Yeah, this one is on me, isn't it?

I was stupid and believed that Larry had left a final message for us. I believe he did. I also believe Veles knew about it and decided it was worth using it yet another cheap shot. Given he'd been willing to use an actual nuke against me, I had to admit that it was starting to look like I was the idiot for keep giving him opportunities to do so.

Now, normally, I'd have cast COUNTERSPELL, but the gods of luck were not kind to me today and I got smacked in the face with what amounted to a concentrated blast of flame. Now, if this were me Pre-Mark of the Champion, this would have been a game over. Anyone miss Game Over screens? I do. I feel like something has been lost from just showing the continue without something to remind us we needed to get better.

Anyway, I blasted in the chest and set on fire before rolling across the ground. I wasn't dead, though. I wasn't just a human being anymore, I was a demigod infused with the power of a dozen other champions now. Perun's magic had altered me so I was more like a comic book superhero and if I wasn't Superman, I was at least Spider-Man in terms of durability. The spells woven into the fabric of my Dark Undermaster Armor also blunted some of the damage. It hurt, don't get me wrong, but more like touching a hot stove than having boiling grease thrown in my face.

My interface also sprang to life enough to acknowledge what had happened too, which was a sign it wasn't completely busted.

YOU HAVE SUFFERED 32 POINTS OF DAMAGE.

"This is why you need to double tap the bodies!" Jon shouted, flying out of the way of the spellcasting zombie. "Be like John Wick!"

Larry C.C. Weis' corpse stood up and stared at me with a malevolent glare. He then spoke in a shrill Saturday Morning cartoon villain's voice, complete with reverb. "You perfidious little worm! I curse the day that I met you! Your existence has been a plague on mine in a way that I cannot think of a single other being matching."

I blinked. "Weis?"

This seemed to piss off the rotting corpse and he growled at me. "No!"

I paused. "I'm sorry, you're going to have to be a bit more specific then. I've killed a lot of people since coming to Ledziana and quite a few of them have been evil wizards."

"Is it Valentin?" Jon asked, slowly transforming behind an overturned set of pews.

"Valentin was a warrior, not a mage," I pointed out. "Also, he was a lot more frat boy than faux Shakespeare."

Valentin had been the first of the champions and also the first of them to go bad. I still didn't know what Lary had been thinking recruiting the guy since he'd not only been a janitor at Epic DungeoneeringTM but a serial killer.

"Ooo, maybe it's that Boris Poppy guy," Jon said. "I felt like he was an underused villain for a cursed dragon!"

"Also, not a wizard," I said, remembering Valentin's dragon ally that we'd tricked Chernabog into slaying at the Earth Temple.

"I am Hellmaster Pollux, the Verminlord!" the corpse that had once belonged to Larry C.C. Weis shouted.

“Oh yeah, you,” I said, remembering him. “You were the guy who tried to ambush us on the back of a flying skeleton steed."

"Very Metallica album cover," Jon said. "Less so riding around in the corpse of a hack fantasy author. That's more Sam Raimi."

"Dead by dawn! Dead by dawn!" I said, waving my hands in the air.

Pollux, despite his body being nothing more than the remains of a far better man, looked confused. Clearly, this conversation was not working out the way he expected. "What in the world are you two idiots--"

"SUNSTRIKE!" I said, blasting the death lord in the face with a spell designed for the slaying of the undead.

Hellmaster Pollux the Verminlord was a death lord like the Witch Queen but significantly lower down the totem pole. Still, like the old adage went, what did you call the worst student of a medical school's graduating class? "Doctor." Well, in this case, the worst Sith Lord was still a Sith Lord (with apologies to Darth Maul). Hellmaster Pollux was one of the Thirteen and apparently the sole one who hadn't joined Susano or been taken out by her. It made me call into question everything else she'd said to me.

The blast that flew out of my hands into Pollux's (or Weis') face was one of glowing light, but it didn't disintegrate his body. No, the death lords were infused with Veles' power the same way I was infused with Peruns and that meant that we could exchange blows like comic book characters. Instead of being disintegrated by the blast, he just looked a little extra crispy.

Hellmaster Pollux glared at me with his now-empty eye sockets that began to glow with blue-white witchfire.

