Three days.

Three days of almost non-stop fighting, reaffirming his path and keeping his mind sharp through a seemingly unending slog that made even him weary of picking up arms to fight immediately after.

That was how long it took for the end of the monster horde to come into view. While it was logically not anywhere near being a paradox or actual Impossibility, remembering that as you faced one enemy and ten more appeared to take their place was simply not possible for him.

But no, his Truth was that he would need to keep fighting. Fear was but a tool to motivate himself forward, and while it deserved respect, the Paths its commands led to were living nightmares he would not accept.

That said, he was absolutely wrecked.

Sure, he was technically well fed, hydrated, rested and topped up on mana, but he was also not build to deal with this. Not only did his mind (which was practically human) keep telling him he should sleep, he knew for a fact that all of this would go up in smoke with time after using and abusing his body, like a gamer losing consciousness and possibly dying after consuming too many energetics (because what else would be relatable to a person of the 21th century when death by overwork was such an ugly thing to think about)

At this rate, it was questionable whether he would be able to live even if he just dropped to the ground and slept like a log. Rather, he would need to organize everything so that he would wake up in small intervals as he allowed his body and mind to rest and continuously monitored the adherence of resources to his soul, creating an equilibrium between forcefully infusing himself with mana and vitality and allowing his damaged channels and reservoirs to rest, using more esoteric methods as needed to consolidate himself.

Well, that was not exactly an option, so he instead he straightened out, groaned as he felt his body complain about his intentions with all the emotion suddenly being thrown at him. Which he fully intended to use. Taking a deep breath, Aki infused his loathing, anger, vitality and mana into his words before shouting.

"Come out and fight you lazy cat! If it wasn't obvious, I Challenge you. Your everything against my everything, I swear upon my true name. I swear it. I swear it." With words that only he would truly understand, he spoke in fataram, his resources pumping through his shattering vessel faster than ever as his condensed significance burned and rotated, his limited time making all of this more significant as true death came for him.

Which was, of course, the whole point.

Not the XP, not the achievements, not the stat points, not the materials, not the essence he had so zealously acquired and hoarded during three days of non-stop combat. Because of course all of that essence was being directly fed into him.

"Kneel before your bett"

He didn't give the thing a chance to express it's indignance and fury. He jumped from the ground, the long wiped ritual lines flaring to life as the ground cracked under the pressure of the telekinetic platform he had used to disperse his force.

The sheer speed of it was not something his body liked dealing with, but with all the extras being used to keep it together at the moment, that didn't matter much.

So when he punched out the red dragon's chin, there was enough force to make the giant, five stories tall monstrosity of muscle and scale be moved back a bit, it's jaw and throat distending as it's usually impenetrable defenses failed completely.

This result was however, not because of the sudden punch's force, a strike that in fact could only barely damage the oversized anatomy properly.

Truth be told, the same attack capable of toppling buildings would have simply made a shockwave in the air as the dragon's magic passively redirected and absorbed the force before it's strong physicality even came into the equation.

Those were only a few of the advantages a dragon would have, simply for being old. Together with the mana conductivity and ease of specialization of each body part they had, nevermind the base and mutating advantages their actual biology had and easily gained, dragons were invariably the species most suited for wizardry.

And divinity. And the martial way, and reality bending, and… well, no their crafting did fall entirely into the category of wizardry and divinity, and they were rather bad at raising researchers and artificers due to their lack of need for developing anything other than themselves.

Either way, none of that mattered because the dragon currently had no access to these advantages, the specialized Bane churning from Aki and infecting it's aura, spirit and then body faster and faster, deactivating each and everyone of them.

Even throwing a magically enhanced bigot at the target of their hatred would not necessarily create such a potent and specialized Bane essence, but using a ritual charged with heaps of the target's essence was certainly more than enough.

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

There were, of course, problems with using something so powerful though.

'Kill. Kill. Kill. Kill Dragon. Kill. Kill Dragon. Kill Dragon. Kill Dragon.'

Not that having 250+ aural and mental resistance wasn't good for someone in this specific situation, but it was also not really enough, leaving Aki dangling from a chasm of single mindedness that led to him punching a dragon instead of doing anything else to inject the Bane essence.

Luckily, he was a sorcerer who dabbled in wizardry, not the contrary. Roiling emotions and destructive impulses helped him cast.

