I didn’t fully understand what was going on here. And yet, somewhere in the back of my mind, things were slowly starting to make a twisted kind of sense once I got over my shock.

  But the surprise was hard to overcome. The dark echo that had been plaguing me ever since Eversight dungeon was…

  Zoltan?

  He was on the ground, still half-formed and unconscious, which let me focus on the growing changes in my body.

  I could only stare at the fading blue boxes as my mana core spun faster and faster. It was now rotating with so much speed, I was sure smoke was going to sizzle out from within my chest any second now. My mana core had gone crazy as my Path evolved.

  The sensation of something burning into being within me grew more and more powerful with every second. I swallowed as I raised my hands, looking down at the faint lines of gold threading beneath my skin, suffusing me with the soft glow that really, really belied the sensation of an inferno growing to life inside my body.

  When I breathed harsher, I was genuinely surprised to not see myself exhaling wisps of flame.

  Things both within and beyond me were settling into a whole different order. It was like the pieces of me were being forcefully rearranged, like a red-hot forge was smithing something completely new out of what I had been only moments ago. I was again left with the familiar, expansive hollowness that suggested there was more to me I had to discover.

  Everything in my line of sight sharpened to high-definition detail. I could see farther than before, could appreciate the fine filigree on the metal walls of the Nether Vein’s rapidly lightening hallway. I could smell the odour of the bugs, alive and dead, around us a lot more acutely than before. The stench reminded me of burning socks.

  My skin sizzled. My muscles turned molten liquid before reforging into bands of pure power. My every organ felt like they were changing the constituent materials of their cells into newer ones. More intense ones.

  I hadn’t even been able to read all the blue boxes properly. Had one of them really said something about a second mana core? Was that actually possible?

  “Ah, so you’re finally evolving,” Zoltan said. His voice sliced into my senses, rooting me again in the present. “Took you long enough. I’ve been waiting and waiting, and it’s unbelievable it took the destruction of Zairgon before you could finally push through.”

  This time, I didn’t step back. “What the hell do you mean?”

  Zoltan slowly got to his feet. He was naked but that was fine. Half his body hadn’t fully reconstructed yet, stuffed with the Netherthreads instead. “Don’t tell me you don’t get it even now when I’m standing right in front of you, mongrel.”

  I swallowed. Right. My suspicions. Whatever had happened in Eversight Dungeon, the blast of mana and the opening of the Nether Vein hadn’t erased Zoltan. Far from it. Instead, he had been…

  “You were hitching a ride inside me all this time?” I asked. “You fucking parasite.”

  Zoltan clenched his good fist. “Not of my own volition! You truly believe I wanted to be stuck inside your body after I was consumed by mana and the Netherthreads?” His voice rose with every word, his scarlet eyes taking on a mad cast. “You think I wanted to waste all my time stuck in an incorporeal state inside your blinding mana core? You did this! You, you Pits-cursed, shit-eating swine!”

  It was surreal just standing there, listening to a resurrected Scarseeker rant at me while all around us, the madness of the Nether Vein continued raging.

  There were so many emotions trying to claim my mind just then, I was a little surprised I wasn’t collapsing mentally. Euphoria from the Path Evolution, shock at Zoltan rising, trepidation at his clear aggression, and most importantly, the fact that I needed to help the others.

  I needed to finish this madness and accomplish my real goal of stopping the Blight Swarm.

  “You’re blaming me for your own mistakes,” I said. “I didn’t drag you to the bottom of the dungeon and force you to take the full brunt of my mana implosion.”

  “Enough with your craven excuses!” Zoltan yelled. “Everything that’s gone wrong is because of you. You! The least you can do is die gruesomely.”

  He lunged at me. I batted his swipe back with my mace. The sheer energy burning through me at the sight of Zoltan’s hand getting slammed back—fingers crushed and blood weltering—by my mace turned me into a livewire.

  We both growled, then clashed. The results were the same every time. I drank in his growing realization that the gap in our capabilities had closed significantly.

  Even if I wasn’t beating him back just yet, I was meeting him blow for blow, leaving his fists a mess.

  “I don’t have time to waste on you,” I growled, throwing my hand forward as we separated for a moment. “Just die.”

  The sudden Imbuement of Illumination around my fist had Zoltan shrieking. Though I didn’t hear the hiss of burning flesh for long. The Netherthreads writhed all over him, coating him in a protective cocoon.