"Oh, that's dirty," Hellmaster Pollux said, chuckling. "I am starting to see why the master believes you were the only one worthy of succeeding Garland."

"Garland is dead," I said, pulling out Perun's sword and causing it to crackle. It was as large as a great sword and as thick as a 2 by 4 but as light as a piece of plastic now that I'd settled into my power. It crackled with lightning from the Skyrealm. "I'm not."

"Points for trying to be badass but a little off on execution," Jon said. "I give it a 6.0 out of 10.0."

Hellmaster Pollux let out an ear-splitting cackle. "You actually think you can take on me, fool? I was old when your country of birth was new. I waited until--"

"Are you taking credit for Veles dumping your ass here to attack me after he delivered his message and then waiting until Weis delivered his?" I asked. "Because from my perspective, that makes you just a mailman."

The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

Hellmaster Pollux snarled, blood leaking from his mouth. "I am the last of the faithful death lords."

"Which doesn't make me respect you," I replied. "It means you're the only one of the lich kings that was too stupid to realize he was being played. Because if you really were so beloved a ringwraith then why did Super Sauron leave you here to be an annoyance?"

Hellmaster Pollux didn't initially respond. "I will end you, Bartkowski."

Why did people keep saying that?

I was trying to delay him to figure out a proper way to deal with a death lord, significant upgrades as I'd made, I was still pretty much outmatched. The problem was that the best way to fight him would have been with the rest of my team and I didn't want to take for granted that this guy was a centuries-old archmage.

"DISINTEGRATE!" Pollux shouted, having switched to the same 'name the spell and done' type of magic I used, presumably a gift from Veles. I had to admit I wasn't fond of it since, well, it was a lot easier to fight guys who had to spend at least a few seconds reciting a spell.

"COUNTERSPELL!" I said, managing to barely throw up enough power to diffuse the spell that otherwise would have been an instant kill. Even so, I felt it wash over me like a tidal wave, threatening to drown me in magic that wanted to tear me down to base molecules.

"Oh, how cute, you fancy yourself a wizard," Pollux said, looking more annoyed than intimidated.

I pointed my sword at him. "PERUN'S LIGHTNING BOLT!"

It was my biggest and most powerful spell to throw at anyone, being something that I'd inherited from my absorption of divine energy versus an ability I'd learned. It was basically Zeus' thunderbolt but, well, Perun's, and could be felt even by gods.

From my fingertips and channeled through the Sword of Perun flew a massive bolt of blue-white energy that sailed outward at Pollux like a hungry monster. It had the potential to backfire or cause unpredictable magical effects whenever I used it but, at this point, I was willing to take the risk.

"PORTAL!" Pollux said, conjuring a hole before me.

Oh shit. I knew where I'd make the other portal open up if I was doing this. Throwing myself to the side, I barely managed to avoid being struck by my own lightning bolt as the portal Pollux had conjured up had its other end right behind me. The blast continued onward and went over the death lord's shoulder. I had to give all my training credit. This was a triumph, I'm making a note here: huge success.

That was when Pollux pointed one long bony finger at me, much of Weis' flesh having been seared off by my SUNRAY spell. "ANTI-MAGIC FIELD."

What happened next was like someone stuffing a wet rag down your thoat and pouring a pitcher of ice-cold water down past it. Waterboarding for the soul. I could still talk but it would be like choking out words through the water that kept coming. I couldn't feel my magic anymore and as powerful as a demigod as I was supposed to be, Pollux was stronger in pure mastery of the art. Still, I managed to spit out the words, "You...can't...cast...while...disabling me."

Hellmaster Pollux kept pointing at me while grinning his rictus grin. "Oh, stupid boy, you don't know the benefits of actually learning the true art of sorcery rather than having it downloaded into your brain like one of your insipid computer programs. I am ambidextrous in my spellcasting. POISONOUS GAS CL--"

Hellmaster Pollux was caught mid-spell by a dragon breathing its napalm-like breath on him, catching him in the face much like Sparky had done before. Since the only dragon present was Jon, I was glad he'd decided to finally intervene. Did that sound catty? Maybe it was.

