It was like a lightning bolt that split the sky; the Kiku-no-Tsurugi swept down, poetry in motion, and cleft through the cyst and everything else in its path as though it were the only solid object in a world of mists. Stumbling backwards, Topher let everything fall from his hands; he fell to the ground, grimly waiting for the pain, as blood began to blossom across his chest. Take that, fucker.

In front of him, the cyst split apart, falling apart to either side like a bisected piñata; within was a man, appearing roughly the same age as Topher, who met his gaze with eyes full of shock and horror. He was blonde, Topher saw; neatly-trimmed hair wreathed his brow like a crown, a great beard like a lion's mane covered his face where his mouth had fallen open in surprise, and a vast and fatal wound gaped nearly the entire length of his torso from the side of his neck all the way down to the opposite hip. He choked, trying to say something; but after a moment he simply shuddered, then collapsed, eyes rolling back in his head. As Topher watched, his body began to darken and soften; then, in an instant, everything flowed and spilled downwards with hideous, viscid awfulness as the man's body liquefied and turned into a pool of ichor. Topher stared, his mouth quirked upwards in grim satisfaction; killed an Infernal Duke. Probably would have Leveled me again, if 99 isn't the cap and I wasn't already dead.

As he lay back, waiting for death, Zanasha rushed to him; wrapping her massive arms around him, the half-orc wailed as she saw the bright line of blood spilling from his chest. "Topher...!"

"It's cool," he muttered, trying to put on the bravest face he could. "I knew it would happen. Only way." He looked into her eyes, trying to memorize them with the moments that remained to him. His mouth crooked upwards at one corner. "See how far I'll go to impress the girl I love?"

"No. No, you cannot." She shook her head furiously, fumbling for bandages or other remedies, but he stopped her; reaching up with arms that somehow still worked, he touched her face gently.

"It's all right. I'm n-not afraid." He gently pulled her chin to him, kissing her one last time. I did the best I could. Somebody else's turn now, I guess.

The kiss lasted a long time; moments seemed to stretch out, become sublime. When they parted, he gazed into her eyes again, smiling.

Then, after a moment, he frowned and looked around impatiently. "Jesus, this is taking forever. Shouldn't I be dead by now? Fucking awkward, I tell you."

Startled, she glanced down at his wound; her hand flew to her mouth, and she suddenly grabbed at his chest, pressing his shirt into the blood. "Bide. Bide, Topher...!"

With careful, hurried movements, she dabbed away the blood; Topher winced, since it was really starting to smart now. But what was revealed as she cleared the wound was astonishing; the cut, which he'd been sure would have cleaved him nearly in half, was only a quarter-inch deep. Topher scowled. "The fuck? Come on, I can't even sacrifice myself heroically?! This is my second attempt!!"

Zanasha choked out a laugh; she pulled him close, making a strange half-weeping sound, and hugged him so tightly that he had to pound on her back so that he could breathe. Reluctantly, she laid him back down; her golden eyes twinkled with amusement as she beheld him. "The stroke," she murmured, gesturing with her hand; Topher saw how the path she laid out, mimicking the blade, had passed above his head and then curved back towards her as her reach ended. "You were only lightly grazed."

Topher groaned; he flopped back on the stone, wanting to kick his legs and flop his arms about in a screaming fit of pique. "Fucking bullshit," he groused. Sighing, he struggled to his feet, trying to ignore at the cut down the length of his chest; it burned like the world's biggest papercut that someone had just poured lemon juice into. "Let's see if any of the others were unlucky enough to survive, too."

As he cast around the cavern, he saw something unexpected; Rudo, holding a slender black-clad figure in a sleeper hold, while Hana poured a potion into Kelfir's mouth. His mouth dropped open. "Holy shit, is that...?"

