Something which was becoming more and more obvious to me was how little an advantage was needed to become overwhelming. If all things were equal, and my strength the only thing slightly higher, the accumulation of damage from the difference could end the fight quickly. Of course, once reaching Grade 1, the chance of instant death was less and less.

The body would naturally recover from grievous injuries which would have been lethal before. I, myself, had regrown whole limbs since the System had arrived. I had stopped needing to eat, nearly at all. Drinking was still necessary, but only barely. The organs which required those functions had seen their needs met with mana. Some of them were just straight up missing, a fact I had discovered due to being disembowelled on more than one occasion. I was able to compare between different stages.

All very bizarre, upon reflection.

My enemy wasn’t falling particularly quickly, but it wasn’t recovering either. Once your attributes started to get into the triple digits, it became rare not to have some countermeasure for danger. For Shub-Nagorath, it was her brood. For myself, it was Naea and her healing magic. I wouldn’t have survived half of the dungeon without her. I’d be maimed beyond belief by now, if even alive.

For Master Thorn, I couldn’t see one. This creature didn’t rely on any kind of attrition to defeat its foes, if it had ever had any before me. Decisive victory through speed and maybe an ultimate escape ability hidden away somewhere. That’s what the ratman had as its survival options. Unfortunately, it was the boss monster of the Trial Tower. Escape was probably never an option to begin with.

Nothing I could do about that. The ratman sensed the shift in my own energy as I decided to end things. I could see it in its eyes. Uncomfortably human. Uncomfortably intelligent. There was a rage within this boss monster towards me which was entirely justified. The System had created these things, in one way or another, but to them, their backstory was real. I had slaughtered its students on the way here. I wore their belts. Now I had come for him.

It was easy to feel sorry for the creature, and I allowed it. Pitying the weak was something my Dao felt very comfortable with. It strengthened my own resolve to finish things. I was never the type to pick the wings off bugs and nothing had changed. A dragon didn’t have to take pleasure in destruction.

They simply had to be destruction.

So I was. When Master Thorn tried to attack, I dodged and countered. When it tried to block my attacks, its very vitality was taken instead. Drain waited hungrily on my fingertips for each mistake I could force. Further and further, the scales slipped in my favour. To its credit, the boss monster was not going down without as much of a fight as possible.

Its weapon danced through forms, sometimes appearing as multiple implements within the same combination. A spear thrust might become a sword swing straight after, then returning to the glaive as the ratman gave himself room with a sweeping slash. I burned my resources freely, avoiding the chaotic fighting style easily as I robbed more and more strength from the creature.

“Oh that’s not a good-” Idea. I had seen the flicker of attention in Master Thorn’s eyes and read his intent correctly. I didn’t need to shout a warning to Naea as the rat chose to go for my support instead of myself. Yeah, good luck with that. I myself had a hard enough time hitting Naea during our spars, and I literally knew all her tricks. This idiot had no chance.

Proving my point, Naea used her Invisibility to first throw the attacker off. Suddenly in the air without a target, it must have sensed the incoming blow because it changed the weapon in its hand to a flat-headed axe and blocked to the side. He was still punted into the roof by Naea’s invisible tackle but the damage had been lessened. “I think he thought you’d be easier to fight than me, Naea!”

“He should have known you were my familiar. Doing all the fighting for me.” We bantered as Master Thorn removed himself from the small crater he made near the ceiling on the far side of the room. I took control of the Dao in the air, letting Naea relax and focus on the fight which was apparently her’s now.

The thing is… unlike myself, Naea had no issues ripping wings off butterflies. The next twenty seconds or so were a lesson in brutality. Naea drew on Battle Bond over and over, keeping herself overfilled with mana. Her tiny fists landed like comets as the strength of Infusion powered her blows. I was happy enough to take a breather. I hadn’t used my Dao skills Infused Strike or Retribution up to now so my Dao itself was plentiful, excited and ready to lay down its dominance.

The small fairy crashed into the ratman again and again, the force of her blows keeping him in the air. With my Dao holding the boss’ down, his space warping defences were weakened. He was pinballed around violently as Naea used Sparkstep and Harmony of the Storm in tandem. Her clashes with the shifting weapon, or the bones of Master Thorn, were thunderous. If I had to point out one problem Naea had it was-

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Clang.

Three things happened in quick succession. The expected one first, then the natural reaction and finally something completely out of left field. To start, Naea was finally caught with the wide paddle the ratman was flailing around. It was bound to happen eventually, and was the main weakness to Naea’s style. She was a glass cannon of the highest proportions.

After she was hit, my natural response was to pounce, catch her out of the air and move her to safety. Master Thorn took the chance to create some distance. I breathed a fast sigh of relief when I saw that Naea was just knocked out and not hurt worse. Her vessel happily absorbed the mana I sent through our connection. Battle Bond allowed for Naea to hold her own, but its original use had been healing. She would be fine.

I returned my gaze to the ratman boss monster just in time to see the twist in the tale. Due to the shape of the place, it hadn’t mattered where I was in relation to the entrance. Or so I thought. Rage became my world as I was forced to leave Naea where I was standing, near the wall of the circular room. The balance of the fight had been thrown off once more, the gameboard flipped.

