To nobody's surprise, least of which my own, my powerful opener did very little. The explosion collided with Mikha'el's pearl-colored armor that seemed to absorb the mana. The physical impact itself vibrated the armor and pushed the angelic being back slightly, but failed to succeed as a crippling first strike.

"The snake emerges from the bushes to strike," Mikha'el commented. "Do not feel ashamed, it is typical of your kind to rely on being underhanded. Such is the nature of those that are disadvantaged and blind to the light of Grace. Your tricks are meaningless in the face of my faith."

A burst of light appeared between Mikha'el and myself, sending me tumbling away. My body bounced off a building, taking a bite out of the structure. Thousands of years of history crumbled as I regained my bearings in the sky.

Mikha'el opened his arms wide and innumerable little lights appeared overhead. Each speck was a sword hanging pointing down directly at me. The angel swung his closed fist back in to pound his chest as a deluge of swords dropped down upon me.

The weapons obliterated the structures around me. Rubble piled up in all directions. My body twisted and spun to avoid each drop of fatal rain. The overwhelming quantity made such a task as impossible as staying dry in a downpour. The swords of pure light scythed through any flesh it could dig its sharp teeth into. Ecstasy's war will activated, preventing the weapons from coating my body in agony.

I fired an [ICBM] at Mikha'el. He waved his hand and a thin pane of golden light intercepted the explosion. In response, a cross the size of a battle axe formed in his hand. He swung the weapon at me with full force.

As the weapon came to cleave my body, I thought about how bullshit what just happened was. An ability to simply negate an attack with mana. Simultaneously, I wondered why I simply didn't mimic the act and create my own magical shield. Something like that should be easily doable at this stage; it's not as though there was a rule against creating skills mid fight.

Using my trusty ink-colored mana, I created a bubble around myself. All of my thoughts went into making it as sturdy as possible. My face scrunched and my nostrils flared in concentration.

The cross hit my shield and they both shattered. A new ability, [Obsidian Barrier] appeared in my list.

Mikha'el gave me a horrified expression. I knew that it was because his cross got desecrated rather than my defenses scaring him, but I needed to have whatever win I could be provided. Instead, a lance of light appeared in Mikha'el's hands. He took aim and tossed the weapon at me like a javelin.

"This is too good for you," he said. "You do not deserve the honor of being slain by this weapon."

I moved to avoid the weapon, but, as soon as I shifted out of its trajectory, the tip of the lance turned to home in on my chest. No matter, I could just reactivate my [Obsidian Barrier] and move on from there.

The only trouble was that the ability didn't activate.

The lance punched a hole in my stomach before looping around and ending up in Mikha'el's grasp. The angel was surprisingly close. Unbeknownst to me, he had left his distant position and rushed in to charge me.

Blood poured out of my puncture wound like an uncorked bottle. I dove down and avoided the skewering strike. I wrapped my tail around the lance and yanked it downwards. I punched Mikha'el full force, knocking him backwards, but failing to disable him. Mikha'el ripped his lance backwards and it slipped out effortlessly. I looked down to see a portion of my tail burning on the cobblestones below. My flesh steamed from the powerful mana exuding off of the lance.

"Hey, what fucking gives?" I demanded to the invisible audience.

"Shouldn't you be focusing on other things right now?" Passion answered. "Things aren't going well for you."

"I thought you wanted me to win. Why did you stop my shield?"

"You're the one who made the shield invulnerable," Want chided. "There has to be some form of drawback. It will last for five seconds before going on cooldown. You can use it again now if you want."

It was less so a want as it was a need. Mikha'el created another burst of light to force me away. Before my eyes were blinded for a second, I saw that he was moving his arm to throw the lance again. I activated the shield and the lance bounced away for the angel to collect. Annoyingly, he didn't move to retrieve it; he simply summoned it back into his hand.

He stabbed out again. I dropped my shoulder, allowing the point to glance off my body. Through the dull senses, I felt the scale it grazed melt. I didn't think about it; he was close enough for a counter attack. This time, I ignored Mikha'el himself and instead, launched a [Bomber] directly into the lance.

The light bent slightly before recovering and the weapon disappeared. Mikha'el finally attacked with his own body, laying a strike directly into my face. A dull thud rattled around in my brain as Ecstasy's anesthesia kicked in again.

"How dare you defile the holy lance?" Mikha'el demanded rhetorically. He opened his palm and a volley of light swords formed around him and sliced at me from all angles.

