I crashed into the apartment building next to mine and quickly scrambled to recover.

But just as I did, something hit my shoulder. Something hot.

I screamed, but still somehow managed to punch the ground to form a crystal barrier in front of myself.

Said barrier exploded into pieces a moment later.

Still, that moment was enough for me to get back up despite the searing pain in my shoulder.

I've had worse!

I still held my gun self, ready to fire, but the hurricane hadn't stopped yet. Knowing my luck, trying to shoot him now would probably have my attack be blown straight back at me, despite its insane velocity.

I grit my teeth, turned around, jabbed a nearby window with my tentacle, and then jumped through the hole I'd made.

In the back of my mind, I lamented causing this much property damage, but I had to remind myself that none of this was real… probably. And more importantly, there were no people, so it ultimately didn't matter.

I ran through the building I found myself in, smashing down doors with my axe self, and eventually jumped out of a window on the opposite side of it. I didn't want to stay inside a tight space for this fight, nor did I want to find out whether he was strong enough to bring the whole thing down on my head.

As soon as I landed, I heard something above me and snapped my head upwards.

The demon guy was there, already in his black form.

Must have flown over the building, dammit. At least there wasn't also the hurricane though.

I whipped my hand up and fired off a water shot straight at him.

He easily dodged by flapping his wings and then pointed a hand down at me. A surge of black flames poured out of it like a waterfall and I had to hurriedly pull out my tentacle to springboard myself off the ground and to the side.

Mid-leap, I briefly slowed down time, twisted my body to face my opponent again, fired off another water shot a bit to the right, and then fired Rend to left, where I expected him to dodge.

To my annoyance, he dodged down instead and threw me a knowing smirk before pointing at me.

I scowled as I landed on my hands, created a barrier of crystals, and then pushed myself off again to land back on my feet.

The crystals once again exploded, but this time, I actually got to see what had caused it.

The black lightning.

Another long-ranged attack.

Argh, this was really frustrating!

He could just fly around and rain projectiles on my head! What was I supposed to do? I've never faced an opponent like that before! The only one that came close was the shark and he had at least swooped down at me periodically.

I needed a way to pull him to the ground! To get close to him so that I could… Soul Strike him.

...Whatever! I needed a plan!

But first, I needed to buy some time to actually think of a plan.

He aimed his index finger at me again and I instinctively cartwheeled out of the way moments before the black lightning hit the ground and tore through the asphalt there.

I aimed my gun at him again and fired a rocket filled with fire.

He casually moved aside to dodge it before it was even halfway to his position, but I hadn't expected it to hit him anyway.

As soon as the rocket got far enough from me, I fired again, this time water enhanced by Guided Shot… aimed at the rocket.

The rocket burst into flames that immediately turned into steam as the water bullet doused it. This little stunt created the perfect smokescreen between me and my foe for me to cut and run.

I sprinted around the nearest building to block his view and then continued further into the city to reach the metro station, where I could hide from his bird's eye view.

Unfortunately, I didn't make it.

Pain suddenly washed over my entire body and I immediately lost my balance as the entire city seemed to rumbled and quake for a brief moment.

Right before I faceplanted, I caught myself with my arms and looked around in absolute terror at all the cuts and gnashes on every tree, building, and road I could see.

What the actual fuck?!

Then I heard a soft thud and whipped my head back.

There he was, back in his white form, lightly panting, but also standing on the ground.

Had he exhausted himself with that attack too much to keep flying?

It didn't matter.

This was my chance!

I slowed down time again, whipped my tentacle into the ground to help myself stand quicker, then grabbed my axe self out of my Soul Pocket, and hurled it at him, before pulling out my gun self as well and shooting off two water bullets to distract him.

Or so I thought. But I mistook the sky for my opponent and my nose for my gun self when I'd tried to fire these water bullets, so all I'd ended up doing was yanking my nose up – ow! – and squeezing it after I'd thrown my axe self.

"Gah!" I yelled as my mountain began to itch.

Somehow, even through my confusion, I managed to swap Armsmaster to Rend.

From then on, it only took a moment for me to fight off the mental attack.

Just in time for another to hit me and I instantly knew that his lamp flowed better than my flowers–

I rolled to the left, avoiding seemingly nothing, but from his expression, I must have dodged another one of his mental attacks.

This was getting really annoying.

I fired off Rend enhanced with Guided Shot, the same way I'd done it back on the stairs to myself. For some reason it was harder to do than back then, but I still managed to do it.

Once again, he tried to dodge, but the aimbot worked as intended and it hit him head on.

