Topher stared at the figure before him -- he appeared young, perhaps in his early twenties, but Topher could tell at a glance that it was a deceiving appearance masking great age and experience. His skin was slightly bronzed in a way that made Topher think he might be Hispanic, and his stylish black hair and slightly hooded eyes reinforced the hypothesis. His posture was open and unguarded; as Topher watched, he tucked his hands into his pockets in a way that seemed greatly habitual. But his eyes were the most remarkable part of him; inhumanly red, they were flat discs of dispassion that were pointed somewhere slightly off to Topher's left and remained perfectly still, without any saccades or twitches whatever. He's blind, Topher intuited suddenly.

"Okay," the figure mumbled, looking strangely awkward, "you've figured out by now I'm an Otherworlder, just like you, so we'll start there. I'm Yariel Arce," -- he pronounced his surname 'ar-seh' and rolled his r's very smoothly -- " and I'm from Uotado, Puerto Rico." He made a vague, hesitant gesture towards Topher. "You're Topher Bailey, from Pensacola, Florida, if I'm following everything right. What things are you still confused about?"

"A lot," Topher rasped, taking a step forward, "but there's really only one thing I care about. Where is my wife?"

Yariel, as Topher supposed he was called, seemed to take a moment to absorb this; his posture shifted slightly, as though reassessing where he stood in relation to Topher. "Hm. Okay. Moving on to that." He turned to face an empty expanse of stone next to him.

Without any sort of effect or transition, Zanasha was suddenly there, standing on a little round pedestal. Her hair was floating about her, as though she'd been in the midst of a jump or similar movement; but what captivated him was her expression. Her face was frozen in a fierce, joyful smile, and her eyes were alight with happiness and excitement; it was a look Topher recognized extremely well, and it nearly broke his heart to see her elation used as a weapon against him. For a moment, he was consumed with the urge to grab her and run, consequences be damned -- but a small window immediately appeared over her head.

Edict: Contingent Interregnum

At the sight, Topher felt his will break; as always, he couldn't do anything against an Edict. "You bastard," he groaned. "'Contingent'... meaning there's conditions. You're gonna demand something of me." He clenched his fists. Haven't I done enough already?

"Um. Kinda." Yariel shrugged, turning his back to Topher and taking a few steps towards the vast image beyond; Topher was tempted to attack again, but fought it down. "It has rules. It holds her in a Temporal Stasis until one of three trigger conditions is met, basically." He turned, vaguely in Zanasha's direction; his blind gaze smeared aimlessly across her, like the stroke of a paintbrush. "The first was that you eliminate Vius Mak Ghiroth without anyone else finding out anything more, but that one's pretty impossible now after... well, all this." He gestured morosely at everything around him. "The second condition is that you, uh... surrender." He shifted uncomfortably.

Topher blinked. "Seriously? Surrender in what way?"

Yariel sighed. "A magically binding agreement that you'll uphold a set of responsibilities; basically, to be my lieutenant and help keep me secret. If you do that, I can release her immediately with no further questions or demands." He turned back over his shoulder, casting his blind sightline somewhere roughly in the vicinity of Topher. "We gonna do that one?"

"Go fuck yourself," said Topher automatically.

Yariel nodded. "Okay." He turned back around, facing away from Topher again, and ran his hands through his hair. "The third option is the fail-safe -- if you, Topher Bailey, kill me." He gulped. "You do that, and she and everyone else goes free."

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Hana Shirakane is the eye of the hurricane.

Somewhere in the cataclysmic inferno of the battle, she finds that her secret heart has accepted the truth of what Topher Bailey has been telling her for entirely too long; that her Class, her Skills, and her Flux Blade make her more than the sum of her parts. The elegance of her Class, together with the Flux Blade's formless, protean power, allow her to target the weaknesses and indefensibilities within any opponent; and, coupled together with her gardener's soul which gives rise to her Unique Skill, these two proficiencies form the sides of a coin which always comes up heads.

As her Level continues to skyrocket with each kill, she feels her shyness and self-doubt falling away behind her, like the initial stage of a rocket which drops away once its fuel is spent. The opponents before her are limitless, but her Attack and Defense compound and increase with her proficiency exponentially; her grace and poise carry her in stately fashion around and between strikes that would obliterate her, turning deathblows into misses or scratches in ways that multiply her staying power further and further with each Level-up. Twice now she has had to drink healing potions, but the rate at which it becomes necessary has lengthened by leaps and bounds each time; she has three more in reserve, and doubts she'll ever need the last two.

