“He’s cooked! Let him go!” Wisp shouted from the forge.

Ike nodded. Without looking, he dashed off. Lightning crackled behind him. Roderick’s hands slammed down, but to no avail. Ike was long gone, nothing left but his afterimage.

At top speed, he closed in on Roderick’s ankle. He unsheathed his sword and held it tight, preparing a horizontal slash as he raced in.

Roderick’s foot glowed red-hot. All the way to his ankle, it glowed, hot and soft. The metal deformed as it melted. He slashed at the point where the foot and ankle met. His sword cut easily through the soft, melting metal. Roderick’s foot remained in the forge, while his ankle jolted free, skittering across the stone floor. His legs slipped apart when the cut-flat ankle found no purchase on the stone. He fell into a deep split with a crash.

Ike winced instinctively. Even though he knew it was only a puppet, it still looked painful.

“You filthy—” Roderick swept his legs across the ground. The grinder, the small puppets, the remaining metal scraps of the hammer—everything went flying. Ike hopped high into the air and barely cleared the man’s legs. A piece of metal hurtled toward him, kicked up and whirling in the air. He ducked his head, raising his hands to defend against the debris. The metal bounced off his body, bruising but not seriously injuring him. He tipped over in the air.

A giant metal hand smashed through the air. Ike saw it too late. It knocked him out of the air like a fly. He flew at top speed across the room. Everything became a blur. Ike struck the wall and bounced, falling toward the ground. For a long second, nothing hurt.

And then he hit the ground, and everything hurt.

Ike stifled a scream. His vision blacked out. Slowly, it came back in. Wisp and Roderick battled back and forth. Wisp’s hands landed tiny pits on Roderick’s giant metal body, but he felt no pain and took no real damage. He punched at her. Wisp shot a spider thread into the air and soared out of his reach. Roderick grimaced. He swiped at her, but she danced around the room, maneuvering with speed and agility his huge body couldn’t match.

Ike tried to shove himself upright. His arm gave out, broken. His legs responded sluggishly. An overwhelming blast of pain surged through his body. His vision blacked out again. He dropped to the ground, waiting for it to pass. Come on. I need to get back in the fight. Wisp can’t hold on forever.

Ike poured his mana into Salamander Healing, forcibly activating it. His body trembled. Heat washed over him. The raging energy of aether scoured every cell in his body. He bit back a scream. Since he’d converted to aether, he’d only had to use small amounts of healing. Now, forcibly activating it, he came up against one incontrovertible truth: his body was still used to mana, not aether. His core and mana passages might have converted, but the rest of him? The bones, muscles, tendons, and organs? They were still soaked in leftover mana. He had converted to aether, but only his magical organs, not his whole body.

There’s no other choice. I need to convert now. Ike bared his teeth and kept pouring aether into his whole body through his healing skill. His body ached. He’d thought every part of him had hurt earlier, but that was untrue. Most of him had hurt before. Now, all of him hurt. Every cell. Every organ. His eyes burned and his arms screamed. He flinched, instinctively pulling away from his healing skill.

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No! Ike forced himself to stop flinching. He put all his aether into healing. His body burned from the aether, and it died. His skin reddened, then blackened. Ike withered up. Down to nothing. His vision went dark. From outside, he appeared as a blackened, shriveled corpse. Even his bones crumbled.

When the destruction finished, all that remained was Ike’s aether passages and core, surrounded by a lump of dead flesh.

And still Ike pushed on. It was like absorbing aether in the first place. He had to completely press out all the mana in order to convert to aether. Mana was the basis of life, even for mortals, let alone mages. Even when he’d absorbed aether, his body, his tissues, every part of him was still full of mana. To count such a half-assed thing as a conversion—he felt ashamed of it now. Only converting his passages to aether, but not his body? He’d never advance that way. Perhaps that was why he had felt no progress in his Rank since his conversion. He’d put it up to stabilizing his Rank, but it had been months by now. His Rank was well stabilized. The problem was that it was too stabilized. It had stabilized forever. As he was before, he would never be able to pass Rank 2.

As he was before.

Aether burst from Ike’s withered body. It grew from nothing. The blackened cells revived. The shriveled organs revitalized. The shattered bones reformed. Every cell had been reforged. No longer was his body full of mana, but aether. His muscles reformed stronger. His bones grew denser. Every part of him was stronger than it was before. Not a mortal, inundated by mana until he coincidentally became a mage, but a mage, who deliberately reforged his body with the raging energy of aether.

In his stat sheet, one skill let off a brilliant light as it reformed. [Salamander Healing] vanished. In its place, he gained a new skill:

[Body Reforging Art]

There was no time to worry about any of that. Ike pushed upright. Across the room, Wisp’s leg suddenly caught. With a yelp, she fell from the ceiling.

Roderick’s eyes glittered. He laughed and lifted his hand. “If you love dancing around on that thread so much, then like a bug, be squashed!”

“What’s wrong with being a bug?” Ike snarled. He dashed across the room, arm already drawn back. He punched Roderick on the head.

Ike used no skills. Not Shockwave Punch, nor Lightning Clad. He used his newly reforged body to punch Roderick, with nothing but his bare fist.

Roderick’s head snapped back. A huge crater opened in the side of his head. His face distorted as the metal shifted. He shouted in pain as his whole body slammed against the far wall.

Wait. Pain? He felt pain?

Ike chased after Roderick. He punched him over and over, beating his face into pieces. Roderick batted at him, trying to stop him, but Ike could no longer be stopped. Not by Roderick, anyways. As he punched, he listened. Most of his punches did nothing. Roderick didn’t make a sound of pain, he only growled in frustration or shouted insults. But the lower he punched, the more likely he was to receive pained shouts in response.

Ike drew back, landing on the floor. He stared at the misshapen lump of metal that had been Roderick’s face and thought for a moment.

Roderick groaned. Then, realizing he was no longer being beaten, he laughed. A huge metal hand loomed over Ike. “Good. As you’ve realized, it’s futile. Be crus—agh!”

Ike hopped into Roderick’s open mouth and slid down his throat. Lightning flashed around him, shocking Roderick and lighting the space around him. He slid down, deeper, deeper. Right at the bottom of the throat, where he should have fallen into the stomach, he landed. A small metal pod sunk into the wall of the metal. Bright lines of mana crawled all over the pod, connecting it to the puppet.

The puppet screamed. It tore at itself. The body lurched under Ike’s feet, but Ike stood steady. He smiled.

“Hello, Roderick.”