I left my battlefield in pursuit of where Yoshitsune’s fight was raging on. Now that the eagle’s wind faded, the fires encroached on me once again. The heat seeped into the cracks in my scales and seared the flesh beneath. I sucked air between my gritted teeth and moved over the burning coals of the land.

By virtue of all the dust that the boss was kicking up, the area immediately next to the road was safe from the worst of the fires. That’s where I found Yoshitsune and the scorpion in hand to hand combat. The scorpion held a sword in each hand while their tail jabbed from overhead to keep Yoshitsune warded away as the smaller demon hopped around to find a suitable angle of attack. Both seemed low on mana and energy.

My presence alone was enough to decide the fight in an instant. I watched the confidence drain from the scorpion’s face as Yoshitsune sprung in with even greater confidence. The tip of the blade speared through the demon’s neck and their numerous limbs went limp at the same time.

“Ishmael-san,” Yoshitsune greeted with a smile before it turned. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing, the eagle was just strong,” I brushed off and looked around. “Where the fuck is the dog?”

“Not sure, but the boss still hasn’t slowed at all.”

“Useless fucker.”

We found the worthless dog priest down the road, closer to where the boss starts their sprint. A large quantity of traps and caltrops were spread all along the road to create the most sadistic marathon of all time.

But, it was quickly demonstrated how ineffective these efforts were. The boss sprinted over all the traps without issue and gave us a mouthful of dust for good measure. The traps appeared to be entirely untouched as if their feet had never even touched the ground. Herzblatt groaned in frustration and ran their hands through their fur.

“Is this how you’ve been wasting your time?” I asked pointedly at Herzblatt, causing the dog priest to jump up in surprise.

“Ah, friends,” Herzblatt said with marked relief. “I’m glad to see that you have, once again, been favored by God.”

“Do you think that your refusal to fight other demons has saved your soul?” I asked Herzblatt with a sneer. “That by having us do the bloody work for you, you remain unblemished? Let me tell you, the one that orders the killing is equal to the one that does it.”

Herzblatt remained silent in the face of my words. They just stared at me with a deadpan expression. I expected nothing less from a spineless fucker like him.

“So, why are you laying down the traps?” Yoshitsune asked to break the silence. “They don’t seem to be working.”

“Because the Boss is the Messenger and the guide says that traps are good to slow it down,” Herzblatt answered, relieved to change the topic. “It is the frailest boss and will die in only a couple of hits. But, none of the traps that I had on hand seemed to have worked to slow it down. There was mention of glue, but my stock was not enough to trap it.”

“Then we all just have to strike it as it runs by,” Yoshitsune suggested.

“We might be here for a long while then,” Herzblatt answered.

“I have an idea, if you have a lot of mana potions,” I suggested.

“Be my guest.”

I stood in the roadway and stuck out so that it was at chest height and waited. Soon enough, the Messenger finished their journey across the field and started it anew. The figure of the boss appeared in front of me as they renewed their blistering straight line trail. It seemed entirely unbothered by my presence in the middle of the road and made no effort to move out of the way. It would sprint by as it always had and always will.

It blew through my extended tail. The speeds felt like my scales would be pulled from flesh. But, they held firm and contact was made. I, once again, activated [The Great Decay] and watched the Messenger sprint away. Through the cloud of dust, I could see the black smog that coated their body and my mana bar began to wind down.

My tail was completely numb. A couple of my barbs were ripped loose entirely and were lodged somewhere in the boss’s chest. But, it didn’t matter. The job was done and all I had to do was sit back and relax.

“What did you just do?” Herzblatt inquired.

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“Shut the fuck up and give me your mana potions.”

It was not noticeable at first. The next pass through of the boss did not appear to be any slower than any of the times previous. But, it became quickly apparent that the boss was slowing down. Each lap took a second longer than it had the time before. Every five laps, I had to drink a blue potion that was handed to me by Herzblatt like he was a resort employee with pina coladas. The bombs that they released into the sky made smaller fires and the wind that their movement kicked up were too weak to carry the flames.

Finally, the full appearance of the boss could be made out through the dust. A gazelle-like bipedal beast wearing a toga was beginning to flag. A leather satchel that hung on their shoulder automatically dispensed their ordinance.

Herzblatt and Yoshitsune, feeling confident that it was moving slow enough to finish off, stood on either side of the road with their weapons ready. The Messenger made no moves to avoid the attack. They just kept on their resolute path forwards as though their entire existence hung in the balance. That stubbornness would not be rewarded. Herzblatt and Yoshitsune’s weapons effortlessly cleaved through the boss’ body as it moved by.

