I stared at Einarr, who now firmly gripped my tentacle, as my Disintegration—or should I say Corrosive?—went to work.

Well, Disintegration was the active passive, but so was Corrosive, right? I mean, I couldn't tell much of a difference. Maybe one works better on meat and the other on metal, or some shit like that?

I really need to figure this crap out.

Either way, I could hear the sizzling as it burned into his hand—not that the dwarf seemed to notice. He didn't flinch, didn't growl, didn't even blink.

That said, he did look like a leprous corpse—thanks to all the damage Blight had lovingly gifted him. Sores, blisters, boils, and blood-filled pus oozed across his body like some gourmet glaze.

Oh, the zest that would add when I devoured him…

But I'm getting sidetracked again, aren't I?

Not gonna lie, I was still feeling pretty damn confident, even with the sadistic smile Einarr was giving off—okay, maybe slightly nervous, but I wasn't about to tell him that.

We stood there, smiling at each other like idiots in some old western-style standoff, just waiting to see who'd flinch first.

The answer?

It was me.

Well, not so much a flinch as it was me launching a burning wave of Necrotic Flame straight at his smug, ugly face.

This time, he didn't have his hammer to smash his way through it.

My manic laughter echoed over the roaring fire, the greens and purples casting a sharp hue through the swirl of my Phantasmal Mist that clung to everything like a haunted fog machine on a power trip.

Oh, how he must've been writhing in pain and agony inside my blaze.

Well, he should have been.

However, my attention drifted as I noticed the tentacle he was still holding—stretched out… but not pointing toward where the fire blazed.

It was pointing up.

And up.

My head tilted, following the line of it like some confused puppet discovering its own strings.

There he was.

The red-bearded bastard was floating above my destructive necrotic inferno.

Shit.

"Are you flying?" I grumbled to myself more than to Einarr, who remained silent, probably oblivious to my words—meh.

The more I studied him, the clearer it became—he wasn't flying so much as floating, defying gravity like some smug little helium balloon with a beard.

I tried yanking him toward me using the tentacle he still clung to.

Mistake.

Not only did he comply, the bastard used my pull to build momentum—hurtling toward me like a red beard meteor, fist cocked straight for my face.

At least he was unarmed. If he'd had that hammer, the ensuing explosion would've left a crater where my everything used to be.

His fist connected with my jaw, and suddenly I was in a cartoon—my head spun, neck twisted in directions that would make a chiropractor scream.

And that was before the impact of his landing.

I went tumbling—no, rocketing!—through the air like a skipping stone launched by a vengeful god. Except there was no water. Just broken city.

And I wasn't skipping. I was obliterating everything in my path like a pudding-powered bullet train—one whose head was now facing entirely the wrong direction.

Miraculously, I hadn't lost any of my gooey mass during the whole disaster.

Stellar Core's doing?

My undesired rampage ended when I slammed into the final ruined wall with all the grace of a high-speed splatterfest.

"Ugh, I'm getting tired of this crap," I burbled from my liquefied, wall-smeared state as I began oozing back together.

What's going on? He was a pushover a little bit ago.

The heck if I know. This stupid Divine Stellar Core is still working, right?

Well, yeah—there's so much mana around us it's literally sparking.

Maybe we're not using it correctly.

Oh! Oh! I've got an idea!

What?

Let's split our focus.

...What do you mean?

Some of you—handle all the physical stuff. Tentacles, tendrils, you know, the creepy shit. Like when you tried to molest the dwarf a minute ago.

The rest of us will focus on the magic!

Huh… sure—HEY! Which one of you tried shoving a tentacle up his—

I don't know what you're talking about.

…

Squinting, I noticed a dust storm swirling up through the mist. Maybe I'd kicked some of it up with all the superhero landings and meat-grinder collisions—but no.

This was different.

It felt like something was coming. Charging.

Oh! Never mind, figured it out.

Einarr.

He was moving at incredible speed, tearing toward me like an enraged bull on fire.

"Aww, it's kinda cute to see a dwarf running that fast—like an enraged toddler," I mused aloud, already bracing for the umpteenth round.

A few dozen meters away, he leapt into the sky with his fist pulled back.

This time, I was ready.

After all, it was two versus one—both of my souls independently strategizing.

Well… maybe "independently" isn't the right word, since both souls were, in fact, me.

Still, in a synchronized harmony that athletes and dancers train years to achieve, some of my soul fragments took over and lashed out—my left arm morphing into a tentacle that whipped around in a wide, arcing swipe.

