Hei struck at Alice with his spear. His blows followed one after another, chaining together into a torrent of flashes. Alice fended off the onslaught with her sword, but she couldn't match his ceaseless, erratic tempo.

A stab slipped through her guard and into her chest.

But there was no blood. No wound. Only a muted, stony glint across her body. The Red Tower behind her shook. It then glowed white, before disintegrating into motes of light.

A translucent, smaller mirage of the tower manifested, centered around Alice and surrounding her. It faded in and out of sight like vapor. Hei struck out again and again at Alice, but all his attacks bounced off that airy, immaterial tower.

I checked her stats.

[HP: 670+4740/1200]

A shield.

「My third ability is Origin Reprisal,」Alice explained to us plainly.「I can claim the power of anything that belongs to me.」

…In that case, she now had the durability of a tower. A shield that blocks 5,000 damage.

Hei continued to chip away at her defenses. Though the tower around Alice was incorporeal, it nonetheless began to crack beneath the fury of his strikes. But Alice simply ignored him and attacked our golems instead.

She was buying time for herself. As long as she farmed to level 6, she'd win. There was no need to deal with us if we couldn't kill her before then.

Naturally, her own golems died in the fray as well. Hei and I reached level 2 with the XP we gained. I now had Vortex Shield, and Hei had Voidstep to teleport. But how much would those even help?

Hei charged at Alice, then disappeared in a small flash of light. A shadowy pulse exploded above Alice.

Slightly to the side, right against the wall of the immaterial tower.

…Did he just try to teleport inside? It looked like the hologram-like tower blocked even that.

Alice swung up, unleashing a wave of fire. Hei kicked off the tower's surface, as though it were solid, and twisted out of the way of the flames.

At the very least, Alice couldn't use Origin Reprisal for free. She gave up her tower for this, didn't she?

We soon reached level 3, catching up with her. I had my Frost Grenade now, which I could use to stop her movement. And Hei's got Schwarzschild Trident.

He conjured the trident into his grasp. It stretched longer than he was tall. A white glow outlined its silhouette, but the weapon itself existed as pure blackness, without discernible depth or volume. When he hurled it at Alice, she did not dodge. Instead, the tower blocked the blow for her. The trident stuck out of the tower-mirage, its three prongs having bitten deep into its stone.

Space vibrated and twisted around Alice. The colors of her body grew darker and warmer, until her entire figure turned into a deep, dark, red. Almost like a shadow. She dropped to one knee under her own weight. The holographic tower around her quaked, and pieces of its cracked surface fell off.

Hei thrusted his spear once more at Alice. The speartip accelerated as it neared her, empowered by tides of crushing gravity. It struck the tower, this time sending fissures across its walls.

The gravitational warping induced by the trident would prove dangerous, even for someone with the durability of a tower.

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[Schwarzschild Trident

RANGE: 120 meters

COST: 150 Mana

COOLDOWN: 50 seconds

You throw an immaterial trident. Upon hitting an enemy player, it deals 20 damage and applies the Seal of Schwarzschild debuff.

Seal of Schwarzschild: 10 second duration. Gravity distorts around the target, slowing them by 30%, reducing their damage against you by 30%, and increasing your damage against them by 30%. If the target drops to 0 HP, the ability's cooldown is reset.]

Alice stopped attacking the golems. She held up her palm at Hei. A red orb manifested in her hand and began to glow. Instinctively, Hei fell back, and began strafing sideways in anticipation of an attack.

A split second later, the red orb shot out a brilliant beam of energy. It was an instant laser beam.

Hei took the attack to the chest.

"No!" I screamed.

He tumbled back, trailed by scorched smoke. The thin armor on his torso had been seared black.

"Teleport out!" I told him.

Alice's pointed at Hei. Her lips parted, and she spoke.

「Red team has slain –

Before she could finish, Hei Voidstepped away. He reappeared closer to me, out of the range of Alice's instant kill Proclamation.

It was the first time he had gotten hit.

Alice charged up a second shot of laser. Was Hei still in the range of that orb?

She must have borrowed the tower's attack, just as she had borrowed its defense. The tower's laser shot was unavoidable.

I fired a Cold Genade at her. The icy bead exploded at her feet, freezing her solid with a burst of frigid mist before she could launch another attack.

I took the chance to retreat with Hei. We only had seconds before she thawed, but we made it all the way behind our outer tower. We ought to be safe there for now.

I checked his HP..

[HP: 710/850]

140 damage, with a single laser shot, at 30% damage reduction.

"150 meters range, 200 damage," I told Hei. "Her laser attack should be the same as the towers."

Hei gritted his teeth. "When's Doublerift coming back?"

I didn't know. And Alice had just reached level 4.

She now had the power of a living, walking tower. Her laser attack was unavoidable, and it outranged all our abilities. Not even Doublerift could survive more than a handful of shots from it. And once we took damage, we'd be marked for her instant kill.

Just then, the tower around Alice vanished.

The Outer Red Tower, the physical edifice, reappeared behind her. It emerged completely unscathed.

None of the damage had transferred over.

I remembered now. We had seen this ability before. Back in the fight against 6e12.

Back then, she had reduced the night sky to a lightless, empty dome. Her sword shined bright, glistening with white-hot starfire. Crescent of white flames erupted from the edge of the sword with each swing, sailing forth, and raged into the darkness overhead. Each cut restored a thin band of stars. It was as though the sword had taken the celestial might of the heavens, and released their power back with each stroke.

The Outer Red Tower disintegrated once more into motes of light, and simultaneously the immaterial tower reappeared around Alice.

[HP: 930+5000/1400]

It was as I feared. Her Origin Reprisal ability merely absorbs its sources of power, without expending them. Once Alice finishes using the ability, she restores what she absorbed back to their original state. And then she could start the loop all over again.

It was an utterly unfair ability. But fighting Alice had never been fair.

I reached into my component pouch and took out my Deuterium Fuel Cell. I had been saving it as a surprise, final maneuver, for after we destroyed Alice's Death Ward. But we no longer had the luxury of waiting.

"That's the upgrade for your plasma cannon?" Hei asked.

I inserted it into my weapon, Jormungandr.

"This isn't really meant to be a plasma cannon," I told him.

The fuel cell's deuterium atoms flowed into the plasma storage chamber of my weapon. In there, those atoms shattered into ions and electrons. I fed the device my mana, filling the chamber with heat and pure, condensed arcane power.

Ions collided against primordial particles, obliterating their own mass and releasing bursts of energy – a billion-billion microscopic bursts, each further accelerating subatomic collisions. It was a self-propagating, self-intensifying chain reaction that generated heat surpassing even that of the sun.

"This is a fusion reactor," I said, and pointed the barrel of Jormungandr at Alice.