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And when that happened to fail?

Well, I still wasn’t anywhere near good enough to teleport between my clones, but all my practice with rune projection paid off. I could achieve enough proficiency to blur my own body temporarily into a near undetectable form, while replacing myself with a clone. It created the illusion that I was capable of short distance teleportation, and I loved every bit of the frustration on the faces of my enemies.

Or enemy, rather. The burning recruit could still show emotion while the stiff facial muscles of the undead weren’t capable of anything beyond groaning and biting.

I managed to stay just a step ahead of them all as I ran towards the house, but it was a closer thing than I made it seem. Several times, the burning recruit almost caught me, his fingers passing inches from my skin and bathing me in uncomfortable heat.

And the whole time, paranoia and confusion were wreaking havoc on my mind.

None of this was supposed to be possible. And if he was suddenly capable of betraying me, what did that mean for the rest of the recruits cutting their way through the undead horde to join me? Would one of them stab me in the back while I struggled to fight off the obvious enemies?

I can abandon them. I can just run. Mia can follow. She’s even better at her technique than I am. We can get out together. But… what if she betrays me too?

The spiral of doubt and bitterness almost made me miss a step, and I forced myself to refocus on more immediate concerns. There would be time aplenty to freak out later. For now, I couldn’t abandon anyone. I wasn’t sure I could make it through the city alone.

The dead were not idle while we struggled. More and more corpses were emerging and advancing on us, drawn in by the commotion or whatever other senses they had. The street was so thick with the press of bodies that it resembled a rotting river. We still had some leeway to move, on account of all the dead we had cut down already, but that wouldn’t last forever.

In a fit of genius or stupidity, I started making riskier moves. I shunted my illusions behind clusters of enemies, then did my best to move evasively. The dead kept grasping for the mana the moment it formed into a figure, which made the technique a lot harder to maintain, but I persevered.

It paid off when my burning assassin started tearing his way through the corpses in an attempt to get at me. His fire was far more effective against the undead than any of our weapons. Soon, the street was lit by the flames of burning corpses.

Best of all, even if it added another hazard to keep track of, the flames were spreading. The dead did not care for their own safety, so the press of their bodies made it easy for the fire to jump from one corpse-clump to the next. This was good news for the living, but it did mean we needed to hurry.

It also meant the human torch had outlived his usefulness. I could not let him reach the house and set fire to our only chance at safety.

With a deep breath, I switched the technique I was using and poured all my mana into it. A reddish shield sprang up around me as I materialized fully a few steps away from the burning recruit, all my clones fading away.

He gave a roar of triumph, and then he was on me, rushing to close his arms around my body so he could burn and break me simultaneously.

I let him do it.

But first, I angled my sword just right.

He was counting on my dodge. I could tell that much from the startled look in his eyes. He did not expect me to just stand there and let him close in.

He stuttered to a full stop, arms around me in a fiery embrace. Slowly, his stunned eyes fell, gazing at the hilt of my sword pressed against his stomach.

I had aimed up, through the ribs and straight into his heart. It was easy, since all his armor was burning or melting. When he started bleeding, I was fascinated to see that the oozing substance resembled magma. It definitely burned like magma too, sizzling against my sword, my hand, and the ground.

He had just enough time to raise his head again and meet my self-satisfied smirk before I ripped my sword upwards, dividing his entire upper body into two parts like a macabre blooming flower.

That, of course, caused an eruption of his odd blood that covered me entirely, but I didn’t care. It also sprayed all over the surrounding undead, igniting those who weren’t burning already.

Closing the final few yards between me and the house was both difficult and exhausting. With my shield running at full power, I wasn’t skilled enough to engage The Hunter’s Clouded Steps as well, which meant that I had to force my way through the undead rather than dodge around them.

Every hit drained my mana core, which was already emptied considerably from giving the human torch a hug. At least the lava blood had all slid off my barrier, leaving behind hazards for the undead to navigate.

Even with my delay, I was still one of the first through the door. The few recruits who were now guarding it leapt out of my way, and I stumbled to the floor, panting hard.

Immediately, Mia’s hands started tugging me back to my feet.

"You can rest later," she taunted, though I could hear the worry in her voice. "Come on, we need to help them."

I groaned, but complied, switching all the mana I could into my body strengthening technique.

The two of us took up position next to the door, ordering everyone else to secure other potential entrances into the house. It was a delicate dance of slash, push, clear the entrance, jump out of the way for recruits to enter, resume defense, but we managed.

Still, no amount of effort on our part was going to be enough to save everyone. By the time the screaming outside stopped and the whole horde of the undead was well and truly on fire, there were only about thirty recruits safely inside the house. The rest had either been torn apart or caught in the conflagration that the human torch had unwittingly started.

To my immense relief, the door was made out of the same bluish, mildly mana-infused rock as the rest of the house. So, when we managed to push the burning corpses away from the entrance and slam the door shut, the sound of undead slamming against it was accompanied by the cracking of bone. They couldn’t break through rock, especially not with the flames eating away at them and making their bones brittle.

At first, I fumbled with the odd lock. It took me a moment to figure out that it required a pulse of my mana. After engaging the mechanism, I stepped away gingerly, eying the stone door like it might collapse at any moment.

It didn’t, but my sigh was more full of exhaustion than satisfaction.