As she whirls and sweeps across the battlefield, dealing death in every direction with inestimable beauty, she expects it to go on forever; with a singing heart, she awaits the reprieve of Bailey-sama's triumphant return. But, unexpectedly, she eventually begins to discover that she has done her job too well; the tide of grotesque, shadowy enemies first swells, then peaks, then slackens, and then finally becomes a trickle.

And then, incredibly, it is over; she stands, atop two feet of shadowy dust piled nearly to the edges of the massive hall, triumphant and alone. It takes several seconds for her to really register that she has been victorious; nothing in any of her thoughts or prayers accounted for anything like this occurrence, and it quite upends her self-concept a bit for a couple of moments. But eventually she breathes a sigh of relief; maybe she can go help Bailey-sama with his battle after all. Taking a moment to check her Level and attributes (Level 13287, with Dexterity now at S-Rank and other stats not far behind), she sweeps her hair majestically away from her face and begins to move forward once more.

A footstep behind her, however, arrests her momentum.

Turning around, she beheld something strange: a young man -- teenager, really -- who looked like he'd recently escaped from a machine which pulled its target backwards through a hedge repeatedly and at great speed. The once-stylish black slacks on his legs were now tattered rags, and while his white shirt was still mostly intact, it was scorched and stained with innumerable fluids and other indignities. Hair that had, long ago, been carefully combed-back was now a wild haystack of black tangles, and he was entirely barefoot with only limp rings of cotton around his ankles to indicate that he had once been shod and socked.

But most striking of all were his eyes -- haunted, desolate eyes that held no love for anything remaining in this world -- which gazed upon her like a stone upon which he intended to tread. And in his hand she saw something that shocked her to her core -- the Kiku-no-Tsurugi, which she'd last seen when she made it a gift to her closest friend in the entire world.

If she had been feeling a little less self-assured, coming so strongly off the heels of the greatest triumph of her life, she might have been a little less aggressive. If Sora Sugimoto had had any sleep whatsoever in what bleary, achy history he now counted as his functional short-term memory, he might have paused and taken note of the situation and pursued a more thoughtful approach.

Neither of these things occurred.

A pair of hands tightened on a pair of hilts, and the empty chamber became an arena once more.

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"What if you kill me?" Topher interjected, squinting suspiciously at the other man. "Will you let her go then?" His heart quailed within him at the thought of condemning his new bride to widowhood so soon after their marriage, but he needed to know his options.

Yariel shook his head. "Won't matter if we can't make a deal. If you don't beat me, I'm, uh... going to have to kill most of the population to contain the damage." He gestured towards the wall of portals. "Crash the moon into the surface; it's already in motion. I started it when you came in."

"The fuck?" Topher spluttered. "Why the hell would you do that?!"

"I'm out of options," Yariel retorted dully with a shrug. "Too many people know I'm here now; none of this was set up to work with, you know, open information." He shrank back slightly, as if expecting Topher to yell at him, but kept on speaking. "People like the Archmages, or anybody else strong, just mess everything up too much." He reached out a hand to Topher as if pleading, but the gesture was limp-wristed and bereft of energy. "If you work for me, I can send you back down there to clean everything up; you can tell everyone you killed me. I spent a lot of time setting it up; you know, bad guy defeated, you get a happy ending. Like this." He paused, as if realizing something, and flicked his fingers at the portals; Topher's mouth dropped open as they swirled and shifted, revealing the scope of what the words meant in full 3-D Technicolor detail.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

He saw Rudo, resting in an opulent bed with an immensely self-satisfied expression; Zashe, brow knotted with worry, sat at his elbow feeding him soup and chopped fruit. Not far away in another image, he saw Tok Rockbrand, wearing a gleaming crystal monocle and possessed of an armored left arm, sitting at a table across from Dakath Xyrmaer and arguing animatedly about something with the curmudgeonly Stone Elf. In yet another image, Sahlerra Siukh reclined sumptuously across a pitch-black fainting-couch and directed a roomful of retainers and servants; and in the image below that one, Quint Aumrahan clutched a cane for dear life and looked mournfully down upon the destruction of the Demon Lord's Castle. And, occupying the center position of honor, was an impossibly sweet tableau -- the entire Leafwind family, gathered together around a table and eating what looked like a delicious meal with happy smiles and laughter. Everywhere he looked, Topher saw people he knew -- and, he had to admit to himself, people he loved -- living lives that he couldn't bear to see cut short. His eyes, proof against any attack, were nevertheless defenseless against the tears which afflicted them.

