Banda clashed with Paron in an endless series of exchanges, stronger and sharper than he had ever been.

  His Harness technique had reached the limit of a fivefold enhancement. The form of his body no longer changed nor did the strain cause slight injuries, as he had learned to control its surge precisely.

  Paron struck hard with the back of his spear, and Banda blocked with his hand. The armor of aura that coated him shook but it did not shatter. Solid and firm as it was, it could handle such impact without breaking.

  But that was not all. The aura that lined his hand was far thicker than the rest that thinly covered the rest of his body. The total amount was the same, but now he could focus most of it on one area, strengthening its protection.

  It was a more skilled application of the technique that allowed him to make more efficient use of it. A more even spread of Armor was safer, but he could compensate for with his instincts.

  Paron flourished his spear and struck from the other side. Banda forced the dense concentration of armor to his other hand in time to block that strike clean too.

  The centaur flickered away, faster than Banda’s eyes could track, and reappeared behind him. Banda’s Sense technique had expanded to 5 yards, enough to follow Paron’s rapid movement.

  Paron thrust his spear but Banda had already started to move. He slipped past the weapon as it drew a thin line of blood across his cheek, and clawed back. Though Paron flourished his iron hand away and they fell into another exchange.

  Banda had been able to train with Paron for almost two weeks without rest because of Paron’s special abilities. His spear could restore through its strikes instead of harming. Not only were Banda's wounds healed, but also his aura, stamina, and even his mental fatigue.

  Banda had improved himself greatly since they began. More than he had expected in this short time. But for all the progress he had made, the distance between him and the centaur felt exactly the same.

  Paron stopped his movements suddenly, and Banda followed suit. “Commendable mastery of the basics. Well enough… Now you must look beyond.”

  “...how did you get this strong?” Banda asked. It was not the centaur’s might that interested him. None were mightier than himself after all. But the sheer depths of his skill that could only be honed through countless fights was incomprehensible.

  “I am not strong.”

  Paron’s words bothered Banda. He had experienced the exact opposite for himself these past days. But it did not seem to him as though the centaur was lying.

  “How do I be strong like you?” Banda changed his question slightly.

  “There’s no need to rush… All things come with time.” Paron gave calm advice.

  “I do not have time.” Banda frowned.

  He could feel the seal around the Soul Seed already start to wane. The shamaness’ words were true. He had little more than a day until they were back under the mercy of Otto. Banda had to kill him before then.

  “We all have time. Too much time…” Paron seemed to get lost in thought at his own words. Though that was not unfamiliar to Banda. Paron often acted strangely, often said words that make no sense to him.

  “Why did you train me?” Banda asked out of curiosity.

  “An odd question…” Paron spoke. “Did you not ask it of me?”

  “I am not Monga.”

  “Hmm?” Paron stared at Banda in silence. A brief trace of clarity seemed to wash over him. “Ah… Still too soon… Far too soon…”

  Banda looked back patiently. He had only suspected at first but having fought Paron for days on end, he was sure of it. Paron was an Adversary.

  “How-”

  “You are running out of time.” Paron spoke suddenly before Banda could finish his words. A strange weight in his tone hung grim in the air. “Long are the days and long are the nights, but this era too shall end. You must conquer yourself, child.”

  Banda frowned. Paron spoke in tricks again. Confusing tricks. Why would he fight himself. It was others that were his enemies. It was this forest that he should conquer.

  Paron chuckles lightly. “Fret not, child. All things come in time. But you cannot linger here much longer.”

  “Eres has not come out yet.” In truth, he was worried about the time remaining. But Banda could not leave until she came back.

  “Eres?” Paron questioned. “Ah, the Oracle… The journey ahead is long with such a wayward guide…”

  Banda’s eyes focused more keenly. Eres had told him of oracles. Humans who could see what would happen. But she had not told him that she was one.

  Was she an oracle, or was Paron mistaken again. If Eres could see what would happen in the days ahead, then why had she not warned him of it.

  “But,” Paron’s words snapped Banda out of his scowling contemplation. “I suppose we need not all reach our destinations. Yes… that is for the best.”

  Something seemed to cross his mind as he glanced around. “I don’t see her… Strange…”

  Paron stabbed his spear through Banda’s chest. Beyond his instincts, beyond the speed of his reaction. Paron had simply stabbed, and Banda could have done nothing to stop it.

  Banda darted back on the verge of hysteria, as blood poured from his chest. It had struck his heart. A fatal wound.

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  His legs staggered from weakness and gave out from under the weight of him, to his further shock. He felt power drain from his body like blood from a wound, as he started to grow old.

  “Age takes its toll.” Paron spoke, his presence now exuded a callous and methodical hostility. A suffocatingly firm pressure the likes of which Banda had felt only once before.

  “Time is the greatest poison.”

  ---

  Eres started with a single hand. A mana-blue hand that ended just where the wrist began. A hand not much larger than her own, floating in the air.

  A thousandth would have been too paltry, so she gave it a hundredth of her aura. And then she created a hundred more.

  Together, they would encompass the totality of her aura. The maximum number this martial art would be able to produce.

  She did not give them wondrous shapes or effects. She only increase their strength and durability and speed as high as it would go.

  Each had the strength of ten normal men. Or that is what it would have been, were she at the start of her cultivation. With her capacity doubled from the Spirit Tempering stage, each hand was worth that of twenty normal men.

  The base of her art had been brought into form, but her ambitions were far beyond such lowly measure. A mere peak Rank 1 Warrior with nothing but Harness and a low-grade enhancing art would be double or even triple that of an individual hand.

  These hands lacked wondrous qualities, so she would make them beyond wonder. Channels wove at her will as she gave the art its key feature. The hands could fuse together and separate at will, and the fused hands would hold strength and durability the sum of the hands that comprised it.

