated the odd mental flesh and innards of the boss as he passed, tearing it apart from the inside.

His AI informed him that his teammates were starting to run low on mana, with only Liz, fueled by [Lesser Blood Sacrifice] and what was presumably a mountain of corpses, still in good shape.

Three seconds.

Gravity pulled in on the rhino around him and his repulsion kept it at bay pulling and pushing at its weakest parts. It bellowed, and its call rumbled through the fleshy prison that Matt found himself in seeming to shake the world.

Five seconds.

He could barely sense the world outside of the rhino while its spirit was still intact. Even his AI was getting some spotty results as it tried to connect to the rest of his team’s.

Seven seconds.

Matt found the creature’s spine and he slipped along it, finding an entry into the creature’s impossibly massive and tough skull. Its brain wasn’t quite physical, but instead was an energy field of pinks, blues, and reds that absolutely recoiled at the arm-thick lance of mana that was disintegrating it.

Nine seconds.

Matt felt a massive wash of Genesis Energy flood through him as the rhino shuddered and died. With its spirit weakening, Matt burst out of the creature’s head, allowing the titanic boss to crumble to the ground seemingly in slow motion.

He didn’t wait for it, and flew to the ground at high speed, firing [Cracked Mana Spear] up once again, this time aimed at the flood of death squads that his team was still holding back.

Ten seconds.

If he wasn’t trying desperately to hold the spell structure together in his spirit, he might have been able to enjoy the sight of their panicked faces as they tried to raise defenses against his attack.

Eleven seconds.

Unprepared for his sudden appearance, several teams fell to his implacable beam.

Twelve seconds.

A desperate attack swept out from a team as the spear swept towards them in a massive combination of six skills, forming into an axe that flew like lightning and was as tall as Matt. He tried to dodge, but the attack unerringly curved and took out his right leg, carving out a section of his hip as it did so. He stayed standing, but his AI warned him that the damage would be extensive once he had his body back.

Thirteen seconds.

Matt saw and felt two more people die under his mana beam's sweeping attack, and felt his spirit starting to buckle as the spiritual strain built itself to an unsustainable level, but he pushed further.

Fourteen seconds.

The world started to blur as the strain built up.

Liz swept in and grabbed the still-forming loot from the rhino boss, and with one hand, grabbed him and pulled him to the reward distortion that Susanne and Aster were already dispelling.

Fifteen seconds.

As [Cracked Mana Spear] faltered, Matt watched as the other teams started launching last minute attacks on them as they neared the exit.

The ground around them tried to raise up and create walls, but they were a step ahead.

Blast of winds tried to knock them back, but Aster commanded the world to stand still, and it did.

Arrows lanced out at them, but Susanne created a copy of herself that flitted around and cut the arrows down.

A ball of flame tried to descend on them, but Liz threw it back at their attackers with a hawk-like cry.

And then, they were in the distortion, and Minkalla was asking Matt if he wished to take the challenge for Mind Over Matter.

Matt didn’t hesitate as he agreed and felt himself being taken into the challenge.

It didn’t do anything for his aching spirit, but he knew time was the only real remedy for that, and he had the challenge to complete.

He had heard that the challenge had been given a few nicknames over the millennia. Face Your Fear, Whetstone, and The Twisted Mirror were just a few, but they all meant the same thing.

Minkalla would attempt to break your Concept by showing its failings, its opposite, its anathema. To win, you needed to withstand the pressure as it sought to crush you.

Matt found himself in a starscape, a planet of blue and green under his feet, and he saw himself. He lived his life, and then he died. The world went on without him, and his goals in life fell short, the people he helped fell backwards without him supporting them.

You are finite, Minkalla told him.

You are not endless.

You are limited, your days are numbered, even you will fall short.

When you die, you will cease to give.

You are not endless, you cannot help forever, your contributions will be a fleeting moment in time, then passed over and forgotten

In the blink of an eye, what you claim to be endless will be swept away like a mote of dust.

And the life began anew, this time showing Matt trying desperately to leave some kind of lasting legacy, only for it to be rendered pointless in the end.