Hellmaster Pollux was reduced to a flaming skeleton but stood there, growling as his now bony appendages shook with rage. "You think this will stop--"

"RAINBOW BLAST!" I said, hitting him with a prismatic spray of red, yellow, blue, orange, and green energy blasts. Each of them struck the death lord one after the other, forcing him to his knees. Well, if he had knees. His patella.

"I am empowered now with the status of Chosen One by Veles!" Hellmaster Pollux said, lifting his finger bones. "I shall cast you--"

"PUSH!" I shouted, aiming my hand forward and sending the death lord flying into the air like a cartoon character. He flew through the hole created in the canopy of the tent and spun around, screaming at his sudden weightlessness.

"PULL!" Jon shouted before hitting him with a second blast of dragonfire, this one causing the death lord to explode like a miniature death star. A shockwave of mystical energy exploded from the dead Chosen One's body and showered the tent with little sparkles. It was beautiful in a, "we just killed a guy" sort of way.

"Do you think he'll stay dead this time?" I asked, looking up to the spot where he'd exploded. The tent was now on fire, and I wasn't planning on staying inside for long.

"Probably," Jon said, stepping out of the tent's back to reveal a large blue dragon's body the size of an RV. It filled up much of the tent and casually knocked away the pews or crushed them with his girth. "I get the impression that Veles isn't big on second chances to begin with. Honestly, bringing him back in the first place feels like fanservice."

I sighed, walking bits of burning canopy falling around us. "We're in a Death of the Author situation, Jon. It doesn't matter what happened before. There's no storyline being written and no rules anymore. Everything now is like actual history, which, unfortunately, does not require things to make sense."

"How much EXP did you get for killing skull face here?" Jon asked. "Again."

I tapped the side of my right hand's mark.

Nothing but static.

"No idea," I said, pausing. "I'm not even sure I'm getting experience anymore."

"That would suck if you maxed out right before the climax," Jon said, his body being pelted with bits of burning cloth from above our heads. Thankfully, that wasn't something that bothered a dragon. "Mind you, that happened in Baldur's Gate 3. You can only get up to 12th level before you're finished. What was your level last time you checked?"

"14th," I muttered. "No, I had enough EXP for 15th before the nuke."

"Eh, not bad but not good, either," Jon said. "I managed to get all the way to 18th before I died."

"I know, Jon," I said, tapping the side of the interface before trying to fast travel us. "So, you've told me, many times."

"I'm just saying that if it's a choice between a guy who is 18th level and a dragon," Jon said. "Versus, well, you, maybe we should rethink who is the leader of this group."

I hesitated at using the fast travel system because, again, I wasn't sure whether Veles had been lying about the radiation affecting the marks or if it was something else. I also really hoped I wasn't dying of radiation sickness and unaware of it. I'd find out soon, though, especially if the whole shapeshifting thing didn't work.

There was also the time limit factor that I had to consider. I believed Weis' message and didn't think it was a kind of reverse, double bluff idiotic twist like the revelation that the Machines were responsible for the creation of Zion in The Matrix 2. That had just been shitty writing because the Wachowskis hadn't been allowed to make one sequel and one prequel.

I only had three days to deal with Belobog's armies or I was going to be stuck on Mokosh. Which wouldn't have been such a bad thing if not for the fact that I had some lingering fondness for Earth. Oh, and I was sure Veles would figure out a way to destroy this planet too. It really wasn't a temptation to stay here. I needed to take out the God of Evil, hubristic statement as that might be, or I'd be living the rest of my life wondering when he would finish the job.

"Ready to go?" I asked Jon, ignoring his attempt to try to take over. I was pretty sure the only person who thought he'd do a better job than me was Jon himself.

"Uh," Jon looked at me uncomfortably. "I think I'll just fly back if you don't mind. Maybe take a detour down to the nearest portal and use it. You know, until we can confirm the magic hasn't been effected."

"I don't have time for that," I said, uncomfortable. "But suit yourself."

I pictured Dragon Keep and commanded myself to appear there. Light surrounded me as usual, but it began to twist, turn, and shatter into a rainbow. After a few seconds, I found myself in an endless white void like, ironically, the Architect's chamber in the movie I'd just derided a few seconds ago.

There was nothing surrounding me.

Nothing.

Forever.

"Ah crap," I muttered.