  I scowled. Here I had thought the last Sacrifice would be enough to stop the Nether Vein’s ripping and shredding storm all around us. Not so. Zoltan was acting as an anchor now, amplifying the Nether Vein’s massacring ferocity. It wasn’t just to burn the Scarseeker that I had resorted to Illumination again. With the storm resurging, I needed Reflection to protect myself too.

  “I am immortal, mongrel!” Zoltan shouted. “If anyone is going to die here, it will be you.”

  He threw blood at me, sparking with black lightning and writhing with bits of Netherthreads. I defended easily with Field Manipulation, before countering with Manifestation. A sea of heat and light spontaneously arose around us, smothering us both with blistering energy.

  Zoltan screamed but rushed to attack me through the storm of power anyway. I caught why just in time. He wasn’t rushing me foolishly with the same ineffectual attacks that he had used so far.

  Now, he was manifesting his Icon.

  Reflexive Mana gave me just enough room to avoid getting speared through. Yet, Zoltan had apparently anticipated that. He was moving too fast. Despite my initial successful dodge, the Scarseeker’s free arm whipped around and caught me right in the midsection.

  I grunted as I was thrown to the ground, though I got to my feet fast. Which was good because I was able to dodge just before Zoltan’s next blow with his Icon pulverized where I had been.

  “Stay still and die,” the Scarseeker said. “You’re not leaving the Nether Vein alive!”

  I stood straighter. “You stupid idiot, I’m trying to stop the Blight Swarm from destroying all of Zairgon. You’re supposed to be joining me! Has your hatred made you so blind—”

  “Yes! Yes, it has.” Zoltan was almost frothing at the mouth. The volume of his words had almost reached a shrieking level that was starting to physically hurt my ears. “Look at me. Look at what you’ve done to me. And all this despite wanting the same thing as me.”

  “What?”

  “You Pits-cursed imbecile, don’t you see?” He levelled his Icon, which would have been threatening on its own, but his invective words were like little daggers stabbing into my soul. “I was in your head, or soul, or whatever the Pits-screwing mess it was after that dungeon. And I saw. I saw. You’re—you just wanted to protect your little family.” His voice broke then, laughter breaking out like shattering glass. “Just like me.”

  My grip on my mace tightened. It wasn’t that I didn’t know that. People were driven by motivations, and at least a strong part of Zoltan was motivated by his need to do what he believed would save House Kalnislaw.

  “No,” I said. “You’re not like me. You’re a dumb asshole, because unlike me, you never ended up helping anyone. You didn’t do what’s right, you never made any real friends, you never paused and took a second to decide if what you’re doing is right or wrong.”

  “You don’t know me or what I’ve really gone through, you cur. You don’t know how much money I’ve taken from Brasvay just to stop you. You have no idea what it was like stuck inside your little head and seeing what an insufferable pretender you are. You disgust me. To think that I saw shades of myself in you.”

  He sold it by making the worst gagging sounds I’d ever heard.

  “And what?” I said. “Just because of your stupid, misplaced hatred, you’re going to let Zairgon fall—”

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  “You think you can save Zairgon?” He raised his arms, looking around with a mad grin. The pose was so eerily similar to the one my shadow had been making before I had Sacrificed it, only to unveil that it had been Zoltan all this time. “Please. All this saviour pretence you’re playing at has to end somewhere, and if I must be the one to do it, then so be it!”

  I cast Field Manipulation. Infusion increased gravity while Siphon ensured I remained unaffected. Enough of Zoltan’s self-obsessed maliciousness. I needed to end him, needed to stop the storm of Netherthreads, needed to end the threat of the Blight Storm.

  Growling, Zoltan surged forward regardless of the severe gravitation force dragging him down. The Netherthreads propelled him faster and faster.

  “I won’t let you—” Zoltan screamed. “I won’t let you become a—not you, never an alien like you—”

  I didn’t understand what he meant. I hardly heard it. My focus was on his onrushing Icon, on the way it glowed with ever-increasing ferocity. I was tired of dodging. I was tired of needing to dodge. If I had grown, if I had finally crossed the threshold into Gold, if I was really as strong as I was supposed to be, then I was done dodging.

  The Icon closed. Zoltan closed in. The sparking blood, the black lightning, the writhing Netherthreads filled my world. This was it. The rushing noise, Zoltan’s scream, my own answering roar, all combined to drown my ears.