"I set everything up," the young man repeated, "all the variables. Kelfir and his family get to live happily ever after; all the people in charge are your close friends. You basically get to be the most powerful person in the world, and you can help everyone rebuild from all this nonsense, with a convenient personal stake in everything so you never feel put-upon or abused." Distractedly, Topher noticed that the shyness and awkwardness was beginning to fall away from the other man's voice as he warmed to his pitch, his vocabulary becoming richer as his confidence built. "You get everything you want, everyone survives, and the system continues in a sustainable fashion." Yariel cocked his head in Topher's direction, his off-kilter gaze disturbing and yet vulnerable. "You, um... you sure we can't make this work?"

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What is currently occurring, perhaps a hundred yards away, is unquestionably the most intense battle which has ever been fought in this world.

Hana Shirakane is an epic force -- a beautiful, unbreakable sustained note of pure battle-fury and perilous grace -- who has dodged ten million strikes and shows every intention of dodging ten million more as many times over as she needs to. Ascendant, she lashes strikes with every weapon imaginable (and a good many she invents on the fly) at Sora Sugimoto, who finds himself hard-pressed in ways he never conceived simply to stay alive.

Almost since birth, Sugimoto Sora has been a human being steeped in expectation and preparation for battle; raised more by rules and instructional materials than human beings, he has studied the arts of combat and warfare diligently since he was old enough to hold a sword or form a fist. When other children were running about with glee or sifting sand thoughtfully on playgrounds, he was doing kendo drills from sunup to sundown; he learned to read (Chinese, Japanese, and English simultaneously) from texts such as the Art of War and The Book of Five Rings at roughly the same age other students were mastering Futari wa Tomodachi and Gongitsune. And, since the first instant he set foot upon this world, his natural gifts have been multiplied a millionfold or more; housed within his frail and mortal shell is a synthesis of talent and temperament which gives rise to a truly preeminent martial genius. Even the legendary Kiku Oshima, who was sent directly into the crosshairs of the True Demon Lord's murder machine at Level 4 and still managed to almost win anyway, would be no match for Sora Sugimoto; and so it is astounding in the extreme that a low-status woman -- inspired more by action movies and anime fight scenes than anything else -- with a mid-tier magic weapon and what might charitably be termed an NPC Class is handing him his ass to such an extraordinary degree.

The forces unleashed by each and every strike, if not blunted by the astronomical Defense values of the combatants, would be enough to tear the moon itself asunder; multifarious energies crackle and scourge every free meter of air as they flicker back and forth in strike, counterstrike, and the occasional clutch or grapple. Sora Sugimoto finds out extremely quickly that he cannot rely upon his attributes or regenerative skills; Hana's facility with her Chaos Blade Skill (now far above S-Rank) allows her to both bypass his defenses and savage his very metabolic energies, rendering every attack as fatal to him as if he were an unprotected peasant. Worse, he has quickly proved to his satisfaction that she cannot be caught in manipulations of momentum or joint freedom, for her Fateful Dive Skill -- normally meant only to allow servants to leap fortuitously out of the way of altercations between patrons for the cost of a small SP expenditure -- allows her effectively precognitive warning for his tactics and stratagems, a talent which she frequently turns into innovative counterattacks that mostly seem to target his testicles. Similarly, his attempts to run her out of SP have come up short against her Hospitable Blessing Skill, which (in addition to granting both SP regeneration and immunity to curses, poisons, and diseases) is both bestowable at will to any ally she wishes and also active upon her at all times. This combination -- an unbeatable defense coupled with an indefensible attack -- is the Rock to Sora Sugimoto's Scissors in a way he can scarcely wrap his mind around, let alone formulate an effective response against.

