My fight against King Aldus was not going as well as I had hoped it would. Since I managed to land my first surprise attack, there hasn't been a second. Every time I utilise my teleporting feature, the tricky demon always manages to evade my beams.

Even though my lasers are quite fast, they still take a second to power up and that's all the time he needs to move out of their path. Also, my old human habits of protecting my body due to the fear of dying are throwing me off my game. The fact that I'm a Dungeon Core and not a human is something I've been overlooking recently due to having this fabulous body.

I hate it when Me's right.

Even without his shielders, I still can't quite manage to hit Aldus as we continue to trade attacks and dodge one another's strikes. That is until I talk myself into doing what's necessary, what's needed and what must be done to finally gain a foothold in this fight.

Gathering all the courage I can muster, because it takes ovaries of steel to do what I'm about to, I don't dodge. Instead, I let the King's sword hit me head on and his blade pierces straight through my chest and out of my back. I feel foolish, but ecstatic at the same time as I cough up blood or whatever the substitute for the liquid inside my body is. It's the same colour as a human's so I'm just going to roll with it being blood.

Grabbing hold of my smug-looking enemy's wrist before he can realise that I've tricked him, the power I had been gathering detonates in a mess of flesh and bone as both of our hands explode. The Demon King screams in pain while holding his new stub close to his chest. Obviously he wasn't expecting me to sacrifice a part of myself to hurt him, but he has no idea how far I'm willing to go now and I begin laughing in his face.

He obviously doesn't like that because before I could do anything else, King Aldus pulled his blade from my body with his uninjured hand and unattached my head from the rest of my body. I hadn't been prepared for that attack. Not that it hurt. Not that an attack that can instantly remove your head would hurt, but I didn't feel any pain in my hand after it had exploded either.

Strange.

It's a strange feeling knowing something should hurt even though it doesn't. There was a type of phantom pain the moment my hand blew up, but it quickly faded as though it was just an illusion. My mind still remembered the pain I had felt as a human and had found it hard to shed itself of my baggage. Either way, being decapitated on the spot like that released my soul from the body I had created for myself.

In my soul form, I was still laughing. Laughing at how foolish I was. Laughing at how easy this fight would be now that I'd cast off my human fears.

The King was wounded. His mind would be quicker to making rash decisions and that would also help me win this fight. I was definitely going to kill this dickhead. I was even going to reincarnate his soul myself into some weak-ass monster body just so I could kill him again and then I would do it a third time. One kill for each triplet. A death each for Violet, Amber and Blondie.

A piece of my heart was missing and now that I was detached from my body, I could see everything. I could even see a broken piece of my Dungeon Core lying on the ground in the room Veris was protecting. The jade fragment, which would have been considered small when compared against my current Core, was bigger than the physical representation of my heart had been when I was first reincarnated as a dungeon. I wonder what would happen to Colin if he ate that piece?

Shaking off idle thought, I begin spending points as though there's no tomorrow. There still might not be if I don't play this right though. As I spent the accumulated efforts of my DP Farm, I also checked the overview to have a quick look at how my family were faring.

The portal was still going strong and quite a few big demons had managed to breach through. More than a dozen of them lay dead already, but the Assassins were showing signs of fatigue. That's an odd sight on its own around here and it shows the demons are really pushing them to their limits.

Marie was surrounded by Light, Dropper, Noir, Carrie and Dee. Dum had retired to the mountain, burning out faster than the others due to his cursed arm. Leaving his partner and the others to protect the Space Mage as she tried to close the portal that had become self sufficient. The dungeon's natural mana proved more than enough to keep it operating.

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Around them, demons and Assassins were dying faster than I could count and I dumped all of the Goblins from my dungeon into the middle of the demon horde. I also spent the majority of my points there and then on more Assassins, hoping they could hold the line long enough for me to kill the King. I would be able to help them afterwards with my void beam.

I couldn't keep my eyes on them for long as King Aldus was still alive. Also, my new body was ready. This one is stronger than any I had ever created before, imbued with 100,000 DP, it had almost cleaned out my reserves.

The body that appeared looked exactly the same as the previous two only much, much stronger. Overflowing with the power I had been using during the fight. The power that makes up my lasers and void beams which I'm now only realising are the Dungeon Points I invest on creation.