  All I saw was power. All I felt was determination. Do or die. No. I wasn’t about to die. Not to Zoltan. Not after I had come this far. Not after everything riding on me.

  Who’s going to pick up the pieces if you die? The Scarthralls’ concern burned clear in my mind.

  As the lancing Icon reached me, I swung.

  [ Augmentation Unlocked!

  You have acquired a new Augmentation for your Power Attribute.

  Augmentation: Empowered Deflection ]

  [ Rank Up!

  Your Power and Agility Attributes have risen by one Rank.

  Power: Gold IV

  Agility: Gold II ]

  An aura swirled around my mace an instant before it connected with Zoltan’s Icon. When the two met, a gong hammered the air, space itself rippling. But I grinned.

  I wasn’t affected. At all.

  Despite the overwhelming power behind Zoltan’s rush, despite the incredible magic compressed into Zoltan’s Icon, it had no effect on my mace, much less on me. With Reflection wrapping it in a protective coating against the Scarseeker’s Aspects, my new Power Augmentation, the one I had been working on for several weeks now, safeguarded against the sheer force.

  Zoltan staggered back. His eyes had gone wide. “How? How? You can’t—”

  I slammed my mace at him. He was still fast, still easily quick enough to block the blow. The impact didn’t activate my new Augmentation. Just as I had suspected. It was a defensive Augmentation entirely.

  With a desperate scream, Zoltan unleashed his fury. I matched everything he threw out, hit for hit, never faltering or missing. Gongs pulsed through the air. Space rippled. Through it all, as the burning light I manifested scorched us both, I did my best to find the opening that would allow me to counterattack.

  It was my new powers that let me get a proper hit in. Lightshade burned to being as my mace and Zoltan’s Icon clashed yet again. Empowered Deflection stopped the drilling lance with another gong, before it was smacked away by a light clone of myself smacking in at the exact same spot.

  Zoltan cried out and staggered back. I grinned harshly. It was my turn to be ferocious, to hammer in with overwhelming power. I swung, and Zoltan defended, but I was aided by more sparking, glowing versions of myself. Every hit sent the Scarseeker staggering back. Every blow put him on the back foot.

  When the Netherthreads tried to assist him, Reflection ensured they did nothing to me. The mirrored javelins of light-edged darkness only injured and harassed Zoltan more.

  “Enough!” Zoltan cried out. Then he flung himself back. “You can’t kill me. But it looks like my efforts won’t be enough to kill you either. Disgusting, disgusting, disgusting that I have to go so far for a mud-breathing mutt but—argh.”

  He exploded. I was internally admitting that he wasn’t wrong. Even with the new move aided by Lightshade, I hadn’t hurt him much. But my thoughts were interrupted when the Netherthreads surged out of him to connect with the storm growing all around us.

  A small part of me wanted to think the Nether Vein itself was destroying him from the inside, but that was na?ve thinking. Especially when I saw the blood spurting outwards near Zoltan’s vicinity, each droplet sparking and connecting with others via more of his dark lightning.

  Everything shook. I didn’t catch sight of the others, but Kostis’s tornado of smoke and trapped bugs was wavering. Farther beyond, I thought I heard Khagnio cry out across the Nether Vein’s expanse.

  I couldn’t let this last. Zoltan had to be stopped.

  My first instinct was blasting him with everything I had gained over the Blight Swarm invasion. Threaded Reinforcement was turning the active threads of mana within me into heavy lines of power, but I ignored it as I focused on channelling my Aspects.

  Gravity Orbs couldn’t rip apart the metal surface of the Nether Vein, no matter how much I mana I drove into Manifestation. It didn’t matter. Illumination and Flare both mixed into the orbs, before I created massive waves of both Aspects, pushing them outwards with Massless Interaction and Siphon.

  The collision between my manifested Aspects and Zoltan’s chaos made the world thunder and erupt. I felt I was seconds away from being ripped apart myself. But Reflection was powerful.

  “Ha!” Zoltan wasn’t visible, but his voice came roaring out from within the mess of Netherthreads and energy. “You’re still weak. Still a Pits-cursed mongrel.”

  I growled. With Reflection coating my body to stop the Netherthreads and whatever else Zoltan was crapping out, I approached the epicentre of the storm. “Eye” might have been the right term, but with how furious the centre point of this whole mess was, I really didn’t want to call it something so peaceful.

  The Netherthreads tried spearing into me but only got reflected back. Black lightning danced over my body, but apart from light sizzling across my skin and scorching my clothes and armour, I was fine. I could take this. I could stop Zoltan’s madness.

