I understood that the likely reason the elven monarchs agreed to let me take on this role and lay my claim on the most valuable loot there could be in defeating the Argyrian Patriarch was that, in part, they didn’t truly believe I could deliver on my promises of holding him back the agreed time. But whether I succeeded or not, at least it wouldn’t be them standing against the Argyrian Patriarch right off the bat.

I knew I was the one who had suggested taking this position, and I did so precisely because I knew they would look down on me—just as they did. But barely a minute into the fight, I was already starting to question the feasibility of my own claims.

Surfing my sword at full speed, I felt the warmth—no, the scorching heat—of a light beam attack streak past me. I barely managed to weave away, only to realize more were being casually shot in my direction by the Argyrian Patriarch.

"Fuuuuuuuuuck!" I screamed, dodging for my dear life.

I weaved through the air, desperately avoiding the onslaught.

A fresh notification from my Identification skill flared in my mind just as another Solar Flare Ray blazed toward me. Without a second thought, I flipped upside down and dove, the rush of air pressing against me as I narrowly escaped its scorching path. The Argyrian Patriarch, like the madman he was, unleashed attack after attack with no regard for precision. Madness or not, it made sense; as a monarch, he had monsters as his subjects, creatures he could seamlessly harness energy from. MP, HP, SP—none of it was a concern for him, so why bother.

As I leveled out from my dive, I sensed the next threat honing in on me—[Stormhound Bolts]. Unlike [Solar Flare Ray], which smote in a straight path, [Stormhound Bolts] lived up to their name. They hounded me like relentless predators with me as their prey.

I jerked left, then right, zigzagging through the air with sharp, snaking twists. Each sudden turn was more abrupt than the last—I needed to throw off what was essentially a guided missile snapping at my heels. I wasn’t just dodging; I was leading them on a chase, hoping they couldn’t keep up.

The moment I sensed a brief lull in the Patriarch’s assault, I seized my chance. I swooped low, dropping altitude fast to duck under another Solar Flare Ray. The maneuver brought me dangerously close to the Patriarch—exactly where I needed to be. I was below and behind him now, his blind spot.

I rolled midair, both for the sheer thrill of it and to throw off any more incoming bolts. My surroundings blurred into streaks of color as I spun, keeping my movements erratic and unpredictable. Just as I steadied myself, another Ray cut through the space I had occupied seconds before.

Seeing an opening as the Argyrian Patriarch recalibrated his next attack, I pulled my spiritual sword up sharply, practically standing vertical in the air. With all my strength, I hurled my sword at him. The impact stalled my momentum, but the blade still found its mark. The Stormhound Bolts slammed into my sword, weakening its strength, yet it still hit the Patriarch hard enough to send him flying backward. He spiraled upward, his once-controlled posture breaking into a chaotic tumble. I didn’t wait for him to recover.

With a flick of my wrist, my chains manifested—glowing, ethereal, alive. They lashed out with a crack, wrapping around his twisting form. I yanked hard, flipping him midair and reversing our positions. Up here, the air felt cooler, or maybe that was just the high of not being on the receiving end of violence.

My feet connected with his back in a bone-rattling impact, driving him downward like a missile.

Even as he plummeted, I summoned spiritual swords, their ghostly forms shimmering into existence, their points aimed at him. With a thought, I hurled them after him. Each blade struck true, accelerating his descent. The air roared with their passage, the ground rushing up to meet him with terrifying speed.

I wasn’t finished.

“Judgment of the Firmament: Arctic Oblivion!” I roared, feeling the surge of power as the hybrid-spell answered my call. The sky above shimmered, parting as a colossal lance—the height of a millennia-old tree—descended like divine retribution. It crashed into him with a thunderous impact, shaking the earth as shards of frost erupted in every direction.

The explosion that followed was deafening, engulfing everything in a swirling storm of ice and mist. I hovered above, watching as the chaos settled, my breath steady despite the strain. As the mist dissipated, a mountain of jagged ice loomed where he had been, glittering cold and final in the pale light.

Hovering above, I held a count in my mind—a second one, apart from the one I had been keeping since the start of this battle. I had only reached ten before a notification flashed before my eyes, a warning as much as an update.

Not even a second had passed since the notification, and barely twelve seconds had gone by since he was trapped in the ice when I felt it—a shift in the air. Subtle at first, like the world itself was holding its breath. Then came the heat. It climbed rapidly, a suffocating wave pressing against my skin, making the air shimmer.

Three seconds later, the inevitable happened. The ice prison I had crafted, towering and absolute, began to steam. Cracks spiderwebbed across its surface, glowing an ominous red from within. The heat intensified to an absurd degree—it felt like I was standing in the heart of a forge.

