Edge had been saving his ultimate for the right moment, and now it had arrived.

Warren was running on the dregs of his mana. He thought Edge was dead and was standing within arm’s reach. It was a perfect time to take him by surprise and end the fight in a flash.

Sometimes, when life and death are balanced on the edge of a knife, time slows to a crawl. The senses open and the mind speeds up, letting each second float by in a glacial procession.

It gave Edge time to process what was happening in crisp, clear detail. To take in the warmth of the sunlight against his skin. The cool breeze blowing across the plains. The expression of dawning realization on Warren’s face when he discovered that instead of looting a corpse, Edge was still very much alive.

Within his chest, he could hear Skill-Eater laughing, reverberating across his soul. Edge’s core approved of the deception and was eager to watch it bear fruit.

The alien cackle was accompanied by the sound of an engine roaring to life. Of an endless river of incandescent might flowing into his reactor from beyond the door that led to the place where a giant was bound in endless black chains.

Pressure was building within Edge’s chest as the temperature continued to rise. As that mysterious engine called [Overdrive] snapped into place alongside his core, the device revved up. Pistons started to pump, and gears began to turn.

It forced more and more magic into his reactor, until all he could hear was the crackle of flame. In less than a second, the impossibly dense energy hit critical mass—burning so bright that Edge could see his core glowing through his skin. By now, the confusion on Warren’s face was shifting to fear. “What the fuck…”

Before he could finish his sentence, the pressurized mana was set free. It erupted from Edge’s reactor and went flowing into every skill that he had, granting him unlimited use of their power while making them stronger than ever before.

Regeneration kicked in of its own accord, turbocharged in that moment—erasing Edge’s wounds in the blink of an eye. As time resumed its full course, Warren turned to run while fumbling for the spellslinger holstered at his hip. He knew that something had gone horribly wrong and was desperate to get away.

Edge wasn’t about to let that happen. He rose to his feet while casting as fast as he could. He used entangle time and time again, tossing his vines in every direction in synch with his racing heart. In that moment, he learned that his opponent had been maintaining a deception of his own.

It turned out that Warren had more mana left than Edge had thought. The manslayer flared Disruption pulse hard, running the skill at maximum output. He doubted that the bounty hunter could keep it going for long, but it was enough to prevent him from being overwhelmed in an instant.

The antimagic field kept the vines from manifesting beneath the manslayer’s feet, but it couldn’t stop the rest. A forest of living ivy burst free from the soil, hundreds of members strong. They encircled the men in a ring of grasping tendrils with a clear space in the middle. A ten-foot stage for the final act of their saga.

While he hadn’t been able to disable his foe, Edge had stopped Warren from getting away. And entangle was only the first skill at his disposal. Elemental blade emerged from Edge’s palm, weaker and smaller than he’d been expecting, flickering as it fought to retain its form.

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It seemed that the boost to Amplification from [Overdrive] and the effect of Disruption pulse were evenly matched. Just enough to cancel each other out. But it couldn’t stop the rest of what his ultimate could do. While the suppressive field kept Edge’s skills from being stronger than normal, he still could still use them without restraint for the next twenty-five seconds. Now he just needed to make them count.

He held his iceblade in one hand and drew Trapper’s knife in the other, naginata lost somewhere among the countless vines. Unfortunately, Warren’s sword was lying near his feet. When he bent down to retrieve it, Edge scored a glancing blow along one shoulder, leaving his armor encrusted with ice.

Warren didn’t know what was happening, but the man’s mind was needle sharp. You didn’t live for decades hunting other people if you wern't as quick on the uptake as you were on the draw. He could tell that Edge was using far more skills than he’d expected. That Disruption pulse wasn’t working the way that it should.

But the man had no way to anticipate the full extent of what [Overdrive] could do—enabling skill combos that would normally be impossible to pull off. Edge had no intention of letting him adapt.

He feinted with the knife, using double strike to throw Warren off balance. He dodged, rather than try to parry the doubled blade.

Before the manslayer could recover his stance, Edge followed up—unleashing triple combo with elemental blade, slash, and double strike. Warren raised his sword up just in time to save his life, catching both iceblades on the end of his weapon. Then he swore and stepped back, as the metal conducted the cold into his hand, nearly freezing it solid before he knew what was happening.

Edge attacked in a flurry, using both weapons, and even his feet. Every attack was doubled, every swing was a slash. He even leapt and concealed unpredictably, boosting his defense while keeping his opponent off balance.

Edge abandoned defense, trading blows instead. Every cut he took healed in an instant, while Warren had no such recourse. The man tried reaching for his potions and his spellslinger, but Edge refused to let him draw. He slashed and kicked like a demon, blood and ice spreading across Warren’s body as he racked up the hits.

Each time that the bounty hunter blocked the dual iceblades, he was thrown back by the force of the triple combo, nearly falling into the vines waiting at the periphery of the ring. Edge began mixing in shadow step, abruptly speeding up to attack from unexpected directions.

The manslayer was on his last legs, but Edge only had ten seconds left on his ultimate. He had to finish this fast, or he could still lose it all.

He put everything he had in a final barrage, using every skill he could wield in a seamless combination. Just when he thought that his best wasn’t going to be good enough, Edge felt Warren’s Disruption pulse falter and die, as the man’s reservoir ran dry at last.

His iceblade grew a foot as the interference faded away, glowing a wrathful blue while chilling the air with winter’s wrath. Certain that the other man had nothing left in his tank, Edge executed his final combo of the fight.

He unleashed elemental blade, slash, and double strike in unison, each skill far more powerful than they had been only a moment ago. Fresh vines burst through the ground, binding the bounty hunter’s feet.

The pair of frozen swords went screaming through the air. Warren's blade blocked his sword at the last possible second, but Edge’s skills cut straight through, biting so deep that they didn’t stop until they hit Warren’s spine. The dual iceblades carved straight through the man’s stomach along the way, turning his guts into a tangle of frozen shreds.

The manslayer looked down at his ruined chest and then straight into Edge’s eyes.

Warren seemed surprised, then annoyed. Then his trademark grin spread across his face for the final time. He winked. Like he had one last trick to play, and it was going to be a good one.

In that moment, Edge sensed an incredible amount of aether starting to take shape. Waves of gold began pouring out from the hole in the manslayer’s chest, growing more intense with every passing second.

He could tell that something was wrong, but it didn’t change what he was going to do next. Before the Waren died and his core died with him, he was going to steal every skill that he could.

Extraction, he extended his wrists and bid his chains to fly free.

“I’ll see you in hell, Vasher.” Warren’s words formed bloody bubbles on his lips, just as Edge’s chains went plunging into the bounty hunter’s chest and dove deep into his core.