The Decay mana of the Convergence reacted to their presence immediately, but not in the way he thought it would at first. With other Decay-based venoms used on him, rapid necrosis of his still-living tissue was common. It seemed that the concepts within this particular Decay mana were a bit different though, flavored halfway between Life and Decay, similar to how Dei’s soul mana was halfway between Soul and Spirit.
The Decay mana didn’t simply rot him, but specifically caused his body to imbalance itself by flaring toxins in certain parts of him. When he activated [Fortress of Denial], he was granted a much clearer view of what was happening.
The Decay mana fed itself to different, smaller mana types such as Fester, Toxic, and Cycle. When these mana types showed themselves in higher quantities, Dei could sense his Homeostasis Skill flare intensely, suppressing whatever happened in that area.
From this Dei figured out that the Decay mana was causing the bacteria or viruses in his body to grow faster in certain areas, or perhaps boost the toxins they produced. The oddest thing was that the reaction between his body and the mana were different every time. There were, of course, instances of poison buildup, but Dei also saw Blood mana flare in certain areas or Flesh mana condense itself. He quickly figured out that it was encouraging body growth, occasionally healing him but mostly causing outbursts of cancerous cells.
His Homeostasis was not for show though, and cracked down on each and every one of these cancers. Better yet, it knew when the effects of Decay were helpful, and allowed those to fester, increasing his rate of healing.
The process of checking out his organs and piecing everything together didn’t even take a second. When his view was brought outwards once more, he saw the effects of Decay on Edward, and it was shockingly destructive towards him. When the mana infected Dei, it was mildly irritating. On a small scale it was harmful, sure, but his body could easily counter it.
Edward though? Baseball sized growths bulged out from below his skin, and the man stumbled as supposedly more extreme changes happened below the surface. Some of the lumps burst into flame as his body actually burned it away, while others ballooned to absurd degrees. Dei felt Fendrascora pull him backwards, getting tens of feet between them as the growing lumps exploded, spraying a disgusting black liquid everywhere around him.
Dei’s face contorted in disgust and confusion. This… was not something he expected. Why? Why was the Decay mana so much more toxic to Edward than him?
Edward was an endurance based fighter. His entire goal was to last as long as possible. Something sparked in Dei’s eyes as he realized that Prime Humans Had Weaknesses!
They had incredible Racial bonuses, of course they would have weaknesses! He had experience in that regard. The better Racial bonus one was born with, the stronger the weakness too.
‘The weakness of Prime humans is that of mana types that end cycles or longevity, that cut life short. Passing and Decay are two I know, but what else? Could I use Void, the state between two points, to lessen the distance between Edwards current self and his end?’
Ultimately, it didn’t matter if he could. He didn’t need to do anything except keep Edward distracted now and let the Decay mana do its work, which he saw would be an issue.
In his crazed state, Edward showed no recognition of the world around him, but he did recognize enemies, and he looked towards the center of the Convergence now, ready to leap towards it and potentially end the Convergence by moving or breaking the anchor. Dei would have to stop him.
‘Well, Homeostasis is going to evolve very soon anyway… this is going to be a workout for my immune system’
Pushing Snap mana into the base of his feet, Dei kicked off the ground and propelled himself with an explosion to slam into Edward, sending them both flying, still only on the edge of the Convergence.
Dei grappled with him, holding his head under the water to drown out his screaming as his body blew itself to pieces. The water beneath him roiled and popped, the red and black ooze coating Dei as all he could do was close his eyes and mouth to hope for the best.
After only a handful of seconds though, Dei felt the skin on his hands peel and melt as Edward superheated himself.
‘Wha-’
Before Dei could react Edward exploded, releasing a fireball of heat and sending Dei and his entire group hundreds of feet into the air.
Fendrascora made sure that none of them were separated, but they had to wait until they hit the ground again before they could move, and by that time he expected Edward to reach the anchor. He tsked, but Clever had other plans.
Dei felt hyper-detailed instructions enter his mind on how, exactly, to move the snap mana in his legs to help give him downwards thrust. He also felt Fendrascora reshaping herself on his back, no doubt to Clevers specifications.
Dei followed Clevers orders without question, firing Heat and Convection behind him in a series of micro explosions. He expected to start flying wildly, as his control wasn’t that good to reach unhindered flight, but Fendrascora had thinned her body out in certain places and structured itself more sturdily in others, leading to a fifty-foot wide set of blood red wings on his back.
Under Clevers guidance, they shot towards an unremarkable spot in the air halfway between where Edward had blown himself up and the center of the Convergence. Trusting Clever, Dei brought his fist down at the same moment a ghostly transparent Edward flickered into existence, feeling his fist make contact and sending the visage plummeting to the ground as his body started to grow itself from scratch once more. It was formed enough by the time it hit the ground to leave a crater in the water, moments before Dei’s legs came down on Edwards skinless chest and punched through
Clever sent more instructions into Dei’s mind, and he released another, far stronger explosion to send himself upwards again right as Edward went to grab his legs.
