Stupid, fucking, complacent idiot.

  In the previous boss arenas, the creatures hadn’t become aggressive until I moved some space into the room. Expecting the same here, I tried to get some information on the elemental. Instead, I had gawked for too long and the opening shot was landed by the mini-boss. Without warning, all of the ambient mana but pure lightning was wrung away in an instant. As even the lightning within the huge room took on a blue hue, the lightning elemental struck.

  Literally.

  With nothing but compatible energy in the air, the elemental had essentially teleported across the room. Electricity moved through low resistance easily, and the whole room had become a conductor. My shoulder was roasted by the slash of the lightning elemental’s halberd. There had been just enough of a pause between its appearance before me and its attack that I avoided having my head removed from my body.

  I raged at myself as I dodged around the room, activating Infusion with as much force as possible. A small area of “Grant” mana was established, the expenditure of energy massive but necessary. I could hardly react to an attack which had taken half my life. Catalyst was already hard at work ripping apart the invasive mana which leapt from the elemental’s attack into my mana channels.

  My own mana ripped control away from the mini-boss and allowed me to make some space by locking down the area. The glowing blue humanoid tried the same trick, and stopped at the edge of my barrier. It still swung a lethal attack, but with my attributes heightened and the element of surprise no longer in play, I was able to avoid it. Retaliating with the Jingu Bang, the staff shot forward at amazing speed, but the elemental had shot back twenty feet.

  For a short few seconds, the pair of us didn’t move. Sizing the other up, I judged that this elemental had a higher level of intelligence than the ones I had faced up to now. Whether that was a result of its level being above the others or something to do with a higher quality of energy in the elemental’s creation, I didn’t know. What I did know was that this creature was easily the most dangerous I had faced in the dungeon so far.

  Reysault had nearly killed me, but half of that situation had been my fault. Her army had been a fair amount of the danger she posed, and her own strength was not perfectly arranged for one on one combat. In contrast, the elemental before me was a being of pure lethal ability. If the ice elementals were defenders, sleet were rangers and the snows were more of like vicious beasts, then the lightning was a knight. It carried no shield, but there was a regality in its posture and weaponry which gave off a palpable pressure.

  The elemental was strong, and faster than me by a large margin, so I had to remove its advantages. My mind strained a little under the weight of concentration until I felt Tag take some of the load off me from the Mind Palace. That’s right, I told myself, reaching out to my other connections. I tapped the bond between myself and Merownis, as well as the one with Ascentown. I even thought of Naea, though there was no true link between us other than friendship.

  It’s not just me. I’m not alone.

  Suddenly questioning my decision to assault the tundra alone, I decided to believe I was protecting those who had chosen to follow me. With that in mind, I knew it was no longer a question of my victory. Just what it would cost me to get there. With a quick motion I removed the half finished Greater Potion of Healing from my inventory and downed it. The elemental did not move, content to let my mana ebb away as it waited.

  Taking my cue, the third act of aggression was mine. I couldn’t use Infusion like this forever, so I was on a timer and the elemental seemed to know it. There was no retreat in my mind, not even for a moment. It was either win or die. Every fight ends in victory, I psyched myself up, every challenge is just a stepping stone.

  I shot forward, a pair of potent Magic Missiles appearing in the air as I did. Each of them cost twenty mana each and they began to chase the elemental. The lightning mana I had taken from the first attack was split between Mana Barrier and the Jingu Bang. The staff stabbed forward again, now coursing with electrical power.

  When the mini-boss tried to dodge, it succeeded at first. The Magic Missiles made slow loops in the air as they gave chase but they were just a distraction. They would hurt if they hit the core but I didn’t expect them to land. They were just set up for the personal strike. With Infusion making me twice as strong as without, the staff thrust shot out like a lightning bolt of my own. Its speed was truly blinding, my own eyes unable to follow the attack completely. Even then, it appeared as though the lightning elemental would slip away.

  I could already feel the staff’s excitement even before I activated Perfected Strike. Normally, there was only so much deception a weapon like the Jingu Bang was capable of. It was a straight pole, after all. The ambiguous size and weight of the staff was an incredible help when it came to landing attacks and having those attacks actually hurt. Through the Jingu Bang’s experience alone, a simple tap could hit like a truck. Add King’s Training and I fought like a demon monkey king like the one the staff referenced.

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  This time, the Jingu Bang didn’t need the assistance of the training skill. Connecting to the intents within the lightning mana contained within, the staff did not just extend. It bent, curved and in places completely flipped around on itself as all of my skills worked in tandem to land a decisive blow.

  My hopes had been a little high, it seemed. The energy from the elemental’s first attack faded from the Jingu Bang as its tip connected with the hastily raised halberd. I had forced the Grade One mini-boss to defend, but even that had cost me. A painful shock shot up the staff and onto my Mana Barrier. Despite blocking most of the true damage, it still hurt.

