The skill took effect almost immediately. Misa felt the world slow down around her, like everything was falling into focus; around her was only Vex, Jakos, and herself.

And her remaining clones, of course. There were five of them, spread out in a circle around Jakos, two of them keeping close to Vex in case the lizard needed to be protected — he was still vulnerable compared to her.

Jakos moved, and so did she.

It was a dance. Jakos's eyes lit up with ferocious glee when he realized how much Misa's movements had changed — her style had always been defensive, because she fought largely to steal attention away from others while Vex picked them off with magic. Now she wielded offense and defense in equal measure, and the fight narrowed to just the two of them.

Jakos didn't even glance at Vex. It was through unspoken agreement that they decided that the lizardkin would neither interfere nor be interfered with; he would be a spectator in the battle. Misa, Jakos had judged, was a worthy opponent even on her own. Vex's assistance would guarantee her victory, but wouldn't give him the fun that he wanted with the fight.

He levied a punch at her, and she ducked underneath smoothly; her mace cracked into his stomach once, and she whirled underneath his arm in the same motion so that his followup kick hit nothing but air. She twisted, bringing her leg up to kick him in the small of the back.

It was like punching and kicking steel — but she was strong enough to bend steel at this point. Jakos stumbled forward, then ducked into a roll as another copy of Misa tried to swing a punch at his head. That one he caught beneath the chin mid-roll, forcing the clone to stumble back but not quite doing enough damage to dissipate her.

[The Flow of the Battle] allowed her to read everything Jakos was doing almost perfectly — it was not unlike what she had been trying to do with her own Endless Echoes, though that method was much more finicky and hard to pull off in the middle of a battle. Changing what she'd done fractions of a second back and acquiring information that way sounded good on paper, but was hard to focus on during a fight.

Fortunately, the clones from [Me, Myself and I] helped — they could handle all the extra processing needed.

Which meant she could figure out what skills her opponent had that they were hiding from her.

She stepped a few feet back from Jakos a second before he activated a skill of some sort, blasting the air around him with a buzzing shockwave of electricity; ignoring his expression of surprise, she followed up with an arrow from just outside his range, imbuing it with the concept of a lightning rod.

A faint smirk touched her lips, but she didn't let it distract her, plunging back into the fight. Jakos was clearly surprised and thrown by the fact that she'd dodged whatever that electrical shockwave was, and so he was a little hesitant to use it again — but the next time she cornered him and he needed to create distance, she saw him reach for the skill.

Just as planned. He expected her to dodge out of the way, just like she had before. Instead, she punched him in the face.

The lightning rod concept activated, and the electricity he tried to generate bounced back into him, expanding only millimeters from his skin before rebounding and frying him. Jakos let out a cry of shock, and Misa followed it up with another three punches, putting all the force she could muster into each — if she tried anything less, Jakos would recover and punish her for it, no doubt.

She stepped back to duck underneath the next swing, and then to the side away from the awkward kick he tried to follow up with. Jakos was flustered now — he was getting less precise with his attacks, relying more and more on instinct. His instinct was still good — it was enough to overwhelm any other physical fighter — but with [The Flow of the Battle] pushing things in her favor...

He didn't have a chance.

He saw it too. Jakos tilted his head slightly, took a step back from her, and then held both of his hands up in a grin. "I yield," he said, suddenly sounding much more friendly. "You're a damn good fighter, you know that? Where'd you learn all those moves?"

"Literally right in the middle of that fight," Misa said dryly.

"The system can be unfair sometimes," Jakos chuckled. "I haven't gotten a cool new move from the stupid thing in years. What's the point of it if it isn't giving me new skills?"

"It made you strong enough to do that?" Misa jerked a thumb over to the hole in the wall that Jakos had smashed through. There was, thankfully, no one inside — the move could have caused grievous injury if there had been.

"I mean, I guess." Jakos wrinkled his nose, then bounced on his feet. "We should fight more. I bet I can get new skills if we fight more. I haven't been challenged like that for a while."

"If you want to fight more you're going to have to quit the Elyran military and come join the Adventurer's Guild. Then I'll fight you as much as you want," Misa joked.

She wasn't expecting Jakos to light up. "Deal," he said.

Huh.

Behind her, Vex blinked, then sighed. "I have so many questions," he muttered.

But Jakos didn't seem to hear him. He was already — remarkably enthusiastically — babbling all of Elyra's plans to them. He didn't actually know much, but he did know who he was supposed to capture; it was the blacksmith that had recently been restored, the one that had been lost to Rustbite.

Victor. Ingress' father. Vex lit up; they must've figured out a cure using the glyphs.

"When can we fight, by the way?" Jakos asked eagerly.

"Probably sometime after we save the universe?" Misa answered, smirking. Jakos nodded.

"Right, right. That does sound important," Jakos said. Vex sighed.

"Let's head back. Helix is going to get a heart attack for us staying out this long as it is."