“I’m out of stored heat” he sent to Clever.
“I know, keep doing your usual thing” he sent back in a strained tone.
They were close enough to the ground that Fendrascora sent out a limb, connecting her with the water and dragging them downwards.
They landed a short distance between Edward and the anchor, blocking his way. He didn’t register them as he charged in a straight line towards the anchor.
Originally waist-deep in water, his first step towards Dei hoisted him up and out of it. His second step took him across the surface, and his third step was into Dei’s grasp as Dei pushed against Edwards shoulders, trying to stop him with all the effect of a strong wind against a charging bull. Dei was not the focus of Edwards Rage at the moment, and was shocked to find Edwards strength far surpassing Dei’s own.
Fendrascora sent her entire body out, gripping the water and rooting him. Dei was hopeful for only a moment that it would stop Edward, until he saw the water and peat start peeling itself back, revealing the soft earth below as hundreds of thousands of pounds arched into the sky
Fendrascora grunted in effort as she kept hold of all the weight, until finally, Edwards momentum was stopped.
Dei’s grip on the man tightened when he felt the weight Fendrascora pulled up shift and start falling into its original place. The five of them were helplessly pulled along until, with a thud, the ground settled and their momentum carried the five of them further. Fendrascora had to release her hold on the earth as they were flung away from the anchor.
They would exit the Convergence but that was fine with Dei, there was always next time to lure Edward back into-
Stolen story; please report.
Edward stopped dead in his tracks as Dei lost grip on him and kept going.
‘Does Edward have a momentum canceling Skill?! Why?’ he thought frantically as he glanced backwards to see Edward midair- not simply floating free, but with a pink tentacle wrapped around his ankle.
Dei’s face contorted in anger as he recognized the monster that’d stopped Edward. It was no tentacle, but a tongue.
‘THE FUCKING FROG?!’ he screamed in his mind as his eyes followed the tongue to the ground, seeing a torso-sized frog halfway stuck in a pile of mud as it dug its heels and pulled itself back.
Absently Dei realized their direction was changing as Clever directed Fendrascora into a paraglider-like shape, but he couldn’t take his eyes off the scene before him as he saw his first personal enemy twist its body, using its tongue to fling Edward back the way they’d come. It wasn’t trying to eat Edward, it was just helping him.
Clever sent a panicked apology, saying that he hadn’t seen the frog in any of his other timelines until after it’d revealed itself, but Dei waved him off. Right now there was no time to point fingers or blame, they had the very real issue of a fourth, unknown variable in the fight.
Originally, the fight would be between Dei, Edward, and the Guardian, but why did the frog step in? From watching it so long ago, Dei found that the frog was suspiciously intelligent- likely even sapient. If he tried, he might even be able to converse with it. For a flicker of a moment, he considered trying to strike a bargain, perhaps to gain it as a companion in his menagerie, but he discarded the possibility. He really hated the thing.
So what did it gain? It clearly wanted Edward to kill the Guardian, likely so it could take the Decay anchor. After that, did it want Edward to kill Dei so it could take his soul mana? Did it have a plan for Edward?
‘It does! Edward is a Rage based fighter. He’s dangerous to me because he hates me, but if Edwards source of Rage is gone, what happens? He becomes a normal man. If Edward kills the guardian too quickly, then me, the frog will reap all the benefits of the fight. Sneaky bastard!’
It was a smart plan that was reliant on the frog being intelligent enough to gather information on its enemies and potentially even figure out how all of them worked. It clearly knew Edward and what would make him weak again, and it knew enough about Clevers Time affinity to find a gap or loophole of some kind. Did it know of Dei’s abilities? And did it calculate that he’d lose in an all-out battle against Edward?
He would have to avoid finding out. No matter how much he wanted to though, they were too far behind Edward to catch up. They glided after him, but Dei could only watch from a distance as a nine foot guardian rose up from below to meet Edwards charge.
Its lithe, graceful figure was partially obscured by deep green algae falling from its figure, but Dei knew it was only an empty humanoid skeleton with a goat skull for its head.
Edward crashed into it, but was quickly redirected with a supernatural, reassuring ease. Dei worried that the guardian would be turned to paste at Edwards strength, but was again reminded that Edward would only gain just enough strength to keep his enemy on their toes. The Guardian was so much stronger than Dei that even the small strength Edward got from it was enough to push him aside.
Rather than join the fight immediately, they glided above and watched as Edward charged in over and over, redirected and flung away from the anchor he still tried to reach.
Dei watched Edwards body break itself over and over again, releasing loud pops or crunches as growths exploded inside him. Despite that, his face betrayed not even the slightest hint of pain, and he just kept throwing himself at the Guardian.