The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

Just before impact, it exploded into a writhing web of tendrils.

Meanwhile, the other half unleashed a thick black cloud of Blight, billowing from the tendrils and wrapped in an orange blaze of Necrotic Flames.

I won't lie.

My mind is usually a bag of feral cats.

I mean—crazy voices, shards of my soul, all unified as me.

I am all of them.

All the randomness, the chaos, the cruelty—every last bit.

So having them actually work together—well, working on two unified tasks—felt both weird and natural at the same time.

Like… multitasking between two things was easy compared to the hundreds of thousands—if not millions—of other things my mind is usually doing.

And right now?

Our intent wasn't to bat him away.

We wanted to ensnare.

Overwhelm.

Murder.

But Einarr halted his trajectory midair—suspended like some red-suspender-wearing plumber—and plunged straight down, evading the little net I'd cast for him.

Seriously, that gravity manipulation was getting real annoying.

He wore that same shit-eating grin, which I promptly reciprocated.

What? I might be bitching a lot, but I'm still having fun.

I'll have even more fun once I'm playing with my new jump rope.

With a quick snap of my arm, the tendrils and tentacle retracted, reforming into a gooey black limb.

I wiggled my newly shaped fingers at the dwarf in a teasing wave that promised untold pain and suffering.

He returned the gesture with a rather undignified hand signal.

Rude!

This fight had dragged on far too long.

It was time to end it.

The problem? He seemed to be getting stronger as time passed.

We traded blows nonstop while I blasted him with every flavor of magic I could conjure.

I even caught him off guard with a Surge, plus a bit of Ethereal Mist, phasing in right in front of him and driving a swift kick straight to the groin—

Hey—anyone just now notice Ethereal Mist and Phantasmal Mist sound a lot alike?

Um… no?

I think whoever's in charge of skill naming should fix that. How much you wanna bet we've screwed up our narration and mixed those two up at some point?

Will all of you shut up? We need to focus on two things! Now—fight!

—Burns? Lesions? Sores? Boils? Einarr was covered in all of them.

Hell, I'd punched him through buildings—multiple buildings.

But one well-placed nutcracker? Instant blabbering mess.

The curses he spat after the fifth time I nailed him there were like sweet, angry music to my ears.

Still, while the fight felt like it was dragging, I started noticing something.

He'd plateaued.

Meanwhile, I kept rising—growing stronger with every moment I got more familiar with the mana around me.

Or rather… the mana leaking out of the gaping hole in my chest.

I glanced down. It was glowing now—bright gold… and sparking with flashes of lightning.

Huh. Strange.

I shrugged and launched myself at him again.

The sheer intensity of our battle began to warp the environment around us, saturating it with so much mana that an actual storm started forming overhead.

Gold lightning cracked across the sky, rippling with violent arcs.

I probably should have realized something was off.

But honestly?

It looked cool as hell.

A mist had pooled around my knees—his thighs—pits of fire burned like demonic campfires across the ruins, while dark clouds swirled overhead, stitched together with chaotic bursts of lightning.

It was perfect.

Apparently, it was too much for the airship that had drifted near the construction site of our own.

They noped out real fast.

Pulling back, distancing themselves from the swirling mana hellscape.

Squinting, I thought I saw a few other ships hovering on the edge of the chaos—but none looked eager to approach.

Bonus, if you asked me.

"Aye, lass, ye be a hard fecker," the dwarf huffed, now clearly running on fumes.

"You were alright," I replied, giving him a dismissive wave like I'd just judged a lukewarm appetizer.

I imagined he still had quite a bit of fight left in him—if he had his hammer.

But that was somewhere on the ground, buried beneath a thick layer of mist.

Even I had lost track of where I dropped the damn thing.

Nope.

This fight was winding down.

He probably would've won if he'd had some kind of fire or holy magic—something that actually countered my bullshit—but honestly, this was just a bad matchup for him.

I wasn't getting tired. I wasn't getting injured.

Sure, I went splat more times than I could count, but I always reformed—good as new.

Truth be told, this was a battle of attrition… and I didn't attrish.

Even better, with all the mana leaking out of me thanks to the Divine Stellar Core, I had an endless supply of juice to work with.

My only real handicap?

I was still learning how to manipulate even a fraction of it.

Most of it was just spilling out, wasted like glitter in a tornado.

And somehow, Einarr had been tapping into that.

That said, he clearly had a limit.

"Use" might not even be the right word—"absorb" felt more accurate.

He was channeling the ambient mana into his internal pool and burning through it to power up.