And then, just like that, it happened.

The entire mountain of ice erupted like a volcano. Shards and mist blasted outward with the force of a violent storm. Molten water turned to scalding vapor in an instant, filling the air with a roar that drowned out everything else. Instinctively, I summoned my chains again, spinning them into a shield to block the superheated debris hurtling in all directions.

Through the blinding mist and steam, I saw him—or rather, I felt him. His aura surged, wild and untamed, a monstrous force that seemed to warp the very space around him. Flames licked at his figure, spiraling in unnatural patterns, the air shimmering with unbearable heat.

He rose from the shattered remnants of my attack, no different than he was at the beginning of the fight. Practically unharmed despite the “nuke” I had just dropped on him. His expression was a mix of madness and fury, and the ice that had once held him captive was now a bubbling crater beneath his feet. Steam hissed and swirled around him as if bowing to his power.

I understood.

The moment I made that offer, I knew exactly what I was guaranteeing the elven monarchs—and they undoubtedly understood it as well. It was clear they were pessimistic about my ability to deliver the results I promised—or perhaps "optimistic" would be more accurate. I could see these greedy bastards actually being delighted if I failed. My demise would be a boon for them; it would mean they got to split everything I had worked so hard to secure.

In a sense, they had set me up—but without actually lifting a finger. All they had to do was nod and agree to my suggestion. Despite their obvious bad faith, the truth remained: this was my idea. I had set this up myself. But I didn’t propose this with the intent to die. My plan was to win this front.

That said, "winning" for me didn’t mean defeating the Argyrian Patriarch alone. I knew I couldn’t beat him. We all knew that. No, my job here was to hold the line long enough for the others to exterminate his monsters. They estimated it would take no more than fifteen minutes at worst. Fifteen minutes—just a quarter of an hour of survival. That was all I needed to manage.

But barely two minutes into the fight, I was already starting to feel like I had committed the same mistake as the Umbryan Patriarch—underestimating the Argyrian Patriarch. Not to the same extent, of course.

While prideful, I wasn’t pridefully blind like him. I knew I’d be at a severe disadvantage against someone like the Argyrian.

Let me explain.

The Argyrian Patriarch is an elven monarch who commands control over the majority of elemental sub-affinities. For someone like me, who relies heavily on elemental attacks, he is my absolute nemesis. His resistance to elemental damage is absurd, mitigating almost all my efforts. And while I have my hexes and curses to fall back on—after all, I am a Hexcaster—they’re just as inefficient against him.

Not that they were as easily mitigated as my elemental attacks, but even if I cast a curse to sap his stats—whether it was HP, MP, or SP—it wouldn’t matter. The bastard would recover from the paltry damage before it even started to take effect. That meant I was left with less than half my arsenal as a Hexcaster.

That left me with my skills and abilities as a Weaponry Ascetic. Ironically, it’s the class I least identified with, yet it was the one I would have to rely on the most.

So how, knowing all these disadvantages, did I still make the same mistake as the Umbryan Patriarch? The answer was simple: I was overconfident. Despite my awareness of his strengths, I believed I could hold out for those fifteen minutes. Not effortlessly, but just enough to fulfill the policy I made Goblin and the others comply with.

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

I thought it would be difficult but manageable—enough to let me conserve my strength for the bigger fight ahead. But now, I realized how naive that assumption was. Holding him out wouldn’t just be a matter of skill or cunning. It would take everything I had—and then some.

As the Argyrian Patriarch stood on the ground, glaring murderously up at me, his body contorted grotesquely as he invoked a skill that would have made Goblin seethe with rage.

This skill was Goblin’s signature move, but the Patriarch’s version was far more horrific. Unlike Goblin, who could gently summon and dismiss his bonded creatures, the Patriarch's use of the skill caused his belly to swell grotesquely before bursting open. From the gaping wound, serpentine monstrosities emerged—flesh-and-blood counterparts of the shadow creatures previously summoned by the Umbryan Patriarch. At least half a dozen of these slithering beasts lunged into the air, rapidly closing the distance between us.

I remembered how formidable these creatures were. They weren’t just fast—they were relentless, spitting beams as they pursued me through the sky. Despite focusing on evading their attacks, my gaze never left the Argyrian Patriarch. He was summoning something even more unsettling.

"What the hell—" I began, but the heat from one of my pursuer’s beam attacks forced me to cut myself off.

Annoyance flickered across my face before shifting into a sharp grin. I activated two of my Hexcaster abilities.

Accelerating suddenly, I put some distance between myself and the pursuing creatures before turning to unleash my [Perfected Evil Eyes]. This enhanced version of the Eye of Perdition skill heavily slowed my targets. As they faltered, I unleashed a hail of spiritual weapons that detonated against their grotesque forms.