The first several swords were able to carve me like a turkey before my barrier was available to be reactivated. While the swords did not deal too much damage, each slash chipped away at me. As my bubble popped a splash of blood fell down upon the stone buildings below.

We exchanged another round of attacks. I started to weave in my own lances of darkness in combination with my punches, but his defense was mythical. Panes of light and his enamel-colored armor swallowed almost everything I threw at him. Only some scorch marks and a slight dent in his armor was all that I had to show for my efforts. His immaculate face had yet to be marred by battle wounds.

I, on the other hand, was beginning to look like roadkill. The sheer difference between us made me wonder who really was given the unfair boons.

"Don't look at us, we didn't give him all of that."

"You've been gifted great vitality by the Lord," Mikha'el stated in equal parts admiration and frustration. "Why do you waste it on evil?"

"It was the divine plan for it to be so."

I said whatever I thought would get under his skin the most. Instead, Mikha'el possessed a contemplative look.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

"You know of the Design as well," Mikha'el said with a nod as though I had said something mundanely obvious. "You were made to be a trial. Gifted and cursed in equal measure. I can see that the Design has left you scarred and broken. Your soul has vitality, but it is polluted and left wanting. It is just another flaw to find in Him. Do not worry, I will design a place for everyone who has been abandoned by God. The words of Grace offer you pity."

"Grace?"

"The one who freed me from my bonds in a false Heaven," Mikha'el answered, his face alight in rapture of the glory of the object of his thought. "The one who showed me the Design; the one who showed me the flaws in what we knew. I traveled to the depths of Hell at her behest. I have seen how the people suffer. I have seen how they cling to hope and beg for someone to save them. I know what our purpose is and I intend to break free from it. If you understand, then step aside."

"I have come to my own conclusion," I said vaguely, trying not to betray that I had no fucking clue what this loon was talking about.

"How pitiable."

Mikha'el looked almost somber as he continued the attack, as if he was told that his dog died while he was on vacation. However, that melancholy didn't translate into any form of mercy towards me. If anything, the attacks grew stronger, faster, more numerous; as though he had finished analyzing me and found me lacking.

Looking for any form of advantage, I decided to activate Nostalgia's gift next. I would delve into Mikha'el's mind and grasp my claws around what his one true fear is. Time stopped as foreign tendrils slipped into the angel's ear and scoured over his memories. A single word appeared before my eyes; the answer to Mikha'el's potential weakness.

Isolation.

I wouldn't say I was disappointed. Any wave of unhappiness I felt came exclusively from the fact that I wasn't given a magic solution to my problem. Isolation could be worked with. A depravation of others. Locked away with your own thoughts. I had been in solitary confinement before; placed in a small room because I didn't know how to behave myself. Even before that, I would be thrown into my room by my father when I annoyed him enough and be left to wait there until his mood changed or he passed out.

I didn't consider it to be fear that I felt when locked in that room by myself for hours on end. No, it was more akin to madness. The sound of the thoughts inside your head can become deafening the longer you remain in there. Boredom feeds many evils.

My only issue, as I dodged another lance strike and braced myself at the powerful burst of light that emanated from Mikha'el's fingers, was that I could not make immediate use of it. How do you conceptually isolate someone during a fight? What tools did I even have to accomplish such a thing?

I put it to the back of my mind. Instead, I started to think about other abilities. Passion and Ecstasy's were already working hard for me, Nostalgia was a temporary dead end, and I wanted to save Control's until I knew every ability Mikha'el was capable of using.

And, as for Want, the current exchange ratio was 1:100.

Wait. 1:100?

I slapped away the lance, leaving a patch of boiling flesh on my left hand, and punched Mikha'el with full physical force to give myself the space to investigate this. Sure enough, the ratio had flipped to provide a great deal of XP in exchange for a bit of health.

Though, as soon as I had knocked Mikha'el away, the number dropped to 1:15. It appeared that the more peril I was in, the less health I had, the better the exchange was.

Mikha'el summoned his lance back and thrust it at my head. I turned my head to the side and allowed the spear tip to drag along my throat. In that instant, I opened up [Blood Wager] to see that the odds had spike to 1:150.

I invested as much health as I could afford as my life dropped well below half. In an instant, all of it was invested into back into me.