Correspondingly, however, Hana Shirakane's wild and unbridled combat style has no substance beneath its surface other than her pounding maiden heart; she is acutely aware that the Kiku-no-Tsurugi can cleave through any Defense, and that one solid hit is all it will take to bring this battle to a very abrupt conclusion. Furthermore, the longer the battle goes on, the more she can see a comprehensive analysis of her fighting style building up behind Sora Sugimoto's cold, calculating eyes, and this pushes her to new heights of extravagance in an attempt to finish this quickly; Sora Sugimoto, his warrior's soul inspired to its full depth by her passion and power, rises to respond. It is a great clash of fire and water, of red oni and blue oni -- a fierce and primal conflict beyond all hope of conciliation or restraint -- and it seems as though it will go on forever.

Until, all of a sudden, it doesn't.

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"Wait," said Topher, frowning and feeling his palms begin to sweat, "wait." Temptation scoured his bruised and bleeding heart; he knew, he knew, that this was his weakest of weak points, and he flailed desperately for a weapon against it. "Why are you so quick to kiss my ass? You didn't even notice my best attack. If I really don't even threaten you, why give a shit what I do at all?"

"You threaten me a lot," Yariel commented glumly, turning back to the vast amalgamation of portals again; with no discernible signal, it reverted back to a bird's eye view of the lands below. "I don't think you can kill me or beat me up, but I've been wrong before; and even if not, you can still ruin everything I've worked for." He gestured towards the portals, and they flickered again; Topher saw the corpses of Vashyarl, of Kalphegor and Kholoth, and the vast pit of horror that had been the site of the Demon War's last battle. "I didn't want any of this. I just wanted --"

"Listen, pal," Topher interrupted viciously, "I've seen enough of your bullshit to know you're probably lying out your ass, so quit trying to scam me. You set me up from the minute I busted onto this world, and everything you've done since then has been a way to fuck with me." He threw his hands up in frustration. "I don't even know why I'm listening to you. You're probably lying about everything, including how I can get Nasha back."

"Actually," Yariel commented in a more quiet tone, "I can't lie in this room. Nobody can; security feature. Try it."

I fucked your mom, Topher started to say, but he was astonished to hear the words that came out of his mouth; what he said instead was, "I don't believe you." Shocked, he clapped a hand over his own mouth and blinked. "Fuck! That wasn't what I was gonna say." He lowered his hand after a moment, scowling. "It's true, though. Just because you can make me tell the truth doesn't mean you have to."

Yariel shrugged again. "Ask me a question it's in my best interest to lie to. You've probably already got one in mind."

"You bet I do," Topher snarled. "Tell me how I can whoop your motherfucking ass."

"A few ways," the other man admitted, to Topher's surprise; "My stats are, uh, really high, but you could find a way to circumvent them; Metaphrasty being a possibility, even though I have a higher rank in it than you. But you beat Kelfir when he was S-Rank and you didn't even have it unlocked; so it's, um, definitely an option I have to consider." Bonelessly, he sagged back onto the beanbag chair and gazed lazily at the ceiling, shifting his feet nervously. "There's other ways too -- things that bypass Damage, like asphyxiation. You'd have to land the attack first, though -- really low chance." He shrugged. "But turning that chance into an impossibility by putting us on the same team is way better than risking it, obviously."

Topher froze; the consequences of what he'd just heard took a moment to penetrate his brain, but left fire behind where they had slithered in. "But we wouldn't," he said with finality, balling his hands into fists and facing his foe squarely. "We wouldn't be on the same team, dickhead. I'd just be your slave."

"What do you mean?" Yariel rolled his head lazily back in Topher's direction, his sightless eyes staring somewhere off above Topher's head. "The only thing you'd have to do when you got back is tell everyone I'm dead. Does it really matter if you can't disobey that? I mean, why would you want to?"

"Because," said Topher, quietly, "Vius was just following orders too." The room became silent except for a quiet hum, coming from somewhere Topher couldn't identify; and, after a moment, Yariel sighed and stood up.

"Can't say I didn't expect it," he commented, turning his back to Topher yet again, "but I had to try." He shrugged again. "Anyway, we're out of time; we've established all the, um, parameters. Now it's your move."

Topher's hands twitched uncertainly; his Stylus dropped from nerveless fingers, dissolving into the air as it banished itself. "What am I supposed to do?" he whispered to the darkness, forlorn. "How do I kill somebody my attacks do nothing against?"

"It is... very simple." At the sound of a voice behind him, Topher whirled; his jaw dropped open in shock and surprise, as, poleaxed, everything became clear.

Sugimoto, clutching a mortal wound low on the side of his abdomen, held a bloodied Kiku-no-Tsurugi in his right hand. "You get out of my way."