Meanwhile, behind me, something enormous was taking shape—"Thazaruul, the Rotten Beholder." This monstrous, eldritch entity exuded an overwhelming, grotesque menace. Its deformed body was a pulsating mass of flesh, riddled with clusters of bloodshot eyes that twitched erratically. At its center was an enormous, unblinking eye, just below which a massive, decadently toothed maw yawned open as if ready to devour the world.

A gift from my Eldritch Monstrosity title, Thazaruul served three functions: as a "medium," an "enhancer," and a "conduit."

As a medium, Thazaruul allowed me to channel my curses through its many eyes, striking enemies within its field of vision without requiring direct line-of-sight.

As an enhancer, it amplified the potency of my hexes. What would have been minor misfortunes became devastating calamities, increasing my spells' range, duration, and their ability to pierce magical defenses.

As a conduit, Thazaruul extended the reach of curses that traditionally required physical touch or proximity. Through it, I could bypass protective wards and deliver my hexes as if standing right beside my enemies.

I needed its capabilities now more than ever.

Unleashing a vicious hail of exploding projectiles, I quickly overwhelmed the creatures. I had led them on a chase not out of fear, but to buy time. However, the sight of what the Patriarch was conjuring made it clear that prolonging this engagement was a mistake. Facing him alone was daunting enough, but allowing his abomination to take full form was an absolute no-go.

Realizing that conserving energy for the main fight against the Patriarch was no longer the wise choice it once seemed, I decided to unleash my full strength on his minions. Activating [Fate Reversal] just before defeating them—causing them to vanish like dungeon-spawned creatures, leaving no corpses—my MP and SP surged upward.

It wasn’t a perfect trade-off, but it was the best I could manage. The energy I spent to take them down wasn’t fully recovered, but I at least undid 25% of the total cost. Still a hefty price paid, but that was still better than nothing—especially since, unlike the monarchs, I lacked a Sigil to effortlessly replenish my reserves."

Speaking of monarchs…

With the creatures dealt with, my attention snapped back to the Argyrian Patriarch. He had not been idle. He had used a skill that would have greatly annoyed Goblin—one that allowed him to manifest traits from his bonded creatures. But unlike Goblin, who adopted two or three traits at a time, the Patriarch manipulated the skill into something far more grotesque. He fused traits from multiple creatures, forging a nightmarish chimeric monstrosity.

The result was a being that should never have existed. A blasphemous fusion of creatures that had no right to be melded together. Towering over its creator, its hulking, muscular frame radiated raw power, each limb pulsating with veins that glowed faintly with unholy energy.

Its central head, a wolf-like visage, snarled with unrelenting fury. Its eyes gleamed with an unnatural light, their glow betraying a predatory intellect far beyond that of any beast. To the left, a draconic head loomed, its scaled neck twisting with serpentine grace. Flames and smoke billowed from its maw as if the very act of breathing kindled the fires of destruction within. To the right, a serpent's head hissed, its forked tongue flickering menacingly, dripping venom that sizzled upon contact with the ground.

As if that weren’t enough, other heads emerged from its grotesque form—less distinct but no less horrifying. There was a sample of everything: horned demons, avian predators, and reptilian horrors vying for dominance within the single entity. The crimson gem embedded in its chest pulsed like a second heart, radiating an aura of malevolence that pressed down on the air like a suffocating fog. Around it, the very environment twisted—lightning arced across the stormy sky, and the ground beneath its claws fractured as if repelling its presence.

Then, the Patriarch did something—something that altered the very nature of the barrier surrounding us. I felt the shift instantly, an unspoken restriction locking into place. If I had to guess, he had ensured that I couldn’t escape the battlefield. The reason became painfully obvious.

Striding over its creator, the beast’s heads reared back in unison—a rare moment of unnatural synchronization from the chaos it embodied. The draconic maw inhaled deeply, the air around it twisting into a vortex of flame and ash. The wolf’s snarling jaws crackled with raw energy, arcs of lightning dancing between its teeth as it prepared to unleash its fury. The serpent’s head coiled slightly, venom pooling in its mouth, its acidic fumes burning the air even before release. Other grotesque heads joined the charge, their throats glowing with ethereal light, signaling the doom to come.

Then, all at once, the chimera unleashed its combined wrath.

A torrent of flames shot from the draconic head, so intense it didn’t burn—it disintegrated. The mountains in its path weren’t scorched but obliterated, reduced to glowing embers swept away by the sheer force of the attack. The wolf’s head followed with a crackling blast of lightning that split the sky in two, striking the earth with such ferocity that entire valleys crumbled into bottomless chasms. The serpent head lashed forward, spewing a torrent of venom that hissed as it melted through anything it touched, carving rivers of destruction through the land.