One moment the disoriented and slack jawed dragon was coming to terms with the ridiculous strength demonstrated by the strange being with far too little energy in their body to use such power, then he noted he couldn't see them and that there was a purple glow coming from his back. There was a small prick in his scales, then another.

This made the dragon start turning around and moving violently, preparing both a spell and a breath attack, to throw the unknown creature off and burn it to cinders.

It only had the time to register that it's three left eyes saw a fanged smile that stretched the elvenoid's features a bit too much before it's world devolved into pain.

Standing atop the convulsing dragon, Aki was happy to see the thing's magical nervous system failing at distinguishing normal input from charge being injected into the system like it was a normal creature. Not that he allowed himself to stop and watch, dashing for the wide open eyes only slightly smaller than him, bones jutting out of his fingers like layered plated armor, forming sharp claws that may as well have been decorative as he jumped in, a small explosion propelling him forward.

And then there was blood. There was gore and he could not tell where he was currently at or was going to. While his mana sense was rather good, he could barely understand the flow of dense, fast and boiling energy, as both the vitality and the mana all around churned with confusion, rushing all over in a kaleidoscopic dance of colors and emotions.

Which were great for distributing all of the Bane his every move released. Because there was no way he was stopping so close to his goal just because he couldn't see or hear or breathe properly.

So he ignited another mana explosion, digging into the flesh behind the eye with his hands and every spell he could think to use, from void to arcane, from abyssal to wrath, from wind to salt.

For once, Aki brought himself beyond his limits, breaking body groaning under the strain and the scalding blood all around trying to melt flesh from bone as over fifty spells were cast simultaneously in the hopes of creating a momentarily sustainable synergy, only for the far too weak Human to be pierced from behind by a long white claw, a hole in his belly piercing several organs and sending his spine flying as it broke near the base.

Half dead from shock and rapidly declining blood pressure, his spells fizzled, many going out, and one thing couldn't help but cross his mind.

'Pathetic.' Not only was this dragon little more than a beast with no combat experience, but it had also fallen for his every surprise. Even if he died right now, there was little chance of such a weakling surviving the sheer amount of Bane in their body.

Yet here he was, having an epiphany as it almost killed him. In this moment where he stood closest to life and death, loathing and sympathy, weakness and power, and so many others, that he finally saw the Balance he needed to win.

He blinked, smile receding to a more normal form.

And then he was Void.

The blood suddenly jarred to spray him, his gravitational well more than disrupting the flow in the big skull. Were Aki completely conscious, he would have been able to hear the cries coming from the bloody mist forming around him, and possibly felt the dragon claw trying to poke more at him, this time with little force as it's owner found itself subject to both pain and numbness in a ridiculous discord.

After all, the dragon could feel it's body failing. Not only was it's head fuzzy, hunger staggered him, a feverish cold starting to seep through as weakness weighted on his bones, paradoxically being met with an overly detailed perception of what was happening inside the massersted side of his face dripping fountains of blood, a maniac energy filling his mind as it uselessly tried to force the body to stop what seemed to be inevitable.

Be it the gleaming dust, the opaque luster of bone, or a number of other things he only instinctively knew to be fundamental for his survival, all of it fell from or accumulated in his gaping wound. Whether it was from the sudden appearance of granules in his circulatory system or the sheer speed the blood was circulating, his vitality also reported innumerable internal lacerations.

Avrean realized there and then that he wasn't going to survive. His body would simply not heal fast enough with such insidious dragon hunting magic coursing through it.

So he succumbed to despair. If his body would not listen, then he would lower himself to a dragon's last spiteful resort.

Or so it thought, but the moment the breath attack started to overload, the unstable bulge of plasma in its throat started losing heat and momentum, the elvenoid gleaming gold in the cloud of gray and red matter and essence as they started a tug of war for the energy, which felt akin to a child trying to move a boulder, similarly hurting the dragon as it's failure simply frayed it's mind as Hope was sucked away.

It's inevitable irrelevance seeping through, the Spark within shuddered. Fate unspooled, the spirit cracked and the Mind fell into apathy as both it and the Body fell apart.

With this lack of resistance, it took yet thirty more seconds for Aki to stand amidst a pile of assorted powders, his body covered in gray sludge. Despite the obvious destruction of the surroundings, he had no attention left to pay to the outside, his soul changing and his mind spiraling to comprehend the new influx of pure Possibility he had absorbed as the dragon extinguished it's own soul upon losing at their impromptu Dao discourse.