"Well, that was a thing."

I gazed around the entry hallway. The floor was torn up, wooden tiles scattered everywhere. The corpses of former residents must have crawled up through these holes, dealing the same damage to the floor as their fellows outside had caused to the cobbled streets. I shook my head in disgust.

Then I paused, looking closer. The mage responsible for the whole fiasco must have conjured away sections of the city’s foundation just to pull off this trick.

I didn’t know what to make of that.

"Come on, we need a better view of what’s happening," I called over my shoulder to Mia, already striding down the entry hallway.

We passed a fancy living room. A group of recruits huddled there, eying the windows nervously. Then we took the staircase to the second floor. I distinctly remembered seeing a small balcony up there. It didn’t take us long to find it, through a set of double doors in what must have been the master bedroom.

I kind of regretted throwing those doors open. Stench worse than any slaughterhouse assaulted me as I stepped out onto the balcony. It was easy enough to ignore while fighting for my life, but burning undead did not make for the most aromatic scent. Thankfully, the view from the balcony quickly distracted me.

Above us raged a battle unlike any I had ever seen.

A woman in tattered robes hovered in the sky, almost on level with the floating islands. While I couldn’t make out her features, it wasn’t due to any failure of my enhanced eyesight. Around her head, like some unholy halo, countless faces continuously emerged, screamed in agony, and then faded away to be replaced by others in an endless procession of souls.

Her hands blazed with a sickly multicolored light. I could tell it wasn’t the kaleidoscopic hue of spatial mana. She was forcing all the natural elements together into an unnatural patchwork of spells, firing them one after the other at her opponent.

This opponent, floating at the same level but several feet away from her, was none other than the General of the Legion of Torment.

I could tell he was talking, but my ears were nowhere near as good as my eyes, so I couldn’t pick up a word.

Or could I?

In a moment of recklessness, I converged my mana on my ears. I had never tried to boost their effectiveness in particular, but I kludged something together using both the strengthening and refining techniques.

My ears popped. My balance briefly faltered, and I swayed, gripping the balcony railing. Then the noises of the city took on a whole new quality.

The fire in the street below popped and crackled. The moans of the fading undead reached me, sounding almost like begging now. The hushed words of the recruits elsewhere in the house tried to force their way into my ears.

And beyond it all, so faint that I almost couldn’t make it out, was the conversation happening far above me.

"… masterfully. I did not think a human mage, let alone on a world like this one, could achieve such a soul-merging and still remain in control. Others have tried, of course, but they were all driven mad."

The woman, Reliana Tingent I presumed, screeched in fury. "Die already, invader!"

A spell exploded out of her in a wave. It was a combination of ice, fire, and air, designed to slice apart everything in front of her while simultaneously freezing and burning it.

The general’s body flickered, and the attack passed through him harmlessly. It hit a floating island instead and absolutely demolished it.

"Every time I have seen a mortal try something like this, they have fallen into a mindless state of rage," the general continued, unabashed. "Most went on a rampage, determined to destroy everything. Some just kept absorbing souls, draining the entire population of their world into one merged collective."

More spells homed in on him. More shows of magic beyond what any local should have been able to wield exploded over the city. Still, he remained wholly untouched, speaking as calmly as if he were giving a lecture.

"The most successful example of soul mergers I ever saw was on a world we initially thought was barren of intelligent life. It took us an embarrassingly long amount of time to realize the locals had willingly merged themselves into one entity. They lived in a shared dream realm, electing individuals who would occasionally manifest as semi-independent projections in reality, in order to maintain the facilities required to sustain their collective’s physical form. Said form was useless, by the way. A pile of flesh cushioning brain matter. Nothing like the elegant solution you came up with."

The mage screamed in a thousand enraged voices. The sheer mana-infused volume of the sound almost sent me into unconsciousness, but I managed to cling on.

"That is why I will offer you this final chance," the general declared. "Surrender. I can help you stabilize yourself further. Upon your ascension, you would immediately become one of the most powerful demons under me."

The mage cackled. "Never. You ruined everything. I was so close to taking over. So close to ruling this world. I could have had EVERYTHING!" Her voice rose into a shriek, devolving into mad multitudes again.

"I see. That is… unfortunate." The general seemed genuinely saddened by the rejection, but he didn’t linger on it for long. "In that case, let this be the end of this mess."

His body blurred as he leapt forward, too quickly for me to track or for Reliana to react. The next thing I knew, his hand was in her chest.

Then a wave of mana so thick I couldn’t breathe erupted over the city. Towers shook, bridges snapped, and the few remaining islands collapsed out of the sky as the general’s voice rose in a chant.

I felt something manifest then. An attention. A will. Some sort of entity beyond my understanding, and it was screaming. Its wail rose in pitch with the general’s voice, then suddenly cut out when an eruption of reality-bending force swept out of Reliana’s chest.

The woman died, and the force unleashed from her passing painted the sky red. A crack opened far above our heads, revealing a pair of eyes that peered down at the world. They curved into satisfied crescents, and then faded away.

But the sky did not revert to its natural color. Neither did the demonic mana clear up. Instead, it seeped into the ground, into the air, into the very mana of the world, until it tainted everything.

I knew then, beyond any doubt, that Berlis was gone. This world belonged to the legion now.

Another outpost of the Abyss had been born.