Serenity wasn’t the only one who thought he needed to change things up; Daryl was no longer chasing Serenity. It was obvious he’d decided that if he couldn’t catch Serenity with Naomi’s help, he wasn’t going to catch Serenity on his own. It also looked like he was breathing hard; Serenity wondered if Daryl was starting to get tired. He was at a higher Tier, but he didn’t have effectively infinite stamina, the way Serenity did.

Serenity kept his attention on Daryl, but paid some attention to the mage as well; he’d had some time to heal and hadn’t actually given up, so it was possible he might still rejoin the fight. Serenity dropped Air Glide to save mana and walked over to the mage and glanced down; the injury wasn’t as raw as it had been, but it was still present. It wouldn’t be any fun for him to move, but he could if he had to. Which meant Serenity needed to make sure he didn’t think he had to.

Serenity scooped up his Crystal Hilt and headed leisurely towards Daryl. He wanted to see just how the man would react. The right decision at this point would be surrender, but continuing the fight wasn’t unreasonable either. It wasn’t like Serenity was going to kill him.

Of course, that assumed that Daryl didn’t have a secret weapon of some sort tucked away to change the course of the fight. Serenity watched Daryl; he seemed to realize that Serenity had stopped trying to evade and was ready to fight.

When they reached about fifteen feet apart, Daryl stopped. “Decided you’re willing to fight someone with an appropriate weapon now that I’m alone?”

Serenity chuckled and a smile found its way onto his face. “Did you expect me to fight fair?”

“I expected you to lose,” Daryl stated. “Hybrids are weak. It’s like bringing two people who are a couple of Tiers lower, only they can’t both act at the same time. Useless.” He smiled and waited to see how well his taunt worked.

Serenity just grinned. He’d proven he wasn’t weak or a couple of Tiers behind, even if he was using lower-Tier abilities. He needed to fix that but wouldn’t be able to until he managed to finish his Magitech Abomination Path. It was leveling quickly, but that didn’t mean it would finish any time soon; it wouldn’t finish until he was familiar enough with the Species.

Daryl waited a little longer, but when Serenity didn’t take the bait, Daryl moved forward himself. “Now I’m going to show you what real strength is. A Tier above you and focused attributes, I’ll just run over you.”

Serenity’s grin just got wider. Fine, he’d show Daryl just how “weak” a properly built hybrid was. The taunts had gotten to him that much. He triggered the Physical Form sheath for his Crystal Hilt; that would be the easiest way.

When Daryl struck with his knife, Serenity blocked the blow. Daryl was strong, but he didn’t have enough practice; he telegraphed every attack, so Serenity knew exactly where he was going.

Daryl seemed surprised, so he struck again and again, as though he were chopping wood.

Serenity blocked each of them; he hadn’t even needed to move his feet. When he blocked the third blow, Serenity sighed. “Maybe try something different? I think you’ve proved that this attack doesn’t work.”

Daryl tried the same attack once more time, but when it was blocked yet again he pulled his arm back and swung at full strength in a wild sideways chop.

This time, Serenity smacked the blade down towards the ground, making it miss him. He might have been able to block, but it wasn’t worth it when the parry was that easy. It was time for him to go on the attack, so Serenity caught Daryl’s hand, moved it to the side where he didn’t have any leverage, and set the point of his blade under Daryl’s chin. The heat was probably uncomfortable, but it could be healed. For that matter, even a major injury to the throat could be healed as long as it was fast enough. The threat was still clear. “How about we say we’re done here and settle who’s stronger another way?”

Daryl tried to tug his arm out of Serenity’s grip, but that just meant he didn’t get anywhere. It did pull Serenity’s blade in tighter against his neck, however. Daryl growled. “Fine. You win. But you have to explain how you did it.”

Serenity smiled, then dismissed the manablade, sheathed the Crystal Hilt, and dropped Daryl’s wrist. “I’d be happy to explain. Let’s get you and your team healed first, that way we can all talk together.”

Serenity turned and waved Rissa onto the field. He deliberately allowed his back to face Daryl; he had his attention on the man and was pleased when he didn’t try to attack Serenity now that the fight was officially over. “Rissa! Please heal the mage first; he’s the worst off, and he can help heal the others once he’s up.”

Daryl waited until they were all standing over the mage’s injured form before he spoke up. “Shouldn’t your healer take care of you? Gabe will be up soon, he can take care of us.”

“It’s Gabriel, not Gabe. You know that, Dar.” The mage didn’t even bother to open his eyes; his voice sounded thready but still annoyed. His deliberate mispronunciation of Daryl’s name drew a growl from the swordsman, but Daryl dropped it. Serenity had the feeling that Daryl called Gabriel Gabe fairly often.

Rissa laughed and answered for Serenity. “Serenity’s not injured.”

“You didn’t even check him!” Daryl protested.

