One minute, Emma just had to survive the next minute. She didn't know why she'd picked that time of all things, but it was what she'd already decided to fight through one minute prior. She'd managed that, so she'd survive another passing of sixty arbitrary seconds before deciding what to do all over.

But sixty seconds may as well have been sixty hours, sixty days. Sixty sessions of torture. Lord Grave had been level sixty when they'd met on WOW, Emma only level twenty-eight. The difference between mid and high-end players in a game like that was more vast than the gap between an olympic athlete and a toddler.

And it felt pretty close to the disparity she was staring down now.

Her enemy had more tricks than just the one he'd cut her barricade in half with, Emma was sure of it. Whatever they were, though, she had no idea, and might never find out. So far just the one had been serving him well.

His arm twisted, wrist flicked, and the humming length of glowing energy coiled and uncoiled in the air. Emma filled the air with wind going one direction as she leapt into the other, sending it just off-kilter enough to miss her and gouge out a nice chunk of solid fucking stone instead. She landed in a heap, hurried to her feet and retaliated with a hasty blast of her energy shotgun.

Then, and only then, did she see another of Graves' tricks. He raised another of his arms and brought up a new thing of glowing matter, like the hardened energy Emma herself made into weapons and defences but…different. Less stable, more primeval. Apparently more durable too, because the solid iron cores of her bullets actually broke apart in the effort of penetrating his shield. Despite that, not a one of them succeeded either. Graves stumbled from the transferring momentum, but didn't fall. Then his whip was coming back around.

Emma didn't try to throw it off the same way, knew he'd see that coming and adjust his grip to counter it. This time she speared a length of hardened energy through the ground to stick up high. Had to be three, even four metres in height and began protruding right in the middle of his swing.

It worked, catching the whip halfway down its length and causing the whole thing to wrap around the pole instead of continuing to transfer its deadly momentum from body to tip. Another foiled attempt at cutting Emma in half, now she just had to stop another twenty more.

After that, her next minute would start.

Then the next, then the next. Emma would probably be dead before then, and if she wasn't she'd die soon after. Her mana reserves were burning away much faster than Graves', such was the hazard of fighting so powerful an opponent. It didn't matter how many tricks she had up her sleeve, he could just keep cutting them in half. And every one she showed him was one more he wouldn't be surprised by again.

It was the novelty of her powers that kept his deathblow from landing, but Emma only had so much novelty to use. So defence wasn't an option then.

She roared, and sent her iron-cored javelin hurtling across the room with Force and Energy both propelling it. Graves' shield came up, caught the projectile nearly dead-centre. It cracked. The projectile, the shield. She didn't penetrate, not fully, but she knew a weakness where she saw one. For the split-second Graves was sent stumbling, Emma let her power build. The energy lance came out a moment later and hit his shield almost exactly at one of its edges.

This was, of course, intentional. Because the farther from the split Emma applied force, the greater the tensile strain she could have tugging at the damage. In an instant, she saw the crack widen and deepen into a ravine running right down to the shield's core. She didn't stop there.

Another Matter-javelin—she needed a name for it, right?— cut into the ground beneath Graves' feet and sent him stumbling away. A miss, and an intentional one. Because while he was focused on that, he wasn't focused on the set of larger, denser bullets Emma propelled at the centre of his shield one after another.

As it turned out, three were enough to finalise the break and split the thing in half. The fourth was just needed to cut through the newly-exposed centre and dig into its wielder. Emma would've winced at the sight of Graves suffering such a deep wound, if she cared about wounding him.

He evidently cared a good deal more, because his whip was cutting through the air and suddenly trailing fire as it came for her. One energy barrier, one blast of sand and one slab of stone conjured right over the point of impact let Emma take the hit without losing any more skin cohesion or blood. It did not, however, let her remain standing. Emma went down, slid backwards. Slid far backwards—problem with her Energy armour, it was both light and near-frictionless. When Emma got sent along a flat surface in it, she got sent along it.

"Y…You!" Graves snarled, clutching at his side. By the sound of his voice, by the panic, Emma had been hoping to look up and see some gushing wound.

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Well, there was a wound at least. A small one. It looked like maybe he'd been shaving his belly and slipped, or something. Maybe a cut that big would've been life-threatening if he were a rat.

"You wounded me!" He screamed, eyes practically bulging. Very slowly, very suddenly aware that she was lying down at the mercy of an angry, powerful man, Emma got to her feet.

"We're in a fight." She frowned, refraining from any sudden movements or provocative tones as she did. It was a useless effort, he exploded anyway.

"ME!?" He shrieked. "You wounded ME! LORD GRAVES, THE BEAST-TAMER!"

Seeing that any hopes of de-escalating this situation had ended when whichever idiot raised this man had made such a shit job of it, Emma decided to give up entirely.

"Sorry about that, I was aiming for your dick but it was such a tiny target—"

Another scream, this one not even coherent or intelligible. Graves left the air awash with magical power, though, and that was more clear than any words he might have managed. Emma braced herself.

