I reached the top of the stairs. This was another large open room. This room was a lot brighter than the previous ones. The massive windows let in quite a bit of twilight of the setting sun. That and the light of the central pillar of hellfire really lit up the room.

The place wasn't packed with demons. It was basically empty. Well, basically, but not completely. In front of the steps leading up to the next floor stood a big dude with a spear, a shield, and covered in swirling patterns of blue paint. This guy was half a head taller than me and had a heavy, brutishly muscled build. This guy was metaphorically a giant, if not literally. His skin was red. His face was rough and covered in scars. Including a tremendous one across his forehead. Well, five-head. The guy was bald on top with bushy gray sides.

When I was about fifty feet from him, he spoke in a deep rumbling voice, "You shall go no further, Spawn."

I read the name above his head, "Bob, the Balor… I don't see a fire sword nor a lightning whip."

Bob frowned at me, "That was Wizards of the Coast trying to shield themselves from litigation after pilfering from J.R.R. Tolkien's Balrog. Such is Copyright. I am referencing the proud Celtic traditions for my name. Celtic mythology is tragically ignored in this-"

"Hey, Bob! I don't care." I cut in. In most other situations, I would be curious to hear about myths in general. Bob had a point. Celtic myths were lesser known and deserved better. Just not right now, or from him, the guy trying to prop up a slave economy. I didn't care about his opinion.

Bob scowled at me. His ugly face contorted into a monstrous glare. Mental resistance hit the Fear Effect from the side and pummeled it to death before I felt anything other than a wary pang of concern. I still had a bad feeling about it and got moving at an angle.

It was a good thing I did. The massive scar on his five-head split open, revealing a third eye. This one was dark and beady. It was as big around as the palm of my hand. It also blazed with the light of the noonday sun. This flare of light was immediately followed by a blistering beam of burning hate. The laser shot past me instantly. It scored the ground behind me and then the wall beyond that.

That was going to be a problem. Luckily, Bob didn't seem to be able to leave that attack on indefinitely. After about half a second, the eye snapped closed, and the scorching beam vanished. That's when I made my move. The plan was to end this quickly. I had Titanic Retribution fully loaded.

Attack Blocked x2.

Bob was cooperating with this, though. He saw me coming and stepped out of the way of my attack. Not content with that, Bob struck the side of my hand with his shield. This caused the Titan Retribution empowered punch to swing wide. The punch created a thunderclap-like shockwave that rattled a few tiles of the floor. Dark claws made of shadows also bounced off of Bob's shield.

Bob's beady eyes glinted as he countered with his spear. It blazed and screamed as hellfire ignited inside of it.

Attack from Bob the Balor Successful

You phased through the attack. No damage taken.

HP: 600/600

My body warped like Shadow as Tenebrous Form negated the damage. The area around me was a literal firestorm. That attack wouldn't have tickled. It looked like Bobby and I had the same idea: go for the quick knockout. Trouble was, both of us were hardy bastards.

I wasn't going to complain. Instead, I took out my frustrations of having to beat Bob the hard way… by trying to beat him. I sucker punched him with a left hook. My armored fist crashed into the side of his ugly face, and vicious shadow dug into his thick skin.

Attack Successful! Bob the Balor takes 52 damage.

Bob took the hit like a champ. The impact didn't even snap his head to the side. All that really happened was he took a half step before glaring at me.

Expend Free action? Yes/No

Note: You must select the total number of seconds spent before activating.

I selected one second and mentally slapped the button as fast as I could. I was almost too slow. Even with time stopping, that beam seemed to be moving at the speed of light. It was lucky I kept moving even as I worked the menu. The destructive beam was already destroying the floor where I was standing.

I quickly jogged back and to his right while pulling the bow out of my inventory. I needed to avoid both the laser and the remains of the cloud of hellfire. That eye had to go. I nocked an arrow and took aim at the center of the baleful eye… As I let go of the string, I wondered. Is that where the word came from?

Attack Blocked!

The arrow flew straight and true, but an instant before touching the eye, it hit the beam. This immediately knocked it off course. Bob hadn't expected this. In an almost panicked flailing, he looked in my direction.

Attack from Bob the Balor Dodged.

Counter-attack blocked.

You phased through the attack. No damage taken.

HP: 600/600

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I just barely managed to duck the beam as I pulled the bow back into my inventory. That counted to the system as dodging the attack, and I seized the opportunity to try and counter. I kicked low at Bob, trying to take him out at the legs. His tall oblong shield came down hard in front of my kick. My shine bounced off the shield

Bob wasn't one to hesitate either. His spear rose up, and then came down fast.

Attack from Bob the Balor blocked.

Counter-attack successful. Bob the Balor takes 62 damage.

HP: 600/600

I managed to slap the spear to the side just barely. It pierced the stone floor like butter. Luckily for me, the floor contained the flames pretty well. The ground beneath us was glowing red-hot and started to sag. Bob had miscalculated, and I was inside his guard. I clocked the jerk with an uppercut. Bob took the hit right on the chin. His eyes, including the third one, snapped shut. At first, I thought the hit had literally lifted him off the ground.

Sadly, that wasn't the case. Instead, Bob had jumped out of reach.

Bob spat out a mouthful of blood, "You fight well."

