In the other part of Darape, Barbey had arrived at the thirteenth floor of Chompain Wictin's building. The floor consisted of two rooms: Wictin's office and the waiting room. The waiting room had wood paneling on the lower half of the white walls. The paneling's orangish-brown surface matched the warm light emitted by the fluorescent lamps on the ceiling. The Monstera pots on the two bistro tables added the cold green to adorn the comfortable, warm tone of the room. Heading to Wictin's office, Barbey ambled toward the wooden door from the staircase across the waiting room. He slowly walked past the couch chairs and bistro tables. As he reached his hand to the doorknob, the pots burst. Two ten-centimeter-long fangs, buried in the pots, flew toward Barbey. The back of the fangs were connected to the stems of Monstera instead of roots.

Dodging one of the fangs, he stepped aside and caught the other in midair. Barbey inspected closely the flying fang in his hand and touched it. His fingers rubbed through the part where green, herbaceous stem tissue gradually transformed into a firm, teeth-like material. Barbey raised his eyebrows, unintentionally revealing his amazement. He did not expect Chompain Wictin to revive incognifangs, a mythical creature extinct before Winceim Barbey was trapped in this human body. Then, he dropped the incognifang and opened the door.

Behind the door, the room was similar to the waiting room except for the glass wall. Sun shined through the glass, heating half of Barbey's body. A few meters before Barbey stood Wictin's luxurious executive desk, which had thin gold layered on its wooden edge—a true embodiment of lavish waste. Behind the desk was a much more sumptuous bookshelf with gold covering every visible part viewed from the front. Between the two pieces of furniture, Chompain Wictin sat with his entire back against his chair, and his curvy, ginger hair was lying on his shoulder. The ginger beard, covering his entire jaw, was not long, but his ginger mustache was long enough to curtain his lips.

The royal mantle on his back was purple with white fox fur sewn on the hem. Under it, the tuxedo had a series of crystal buttons aligned at the waist level like a glinting belt. Wictin closed his eyes, facing the ceiling with his head fully on the headrest.

As Barbey closed the door, Chompain Wiction began, "Your mind is really hard to understand, Win. You started chasing immortality centuries before I was born, and you still long for it centuries after I figured it out." He moved away from the headrest and looked at the monstrous man's smiling face with a playful grin, "I can make you an immortal right now."

"You are just creating cycles of death and birth. None of them are actually living forever," Barbey replied without changing his expression, "You spent too many centuries messing with science and magic, too few to understand the world. Your clones are not you. They are—"

"There are no them here. There are only I and I," Wictin interrupted. He stood up and put on a didactic tone and visage, "Like I always say, consciousness is merely a carrier of life, like a vehicle to a driver; life is solely a collection of memory. My clones share my memory, so I am me."

"Your false conception always bothers me," Barbey complained, pulling out his tanto with his phony smile replaced by deadly exhaustion; his mouth corners leaned down naturally, and the weighing brows almost shut his eyes. Chompain Wictin was almost the only person who could annoy Barbey so much. The annoyed man suggested, "Just let me kill you so we can end this faster."

"Technically, you can not kill. You can only force me to use another body, so actually—" Barbey charged forward before Wictin could finish his sentence. He stopped before the desk and jabbed.

Wictin easily blocked Barbey's tanto with the left hand and threw out the right fist immediately before a drop of blood slid off his penetrated left palm.

Partial Unseal: Thirty Percent.

Winceim Barbey and Chompain Wictin had roughly the same physical speed. However, regarding reflexes, Winceim was a dimension ahead of Chompain.

In a flash of yellow light, the thrown fist and the arm attached to it were shattered into flesh jam and bone sprinkles before it could touch Winceim's nose. The exhausted and hyped pairs of eyes locked at each other. Instantaneously, the hyped pair became meat mash with the rest of Chompain's body.

"One point for Winceim," the clone of Chompain playfully commented while opening the door that Winceim used to enter. This clone looked precisely like the one that had just died. Even his clothes and crystal buttons were no different.

The new Chompain held his palms together, leaving no gaps between fingers, and pointed at Winceim. As Winceim turned to face him, a giant white beam spurted between Chompain's middle fingers, and all the crystal buttons started to glow. The beam had a diameter larger than Winceim's height. It immediately devoured the exhausted man and obliterated the desk and chair behind him.

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Winceim's Sash of Million Suns shielded him from being affected by the beam. The beam smashed into his body and rounded him to pass by like a river with a rock in the middle. Winceim slowly stepped forward. Yet, within three steps, a hand pierced into Winceim's chest.