He staggered for a moment and I used the chance to dash forward and–

Ow, my old kettle! How dare the Moon laugh at cheetahs?! It would have been so much simpler if pine trees just–

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I spun out of the way of the black fireball he'd thrown my way and then fired off another Rend, empowered with Mind Breaker and Guided Shot just as I recovered.

He didn't even bother dodging this time and got hit head on by it. Now, he properly staggered as his eyes rolled back, rather than pretending to be affected to bait me into charging forward.

Still, I didn't want to risk anything and kept my distance this time. I summoned back my axe – which he'd dodged while I'd been confused the first time – grabbed it with my tentacle, and yeeted it at him again. At the same time, I began charging a plasma blast with my gun self.

The axe hit his torso and burst into crystals. I waited to let my gun charge a little more and a moment later, wisps of black fire suddenly appeared all around him, making the crystals crack and shatter – along with the pavement around his feet – and I fired off my plasma projectile, enhanced with Guided Shot and Armor Break.

He stood no chance. The glob of plasma exploded and engulfed him before he could do anything.

But I didn't let my guard down yet. I knew better than to underestimate anything in this damn Limit Break and there was no way this final boss fight – of sorts – would be this easy. So I kept my eyes on the mount of liquid plasma and began charging another–

Arms suddenly grabbed me from behind and I froze.

Literally.

There was some kind of black ice covering me now.

"Wha–" I yelped and tried to free myself, but it was in vain.

"Ah… Sorry about that. But really, young you is just so adorable." He chuckled, his baritone voice right behind my ear sounding a little bit strained.

"Are you… hitting on me?!" I yelled as I continued to struggle.

"What? No! I have a wife!" He paused to cough… straight into my ear. Gross, dude! "Had a wife. Not sure if it counts when already I'm dead."

I stopped myself from cursing at him as what he'd just said hit me.

"You're… dead?" I inquired, not even that surprised, considering everything.

"Ah, yes. I guess I forgot to mention that, huh?"

"Did… the Fate Weaver kill you?"

"Ah, no. Of course not. I died to… Well, something else."

I rolled my eyes at this very obvious deflection, which was obviously trying to prevent more spoilers.

"Still, you're much better than I expected you to be at this point! That smokescreen was a neat trick. And I didn't know you had something like Guided Shot… Or did you steal it from somewhere…? Ah, wait. The dungeon, right?"

"...Yeah."

I released Guided Shot from my ring and immediately activated Skill Snatch, because despite the layer of ice, he was still touching me with this whole bear hug.

There were six skills I could steal from him.

One turned Ether into a volatile substance that annihilated matter and absorbed light; another turned it into substance that traveled quickly, caused internal damage, and absorbed light; the next one turned it into a hard crystalline structure that absorbed light; another skill turned Ether into cutting or pushing currents of air and used Intra to sense the surrounding air; the second to last one used Intra to scramble other Intra; and the last one used Tempor to move between spots of low concentration of photons.

Which one was the fucking mode change thing?! None of them seemed like it!

I made a split second decision and took what was obviously the wind skill in hopes of denying him flight in the future.

He flinched away from me and I instantly felt fatigue overcome me.

Still, I forced myself to move.

I used Demon Queen Flames to cut through the black ice stuck on me, then reached for the new skill I'd just stolen and shot whatever I could in his general direction.

It was very messy and unfocused since I had no experience using this skill, but I still managed to fire off a blast of sharp wind that left cuts on the pavement as it slammed into my adversary.

He grunted but somehow stood his ground and recovered just as I got rid of the last bits of the black ice and turned around.

He seemed surprised.

"Ah… So you already have the ring? I thought you got it from… Never mind." He gave me a wry smile. "Well, you can keep that skill. I'm already dead anyway, I'm not going to need it."

I returned the wry smile.

"Gladly."

"I'll need to replace the skill you just stole though… How about… this?"

His visage suddenly blurred, shifted, and split in two.

I stiffened when my newfound air senses registered no air present where both of the figures were, meaning that they both had to be real.

A moment later, the two figures split in two again, creating four, then the four began splitting–

Before he was done creating an army of himself, I poured Intra into my Abyssal Domain, trying another angle at figuring out who was fake – if any – and who was the original.

Surprisingly, it worked.

The copies were all solid whiteness inside, while one of them had normal veins and organs and whatnot. Meaning that the clones only looked real from the outside.

Hah, guess he hadn't expected me to look inside them!

Pretending to be fooled, I aimed my gun self at one of the clones and charged my plasma shot as the copies kept splitting. Then, a second later, I whipped my gun in the direction of the real guy and fired.

His eyes went wide and he created a layer of black ice in front of him split second before my glob of plasma hit it. At the same time though, all his duplicates charged forward, each with either a weapon made out of black ice, or their hands blazing with black fire or electricity.