  Just not the way I had been trying so far.

  So, when one of the thick Netherthreads closer to Zoltan tried stabbing into me, I grabbed it. It burned. My skin started stinging before it felt like scorching energy was sparking straight through my flesh to my bones.

  Biting down against the pain, I focused on Illumination and Imbuement. Back outside, I had used my artificial sprite to infuse the Netherthreads with Gravity.

  Which meant I should—and was—able to imbue the same threads with Illumination.

  The strange thing was that light didn’t cover it immediately, like I was thinking it would. Instead, it started from the inside out. The interior of the Netherthread grew brighter and brighter by minuscule fractions, the buzz within it further proving that Imbuement was successful.

  That didn’t give me an idea of how I was going to get rid of it, though. I could slowly but surely turn it into light, but then what?

  I focused on turning the rest of the Netherthreads into light as well. Earlier, when I had tried destroying them directly, they had proved too resilient. Maybe Zoltan’s mana core was feeding them too much power now that he was back tangibly. Whatever it was, I needed to find some other way of destroying the black strands of the Nether Vein.

  The arm shooting out and clasping around my neck really put a dent in that plan. I couldn’t even bring up my mace. Zoltan’s second arm had grabbed mine. Shit.

  “It doesn’t matter if I have to squeeze a little longer than I was supposed to,” Zoltan hissed as his face floated out of the mess of Netherthreads, his scarlet eyes burning with mad fire. “You will die!”

  I tried to bite out my own response but my neck was being constricted hard. Even breathing was becoming impossible. Struggling wasn’t helping, no matter how I kicked, no matter how much of Flare and Illumination I tried throwing in Zoltan’s face. He was determined to end me once and for all. No matter what.

  No. No. I wasn’t dying here, not to an asshole like Zoltan. Not when I was this close to ending the threat of the Blight Swarm.

  The Netherthreads went wild. Zoltan cursed as his grip loosened, the light-imbued black tendrils shooting everywhere and wrapping us both with no rhyme or reason. This time, when I kicked with all my Power, I finally broke free of his crushing grip on my throat.

  But I didn’t attack. I couldn’t. Not with the flood of Netherthreads going wild around us both. Even Zoltan was now trying to fight back the very power that was stuffed within his body.

  I stopped struggling. The Netherthreads—I knew what was going on. It was crazy that I could even land on the conclusion in the middle of all the chaos, but then again, I was the cause of it. I was the one trying to replace the very consistency of the dark strands of energy with my Illumination.

  And the Nether Vein was fighting back. Desperately trying to reassert its own power back into the very form it used to affect the world around it.

  It wasn’t enough. I couldn’t just use Imbuement and rely on Illumination overtaking the Nether Vein’s dark energy. What I needed was something more. I needed the light to act further. I needed it to destroy, to burst out.

  Zoltan’s hand shot in again, bursting with blood and lightning. “If I die, then I will—”

  My mace shattered his forearm.

  He cried out, which was the least he deserved after my concentration had been shot. The Aspects I had been gathering together sparked out in an ungainly burst.

  But the desire to win, to destroy, to overcome wasn’t gone. And that desire latched onto the new hollowness my Path Evolution had gifted. The new potential that came with a newly evolved Path surged to life, incorporating the greater magic I was now capable of.

  [ Aspect Unlocked!

  Desire determined. Potential acknowledged. Mana connection established. Requisite Path discovered: Path of Starforged Firmament.

  New Aspect: Radiation [Iron I] ]

  [ Path Evolution

  Your Path of the Starforged Firmament has Evolved your new Aspect.

  New Evolved Aspect: Entropy [Iron I] ]

  [ Affix Unlocked!

  You have acquired a new Affix for your Entropy Aspect.

  Affix: Emission ]

  I didn’t even get to read the blue screens fully. Something clicked. Something that went deeper than sight, deeper than perception, a weird feeling like I was using Granular Control.

  And then all the Netherthreads turned into a bombardment of blistering light. I didn’t know if I was screaming, or if it was Zoltan as well. Where I wasn’t covered by armour, my skin melted and my flesh turned into fire. And yet, it was a thousand times worse for my opponent because Reflection was still active, every photonic blast lasering back into Zoltan.

  [ Rank Up!

  Your Entropy Aspect has risen by two Ranks.

  Entropy: Iron III ]