It seemed she'd just gotten onto the boss' second health bar.

Moments later, Emma saw what that entailed. They were no longer alone. Two women burst onto the scene; tall, muscled, armed and armoured. One had white hair, hearty-shaped, soft features and pink armour. Pink armour, like someone thought "Westerosi Barbie" had sounded marketable. The other's hair was black, she was taller, leaner, and seemed harder in every way. Harder features, with a harder expression. Clearly both were warriors, and…Wearing animal ears?

Yes, clearly. They'd been thrown off-kilter by their run, and she could see the bands peeking through parts of their hair. A rush ran through her, pure excitement, as she realised what was going on.

"Battle Bitches!" Graves began, "Destroy this impudent—"

—"So, you've forced these women into a life of sex-slavery." Emma noted. He froze.

"What?"

Emma turned to the women now, both of whom were staring at her with faces she couldn't quite make out.

"Come on." She laughed. "You think I can't see for myself? Look at what they're wearing, those outfits look like they're from a strip-club. And the ears. What, let me guess, they have a pair of tails too, huh? Hanging off the end of a plug stuck right up their—"

—"What are you-I, you're insane!" Graves was backing away now, staring at her more with horror than anything. He was a good actor, Emma had to admit.

"What, do they keep you warm at night? You creep. I bet you pour syrup over their tits and lick it off." She eyed the pink-haired woman, the one with the larger breasts by far, and imagined it. Yes, of course he was doing that. He must have been.

Graves stared at Emma, backing away as he did.

"T…Take care of her." He croaked. "I…I don't want to fight her."

Emma saw that the two women apparently called Battle Bitches—such a cool name—were, if anything, less eager than Graves was. They were staring as if she were the weird one. Stockholm syndrome, probably. Hm. Did that mean that if Emma captured them—

Behind Graves, garulkan poured free into the room and began slowly encircling her. Emma knew, then, that it was all over. However short her odds of surviving more than a few minutes against Graves alone, they'd dropped to zero when two others showed up to help him. Around now they'd dropped even further, and were uppercutting someone in Australia as they burst up through the ground. Or whatever was on the opposite side of this planet, she supposed. Assuming it even was round—

Getting distracted Em.

Right, dying. What could she do about that again?

Not a lot, it seemed. In fact Emma reckoned she had exactly two options; running and talking. The former would still be a plan B if the latter failed, so she opened her mouth first.

"Hold on here, you know we don't even need to fight right?"

It was pretty weak, as far as appeals for her life went. Emma was off her game. Something about getting pinballed across a room for several minutes seemed to have knocked the best out of her.

Graves was, unsurprisingly, not convinced. Narrowing his eyes, glaring at her.

"You attacked me." He spat, apparently having taken very personal offence over the fact.

"And you sent a pack of horrible monsters to eat me first." Emma pointed out.

"No!" He snapped. "Before that, you shot me back with that…That projectile!"

Had she? Oh yeah, Emma legitimately forgot about that. Ha.

"Okay, well what if we let bygones be bygones? Let's be honest here, trying to kill each other has been pretty annoying for both of us so far."

He actually paused at that, frowning in thought.

"You…are the most powerful other human I've met in this world, so far." He noted.

"Right." Emma agreed. "And the same goes for you in my experience." It actually was true, as well. Not even counting his ability to control magical animals, Emma didn't think Herag or Hagor would do too well against him just off his conjured weaponry alone. Larry hadn't been lying when he said the powers given to conventional isekai-ees were bullshit.

Lord Graves wasn't convinced, but Emma could see a crack forming in his anger now.

"What, exactly, would our cooperation entail?" He asked. "Want to join my Battle Bitches, is that it?"

Emma did not quite puke in her mouth, but it was a near thing.

"I don't think we need anything as permanent as that, just keep whatever you've gotten from this island, leave my people alone and we can go our separate ways with a silent promise to avoid each other from now on. We both get to do as we please in this world and never need to deal with the other's bullshit powers."

He thought about it.

"You…are really tedious to fight." He noted.

"Yeah, so are you." Emma winced, her cut leg suddenly flaring up. "So deal?"

He hesitated, then his hand moved to his jacket. Where Larry was, Emma guessed. Wait had she aimed for that spot? Oops.

"What about the angel?" Graves asked.

Emma frowned. "He helps me with my powers, I need him."

His gaze hardened. "He screwed me over, left me stranded here. Do you have any idea how awful my early days were?"

Probably not as awful as mine.

"You want revenge." Emma said, slowly. "I want actual help, come on."

The man glared, but sighed. "Fine." He spat. "Fine, you can have him."

Emma was halfway through a relieved smile when she caught sight of Aexilica barrelling down the corridor behind her enemy. The new plan formed instantly.

"Should've cut the deal sooner then asshole!" She roared, firing out another energy lance right for Graves' head.

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