Xershi felt disappointed he didn’t get to show off again but also admitted to himself he had been wondering about the Ghosthound’s power after so long watching him march up through the image static-filled exterior stairwells without a change of pace. Then consistency was aggravating and weirdly comforting, as you followed after the man moving between floors. Pullas seemed of a similar mind, taking a step to the side and squinting up at the whirling appendages of the obsidian octopi drooling at the prospect of devouring them.

As though he heard the casual passing off of the honor of fighting it, the octopi roared to seize their attention. A massive version of itself flared above its body, opening its sharp beak and releasing a shriek at such a size that it became a dull rumble that bounced off the numerous glass pillars. Xershi winced; in terms of volume, it definitely was an obnoxious foe.

It swooped down, legs whirling. The fifty-meter height at which the octopi stared became twenty and then ten meters in less than a heartbeat.

“Y’all should take a step back.” Standing amongst the glass pillars, the Ghosthound cracked his neck. He didn’t even seem to react as the opponent rushed downward at him. Xershi and Pullas complied, quickly hopping backward. Then the Ghosthound clapped his hands in front of himself, as though he was finally ready. Wisps of steam began to curl off of his neck. A wave of heat spread outward.

That heat was the only announcement of the counterattack.

The Ghosthound moved, but Xershi didn’t see it. Just the aftermath. Just a huge stretch of ground and all the surrounding pillars exploded into a gleaming mist of pointed shards. And an overwhelming wind blasting those tiny particles up into a tornado.

The octopi howled in pain and its image faltered; a fist-sized chunk of flesh had been ripped from his side. Suddenly floating above their foe, the Ghosthound turned. The glittering glass mist caught in the speed of his movements spiraled after him. His hair fluttered and lightened to emerald, matching his glowing eyes. A towering tree stood behind him, forcing the stunned image of the octopi to the side. Its branches spread out and cast a long shadow across them all. Huge green leaves grew out and rustled ominously.

Xershi could instantly tell that while the image was solid, it wasn’t overwhelming. He reckoned his image could overpower it, given enough time. Yet his instincts warned him not to underestimate this man.

His power and attitude made him worth following. And from the rumors that Xershi had heard, he was only getting started.

The octopi recovered, its spongy body wriggling and knitting itself back together as it wheeled around to face the threat. It shrieked in challenge, its whirling arms stretching and merging with a wave of image arms that pounced toward Randidly.

He smirked in response, pointing with a long finger. Suddenly, the glittering shards of the shattered area paused in the face of gravity and began to hum. The image behind the Ghosthound shifted and rose through those shards, whirling them together and creating innumerable glass manifestations of tree roots that shot down and smashed against the extended limbs of the Octopi.

In terms of power, the Octopi’s arms crushed and destroyed the glass roots every time they got the chance. However, even as they fell to pieces, the Ghosthound’s image plucked the destroyed shards out of the air and remade them again into weapons. They curled around the Octopi’s real appendages and slithered toward his body.

Xershi’s eyes flicked downward. At the same time, his image's roots dig down into the space. You fight above, he’s growing below. What a frightful man.

Realizing how ineffective just breaking the roots were, the Octopi inflated its body. The image above it opened its mouth, the hole of its maw dragging in the surroundings with such force that it conjured a black wind that tugged on Xershi’s body, even from so far away. Its voice was raw with intensity. “BECOME FOOD!”

The Ghosthound’s body didn’t even move. He raised his hand and snapped his fingers. Light spun together and opened up an eye of darkness centering on the Ghosthound’s face. Very rapidly, that oblivion extended to cover the surrounding area, rising and gobbling up the air with equal vigor to the Octopi.

Yet while the Octopi’s mouth simply wanted food, the Ghosthound’s opening took everything. A strange chill began to seep into Xershi, who usually didn’t feel temperature at all. The indiscriminate hunger grasped and stole whatever it could take. The two black holes began to grind against each other, their edges almost visibly grasping and ripping away handfuls of the other in obsessive struggle.

The Ghosthound truly has multiple images, huh. And both are quite solid. Handling one would have been possible, but two… Xershi’s optical apertures narrowed to give him a better view of the action. Glass and fleshy arms smashed and tightened around each other in a massive melee. Broken roots were snatched up by the Ghosthound’s image and reconstituted into more appendages. They stretched outward with a little more vigor, bearing a slightly smaller resemblance to actual tree roots.

Stolen story; please report.

Perhaps beginning to worry, the Octopi released another flare of its image and conjured more helping arms to brutalize their way forward. However, a few of the Ghosthound’s glass roots simply crashed and destroyed more of the surrounding pillars, creating an equal army to rise up and grapple with the Octopi.

