I activated Maw of Leviathan.

First, came the sound of shattering. All around us, on either side of the street, the panes of glass on every tall building blew out. Walls cracked, streets caved in, the metal hull of cars scrunched like crushed cans. The warrior buckled to his knees. A short gasp was all he managed as my spell wrung the air from his lungs.

For a split second, I had subjected everything around us to the pressure of the deepest abyss, distilled and magnified by my own arcane might.

The debris rained down. Shattered glass and loose stone fell like hail. Lights went out for several blocks around us. Down the street, a narrow apartment toppled on to the road in a thunderous collapse of rubble and dust.

As he remained kneeling, a trickle of blood flowed out from under the warrior's helmet. His grip loosened, and he finally dropped his mace with a clang. I pointed my railgun at his center of mass.

"That's enough," I declared. "We're all still alive. Swear to me that we'll hold no grudges for what happened today, and we'll walk our separate ways."

The warrior coughed shallow coughs as he struggled to speak. Another streak of blood flowed down his neck.

"You're afraid to kill me," he muttered.

I tightened the grip on my gun.

"You fear retribution," he said. "You're afraid the Syndicate will come after you, if my blood stains your hand. Am I right?"

I scoffed. He was not wrong.

"...Do you take me for a coward?" he asked. "That I'd hide within the shadows of allies, hugging their legs for a scrap of security?"

"You literally joined an organized crime gang," I replied.

In a flash, the warrior sprang up to me. His hand had already clamped around my neck before I knew it. I fired a Cold Grenade without aiming. The glowing, magical bead hit a wrecked car behind him.

"DON'T BELITTLE ME!" he roared in my ear.

Then, he jumped up.

The ground beneath cratered as we left it far behind. We rushed past the buildings and left their roofs far behind. The wind threatened to tear my skin off.

The acceleration was so sudden, I could not move a single limb against it, much less aim my gun.

We rose into the haze of a thick cloud, then pierced through. Above us was the clear night sky. Below, the lights of the city sprawled out, from one coast of the island to the opposite. The warrior held me underneath him.

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"Final technique," he said. "Dragon Descent."

Twin jets of dark flame shot out of his back. They blasted out, ablaze like rocket fuel, and propelled us downward. We began to plummet faster than we had risen. My stomach churned. We shook violently against the deafening wind.

And then, it was quiet. The shaking stopped. Facing upward as I fell, I could see a faint ring we had left behind on the way down. Guess we just broke the sound barrier.

The little golden sword that hung from my necklace released a pulse of warm, blazing light.

The warrior slammed me down into something solid. We broke through. For a moment there was nothing except the horrible turbulence and noise. But there was no pain. My necklace had activated to give me temporary invulnerability.

It stopped at last.

I regained my bearings. In the moonlight, I found myself in the center of a crater. The edges were many yards away. The warrior stood nearby, slouched and panting. The flames on his back had petered out. Above us, through the smoke, I saw holes through multiple layers of ceilings or floors. More than five, probably less than twenty. We had smashed through all of them without much resistance. This seemed like an empty general-purpose building. Had we not decimated it, it could've housed perhaps a thousand office workers.

As for me, I was fine.

"Now we're even," the warrior panted. "I've roughed you up enough for a day."

Well, I mean, his last attack didn't really do anything. But if he had enough, I had enough.

"Yeah," I said. "Got me scared for my life back there." I sat up slowly, still trembling from the fall. I found my railgun beside me; I had held on until the last moment.

"You're not like the rest of them," the warrior said to me in his low-pitched voice. "You're tougher. Stronger. And dare I say, more audacious. You have my respect."

"Guess I could say the same," I admitted. "You're powerful, if nothing else."

The knight flicked his wrist. In a burst of black flames, his mace manifested in his grip. He stowed it away on his back.

"I know talent when I see it," he said. "Come, join the Liberation's Call Syndicate. You'll fit in among us. Better than those tools I have for underlings."

Great. First he tried to beat me up, and failing that, he was now trying to recruit me?

"Organized crime isn't my thing," I replied flatly. "No offense."

"You'll be able to reach heights you've never dreamed of."

"I don't think I like heights anymore."

The warrior raised a gauntleted fist. "With our combined power, we can take over this world!"

"That's generic as heck," I said. "Look, what if I say I'll consider your offer? Will your syndicate let me stay alive at least, for the time being?"

Once again, the warrior brandished his mace. "You aren't walking away until I hear your decision."

I wouldn't have minded staying and chatting a bit longer. There were many questions I had for him. But I didn't know the cooldown on his final technique. If we fought again, and he used that move on me once more, I might not be walking away alive.

This was goodbye.

Cold Grenade, burst.

Ring of Pursuit, activate.

A shimmering mote formed at my fingertip and I grasped it. My body dissolved into light, and the world around me froze in time. I felt my incorporeal form whizz past countless buildings and streets until I arrived at the wrecked car. There, I returned to normal, as did the world around me.

It was a neat trick I had devised during my days here. As long as I had a Cold Grenade somewhere in the world, I could detonate it to hit surrounding targets, then teleport over with my Ring of Pursuit.

As the strategists of ancient China wrote, escape is the greatest tactic.