The gravitational pull was immense, but I Voidported away and got a pinch of soul energy no more than a few grains of sand, then used Convergence to grab his ass and pull him away from me. For a creature so small and light, that would’ve surely flung him across continents.

I continued my journey using the rest of soul energy my clone collected as flight via void manipulation. With all these buffs on me, and soul energy, I easily surpassed the speed of sound. Thank Hydra’s ass for the extra durability. In a few seconds, the Orb of Eblis began emitting mass amounts of energy suddenly. Hmm, so your regeneration is done by the orb, huh? I knew that Convergence would’ve definitely sufficed as a killing blow once he connected with something solid.

I got to the mountain finally and a white beam of light smashed into it. The blast wave rocked me away and I cleared a few trees with ease after coming to a stop when I hit into an elephant and flipped until I fell onto the ground. Luckily, I managed to place the Staff of Eliora back into my inventory so I wouldn’t drop it. Apothea got me back to new, but the same couldn’t be said for my clothes.

Off in the distance, the mountain was obliterated, but Apollyon didn’t try to get to the Orb of Eblis before I did, he simply hovered and watched at me menacingly. Fine, I clicked my tongue and formed voidfire around one hand and light magic around the other. The light flared in attempts to blind the demon, then voidfire burst forth like a rocket to my target. I followed it up with Phoenix Wave and had it track him, and focused just enough to let off a few hundred Arcane Missiles since their homing ability was even better than Phoenix Wave.

He dodged the voidfire easily, was forced to teleport away from Phoenix Wave, but couldn’t avoid the speedy Arcane Missiles. They sizzled his cells into oblivion and destroyed him from the inside-out, and whilst he died in agony, I Voidported back to the mountain and continued my search for the orb. I cleared the rubble with earth manipulation as quickly as I could and found that there was an ominous bright violet pool of liquid. It, didn’t seem like water. I used earth manipulation to remove the bits of rock and sand that fell into the pool and saw the Orb of Eblis lying at the bottom.

I cast Clone numerously until I had ten clones to keep Apollyon distracted, then retrieved the orb. A spear of shadow magic suddenly shot out the orb and impaled me, and then a few more did the same. Ah, fuck, I could feel my cells deteriorating. Convalesce somewhat balanced it out, but that alone wasn’t enough. I used void to forcefully remove the shadow spears from me and the Spectre of Eliora and Apothea had to heal the wound I sustained.

With the Orb of Eblis now in my possession as well as the Staff of Eliora, I teleported over to Emily’s own little world. Hydra’s ass, man, that guy’s impossible to deal with sometimes. The orb began producing even more magic to heal him even across worlds. My clones were probably doing a number on him, but I couldn’t relax.

Life Perception showed that there was indeed a large portion of Apollyon’s life essence within the Orb of Eblis. Mana Perception almost made me reel from the sheer amount of mana contained in the damned thing. I immediately deactivated Mana Perception and took a deep breath.

Apollyon is literally the manifestation of shadow magic, and most of his life essence is in this orb. That basically means that this orb is Apollyon, right? I summoned hundreds of clones and had them put a finger on the orb in order to merge cells with Apollyon, or rather, shadow magic. I continued creating as many clones as I could to keep Apollyon busy, but I knew he’d be here soon enough.

However, I didn’t expect him to let me get so far whilst merging cells. I could feel that there wasn’t a lot more work to do on it. I had my clones enter a void plane to continue and then I myself focused on Apollyon now. He sped forward and I missed with my Divergence because he teleported right above me, but his attempt to impale me through the skull failed when I impaled him with the scorpion tail from Kor’zha and slammed him on the ground. His body clammed up within the second from the poison and his brain matter – or his shadow matter rather – would be split in half by an Arcane Blade that cut clean right down his body and parted him in two.

His regeneration process started yet again, but I delayed that as much as possible by smothering the Orb of Eblis with as much light magic as I possibly could. I dumped monstrous amounts of mana into that light manipulation. That manoeuvre slowed his healing process down from some seconds to a few minutes. In Timedial’s warped time-space, that was more than enough to find what I was looking for – the secret behind his regeneration. But it didn’t even matter, because there was no convenient technique to stop it anyway.

I gritted my teeth; there was an insurmountable obstacle in front of me. How was I going to overcome it? How was I supposed to extinguish a life essence so ridiculously strong? His regeneration wasn’t exactly magic, it was just his extra life essence from the Orb of Eblis going into the physical body of Apollyon. In order for me to kill Apollyon, who grew stronger by the minute, I had to kill him and destroy the Orb of Eblis, a goddamn artefact.

Coalesce, August’s enchantments, Augment, pills and potions, and all my damn concentration wasn’t enough. Light magic was effective against him, especially when I used the Staff of Eliora as a mana conductor. I still hadn’t figured out how Apothea was supposed to be useful in defeating Apollyon, since the Spectre of Eliora was even more powerful than her.

Wait, why don’t I just ask the spectre? “Hey, how is Apotheosis supposed to help me beat Apollyon the Destroyer?”

“Apotheosis can act as a light magnification entity when it surrounds a being,” the Spectre of Eliora said.

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Oi, are you fuckin’ with me? I eyed Apothea. She could do that all the time? Hydra’s a–

Another huge wave of power spread forth from Apollyon. And this one was a big one. “Apothea, wrap around Apollyon!” I instructed. She immediately took the size of Apollyon and emulated his movements. It was obvious that it perturbed him, and the incoming blast of light magic that beautifully followed Apothea made it much worse. I see. No matter where he goes, I can target him like this, and because of the staff and Apothea, the light magic is even stronger. But, still, man…

I knew it wasn’t enough. He was breaking out, and I knew he’d be gunning for the staff. His face contorted in all sorts of acrimonious ways, something I didn’t know he was capable of. He let lose a harrowing howl and burst forth in a sprint with newfound power, then stopped and released a gargantuan hand made of shadow magic towards me. I dodged it, and I could’ve sworn I heard the sound of glass breaking in the distance, but I paid no attention to that.