After an infinite instant, one Winceim figured out what was happening and died. The next Winceim cast Partial Unseal: Forty Percent.

The yellow light immediately wiped out the Chompain Wictin before Winceim. Then, the other Chompain Wictin turned the white beam off.

"It is pretty smart, right?" Wictin asked rhetorically, placing his hands on his waist like a comic hero, "Hiding myself in my own beam. It is only possible because I am immune to my own spell. Didn't expect that, did you?" He winked heavily at Winceim, who was seeping blood out of his chest. A red stream went down his sash and robe. Winceim did not change his expression, yet the increased anger was inconcealable. He had not destroyed the man yapping because he wanted to know what else Wictin could pull off. It was not like he could hurt him in any way.

"Oh! And another thing," Wictin said. One of the naked Wictins hiding under the destroyed executive desk had an orange lump of light forming a circle above his right hand, which had its wrist part grabbed by the left hand. He was casting The Capering Wyrm.

The Wictin talking reached his hand into his mouth and pulled out a throwing knife. Meanwhile, the other naked Wictin hiding under that obliterated desk also took out an object from his mouth. It was a wooden ball.

Juggling the knife, the talking Wictin went on, "I can protect things from my beam by putting them in my body. I know you don't understand why I am explaining this."

As the dressed Wictin distracted Winceim, the naked one with a ball tossed the ball upward and forward, aimed at Winceim Barbey's head. Before the ball could actually hit Barbey, The Capering Wyrm from other naked Wictin went through the ball and caused a giant explosion.

The explosion was much bigger than those that Staker made. The blast covered three floors, exterminating literally everything from the eleventh to the thirteenth floor. Some rubbles made by the explosion even smashed into other buildings, killing a few innocents. The only fluck part was that no one was walking near Winctin's office building on a workday, so the concrete chunks did not fall on anyone but crushed on the empty street.

Another clone of Chompain Wictin stood on the tenth floor, professionally and didactically yapping, "You thought you were invincible because your sash protects you from all magical attacks, and your power to regenerate your body makes physical attack meaningless. Well, you seem to forget that your sash can't regenerate itself. Thus, you are pretty damn stupid." He nodded at his conclusion and continued, "Yeah, I'm smarter. Also, one set of my body is about a few million, while your sash is priceless and irreplaceable, so It's a win for me."

He took out a pill from his tuxedo and kept it under his tongue before swallowing to say his last words, "About the immortality thing… Well, I indeed feel an overwhelming fear whenever one of my consciousness and body is about to get destroyed. I don't know if you felt the same when I destroyed you. However, the point is that you get to use the same consciousness." A frown appeared on the clone's visage, growing deeper as the clone kept talking.

"And the only thing you have to do is to use another body, but I have to change both my consciousness and body. I can only keep my memory. Even this is only possible because I can record and save copies of my brain. If I don't have the technology to do that, I'll have to base my existence on social status. I don't know if a Chompain Wictin without the same body, consciousness, and memory is still Chompain Wictin." He held the tears in his eyes while controlling his voice.

He swallowed the pill, "Previous Chompain Wictin would not talk like this, would they? Well, I guess this is enough. Have a good time with your ritual here. You can take my clothes if you want… I am just… Scared…" Then he dropped to the ground.

After putting on Wicin's tuxedo, Winceim Barbey sat cross-legged between the wreckage. He lay his arms on his thigh and focused on the incantation. Such incantation could not be pronounced through any human throat but through the mind of a four-dimensional being. The three keys of the dragon's heart were located in the three parts of Darape. Barbey could collect these keys in his mind using this four-dimensional ritual and incantation. Each one of the keys was enough to overwhelm a three-dimensional creature's mind. Barbey was the only few in the entire world who could use these keys.

He got the incantation of the first one from that old priest. Chompain Wictin had given Barbey the incantation for the second key centuries ago. The third incantation was held by the Jinin Clan's Darape branch. The clan had an insane idea of the entire clan forming one single being. It was probably the result of an idiot clan leader's attempt to reach immortality by claiming to be a part of an abstract creature of bloodline and family continuation.

This attempt was fundamentally impractical since power divides people and creates conflict within an organization. Sir or Madam Jinin had lived a few centuries with his clan, yet all his effort faded away decades ago when Barbey sent his spies into Jinin Clan. The centuries-long clan had been broken into different branches based on location. Barbey even heard that the Darape branch was deciding to replace the clan's name. Anyway, the only thing that really mattered was that the leader of the Darape branch had agreed to give Barbey the incantation.