A quirk of the stairwells between trial tower floors was the inability to turn around once using them. Once you decided to go to the next floor, you were locked in until defeating it. With confusion, I saw the large doorway from the fourth floor stairs to the room I was in was briefly filled with a golden bubble. Confusion turned to the aforementioned rage when I realised it was the members of The Ascent.

Is it my fault because of the name? For whatever reason, they had pushed through the molasses of a higher level battle and arrived at exactly the wrong time. While I was fast, I wasn’t Dao of Space and desperation-to-survive fast. Master Thorn crossed the distance to my idiot protégés in record time, vanishing between strides and appearing even closer to the group. Before they could even react, they were set upon.

I wasn’t close enough to do anything. Sprinting forward, I unleashed everything I had. Mana gathered in the air, forming Mana Bolts, but it wasn’t fast enough. The golden bubble smashed as the robed ratman brought a hammer into it. Harry screamed and blood erupted from his nose as he fell. My anger redoubled and I threw out a hand. Dao, mana and every other fibre of my being pulsed with the same desire.

Retribution.

Master Thorn had ominously reared back with his weapon, the metal melting to reform as a long scythe head. He was going for a quick four-in-one blow, but it would never land. My technique dropped onto its head, crushing it into the ground. A huge pressure caused the whole floor to creak loudly as an invisible hand smacked the boss down repeatedly.

Skill - Retribution (Dragon)

Few creatures are as fearsome in their revenge than a dragon. Anyone brave or foolish enough to stand against them faces destruction.

Invisible blows rained down like the wrath of god, keeping the ratman pinned as I approached. The party flinched with each blow, dragging the fallen bulwark away from my punishment. In each echoed thud, they could hear admonishment. This creature didn’t deserve to be treated like this, but I had no other answer to its actions. Fun’s over, friend.

By the time I stood over Master Thorn, he was in no state to fight back. The unfortunate side effect of being much harder to kill was the pain you would face if something did kill you. My anger had cooled through the use of Retribution. Unsurprisingly, the skill was cathartic to employ. Gathering power, I turned my eyes to the party. “Unless you can do this, you’re not allowed to ignore me when I tell you what to do.”

By “this”, I meant a lot of things. Whatever they took from the lesson was up to them. “This” meant creating an attack which used both Dao and mana to its fullest expression. In my case, Strike of the Ruler. “This” also meant the complete control of a creature supposedly twice my strength. Until the individuals could defend themselves, they would be treated like the children they clearly were.

————————————

Grant dropped his boot onto the head of the broken Master Thorn. An explosion of light, sound and devastation appeared where his foot fell. It had been nearly impossible to follow the action for myself and the others, but one thing was abundantly clear.

We’d fucked up.

As the five of us got closer to the battle, our hubris had grown. We could weather the pressure from the boss’ Dao, so we had mistakenly thought we could help turn the tide, if needed. Of course, within seconds Harry had fallen, the horrifying ratman was nearly upon us and without Grant’s timely save we would all be sliced in two. Still, we had survived and-

“Oh shit,” Aaron whispered, “he’s big mad.” I looked at the glowering face of Grant and was suddenly unsure of our surviving the trial tower. I realised the weight of the oppressive Dao had not alleviated. If anything, it was more focused now. In my peripheral vision, I saw a heap on the floor and understanding smacked me over the head.

“Why did you come?” Grant’s words each caused a ringing in my ears. He was burning with malice, misplaced but easy to understand. I was still the only one who could truly push back against the bullying aura Grant was pushing out so I got in front of him. His lip curled back in an angry snarl.

“You’re not our king, as much as you might want to be.” My legs were shaking, but it needed to be said. Grant was stronger than us, further ahead in his understanding of the System, but he was also wrong. “You never told us to stay below.” I took a deep breath. “I’m sorry we got in the way, but you don’t decide our path.”

We had taken the risk and nearly died because of it, but Grant had saved us. It was perhaps a little backwards to claim his assistance as part of our journey, but it was. Within days of meeting him, we had all learned more about mana, the new way of the world and even breached the strange possibilities of Dao. Even then, he was wrong to be angry.

Luckily, Grant was not the type of person to continue lashing out. Logic did work to make him think. He looked down at his own hands, seeming surprised to find them clenched in fury. At once, the pressure disappeared. “I’m really sorry. You’re right.” Grant took a step and stumbled to his knee. He smiled and took my hand, his expression tinged with remorse.

“Are you okay?” I asked, pulling him to his feet. He didn’t look it, but I would give him the chance to lie if he needed to. Thankfully he didn’t, shaking his head while taking his own calming breaths.

“No,” he answered truthfully, “I’m not. I pushed myself to the edge just to keep up with that thing. I think I might have gone a step too far, though.” To emphasise his point, his aura once again blanketed the floor. He winced, the effort to restrain his power evident on his face. His whole body was visibly vibrating. The movement clearly pained him but he threw himself over to the fallen boss monster, slapped a hand onto it and then sprinted out of the room.

I looked at the three still-standing members of the party, then to the fairy slowly sitting up across the room. Harry was still down, but other than the blood, he seemed fine. The flow had stopped quickly, and now he was basically resting. Not knowing what else to do, I shrugged and went to explain things to the groggy fairy.

My life is weird, I mused.