Another shadow hand flew forth, and this time the shadowy tendrils came forth and trapped me by binding my feet to the ground. I wasn’t willing to bet that the Spectre of Eliora could save me from something like that shadowy hand, so I Voidported away, which broke my stream of light magic. It was my turn to be hunted now. I began focusing light manipulation on myself for defence and fleeing however I could whilst I tried to think about how to approach this situation.

Anything stronger than the methods I employed now would have to be soul energy, and soul energy only supported void magic for me. My back was against the wall with this guy. The more time I spent not permanently killing him, the stronger he got. It was at the point where soul magic was the only effective thing. I hated that feeling, that detestably helpless feeling. The faces of my loved ones kept popping up in my head. Sure, thanks to the journey of finding my soul, I was able to somewhat come to an area of acceptance rather quickly, but I’d be lying if I said it didn’t still bother me.

The creature that caused all this suffering was right in front of me, and there was nothing I could do to him anymore. What was the point of getting stronger then? I groaned in annoyance, and felt the pain for not totally focusing on a way to avoid his attacks and beat him. Yet, the most disturbing thoughts would never give me rest. It was the thought of failure, and that failure would mean Hydra, Donna, and Dawn’s death. Dawn already lost her first child because of Apollyon. Would I allow him to take her life too? Would I allow them to die yet again?

I was a bit worried about having to resort solely on soul magic to power my void magic, but what choice had I now? I bit down on the blow Apollyon inflicted on me and Voidported far into the skies. I spat blood; the arm that I held the Staff of Eliora with was down there, with Apollyon. He sliced my arm off. So be it, you fucking asshole.

I prepped soul energy again and slammed Apollyon against the ground, then ripped his arm off. His arm, my arm, the staff and the orb floated right up to me. I reattached my arm and focused on him again. Before even releasing all the soul energy I prepared, I took even more and casted Black Hole for a fraction of a second. The unholy vacuum totally devoured the demon’s body and even a decent portion of the surrounding matter. The orb began materialising him yet again, but I dropped the orb to the ground.

I was about to do something rather dumb, absolutely mental; Emily would smack me behind the head for it. But I was going to attempt using soul energy to empower light magic. How else would I be rid of a demonic lifeform like that? But of course, that failed miserably. It was nothing but poof after poof, and I could feel the void naturally taking form. After all, the mana I soaked in soul energy was basically already void magic before it even materialised. I grunted in frustration. Fuck, just fucking work!

I felt like my body and mind was falling apart as I tried to force soul energy into my light magic. The blasts of light magic that assailed the Orb of Eblis just wouldn’t be energised no matter how hard I tried. Tears fell out my eyes. I was in a strange mixture of anger, annoyance, helplessness and morose. These unwanted emotions only distracted me and made my magic waver. Meanwhile, the orb fought harder and harder to materialise Apollyon, which it was succeeding at.

Ugh, why wasn’t it like voidfire?! I complained. My eyes popped in shock and I mentally smacked myself on the noggin in place of Emily. Of course, voidfire’s fire was bounds and leaps more powerful than regular fire, so couldn’t the same be said for light if I fused the magic types to create another subtype? Worth a try? I pondered, and decided to just wing it.

I increased my light magic’s output as much as I could, and bit by bit, added void to it. The void threw the light magic off, but I felt that the two had some chemistry. I tried to remember what it felt like to become pure light magic and began immersing myself in that feeling. Not long after, my arms began turning into pure light, and I used those arms to pour voidfire out. The thought of contaminating light with void did the trick. It was rough at first, but I could feel that I just created voidlight, a subtype of magic.

The polishing would have to be left for later. I immediately used it on the Orb of Eblis, and the life essence was actually beginning to become affected. Finally! My improvising brought a grin of victory about my face, but I celebrated too early. A sudden dark portal opened. I immediately puked at the raw amounts of power, magical energy, and killing-intent coming from that portal. Whatever that was, had to go. It definitely had to go.

My entire body shivered in fear, as much as the Spectre of Eliora tried to heal me to calm me, nothing dissipated that fear. I just closed my eyes, and grabbed the majority of soul energy that I could.

So, it’s come to this…

Most of the ‘room’ was eaten up and I already felt like my very existence was flatlining.

Dawn, Donna, Hydra, I love you guys. I’m sorry, I really don’t think I’m going to make it. Tell August he’s my favourite blacksmith, okay? I’m really sorry. This is goodbye.

My eyes rested on that portal and saw a hand of shadow with pointed claws emerging from it. I recognised that hand when Emily and Mandy would transform into that devil. I needed no one to introduce him to me, anyone could tell that the terror coming from that portal was Eblis himself.

“Heh, geez. Emily, you owe me one.”

I released everything I had, to the last drop. The combination of voidfire in one hand and voidlight in the next enveloped the entire planet. The life essence from the Orb of Eblis vanished in a few minutes, and over the next 70 hours, I concentrated pure voidlight on Eblis and the portal. It didn’t even feel real. After a while, I couldn’t even use Life Perception, or anything for that matter. My arms were nothing more than a highway for voidlight; it just came out in tremendous amounts. The entire world was lit in an amethystine hue for days on end. Until finally, I could see no more, hear no more, feel no more.

A warmth passed slowly over my head. Again, I felt the soothing caress of someone’s hand pass over my hair.

I cried.