And like any pool… it could only hold so much.

Me? I didn't have a pool. I wasn't even a sponge—because I wasn't absorbing it.

No. I was commanding it.

Warping a fraction of the mana around me into the spells I desired.

Now… how that worked with abilities was beyond me.

Same way, maybe?

I think.

The more I thought about it, the more obvious it became—there was always an abundance of mana around me. I probably could tap into it, even without relying on the Core to go full Super Saiyan.

I just didn't have the finesse.

Not yet.

So I kept flailing around like a magic toddler, chucking everything I could get my gooey little fingers on at the dwarf.

I really, really needed more practice.

Where was I going with all this rambling again?

Right!

The battle was wrapping up, and Einarr looked utterly worn out.

I mean, all those leaking lesions and bubbling sores probably weren't helping.

What can I say? I may have been a bit trigger-happy with Blight throughout the fight.

"Well, looks like it's time to end this," I cooed as I sashayed over to the swaying dwarf.

"Aye, it's been a good feckin' fight, lass. A good feckin' fight indeed," he chuckled. "Just know—I've seen you at your best. And either Galen or Orlaith would wreck you," he added, laughing bitterly.

"At least they'll remember my name," he breathed out, eyes drifting upward.

"Don't worry, I'll always remember it, Wienarr," I said with a comforting smile as I raised my arm to deliver the final blow.

His gaze snapped to me, face twisted in rage.

"It's Ein—"

Before he could finish his name, a blade burst from the shadows behind him—slicing clean through neck, flesh, and bone.

His head spiraled through the air in a grotesque spin before landing with a wet thump at my feet.

The sword's wielder finished materializing with the final swing, and with an enraged thrust, Jason drove his arm into the gaping hole left in Einarr's chest.

He yanked it free—fist wrapped around the still-beating dwarven heart.

With a jagged-toothed grin, he bit into it.

"What the fuck!?" I shrieked. "He was mine to kill!"

"You took too long," Jason muttered through mouthfuls, still chewing like it was just another protein snack.

I seriously debated killing him. Right here. Right now.

But after a few muttered curses, I decided not to murder my mother's pain-in-the-ass, kill-stealing, asshole of a champion.

Didn't mean I wasn't going to give him the stink eye for a few days.

Let him wonder if I'd snap his neck in his sleep or just poison his next smoothie.

Still grumbling, I slithered over to the corpse, liquefied myself, and slipped right into the opening that Jason had so inconsiderately created for me.

Rude bastard.

I savored the taste of my meal as Devourer activated—

—or was it Absorb?

Eh.

We'll say it was Devourer.

So! Unlike Absorb, I felt like I actually had a bit of control with this one.

I didn't need to consume everything. Instead, I could pick and choose—see what little goodies I could extract skill-wise before gobbling the rest.

Especially helpful right now… since I had an edible jump rope I wasn't quite ready to chew through. Yet.

I hadn't checked my notifications in a while—mostly because they were a pain in the ass.

But right now?

There was definitely one I wanted to see.

V:\Ascension>SAFE_MODE

BattleResult

 

Enemy Defeated: [Champion Einarr, The Gravitational Destroyer, and All-Around Great Feck]

 

Initiate [Absorb] on [Champion Einarr]?

> YES

> NO

_

Seriously!

Huh. He must've been a really great fuck after all.

It has to be a title from a whorehouse.

No, I'm more upset about Jason stealing credit.

Oh yeah, that party bullshit.

Good thing we don't need experience points or some other ridiculous system mechanic.

Um… I'm more curious about the whole Devourer versus Absorb thing?

What about the other notifications?

V:\Ascension>SAFE_MODE

SkillUpdate

 

[Absorb] [Astral Graviton] Successful.

 

New Selectable Skills Available:

- [Astral Graviton]

_

Oh, hell yeah!

What does it do?

V:\Ascension>SAFE_MODE

SkillDetails

 

[Astral Graviton]

Description: Manipulate the ethereal forces of gravity to control the flow of the cosmos.

 

Status: Inactive

Type: Unique

Activation: Cast

 

Activate [Astral Graviton]?

> YES

> NO

 

V:\>

Finally, a new skill!

Ugh! Did you forget? We can only have so many active skills at a time, based on the Skill Points we earned from leveling…

And we didn't gain a single bullshit level for killing a Champion.

What the fuck?

I know, right.

Does that mean we have to lose a skill?

Yep.

…SHIT!

Next chapter will be updated first on this website. Come back and continue reading tomorrow, everyone!

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.