Minutes passed with no change, and Dei was almost content to wait, but something deep in his heart was unnerved at the sight of this battle. The Guardian was not retaliating for some reason, simply buying time. Even if his Identify had a good enough range to hit it, Dei wouldn’t have, lest he anger it. As he watched its movements though, he started to notice a pattern to them. Not a pattern in the combat sense, but a behavioral sense.
He realized that this was his Beastial Communication upgrade from becoming a Slaughterer. He was reading this monster's body language, despite it being incredibly foreign to his own. What he saw was… not good. It was tense, afraid. It didn’t think it could win.
The Guardian was not the only one non-confident in its own abilities though. At his shoulder, Dei felt pain briefly start to leak through his connection with Clever.
Clever immediately focused on stopping it, but Dei was now aware of the pain Clever was putting himself in, and it only now occurred to him that Clevers ability to search timelines did strain him. He was searching now, for something. For a future they would win.
Dei told Clever to not try and stop the pain from reaching him and simply focus on the future. Dei wished he could tell Clever to not work himself too hard, but that would be a mistake. He needed Clever to find their victory, because he was not confident in doing so.
As Clever did that, Dei decided to extend an olive branch. Though his Wrath Identify was limited in range, his Kindness wasn’t. Channeling mana into it, a small cloud of Kindness mana floated down and made contact with the Guardian. He didn’t actually want to Identify the Guardian of anything, just use the Skill for communication, so he conveyed the message of “Let me hear the thoughts you want me to hear, and in exchange I would like to work out a deal for both of us. I want The Enemy (Edward) dead.”
The Guardian allowed for Dei to hear his thoughts. Dei would have to send long-ranged [Meaningful]s, but those would only have a few seconds of latency before they reached the guardian.
“Help” the Guardian started the conversation.
“I’ll try. What makes you think you will lose?” he asked.
“I am burning mana faster to kill the being than the being is dying. It will take four days for me to kill it. It will take me six hours to run out of mana.”
‘God damn, how enduring is Edward?’
He felt bad for pushing Edward on this guardian simply to buy Dei some time to rest, but Dei’s soul was already looking in a better shape without having to keep healing him.
“I will take the enemy away from you in two hours but I need to rest. Keep delaying him. We can take turns fighting him where I take a break by sending him to you, then I take him away before he kills you. Okay?”
With a plan in mind, Dei saw the Guardians movements relax and send back an affirmative.
“I must ask that you tell me where the anchor is though. There is another [MONSTER] that is hiding from both of us and trying to get your anchor. If you tell me, I can protect it.”
With the word Monster, he conveyed all the knowledge he had of the frog and its goals, and he made his intentions as honest as possible. He wanted this Guardian to trust him, because he really really did not want it to die, and the only way to protect it was to shield its anchor.
Luckily, the Guardian was rather cornered in its options. It knew Dei was its only hope, so it told him easily enough by conveying the location of a rusted metal brooch below the earth. Dei quickly told Clever where this brooch was, and to focus his abilities on scanning the timelines around that one spot- ensuring it would not be tampered with.
Clever sent back a pained affirmative, and got to work.
* * *
Fendrascora kept them in the air by flapping her batlike wings occasionally as they circled above the fight between Edward and the Guardian. Dei continued to rest his aching soul, but he never stopped watching.
It was as he started to get confident in everything going according to plan when Clever sent a panicked word to both Dei and Fendrascora.
“DIVE!” and down they went.
He knew the urgency in Clevers voice and boosted them downwards with explosions, but the rest of Clevers communication was a record of the next few seconds. Dei had been keeping watch of the ground with low level pulses from his [Soul Echo], and he was about to find that the frog was close to the anchor, too close to stop, so they were diving down early.
Whatever the frog used to shield itself from the Soul Echo and Clevers timeline ability was limited though, and when its future became too intertwined with the focus of Clevers Skill- the brooch- its stealth fell apart.
Despite that though… they wouldn’t make it. They would reach the anchor just a moment too late. The frog would grab the anchor and escape. The Guardian would unravel, and Edward would once again throw himself at Dei.
This future was solid. It was set. It would happen, and there was nothing Dei could do to stop its arrival. Feeling the wind rush past him, he felt it there, right in front of him. The timeline of failure, the timeline where he lost.
The link between him and this timeline was solid in a way he could feel at the tip of his fingers. Mid-dive he felt his body react almost on instinct, reaching out and grasping the space between space. the point between points. The time between time. The Void.
It was the nothingness between, it held no substance, yet it was there in everything. Grasping this void with both hands, he stretched the distance between him and the failing timeline, pushing it with all his will as reality turned to putty beneath his hold. The timeline was set to converge with his own, but he threw his very soul into resisting this fact, placing himself between the two and feeling the crushing pressure of both.
His will quaked.
The failing time shook.
And everything cracked.