The figure, still struggling weakly, tried to turn at the sound of his voice; but Rudo simply held his position carefully for another few moments, and eventually the figure went limp. With a sigh of relief, Rudo lowered the figure gently to the ground and swiftly emptied a vial into a lipless black mouth; stepping back, he collapsed weakly upon the stone. "A very near thing; but he should sleep for some time." He turned to Topher, wincing. "Did any of the Archmages survive?"

"I don't know." Topher frowned, gesturing. "Quint's over there; he might need a potion or something, too." He turned to look at the corpse of the Infernal Duke, already disintegrating, and sighed. "I don't think Sahlerra made it."

A wet, cackling laugh answered him; shadows, gathering like a tiny knot of black holes, slithered out of the demon body's fanged half-open mouth. "Men," a horrid croaking voice began from out of the little bubble of darkness, "always... underestimate... me." The darkness receded, and Topher blanched; the Archmage's body was horribly savaged and mangled. Her right arm and both legs had been torn off; only her left arm remained, and even that was a handless stump. Her face was lacerated and gashed, with half her hair torn from her scalp, and hideous wounds covered her throat, chest, and abdomen. The remaining eye which was not a bloody crater in her ruined face quivered, then centered upon Topher's face. "Not... that this is... easy." The ruined voice throbbed with agony, but Topher could still hear the steel within.

"Jesus Christ." Topher had to choke back vomit; he staggered backwards, holding his hands out to ward off whatever the thing was. "How the fuck...?!"

Slowly, in fits and starts, darkness flowed up and over the limbless torso; legs, arms, and hands formed out of the swirling shadows, until Topher was looking at a night-black figure curled upon the ground. As he watched, horrified, it stood unsteadily and turned to face him. "A... human... body," she began, still gurgling horribly and pausing to pant with torment every few words, "can survive... a great deal... of punishment. Seal... the wounds... with shadows." The eye closed, and a shudder wracked the stygian form. As he watched, the tremors in the body slowed, then stilled; when the horrid singular eye opened again, it was calmer and less wild. "Hurts. But... pain... is... an old friend."

"Sahlerra. Jesus." Topher wanted to turn away to retch, but he steeled himself and staggered closer. "What can we do?"

The night-black figure shook its head. "Nothing. I will... repair."

"Repair? Repair how?" Topher blinked. "Can the Archmage Class cast healing spells?"

"Nothing... so.... pedestrian," Sahlerra groaned. "Other... spells. Ana... tomo... phrasty."

Oh. Alter Self. Right. Topher sighed. "So what do we do?"

"Only... Quint... return... us. I will... repair... then sleep." The black, viscid figure flowed downwards into a huddled pose. "Protect... and... heal... yourself." The tenebrous thing trembled once more, then became quiescent.

Topher frowned, then sighed again. "These people have some real ego problems. Would it kill you guys to accept a little help?"

"One wonders," Zanasha murmured with amusement in his ear; Topher flushed and decided not to press his luck.

Turning his attention inward, he muttered the sequence for the spell; as he did so, he felt once again the rigid self-concept he'd constructed for himself, wrapped around the Lex Animus, and it was now child's play to reflect such a thing through his own mind and translate it into the appropriate series of runes. He sucked in a deep breath and held it as his tissues mended; then, in less time than it took to contemplate it, it was over, and new flesh occupied the rent expanse of his shirt.

Zanasha gaped at him. "Ak'zul. How did...?"

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Topher shook his head. "Wizard stuff, baby." Then he frowned. Wait a minute. That's one of my hardest spells. How did I cast it so easily...?

He turned his mind inward.

To his astonishment, it was all there; each spell he knew, each rune he'd ever conjugated, they were all right on the tip of his tongue and at his mental fingertips. Just to see if he could, he cast a Minor Illusion of a complex geometric transform; it was as easy as breathing, and the sparkling construct of light formed atop his fingertips with barely a thought. "What the...?"