  All of the one hundred hands before her melded into one giant hand. It represented the whole of her aura, and its strength was that of two thousand men. Far greater than Banda in his Monstrous Feral Form. Greater than the wight. Greater than the ogre. Only Dabru, the Harbinger of Ruin, was stronger, and even then it was not by much.

  Eres had the giant hand split into two, and those two into four. And the four back into a hundred.

  Eres smiled wide. She did not need to choose between utility and absolute power. She could have both. And she could have them as she wanted and when she needed.

  Each was a hundredth of her aura, so she named it the Hundred Hands technique, but its value was a number far greater. Her mind raced with idea for how to wield them in battle, but her rummaging was cut short.

  “This art has been recognized.” The Training Spirit spoke with rising grandeur. “Be not content, child. This is merely the start. For what lies beyond mere arts and spells is true magic.”

  The room shone a blinding white and Eres found herself back out in the Misty Forest, with the Training Shrine nowhere in sight.

  The joy of her new art swelled within her, but she quickly suppressed it. It had been difficult to tell time in that room but she was certain it had been at least a week. Maybe more.

  The faint feeling of the seal within her revealed that there was still time left, but how much exactly she did not know.

  Eres looked around, and her expression lowered. Banda was nowhere to be seen either. She hadn’t expected him to wait right in front of the door, but she had expected him to be wise enough not to wander off unnecessarily.

  She had to regroup with him, and head for the gemini dungeon. That was where the key to her vision laid.

  Suffocating intent erupted from the distance. Eres’ eyes widened at the weight of it, but quickly recognized its savage nature.

  Eres took only a single step, before a strange man entered her sights ahead that had not been there before. She flinched back into a stance, alert and ready for a fight.

  It was an old man of average height and unremarkable appearance. He was bald and clean shaven with bronze skin. Both of his eyes were blank and his earlobes were unusually large. He donned a white wool robe bare of embroidering or garnishments, and he walked with a gnarled oak staff.

  “Only tragedy awaits beyond the Tower.” The man’s foreboding words were spoken with a tone of ominous mysticism, though strangely absent of enmity. “Your errant ways will bring ruin to all.”

  Eres’ eyes widened. “You are-”

  “My name matters not.” Zeal started to raise The Prophet’s voice. “Return to your path, o’ disloyal pawn of fate.”

  Eres’ eyes narrowed again with callous sharpness. “My path is wherever I choose.”

  The Prophet let out a few erratic chuckles that did not quite feel like mockery. “None can row against the tides of fate forever. Woe thy hands to break upon her gentle currents. There is naught but for you to drift or drown. Your path ends within the tower.”

  Murderous intent fell upon the land. A curtain of tyranny, vain and violent. The sum of which swirled with Eres' eyes. “Fate is just another god. All gods can die.”

  The prophet smiled. “Is such courage born of barbaric ilk? You think The Savage a steed to be broken in, but he is no mere beast. How long before the chains that bind him turn to reins in his hands, and his wayward guide falls from the sky...?”

  The prophet vanished like burning cloth into the wind, as his words lingered. Eres remained only for a moment before rushing off in the direction of Banda’s intent.

  The words of fate still rang foul in her ears. She needed no reminder of things she already knew, nor would she ever accept them. Not even if they came from Adapa himself.

  ---

  Banda clutched his bleeding chest, as panic coursed through him. Lifeblood in every sense drained rapidly from his body weakening with age.

  His gaze jolted up as Paron slowly walked towards him. There was no rush in the centaur’s steps, nor hesitation in his stride. Only the certainty of one who knew not mistake in the pursuit of victory.

  “This world has no need of you, o’ Horned One.” Paron raised his spear, but the certainty of death struck first.

  Banda’s primal instincts flared beyond his control. A violent, unfathomable, insurmountable terror. Banda had emitted rage, frustration, desperation, and fear upon others before, but against Paron, it was indignation. Indignation against the very thought of looming death.

  A complete and overwhelming defiance that heightened his body and mind and soul to its fullest potential, for the sole purpose of survival. And that defiance started to bleed into animosity.

  Paron showed no sign of fear on his expression, but he flinched still. As the moment passed, he started to remember.

  “Ah… It has been such a long time…” The centaur lowered his spear, along with his head as his front legs shakily bent to a kneel. “Forgive me, my prince.”

  Paron thrust his spear forward, slowly and reverently. And Banda instinctively let it happen. The green glow of the spear’s blade restored his wounds, aura, and age.

  Paron withdrew his spear just as slowly and rose again. “I go now to serve your will.”

  Banda watched as the centaur turned and left into the forest without another word. He still did not understand the erratic personality Paron showed. It felt as though the centaur had mistaken him for different people always. Monga, and three others.

  Banda rose to his feet. His eyes still narrowed even after the threat had left. He had gotten stronger, but he was still not strong enough. This Tower was far bigger than his forest, its lords more terrifying. What then, he thought, of the land of the gods that laid beyond the Tower. How much larger that would be.

  For the first time, Banda thought of his past strength with disdain. Where he once held heavy-handed pride, he could now find only discontent. To return to his glory was no longer enough. He had to become far stronger than that. Stronger than that last person who gave Paron such fear.

  A flicker caught the side of his vision, and Eres emerged through the thick fog. Upon seeing him well, she glanced around and seemed somewhat surprised at finding nothing else of note.

  “How much time do we have?” She asked.

  “...a day.” He answered before he whisked her up and sped off in the direction of the Demon Gate.

  Many questions ran through his mind, but there was no time to think on them. Instead, his mind turned solely to killing Otto. To survival.