"No," I said, starting to walk closer to him. I made it a point to walk at an angle and turn side to prevent being too big of a target.

Bob blinked his now baleful eyes, "You deny your skill?'

"We aren't doing this noble warrior's begrudging respect bullshit," I told him. "This isn't a duel. I am going to do whatever it takes to kill you."

Bob's twisted face warped still further with a malicious grin, "Wonderful."

That was when dozens of fuck ugly demons crashed through the windows. Most demons, while having inhuman features like horns and wings, and being a bit too tall and thin, had a certain sharp-edged beauty to them. Not these folks. Most of them were lopsided, asymmetrical creatures. Some were bloated like toads. Others were skeletal. A lot of them had fish-like features, fins, scales, and bulging eyes.

They all had two things in common, though. All of them had bunches of wicked, barbed spears, and everyone was trying to kill me.

This wasn't the killing blow Bob thought it was, despite his effective aura farming. So the first thing was Bob was clearly the heavy of this group, having dozens of them fling spears at me wasn't that hard to deal with. A lot of them had a bad habit of throwing the spear where I was, rather than where I was going to be. The other issue was that I was a Titan Spawn and had bigger numbers.

That and my Cosmic Martial Art was built for this. Every attack I Blocked, Dodged, or even Deflected gave me an opportunity to counter-attack. This was arguably the single greatest source for my damage output. Titanic Retribution was quickly climbing the ranks. It was also a great way to punish any and every demon dumb enough to attack me. What made this actually busted was that I didn't have to counter the person who attacked me.

Like I said, this wasn't an honorable duel. Bob seemed to be roughly equal to me in stats, and that laser vision was likely my bane. That made him my main target. He was, however, not able to break the action economy. I could.

Attack from Fomori Demons dodged x 12

Weapon is Hellfire-type Ablative shell takes 36 damage

Attack from Fomori Demons Dodged x 14.

Attack from Fomori Demons Deflected x 10.

Weapon is Hellfire-type. Ablative Shell takes 30 damage.

Counter-Attack missed x 15.

Counter-Attack Dodge x 2.

Counter Attack Blocked x 8.

Counter-Attack Successful x 11.

Bob the Balor takes 539 damage.

HP: 600/600

Between the rain of spears. The wall of hellfire and my own flailing, I missed a lot of counterattacks. Bob was also less than cooperative in my endeavors to beat him to death. He was very good at putting that shield between me and him. That said, I still managed to pummel him and put the boots into him. Everything was happening so fast that most of Bob's Fomori backup didn't realize they weren't helping.

Unfortunately, this explosion of violence hadn't killed Bob. Angelica had said she had 700 HP when she was level 35. I strongly suspected Bob was at least Heroic scale, and maybe a similar level. Otherwise, he should be dead.

Attack from Bob the Balor Successful.

Ablative Shell takes 3 points of damage

Weapon is Hellfire-type. Ablative Shell takes 40 damage.

Layer of Ablative Shell destroyed.

HP: 600/600

The spear punched deep into my ice armor, and before igniting like a road flare. Bob also took the chance to lift me up into the air and then open his baleful eye.

Expend Free action? Yes/No

Note: You must select the total number of seconds spent before activating.

I hit yes just as I dislodged myself from the spear. I fell to the ground as time stopped. The hateful ray of death was already halfway across the room by the time I looked up. I rolled out of the line of fire and considered what to do next.

I probably could go another round of dodging the chumps to finish off Bob, but the risk was Bob getting a lucky shot in with that eye. He had already gotten me to burn through two seconds of time stops.

Please select an action…

I had an idea. It might not be a good one, but it was better than just repeating the same cycle.

I walked around behind Bob, and hopped on his back and hooked my arm under his head in a choke hold. I hooked my other hand into the belt loop on Bob's pants. Then I levered.

Attack Successful! Cadoc takes 290 damage.

Cadoc is slain.

Attack successful! Brychan takes 270 damage.

Brychan is slain.

Attack successful! Fergal takes 279 damage.

Fergal is slain.

Attack successful! Vercingetorix takes 284 damage.

Vercingetorix is slain.

Attack successful! Durst takes 283 damage.

Durst is slain.

Attack successful! Muadnat takes 272 damage.

Muadnat is slain.

Attack successful! Tradhg takes 280 damage.

Tradhg is slain.

Attack successful! Gobnat takes 271 damage.

Gobnat is slain.

That was so many hard-to-pronounce names. This worked out better than I even hoped. It turned out that these jerks didn't actually have any real team loyalty. These Fomori fish dicks. Kept trying to pelt me with more torturous spears. Luckily, I had heavy cover. I hid behind my Bob the Balor shield as he kept firing hate at the sons of bitches stabbing him.

I managed to take out another twelve of the mooks with Bob's eye laser before they killed him. Interestingly enough, this didn't stop his baleful eye from continuing to fire doom beams. I wasn't taking a lot of time to loot, but Bob's body wound up in my inventory as soon as the last of the so-called Fomori got eye fucked.

I needed to move faster. Angelica was ahead of me. The demons were also clearly getting tougher the higher up the tower I went. Don't get me wrong, Angelica was a better fighter than me, but she didn't have regen like I did. My hope was that I pulled aggro off of her. Perhaps between the two of us, we could split the fish and effectively power through.

Either way, I needed to get going.

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