Maybe it's from when you Validated your Ledger, the distant part of his mind theorized; Topher blinked, his mouth dropping open in awe. Even for a dunderhead like him, the potential was obvious; he could find any arcane text, copy it into his Ledger with Amanuensis, then Validate it to master it instantly. What's more, he'd never have to struggle with any of his spells again; even the ones he'd never cast, like Banish Dead, were fresh and clean in his mind as though he'd spent every day of the last ten years memorizing them. He boggled. "This is crazy. We all lived? We killed the one invincible bad guy and captured the other? What's the catch?"

"The catch," Rudo returned grimly, "is that we have not yet escaped the trap." Rising from where he'd been administering a healing potion to Quint, he gestured around them. "After the great battle, while you slept, the young Mister Okano told me of many visions; from those, I have harbored and secreted foreknowledge, carefully navigating events to this point." Topher's brain swirled; that's why this motherfucker was being so cryptic!

"But beyond this point," Rudo continued, "his visions appeared to fail him; for now that Archmage Aumraham is incapacitated, we have no way to escape the Sanctum now that the Wandering Portal has departed. Furthermore, this trap was threefold; if we felled Kalphegor, Vius was capable of killing us all from concealment once the Nullification was lifted, and it was only by careful anticipation that Miss Shirakane and I were able to locate and overpower him while his own magical powers -- highly lethal and incontestable ones, I might add -- were inaccessible to him." He wiped sweat off his brow with a shaking hand; Topher realized how difficult the past few hours must have been for the older man. "But, even having defeated both Vius and Kalphegor, a third foe remains to us -- one that will arrive imminently in pursuit of the Spymaster, and against whom we have even less chance than before."

Topher's blood ran cold. Suzume Saiki. Holy fuck, exactly how bad is the deck stacked against us here?! "How much time do we have?"

"Not long. Perhaps a handful of minutes." The Innkeeper slumped to the ground, checking Vius' vitals; Topher could tell he was exhausted, and wondered how bad the fight against the Spymaster had been when he hadn't even seen it. "We do, however, have two options."

"We do?" Topher blinked; the older man nodded.

"Indeed. The Demon Queen searches for the Spymaster; her mission may terminate with his death."

In a flash, Topher got it; whoever had set all this up had played all his pawns and opponents against each other expertly. "Goddamn it. He's going to make us choose between killing Vius to save ourselves, or getting ourselves all killed to protect him, while Vius will also kill us if he can because he's so scared of the real mastermind. No matter what happens, he wins; and if Suzume finds us, she'll kill all the Archmages too. So the best case scenario is if we kill Vius ourselves now... which means that Vius's survival is the one thing he's the most afraid of."

Rudo nodded tiredly. "Implying that he has critical information regarding the identity of the mastermind. Yes."

Topher looked down at Vius's unconscious form; he didn't look threatening at all. The body was small and spindly, not even six feet tall; he must have been wearing the smallest amount of false flesh possible, for stealth reasons. "Well, what the hell. Let's go for the hat trick." He opened his Status to check his remaining MP.

Name:

Christopher Bailey

Level:

127

Class:

Clerk

HP:

364/383

MP:

498/559

SP:

11/127

Strength:

Rank C

Dexterity:

Rank F

Constitution:

Rank C

Intelligence:

Rank D

Wisdom:

Rank D

Charisma:

Rank F

Skills:

Literacy (Rank D)

Mathematics (Rank B)

Cooking (Rank F)

Customer Service (Rank D)

Data Entry and Filing (Rank B)

Packaging and Shipping (Rank D)

Home Appliance Repair (Rank F)

Pen Spinning (Rank A)

[Disease Resistance (Rank C)]

[Poison Resistance (Rank C)]

[Obscure Location (Rank C)]

[Nondetection (Rank C)]

Special Skills:

Disrupt Illusion

Improved Status

Summon Ledger

Summon Stylus

Detect Status

Metaphrasty (Rank C)