I heard that.

"I know."

Derivan knew something was wrong almost the moment they stepped through the portal.

Both Shift and Patch were reporting things that didn't match at all with what he was looking at. Shift often felt like little strings in space that he could push and pull, forcing them to vibrate at different frequencies and opening up paths to different timelines — using it to teleport was difficult because he had to path his way to a different timeline and then back again.

More crucially, he had what was functionally the ability to sense the different positions of objects with Shift, because objects themselves existed at a slightly different frequency compared to the air.

That mental map of the area around them didn't match what he was looking at at all.

With Patch, he could sense the system itself and how it was attached to people. That, too, looked wrong. Illyr was standing in front of them, but Patch reported no apparent system there; instead, it was a little to the left.

Derivan kept his gaze carefully focused on the illusion, and reached out telepathically to Sev. We're in an illusion.

Sev's hand tightened on his staff. I figured.

Illyr was a lizardkin — tall and imposing, though Derivan had no idea if that was his true appearance at all. He wreathed himself in a cloak like it was a shield, and glowered down at the two of them.

"You want something for me." It was a statement, not a question.

"We'd like for you not to capture the rebels like you were sent out to do, yes," Sev said dryly. "Any chance we can work out a deal?"

"No." The answer was short and immediate. "I have my duties, and I will fulfill them."

"The stakes here are much higher than your duties." Sev's tone was serious. Derivan paid attention to what the lizardkin was doing outside the illusion — he could sense someone moving around, but he didn't seem to be gearing up to attack them or anything.

Yet.

"I would be nothing without my duty," Illyr said. "And so I apologize for what I must do."

"Illyr—" Sev began. Derivan noticed something strange through Patch — the system around the cleric shifting and undulating in some way, centered around his brain. Sev winced and clutched at his head, but it was nothing Illyr was doing, as far as Derivan could tell.

He's familiar, Sev whispered to him through their link. I don't understand why he's so familiar. I've never seen him before.

Derivan couldn't spare the attention to think about it. The ground around them was shifting, the buildings picking themselves up and walking forward; for all that this was an illusion — for all that Derivan knew that the buildings hadn't moved, that they weren't truly there at all — they felt real. The wall next to him pressed against his armor and physically shifted him, even though nothing was truly pressing against him.

He knew with certainty that he would be crushed, if he allowed it.

Derivan grabbed a hold of Sev, who seemed to be half-disabled — he didn't know if Sev was seeing something different from him, but it didn't seem likely — and moved quickly. He kept a fair distance away from Illyr, trying not to make it obvious that he was following the man and could sense where he was. He tried to make it look like he was just dodging the buildings.

At the same time, he prepared a spell.

Grace and Intensity hadn't seen a lot of use after he acquired the stats. He still didn't know which one he'd gotten from whom, but he'd discovered the effects of each stat during his downtime in Vex's bonus room. They were simple, but effective. Grace made him more fluid, more physically flexible; it operated together with Slime in a way that gave him almost full control of himself physically. He suspected at a high enough level he'd be able to outright shapeshift.

Intensity, on the other hand, gave him a force of presence. It made him harder to move, harder to influence, and harder to change. It was, thankfully, active rather than passive — a trait he could turn on and off at will. He couldn't imagine what problems he'd have if it were always on.

Now, he used them both.

Grace let him flicker between buildings with only a small space between them, even while carrying Sev; he was cautious at first, in case the cleric was experiencing a different illusion — he didn't want to crush his friend against a wall he couldn't see — but it was increasingly clear that Illyr could only maintain a single illusion of this complexity at a time.

Intensity let him increase his presence when he needed to, and allowed him to go through buildings instead of between them. When it was active, he could ignore the buildings entirely and move through them as if they didn't exist — his presence overwrote that of the illusion, and by extension Sev's as well, since he was carrying him.

Entire sections of Elyra uprooted themselves and crashed against him. He had to roll through a window, duck beneath a street, and swing around a horizontal lamppost just to keep up — and he had to do all this while holding on to Sev.

Fortunately, Sev dragged himself out of whatever was going on in his mind after a few minutes of this. "Are we still close?" he demanded.

I've been keeping us close. Derivan said. He is about a street away, to our right.

"Can you get us there?"

Derivan didn't answer. Instead, he diverted his route, activating Intensity and smashing through what few walls remained between them and Illyr; Illyr stopped in his tracks as Derivan appeared in front of him, staring directly at his invisible presence.

"You can sense me," Illyr said, narrowing his eyes. The invisibility — and the other Illyr, which Derivan had been ignoring — faded.

Sev took a deep breath and ignored the conversation. "I know who you are, Sylix."

The illusion cracked and fell apart like it was little more than glass. The real streets of Elyra showed up in front of them, empty of people.

Illyr stared at Sev, something like fear showing in his eyes for the first time.

"How do you know that name?"