But it didn’t end there. Each head added its own twisted element to the assault. A putrid green mist spewed from one, dissolving clouds and scattering them like frightened prey. Another loosed an otherworldly howl, its soundwaves tearing apart the heavens, ripping through trees, rock, and even the air itself. The chimera chest glowed and pulsed violently, fueling the attacks with a chaotic energy that made each strike more devastating than the last.

Yet, for all its fury and chaos, the barrage seemed almost…coordinated in its onslaught, leaving me little to no room to dodge inside the erected domain. Each head aimed differently—one’s fire incinerating distant peaks, another’s lightning obliterating the plains, while venom scorched a forest to the east. It was as though the chimera couldn’t decide what to destroy first, so it chose everything. The sky darkened, the ground quaked, and the horizon itself seemed to buckle under the assault, until the world around the beast was reduced to a shattered wasteland, scarred and broken like a canvas of pure ruin.

For half a minute, the attack poured without losing strength, beams of destruction filling the area. I darted through the onslaught with rapid maneuvers, the wind howling past me as I twisted and flipped to avoid the lethal chaos. And yet, despite my speed, one of the chimera’s beams grazed me—a searing line of energy that caught my side and sent me tumbling through the air.

“Fuck,” I rasped, managing to stabilize myself midair, somehow avoiding being outright obliterated by another beam. My vision swam, the edges of the world blurring as I caught sight of my left arm—or rather, the bloody stump where it had been.

A modicum of pain seeped through my Pain Immunity skill, the sensation dulled yet enough to bring a sense of extreme urgency. Perhaps it was my time as a Hexcaster, but seeing such an injury inflicted upon me sent a clear message: I had to act fast.

I looked toward the Patriarch. He was no longer below his monstrous creation but now perched atop its back. With a dismissive wave, he gave his command, and the chimera responded instantly. Unfolding multiple pairs of wings—patchworks of scaled leather, feathers, and membranous horrors—it prepared to take to the skies. With a single, massive flap, the creature rose, leveling itself to my height.

"Six minutes and twenty seconds," I mused, my gaze locked onto the Argyrian Patriarch. "So, what are you going to do again?"

My question was answered by a series of notifications from my identification skill and a shift in the monstrous creature’s stance, signaling another impending onslaught. My jaw tightened as I braced myself.

Large scorching fireballs were unleashed , but none came from the many heads of the chimera. Instead, they came from Veilleuse-19, who flew through the barrier unimpeded, as in that moment, the ancestral tree served more as a prison than a protective shield, so anything from outside could walk right through.

The massive red wyvern blasted explosive red fireballs at the monstrous creacture. The relentless bombardment threw the chimera off balance, and just as it staggered, Veilleuse-19 dove, slamming into it with earth-shaking force. The monstrosity tumbled toward the ground, but before impact, Veilleuse-19 flapped her wings and soared back into the sky.

At the sight, my first thought was how terrible an idea this was. There was a reason I hadn't brought Veilleuse-19 here—this battle was far too dangerous for her. But there was no point dwelling on it now.

She was here, trapped in this battlefield alongside me. There was no undoing it. And so, rather than waste time worrying, I chose to embrace it. With a broad grin, I shot forward, leaping from my flying sword to take my rightful place on Veilleuse-19’s back.

"Despite everything, I’m glad to see you here," I declared to my trusty steed.

Veilleuse-19 responded with a screech. Unlike Goblin and Bortz, I had no skill to translate her thoughts, but I understood the meaning behind it well enough. With a quick turn, she faced the Argyrian Patriarch and his abomination.

From below, one of the chimera’s heads unleashed an attack upon us. Veilleuse-19 swerved sharply to the left, dodging the ray while simultaneously adjusting her size. If she had remained at her full mountain-like form, we would have been an easy target for this and the many attacks that followed. Instead, she shrank to the length of a low-tier wyvern, her massive form compacting into something far more maneuverable.

Glancing at my stump, I allowed my recovering skills and abilities to work. Golden threads of energy wove from the wound, knitting flesh and bone back together. In less than five seconds, my arm was whole again. The fabric of my battle outfit stretched and mended itself as though the damage had never happened. I flexed my fingers experimentally, wincing slightly as residual pain shot through my nerves. After a few more flexes, everything was back to normal. My gaze snapped back to the Patriarch and his monstrosity.

At that moment, I made my final decision.

"Screw the idea of waging this fight while conserving energy. I'm recovering whatever I lose with the experience points I'm going to harvest by killing him."