“I don’t need to. If he were hurt badly enough to actually need outside help healing, we’d all know.” Rissa’s attention didn’t move off the injured mage. “That’s a worse injury than I thought. You’ve stopped the bleeding, fortunately, but let me get the blood out of your lung; once that’s taken care of, we can get you up and moving and you can finish the healing.”

Serenity watched Rissa heal, slightly fascinated by it. She was using one of the abilities of her latest Path; it allowed her to heal by moving small things inside a body backwards in Time. As far as he could tell, she was turning the now-dead blood in Gabriel’s punctured lung back into living blood and putting it back where it had been in his bloodstream, all with the manipulation of Time on the small bits of matter. It was finicky and mana-intensive; worse, she could only do it for small things, not for major injuries. What it did work on, however, was small specialized things that other healers could have difficulty with.

Blood in the lungs sounded like one of those things. It wasn’t damage, so healing magic didn’t really work on it very well. Serenity was pretty sure that the normal solution was water or blood magic, to help the person cough it up. That wasn’t necessary with Rissa’s Skill; even better, it actually reduced the amount of blood Gabriel had lost to the injury.

That was the only thing Rissa actually did for Gabriel; when she finished, he waved her off.

“I can handle it from here.” His voice sounded a lot better; he also opened his eyes and sat up. “Who won?”

“I did,” Serenity stated. “Glad to see you’ll be fine. I didn’t expect that injury to take you so long to heal.”

Gabriel chuckled. “I could have patched it up temporarily and joined in again, but I wasn’t about to invite you to stab me through the other lung. Staying down long enough to get everything put together correctly seemed like the best choice for a match like this one. I can hold myself together with magic, but reinjuring a temporary patch is no fun at all. It takes a lot longer to heal. And anyway, I wanted to see how well Daryl would do without me. He likes to claim that he’s the one holding the Blades together.” Gabe grinned, but his smile didn’t actually seem happy.

Serenity shook his head and headed over towards Naomi. He wasn’t sure if that was two friends picking at each other or something more serious, but it wasn’t any of his business either way as long as they could work together. On the other hand, he could help Naomi if she hadn’t yet managed to purge the Death mana from herself, and he doubted she’d managed that yet. She would, eventually; he’d used Death mana with the Intent to exhaust, not the Intent to kill. It wouldn’t be any fun for her, but she’d eventually recover on her own even without healing.

When Serenity got to Naomi, she was asleep on the torn-up ground. He stood near her and activated Eat Death in his aura; it was the easiest way to help her recover faster.

Gabriel picked himself up off the ground and followed Serenity to Naomi. He moved slowly, clearly cautious of reopening his injury. Daryl moved to support him and Gabriel accepted the help without any reluctance. That was probably a good sign.

“How is she?” Daryl directed the question at Gabriel even before he’d had a chance to check Naomi.

“Give me a moment.” Gabriel knelt and set a hand on Naomi. It was more than a moment before he said anything; it was a full minute and a half before he opened his eyes again and dug a charm out of a pouch on his side to set against Naomi’s chest.

Serenity could feel the charm working; it pushed on the Death-attuned mana, encouraging it to leave Naomi’s body faster than normal. It wasn’t much of a change, but it was a little.

Gabriel glared at Serenity. “What the hell were you thinking? That kind of magic can kill! It lingers.”

Serenity shook his head. “I was thinking that I can clear it away from her. I’ve been doing that; she’ll be awake soon. She’d have been fine anyway, she just might have been tired for a few days.”

“It’s the same as the magic that fills the lowest level of the Layered Dungeon! It can kill. I’ve seen it happen.” Gabriel was confident in his assertion.

Serenity shook his head. That was probably good news for him; if the “Layered Dungeon” was the one that capped at Tier Nine and the last level had a Death Magic hazard, he’d be at an advantage. “They stayed in it, didn’t they? Probably without any way to clear it out. There’s a big difference between continuing to burn yourself and taking your hand out of the fire.”

Gabriel gaped at Serenity then looked down. “We thought we could finish the dungeon in time. We didn’t. Eric died during the last fight.”

Serenity wanted to sympathize with Gabriel; he’d been there. Sometimes there weren’t good choices; going back might not have been fast enough if they were near the end of the area. Sometimes people died. He wasn’t sure what to say. It seemed like there ought to be something but he never knew what it was.

“Eric should have said something before he passed out,” Daryl said. “We told him to. We could have gone back if he’d said when he started feeling sleepy. He just wanted to finish the dungeon on his first try and beat the rest of us.” Daryl looked away from Gabriel. “We should’ve told him it wasn’t going to happen and planned to only get halfway from the beginning.”

There was a long silence after Daryl’s statement.

It was broken when Naomi took a deep breath, then sneezed. “Aah! Ah-ah- no dammit!” She sat up and clearly tried to suppress another sneeze. She wasn’t successful and sneezed again. “Achoo!”

Both Gabriel and Daryl laughed. It really wasn’t that funny, but it was the perfect way to break the tension.