What you can do, who you are, is not endless.

Even he would run out of mana someday. Not during his lifetime, but eventually.

As long as he drew breath, he would have mana, but when he drew his last breath, he would cease to be.

He was not eternal.

But he made no grand claims to true immortality.

He was not Eternal.

He was Endless.

Even if he ceased to be one day, that did not deny that simple fact. If he died, he would no longer exist. But so long as he lived, he would never falter, never break, never run dry.

And he would prove it, here and now.

I am Endless.

He refused to yield. No matter how long this took.

After all, he was endless.

***

Susanne was in a world with her sword in her hand.

She needed her sword.

It was as much a part of her as breath was.

And while she had it in hand, it was useless. It bent and flopped around like it was made from foam.

Her sword was distinctly not reliable.

As she was forced time after time to kill monsters with her hands, she came to understand that more and more, but her spirit rebelled against the idea. Her sword was always at hand, especially now as she faced down a horde of enemies.

But no. Her sword was reliable. It would always be there for her, it would always be at hand when she needed it.

Except now, it wasn’t.

Closing her eyes, Susanne struck out with her sword.

It didn’t matter that Minkalla had made it useless. She trusted in her sword.

It was always there for her and she was ready to wield it.

Two halves of the same whole.

She never questioned the fact that the monster in front of her died as she danced with her eyes closed.

After all, her sword was reliable.

She could trust in it to be there for her when she needed it, just as she would always be there to wield it.

Blood flew as she danced, writing a song of trust and death.

Of blood and bone.

Shattered and spilled.

No matter what Minkalla tried to convince her of, she knew the truth.

Her sword was reliable.

***

Liz looked at the challenge before her with a scoff.

Rebirth Through Blood, her Concept claimed.

And Minkalla presented her with what it judged to be its opposite- diseased, rotting blood. The lifeblood of countless victims seeping across the ground, causing her every step to squelch in sanguine viscera.

It was carnage of nearly-unmatched proportions, on a scale that any sane person would recoil from- that Liz would have recoiled from not even a month ago.

But Minkalla had already forced her through this trial of fire. The fields of disease and death stretched as far as she could see, but she’d now experienced worse.

She’d done worse.

Now, all she could feel was numbness as she saw a complete rejection of her very being, perhaps what her future was doomed to be.

Mindless, purposeless bloodshed, untold loss of life, and a landscape which reeked with the miasma of death.

Was that really her lot in life?

Liz fought back tears.

No.

No.

The story was incomplete.

Her Concept didn’t forbid the existence of death. She didn’t claim that blood was eternal life.

No.

She claimed that blood enabled rebirth.

People reborn in the forge of battle, through the blood of their enemies.

Life would return in the wake of unimaginable death, just as she’d seen Melinda accept with her own Concept.

And she was a phoenix. Returning to life from naught but ashes was in her blood.

Death was the first step.

Now it would be reborn.

Golden flames engulfed the landscape, and life was born anew.

***

Aster was forced to watch as gravity pulled the universe back together just before the end, heating up in fire as everything became denser and denser.

Then, it expanded outward in a massive explosion. Once more creating life.

But that was all wrong.

At the end, everything was meant to be cold. Still. Not condense back in on itself before expanding once more.

Everything had its end, and that end shouldn’t be the beginning of itself once more.

The end was cold and still.

Peaceful.

Where not even the atoms had energy to move.

That was where the next stage of life could finally exist.

The cold at the end of a universe.

Stillness.

Not a ball of fire once more exploding out to begin life anew.

That was wrong.

Aster opened her eyes and watched as the ever growing universes slowed in their expansion, before slowly starting to dim as she imposed her will on the play in front of her

She wasn’t strong enough to stop this cycle, but she found power in extending the contraction of the dying stars. Prolonging the cold.

Her only little niche in a world built to oppose her.

That was so much better.

Even as the challenge faded away with the stars themselves, she relished in the feeling.

***

Matt dropped to his knee and felt the pain return, as his chest was letting him know the damage he’d taken to his spirit body wasn’t just magically gone. It had been transferred over, even if not all the way.