I spun around on my foot and leapt at Mikha'el. He raised an armored forearm to block me. I smashed my head forward, crashing through the thin pane of light and digging my teeth into the armor. The taste of metal filled my mouth as he smashed the lance over my head. My face tingled from the light as I staggered backwards. Blood dripped from my teeth.

But it wasn't my blood.

A scowl crossed Mikha'el's face as much of my health was restored. He launched into a series of attacks; a pattern that I was now much more capable of defending myself from. The odds of [Blood Wager] dropped significantly after my initial boost. Now, I couldn't even get it over 1:20.

It didn't matter; gains were gains. Feeling much better than I ever felt before, I launched a counterpunch that managed to create a ringing sound like a church bell falling down a mountain against his breastplate. His eyes widened as I snapped my teeth into him again.

This time, I felt the tip of the lance penetrated through my lower jaw, pierce my tongue, and rip into my soft palate. My mouth turned into a fountain of blood as I staggered away. I moved enough to the side to stop my heart from getting pierced from the follow up attack.

"I knew you were hiding your true abilities," Mikha'el said with a sage nod. "I will rise to match you."

The ground started to rumble violently as Mikha'el's eyes glowed with a divine gold. The lance transformed back into a cross. With a flap of his wings, Mikha'el instantly appeared behind me. I barely got [Obsidian Barrier] up before the cross connected.

I was sent like a pinball through the city. The protective shield disappeared quickly, leaving me to bounce around the buildings, turning them to rubble.

[Too Angry to Die] activated in that moment. Not because the blow did enough to kill me, but because the exchange rate for [Blood Wager] in that instant had spiked to 1:500. It cost me all of my health, but the stats in exchange could easily allow me to regain some in the next one hundred seconds.

I sprang up to gnash my teeth into Mikha'el only to be smashed down immediately by his massive cross; gaining nothing but my own blood. I crashed into the ground like a meteor and shook the world. A volley of swords rained down upon me. It didn't matter if they struck me at this point, it wasn't like I could lose any more health.

However, I still had to roll out of the way of the devastating drop attack Mikha'el performed. The cross buried itself into the ground right where my head was.

As I got up again, I saw a crack in the street below Mikha'el. Constellations could be seen on the other side. The realm was falling apart.

I lunged at Mikha'el, but he summoned a cross that smashed me in the chin, knocking me skyward. A flash of light pushed me even higher to allow him to reposition himself at his leisure.

As I floated, my body sizzling and cooking from all of the damage it had taken so far, I began to seriously consider if I had blundered with my greed. I thought that so many additional stats would have crossed the gulf more effectively. Now that it seemed that Mikha'el was using his full potential, I couldn't even bite him to gain a single health point back.

I bit into my own arm, allowing myself to regain a meager amount of health back through the sacrifice. I fully ripped the limb from the shoulder, spitting it in Mikha'el's direction to interfere with whatever follow up attack he had planned.

My arm disintegrated against the crushing power of the cross while my new one slowly regrew out of my shoulder. This, I knew, was not going to be a sustainable strategy. I needed to use [Sanguine Bite] against Mikha'el if I wanted to stand toe to toe. If he wasn't a reasonable target, I was good as dead.

What if I had more targets?

I looked down at the cracked street. Below this realm, there was an abundance of targets; plenty of places to regain my sapped vitality.

I rushed downwards. Mikha'el dodged out of the way and primed a counterattack, only to be surprised that I was already gone. He wasn't the target.

I crashed into the street at full force and then instantly rolled out of the way to avoid Mikha'el's following strike. The crack in the street really branched out after that, growing to cover multiple blocks and becoming far wider as well.

"What are you doing? Stop this immediately!"

I ignored the voices. If anything, it inspired me to continue. There was no deal against keeping this realm intact. The pounding warfare progressed ceaselessly. I focused on defense while showing a brave face offensively. Each slam of my fist, each crashing blow from the cross only served to destroy further, to break further. If Mikha'el noticed my plan, he did nothing to prevent it from happening.

The fault line that spread across the city had finally had enough punishment. With a groan followed by an unnatural snapping sound, the realm that held the city above the clouds broke.

And sent us descending with it.

"I hope you're ready for the sh-"

As the world swallowed us, I could see a smile as wide as the ocean cross Mikha'el's face. A tear of joy formed in the corner of his golden eye and trickled down his trick.

"I can share my love with the world again."

I think I fucked up.

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