That means that my power could run out if I'm not careful... I think? I'm not 100% sure, but I could always add more points to my body. That said, King Aldus doesn't look too impressed as I stare him down from my latest creation. My new body features none of its previous injuries whereas the Demon King is still bleeding profusely from his stump.

I know I've been trying to turn a leaf lately, not killing for the betterment of Tironia and instead choosing the path of reformation, but there's no way in hell that's happening here. The King and his men -his demons- were all dead already. They just don't know it yet.

Before I could start gathering the power in my body, King Aldus rushed me. His sword was still in his good hand as he swung repeatedly, trying once again to remove my head. This time instead of porting away, I kept dodging. Drawing him closer and closer, his rage building with every failed attempt on my life and his sword strokes slowing with each consecutive attack.

The Demon King had progressed past the point of sanity. He must have known his subordinates had died because his attacks became reckless. One after the other, I sidestepped, dodged and evaded as I came up with a new plan. One that I wasn't feeling very confident about.

I honestly didn't know if my Assassins could keep up the good fight at the portal and I was beginning to worry I might lose more than I bargained for. With that thought I enacted my idea.

Screaming as I continued to sidestep the King's attacks, I split my soul in half. Well, it was more like a 95 to 5 split, but it still hurt like hell. I was literally ripping myself in two. 5% of me was sent into a second, hastily-created body and the King halted his attack.

There were now two of me and he paused, unsure who to attack first. Two women, both identical, both powering themselves through the use of Dungeon Points. Hastily, King Aldus chose a target and attacked.

To be honest though, it didn't matter which one of me he chose. I was prepared for both scenarios. He lashed out at the lesser version of me and she stopped gathering power. Again I chose to take the attack, but protect myself from a fatal blow, his sword cutting deep into my side. With that, I'd won.

The lesser me wrapped her arms around the Demon King. Pulling him in tight and squeezing him as hard as he could. With his arms pinned to his side beneath hers, King Aldus flailed and attacked however he could but his struggle was futile. All he could do was struggle as the blackless void tore him and my other self to pieces. Disintegrating matter and putting an end to the one who instigated the war.

I was a little worried I might have disintegrated a part of my soul during that last attack, but fortunately enough I felt complete again once Abi B had evaporated. Which in itself is a weird experience. Watching yourself die while smiling cheerily, and then feeling whole afterwards, was just fucking weird. Really, really weird.

I can't even ruminate on it because there's still more to do. There's that portal and all the demons, the triplets...

I turn my attention back to the ruined forest. I don't have enough time to fully charge my void beam, but it's more than enough for what's needed. Activating Soul Guide, I scanned the area for any sign of the King's soul. Since my soul had returned to me, that meant that King Aldus' soul hadn't been obliterated in the void, only his flesh.

Hiding in the mist is a small, red cloud. Growing smaller by the second, I can see the soul being sucked away down the reincarnation drain. A waste. This bastard needs to die a few more times before he's allowed to start over.

I pick a monster, the worst one imaginable and then summon the soulless creature on top of the King's soul. Using the power of Soul Guide, I force it to stay inside the little, green body and laugh maniacally as though I'm the bad guy.

The Goblin's eyes spring open and it begins thrashing around, falling over itself and garbling the incomprehensible language of its species. I wouldn't be able to understand a normal Goblin, but I get this one loud and clear. Through my will and the dungeon connection, King Aldus' words were a slur of hateful curses as I listened while he tried to figure out what had happened to him.

First was his death. It was the largest factor on his mind and he was furious with himself. He had died, yet for some reason he wasn't dead. Then he remembered that I had died on more than one occasion, yet I wasn't dead either. Examining himself didn't make Aldus feel better either as his small, green body was pathetically weak. A level 1 Goblin with a Demon King's soul.

Thinking about it, that made him sound quite unique, and if I would have picked this combination up in any other situation, I'd be tempted to keep it. That said, he killed the triplets.

"All you're going to know is pain."

Porting inside and dropping the King off with Veris and Dum, the former was licking the latter's wounds, which I ignored the shit out of that problem, I headed straight for the portal and the rest of my family.

It was time to end this.