Where he shouldn’t have lungs anymore, he just felt like his flesh was on fire.

Most of his wounds were ultimately superficial, though he was well past the healing cooldown, even at his best. He couldn’t see out of one of his eyes, but that was just because blood had dried over the eyelid, sealing it closed. He had at least two bones broken in his arm, given the angle it was at, but it wasn’t that bad.

His leg and hip were a different story. He was missing a sizable chunk of his pelvis and his entire right leg. A quick [Bandage] stopped the bleeding, and he lay on the floor in utter agony. His spirit was rebelling at the use of magic, but he forced it to cooperate for just a few moments.

His teammates were already around him, either already on the ground or about ready to collapse onto it. Liz got a [Bandage] around her neck, to make up for any potential consequences for her cut throat, but she seemed to be fine. She looked remarkably clean compared to the rest of them, but that was simply because she wasn't so wasteful with blood as to leave it on her. She stowed her spear and shield, and just dropped to the floor in utter exhaustion, almost hyperventilating as her body calmed down.

What was left of Aster’s fur was an ugly shade of clotted red-brown instead of white, and her chest was still bleeding slightly. He could even see a bit of bone sticking out on the side. She was hobbling around on three legs, the last clearly in too much pain to use. She got three different [Bandage]s to keep her going, but none of her wounds seemed to be critical.

Susanne was missing half her leg and half her face, the burns inflicted by the ten-man squad on floor six almost being hidden by the raw flesh currently exposed, where the char fell away. Her nose was gone, and her eye was completely ruined, to the point Matt could see bone around her eye socket. Her sword was outright missing, at least for a moment.

After a minute to catch their breath and get used to their bodies once again, Liz staggered to her feet and offered her hand to help Susanne up. The warrior closed her eye in concentration and made herself a peg leg, her sword materializing half-inside of her stump and helping her stay upright.

“Hey handsome,” Liz chuckled as she reached him, bending down to lift Matt upright with her sole arm.

He groaned as he met her hand to pull himself upright, wincing as he was forced to stand. “Thanksh.”

“Anytime,” she pecked him on the cheek, somehow finding a bit of skin not covered in dried blood as she maneuvered herself to take most of his weight, and the two of them staggered towards the exit, when Aster’s message interrupted them.

“What is that?”

She still had her anti-illusion mirror frozen to her collar, and she was looking at it in confusion. In the reflection, Matt saw the room they were in, and the pillar at its heart.

Except, instead of a smooth, multifaceted crystal, it now had a keyhole in each facet. Each different, but somehow the same, cheating a mind bending illusion that made the pillar seem to swim through his eyes, brain, and reality itself.

To say they ‘rushed’ forward would be substantially overstating the speed of their approach. Susanne lurched forward, he and Liz were literally limping over, and Aster was practically crawling.

Still, as they studied the crystal, Liz fumbled around in her storage ring for a key. When she pulled out the key they had found alongside Aster’s mirror, all the way back on the second floor, a key that could unlock anything.

It fit in with a snick.

Matt almost didn’t expect it to unlock when Liz turned the key, a small tendril of blood wrapped around her hand, steadying it, but with a soft click, a small panel opened up and he saw the impossible.

The core of Minkalla.

A torrent of Genesis Energy rushed out of the crystal as it swung open, revealing the impossible at its center.

The item that powered an entire planet to do the impossible.

A white hole.

A real white hole.

A part of Matt’s Concept sang in vindication, seeing the white hole powering all of Minkalla. He wanted to stay there and just bask in the feeling but as the planet asked them if they’d like to leave, the rest of his body could only give a resigned but wholehearted agreement.

The door snapped shut and with it the torrent of Genesis Energy and they vanished.

His spirit twisted to open up a new innate skill slot within his core, then expanded as Minkalla converted his excess Genesis Energy to Essence and pushed him up to Tier 12. Then there was a moment where he became keenly aware of a massive amount of space surrounding Minkalla. On autopilot he chose his destination, and allowed himself to be swept away to the Empire’s moon.

But Matt’s last thought, as the world twisted, was that of the white hole powering the entire planet.

It was real.