Messenger defeated. You gain 20,000XP.

Its already pathetic vitality stat, lowered further by my own abilities, made it hopeless for the Messenger to survive even a couple sword strikes. The boss, even in death, still tried to sprint onwards. Its momentum carried it forwards until it finally collapsed down the road to rest in a large poof of dust. Flames from the glass jars breaking all at once spread into the airborne dust and created a massive explosion that rocked the landscape. A tidal wave of flaming dust washed over us before being immediately put out.

I sprawled out on my back and breathed a sigh of satisfaction. I had long since lost the need to sleep but that did not stop me from feeling tired. My relaxation was not meant to be, Herzblatt’s face hungover mine as he looked down with an expression of unearned joy.

“I don’t know what you did but I must say that God is-“

Herzblatt’s infuriating face disappeared. I blinked in surprise and then reached my arm out in the space that he used to occupy. I quickly sat back up and looked around in every direction. There was no Herzblatt, no Yoshitsune, and no bodies of the enemies that we faced.

I was all alone.

I got up and moved to where they had been standing. There were no clues, no traces of a spell to tell me where my party members had disappeared to. Their footsteps were pressed into the dust but that was it. I walked to either end of the dirt road in search of an exit, but all I found was an invisible wall that prevented me from escaping this flaming bubble to greener pastures.

Suddenly, I felt a cool sensation beneath me. Water burbled up from the scorching ground and began to form puddles.

I could feel a rumbling beneath my feet and the sounds of angry swells smashing against rocky shores. From beyond the confines of this glass cage, a mighty wave like Noah’s flood swallowed all the land under its blue might.

Not even the invisible walls of the battlefield could keep its angry might at bay. Millions of tons of water smashed against the barrier, cracking it like an egg. Seawater sprayed in through the cracks, covering me in the briny liquid before the barrier shattered entirely and crashed around me. I took one full step beyond the confines of the battlefield before the water reached me. The full weight of the water crushed my body and pressed me into the earth and dragged me along like a boulder.

After a few moments, the pressure lessened and I was dislodged to float against the dirt. I twisted my body to look above me to see that the sun had disappeared. No light penetrated into my deep blue prison causing the surface to feel impossibly far away.

The lack of oxygen was creating an uncomfortable pressure in my lungs and tightness in my chest. I tried to swim upwards, my heated claws tore through the water and formed angry bubbles of steam. The weight of the scales, like a suit of armor fused to my flesh, made the efforts useless and I floated back down to the bottom.

I tried to think of a solution, but everything felt sluggish. The sharp desire to survive grew duller. My vision was beginning to turn blurry and I was finding it impossible to think.

A metal hook, tethered to an iron chain, patrolled the bottom of the sea. The barbed tip of the hook led the apparatus forwards in the hunt of something to bring up to the surface. A sharp pain in my left shoulder told me that I had been chosen to rise back to the surface. I hung limply on the end of the hook as mighty forces pulled me through what felt like miles of water. Blackness ate at the sides of my eyes and my consciousness began to slip away completely.

My head breached water and reached the air. My first attempt at breath was the retching of water from my lungs. A small swimming pool’s worth of water dribbled out of my lips before the first puff was able to sputter me back to life and make everything feel sharper, especially the pain of the hook that continued to pull me onwards.

A wooden ship waited at the end of the chain. The sound of metal clanging against the windlass measured the passage of time. Eventually, I reached the hull and was roughly hoisted out of the water and into the air. The water did not truly leave me as the sky had opened up and covered the world in a deluge. My scales scraped against the wood as I was pulled over the side and onto the deck.

I continued to sputter as I pulled the hook from my shoulder. The barb did more damage on the way out than it had on the way in and left me leaking like a faucet on the deck.

Giant rubber boots stepped next to me. I looked up to see a man with obsidian skin that was at least ten feet tall. A bright yellow raincoat covered his body and a salt-and-pepper beard wreathed his face like a menacing version of the Gorton Fisherman. A smile poked in through the bushy hair and red colored eyes that burned like angry coals burned underneath their immense eyebrows.

“Well, well, well, look who I found at the end of my line,” the fisherman said with a voice that crashed like the waves that crushed me.

And, in that moment, I was struck with a feeling of familiarity. I had met this person before, even if I had not seen his face.

“Passion?”