Encrypt Document

Authenticate Document

Duplicate Document

Validate Document

Restore Document

Locate Document

Minor Theurgy (Rank C)

Minor Wizardry (Rank C)

[Pass Without Trace (Rank C)]

[Elemental Resistance (Rank C)]

[Damage Resistance (Rank C)]

[Status Resistance (Rank C)]

[Improved Mana (Rank D)]

Unique Skill:

Attract Object

Topher blinked, then sighed. Guess Level 99 isn't the cap after all. He puzzled over what had happened to his spells for a moment, then decided it didn't matter; not like any of that stuff ever made sense anyway. "Right. Well, I've got most of my mana, at least; I can throw a couple of weak spells before she disintegrates my bones, or whatever." He made a shooing motion towards the other man. "The rest of you get out of here; protect Zashe and the Archmages. My Shield spells might protect me for a hit or two, but you'll all just be collateral damage if you're nearby."

Rudo nodded tiredly. Lifting Vius' unconscious body, he staggered away to the place where Topher had seen Zashe hiding; Topher winced. I'll have to ask him what all went down. Must have been pretty epic.

Turning back to Zanasha, he nodded towards the others. "You'll have to go with them." His guts churned, but not as much as he'd expected them to. Guess I'm getting used to this bullshit.

Her face fell; she tossed her hair in irritation. "Did we not have this conversation, in the Lava Mountains?"

"Yeah, you're a Fighter, I know." Topher stepped close, gripping her hand; despite the massive calluses on her palm and knuckles, her fingertips were so warm that his heart ached. "Which is why I know you'll keep them safe." He squeezed her hand, then let go. "I have to believe Okano was right -- that this only works if I'm alone. And I only have, like, thirty seconds left to figure it out."

She smiled, then stood up on her tiptoes to kiss his forehead. "That is when you do your best work," she murmured warmly. Then her right hand came up, holding something he didn't expect. "Will this help?"

Topher stared, horrified, at the sight of her offering the Kiku-no-Tsurugi to him. Seriously? What am I gonna do with it, decapitate myself? But before he could disagree, she had pressed it into his hand; and then, in a flurry of red hair and intoxicating scent, she was gone.

He stared at the sword, bewildered; it was as useless to him as a bouquet of flowers. Then, unexpectedly, another memory tickled his mind:

But he took one look at all the swords they wanted to give Oshima-sama and sneered at them, and forged this in a day. He could stop time...

Topher winced.

Aw, shit.

It was impossible. But he'd Validated his Ledger; he could no more miscast the spell than he could forget his own name. He didn't have any idea what he was doing; but that wasn't new, either. Giving in, he raised his head just in time to see as skeletal claws began to pull apart the air before him. She's coming.

Well, at least now he had a plan, even if it was a shitty one. He raised his free hand, tracing a shape he'd never seen before but still knew by heart into the air. "Ish Solmi Byshk, Yttr Neifod Iss Inush."

The Level 90 Spell, the one from Irineth's spellbook that he'd copied into his own just minutes before.

Tempus Lepsis. Time Stop.

The swirling darkness and the ominous screaming of the spirits slowed, then dimmed to silence. He didn't have long; the spell, he knew intuitively, only stopped time for a minute or so. But he wasn't out of tricks yet. "Ish Tanok Oretu," he continued. "Yttr Eid Solmi Vahraj."

Tempus Thumos. Haste Self.

Now he had still more time; but still not enough. But that was all right. He spread his hands, suspending the Kiku-no-Tsurugi between them as he had Irineth's Soulstone.

And slowly, ever so slowly, akasha began to flow between them.

His trance now was instant and complete; Okano's vision had made perfect sense. In the time he had before Suzume's portal opened, he had to craft a Wyrd -- a one, true Wyrd that would be his ultimate and final weapon against everything. He didn't know how the hell he was going to do it; but he did know he had all the pieces. Now I just have to not fuck it up.

The endless light swallowed him, and he fell into perfection.