  This time when the elemental and I squared off, it was a moment of tension for both of us. From the way the elemental’s form flickered and sparked, any patience which it had before was gone. Good, I nodded. That was how it should be. Take me seriously, you piece of shit.

  The next series of clashes were pyrrhic for myself in my estimation. I kept my health metre visible for the fight and it quickly returned to below halfway as I traded a few blows with the elemental. Tag said it was theoretically possible for me to beat the elemental enough that its body wouldn’t reform but I hadn’t seen it happen. Fighting snow elementals in the snow meant they never had to create the material and expend resources themselves. As with the elementals outside, it didn’t feel like I did any damage to the thing at all with physical attacks to its body.

  Except that was more than fine. I wasn’t only attacking physically. With each clash, Catalyst activated and drained more of the lightning mana from the creature. Its shape shrank to half its height over our engagement, only returning to its full size when we stopped. Unlike the elementals outside, there were no spare lightning strikes to refill this one’s stores of elemental mana.

  While I had stolen some power from the damage it had done at the beginning of the fight, it was nothing compared to the amount I was able to syphon away in the ensuing skirmish. The Jingu Bang drank the energy happily and waited for its chance to whip out like a viper made of lightning. My Mana Barrier became charged, reminding me of the drama with the storm arrows outside. Thankfully, this time it was a magical effect under my control and not just science interacting strangely with magic.

  I sighed with relief.

  It had cost me the rest of a very valuable potion, but I felt the equilibrium of the battle tip in my direction. The elemental seemed to think so, too, as its tactics changed entirely. Shooting to the back of the room with a loud clap of sound and a flash of light, I felt an immense amount of power concentrating to a point. I tilted my head and was about to ask Tag if my guess was correct when he started shouting in my ear.

  “It’s charging up an attack! Get out of the way!”

  I smirked and shook my head. Tag was smart in ways which almost intimidated me. When it came to magic, Spirit and the tricky, unexplainable parts of how the System worked, he was like a cheat code. Even the things I was able to do in combat like summoning Magic Missiles, altering mana on the fly or even paying attention to everything going on at once were thanks to Tag’s help.

  However when it came to the real world and how things worked there, he wasn’t so clued in. He didn’t know there was no way I was going to dodge whatever attack was being charged up. He just knew that I refused to.

  “What are you doing?!” He demanded, frantically trying to keep up with what I had planned. I shushed the scared portion of my brain, grateful that Tag had taken the anxiety off my shoulders. With him worrying, it left me free to act.

  The entire fight had taken less than fifteen seconds at this point, and my mana was nearly as low as my health. That didn’t matter. As I began gathering all of the energy I could into one Magic Missile, I heard the fear once again. “That’s not how Magic Missiles work!” My own voice told me.

  “Too bad,” I replied. Since I awoke to the System and began brute forcing my way down the path of magic I had learned one thing. If the pieces of the puzzle don’t fit, you can just shove them together anyway and deal with the aftermath later. I could feel a magical debt being accrued as I pushed against my mana total. Even as I started to run out completely, I used the regeneration I did have to add more and more each second.

  On the other side of the room, the elemental was doing something similar. A crackling blue ball with streaks of yellow and orange energy blasting around its edges was growing by the second, as the elemental’s human form shrunk in kind. “You know,” I admitted aloud, both to the enemy and to Tag, “this had always been something of a dream.”

  “Yeah, if it works,” Tag spat back, doing everything he could to hold together the unwieldy mess of magic I had created. It felt more like a bomb in my hands than my salvation but that’s where Spirit came in. Opening the Spirit Well like a sluice gate, I flooded my new attack with intent. More than an aim, I placed into the attack my dream.

  It’s not enough, a fearful voice screamed in my mind. I believed the instinct and reacted immediately by adding Dragonburn to the mixture at the final moment. A colossal roar erupted from within the Aspect, louder than any I had heard before. Something cracked within me. My head swam at the volume rose, the dragon within my soul screaming in unison with me.

  “Haaaaaa!” I screamed too, unleashing the power in my hands at the very same time the elemental exploded. It’s core popped before the final attack shot forward. I received energy for claiming its life and immediately retaliated. A constant stream of Magic Missiles flew from my hands in a river of power. The beam of energy I created collided with the lightning bolt from the mini-boss and the whole world went white.

  I was thrown backwards so hard I made a slight crater in the wall. I had enough wherewithal to take a look at my health total. It wasn’t looking great but my Recovery was still positive. As long as I didn’t take any more damage, I would be fine. My ears were ringing and my legs didn’t coordinate with my brain at all as I tried to stand. I rose a tiny bit before slipping and catching my head on the floor, hard.

  “Oh,” I murmured, darkness encroaching on my vision and unconsciousness pulling me into its grasp, “there we go.”