I backed up, brought out my axe self, lit it on fire, and swung it horizontally.

It tore through them with ease and made them turn into white wisps of nothingness.

But… I didn't feel any resistance. It was like slashing through thin air.

It threw me off so much that I accidentally let go of my axe and it went flying into a nearby building where it sunk into it.

Wait, what? Were they… illusions or something?

Before I could finish that thought, the ground below me shook and I instinctively backpedalled out of the way just before the pavement I'd just stood on to cave in and reveal a giant eight-legged monstrosity with way too many eyes and–

I fired Rend at it.

As soon as it hit, its entire form warped and burst like a balloon, revealing the ground in front of me perfectly intact.

I frowned and looked back up at my adversary who had gotten himself out of the pooling plasma and was pointing his finger at me.

I jerked my head to the side and almost went deaf from the loud crackle of electricity that zipped by my ear and hit something behind me.

"Interesting," he commented with a smile. "It's still affecting you, but you can see through the illusions?"

I was about to explain but then I realized that if I were to do that, it would help him make the next illusions actually work on me.

"I wonder…" I murmured instead.

Chat began suggesting that the illusions probably used Intra and I couldn't help but agree with them, considering my own Intra-based attack had dispersed it.

Now why was that relevant?

Because from what we'd seen of the black and white forms, a pattern began to emerge. Namely, both this guy and Echo were tougher and stronger and tended to use more physical attacks when in the black form, while in the white form, they were more resistant to mental attacks and used more mental attacks themselves. Sure, he still used the lightning and the ice in the white form, but…

"Your white form is Intra-focused and your black form is Ether-focused," I announced out loud.

He paused, before giving me a smile.

"Correct." He gestured to himself. "This is my demon racial skill: Eversion. It lets me switch between Intra mode and Ether mode. As you can guess, Ether mode makes my Ether skills stronger and helps me rapidly regenerate Intra, while Intra mode is the opposite."

Rapidly regenerate…? Well, that wasn't good. That meant that if the white form was Intra form, he was currently rapidly regenerating Ether.

...Which might have been why he was so eager to stall by chatting.

Shit. Now that I looked at him, he didn't seem as injured by my earlier axe hit as when he'd bear hugged me.

That meant that he regenerated very quickly.

This was bad.

I already felt quite exhausted from both the Skill Snatch and the fight itself, while here he was, stalling to regenerate all he wanted.

"But, as you can see–" He flapped his golden wings. "–I'm not just a demon, so I have another racial skill."

Wait, what? You could have multiple racial skills?! How?!

"I already used it a couple of times, but I guess you haven't noticed," he said with a smile.

Then he spread out his wings and his left one began to glow yellow.

"Feathers of Narnia."

The whole world around me shifted.

The lions began to scream as the pavement on top of my head turned black. Fifteen horses came from behind a nearby ash hill and charged straight at me.

I grabbed my hair and fired it at them, but they simply danced out of the way of my pineapple shot before continuing their waltz toward me.

I tried to back up but soon found out that I couldn't, because my feet were held to the football field by jelly.

I grit my tongue and conjured my elephant into my hands to prepare–

Suddenly, I the world tilted and I began falling.

I only belatedly registered the scalding pain I felt around my torso, the lack of feel in my legs, and the fact that the illusions and the prior confusion had vanished in a flash.

My upper body hit the ground and the last thing I saw was my opponent's arm, blazing with an oddly solid-looking scalpel-shaped black fire, coming to a stop just a bit away from where my torso had been.

Then there was darkness.

Empty dead void of nothingness all around me, stretching beyond infinity.

My mind was blank.

There was nothing to think about.

Because I was dead.

The dead couldn't think.

The dead were not alive.

The dead–

I gasped as my mind suddenly returned to me and I found myself staring at a wall and feeling incredibly unwell.

I immediately fell to my knees and threw up.

Holy shit what the fuck what the fuck what the fu–

Just remembering being fucking bisected, made me so nauseous, I thought I was going to faint. Not to mention that… that empty void. What the hell was that?! The afterlife?! Why–

Wait.

I hastily lifted my head and looked around, uncaring about the vomit still on my lips.

I was… between two tall walls. My air senses from the stolen skill told me that I was in the same alleyway where the trial had started.

I forced my limbs to move and walked out of the alleyway just to confirm it with a sense I was more familiar with and sure enough, I was still in the imitation of Khilow filled with faceless people, back where this trial had started.

Except… my Ether and Intra were both full, I'd kept my stolen skill, and most importantly of all…

I wasn't dead.

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