And this time, the roots didn’t stop at creating an equal army. Aside from the area left to Xershi and Pullas, they curled into knots and smashed apart more and more of this layer. The tinkling and shriek of glass breaking became a constant musical accompaniment. A larger and larger glass tree began to form behind the Ghosthound, spinning up to fill the shadow of his image.

“Beautiful…” Pullas whispered next to him.

Xershi glanced to the side, annoyed at the distraction. “You like glass?”

“In terms of materials- no, that’s irrelevant. But I can see you don’t actually get the process he’s utilizing. What’s beautiful isn’t the glass, but the patterns of his image.” Pullas continued to gaze upward with shining eyes. “Mr. Ghosthound is… majestic.”

Xershi tried to examine the battlefield on a grander scale. His attention kept snagging on details. A bulging octopi leg swept back and forth, shattering four glass roots. However, four more curled around its base and began to squeeze until the limb popped and tumbled down to splat against the broken ground. This happened a hundred times in a few seconds, a huge mass of writhing tentacles squirming for dominance.

The tree continued to grow, a mass of reshaped glass humming with image power. Steady was exactly the word for this image; no matter how much the obsidian-bodied Octopi struggled and smashed, it continued to grow like a weed. The physical manifestations had protected the early image from clashing directly against the Octopi’s, and now it had been allowed to domesticate some of the surrounding space to be friendlier to it.

Above, the two black holes had indeed begun to shift. Pushed back by each other’s dominant suction, the central seed of each began to drift toward one another, while the actual bodies of the black holes didn’t shift. The devouring power of each grew more intense as the eye and the edge grew close. The cold continued to layer itself across Xershi’s body, beginning to affect normal functions. He used a bit of his own image to push it back.

“I don’t see anything majestic.” Xershi finally allowed.

Pullas sighed. “I don’t know why I even bother.”

Stalled out, the Octopi returned to his superior image as he began to make his push through the maw of the Ghosthound’s image and manifestations. At this point, the space was positively stuffed with aggressive glass roots breaking and being remade. The beak enlarged again and then again so that it was a mountain that towered above the battlefield. It turned above the Ghosthound’s black hole and pecked down, like a bird eating a seed.

A wave of glass roots stretched up and wove themselves into a shield, but that massive beak ripped easily through.

The sky rumbled from the collision. The spatial rind deflected the beak, releasing powerful waves of crackling red lightning. However, the Octopi now seemed determined to leverage its advantage. Mobilizing more and more of his image force to crack open its target. The beak flared with detail, the lines of its curvature glittering.

Yet before it could peck again, the Ghosthound moved. Again, Xershi didn’t see him actually accelerate. But his path through the battlefield of appendages could be clearly seen, as his body left a trail of pulp and glass dust.

Again, there was a sudden absence of flesh in the Octopi’s body. This time it was much larger, almost the entirety of its swollen head simply blown away. The image in the sky faltered, briefly shaken by the damage to its physical form. Shrieking and moving by instinct, it spun again and accelerated downward to flee from the threat.

The Ghosthound just materialized next to the Octopi, even as its body knitted itself together. He was wreathed in two layers of flames, one orange with an emerald core and the other the shadowy grey flame of Nether. He reached out and grabbed the Octopi with both of his hands, his fingers squeezing into its flesh for a firm grip. Then-

Xershi hit the ground hard, completely unprepared for the wave of kinetic force that had blasted through him on its way to level all of the surrounding pillars that hadn’t already been demolished. As he sat up, he was at least pleased to see that Pullas had been similarly blindsided and on her butt. In image battles, there were often powerful shockwaves. But this was on another level altogether.

In terms of Stats, no one can rival the Ghosthound. Xershi had heard this phrase from the Don, through his father. And now he had felt it with his body.

After getting to his feet, Xershi was able to piece together what had happened. With a tight grip on the Octopi, the Ghosthound had accelerated directly down at the ground without slowing down in the least. And while the Ghosthound could rely on his high Stats to simply absorb such a blow, the Octopi had been splattered across the ground.

There was no dust or debris, so Xershi should see the figure of the Ghosthound standing above the Octopi as it struggled to heal. The crater was massive and looked like an alien landscape. His landing had shattered the ground in a huge area and then the heat of his flames exploded outward on the heels of the crash, melting all the glass into rippling waves.

This time, Xershi could see the beauty in what the Ghosthound had done.

“Let’s review,” The Ghosthound said softly. He crouched down next to the Octopi. “When you try to swallow something too big for you, it can get caught in your throat and choke you. And choking can be deadly, yea?”

The Octopi gurgled a reply, but it was too quiet for Xershi to hear. Either way, the Ghosthound straightened and turned to look at Xershi and Pullas. The flames dancing across his skin dimmed and sank back into his body. “Okay, that’s one problem handled. And you two got a bit of an extra break. On to the next layer we go.”