Ray was tempted to use his new Soul Aspect with Aetheric Trace the very moment after he had earned it. He needed to test it out, after all.

  But the problem of being out of Mana was that he couldn’t use any spell that would regain him Mana either.

  Sighing to himself, he decided to get going. It was too dangerous to remain standing at one spot. Everything was still falling part. This whole battlefield would be nothing but dust floating in the air before long. Ray didn’t want to be here when that happened.

  Plus, he had already taken up a little too long getting his newest Soul Aspect. He had to hightail it where he needed to be.

  Fighting that gigantic Segmented Titan.

  Getting there wasn’t exactly easy, especially since Ray currently lacked his general ideal mobility options. No wings to carry him across uneven ground, no Time Veil to boost himself and move faster and faster. All he could do at the moment was run on his own two feet.

  How pedestrian.

  It got actually dangerous at certain points. The cracks sometimes got so wide that Ray actually hesitated before jumping across them. He missed his landing at one of those crossings, his jump making his waist collide painfully against the other side painfully. At least he managed to hold on with his arms before swallowing against the pain and pulling himself to solid ground.

  Then he continued running. No point wasting time being worried or relieved that he was still alive.

  No point considering how helpless he felt without his Mana-powered abilities.

  The sounds were drawing nearer. He was moving in the right direction. Not that there were a lot of stable paths for him to take. But it was definitely a stroke of luck Ray didn’t once fight himself trapped or needing to backtrack.

  He paused when he finally spotted the massive Titan. It was still distant. He’d need to keep moving. But it was confirmation he had nearly made it.

  Ray got going. He was pretty sure that Pierce and Lent had left the dungeon. Which meant the Titan had to be fighting against the others, namely Sameer’s team. Hopefully, Gritty wasn’t caught up in the mess.

  Speaking of Gritty—

  Gritty: You still alive, wingman? We’re nearly at the end of the dungeon.

  Ray: I’m fine. Thanks for the update. Glad you didn’t get caught up with the monster.

  Gritty: Where the hell are you?

  Ray: About to kill the monster and win us the treasures.

  She didn’t reply to that. He wondered if she was torn between concern for him and the fact that she wanted to win too.

  Gritty: You got Mana, then?

  Ray: You bet.

  Gritty: Good luck, then. And don’t die. It’s weaker than before. Just make sure to target its centre. There’s something like a connection running between all the segments. Once you see it, target it.

  Ray came to a stop. He was closer to the monster now, as well as the team fighting it. Well, not team. It was just Sameer.

  Ray: Connection? I was fighting that thing too. I didn’t notice anything like that.

  Gritty: You’ll see it. Don’t look with your normal eyes. You got Mana now, don’t you?

  Ray: OH!

  He was starting to understand what he’d have to do. For now, he used Aetheric Trace. The journey to the battle had allowed him to regain just enough Aeon Mana to cast the spell. Naturally, Ray focused on his newest Soul Aspect.

  Spiky pain burst around his head, but Ray ignored it. He’d get relief soon enough. Hopefully.

  Deep blue colours bloomed on his back, energy roiling and thickening. The stony vines emerged from the cloud of gathered energy from his shoulders.

  Ray didn’t even need to focus much to send them firing in every direction. It was fascinating to watch. The petrified vines, all of them thorny and the colour of the night sky, stabbed into the ground around him, digging into the rocks. A moment later, they began to pull out the earth itself, ripping apart the dungeon even further.

  For just a second, Ray wondered if they were going to smack him with the stones. Had he accidentally picked the wrong Soul Aspect? The other option had to do with—

  The broken rocks in the vines’ clutches started breaking even more. They were compressed before they turned into motes of aquamarine energy.

  No. They turned into Mana.

  The vines’ colour changed as they absorbed the Mana by consuming Ray’s surroundings. They lightened, turning more sky-blue. Each of the lighter coloured vines shot back towards Ray, returning to the cloud of energy on his back. The darker ones remained processing the rocks to gain Mana.

  As soon as the lighter vines re-entered the cloud of energy, relief arrived. Ray gasped a little as he felt the headache disappear. He blinked. Then he smiled as he checked his Status. Oh, yes. He had regained Mana.

  It wasn’t a lot at first. In fact, he had spent more Mana casting the spell than what the spell had returned.

  But he wasn’t disappointed. The spell wasn’t even done. There were at least half of the total number of summoned vines still left. As Ray watched, the counter on his Aeon Mana store rose higher and higher as more of the vines returned to him. By the time all the vines had completed their absorption process, Ray had regained all the Mana he had spent and then some.

  He had successfully obtained a process to take in more Mana than he spent.

  Perfect.

  It was a little worrying how the vines had needed to literally consume his surroundings to complete their function. The dungeon was already in a terrible state. He would have to actively worsen it to gain more Mana.

  In his current circumstances, that was definitely a precarious thing to consider. But whatever. Ray’s main priority was winning.

  He headed towards the fight. Another couple of Aetheric Trace casts had his wings back on him as well as more of the vines to gain more Aeon Mana. Best to top himself up before he got embroiled in that battle against a monster none of them had been able to beat yet, not even together.

  The fight… was going on strangely. Sameer’s team might not have been fighting with him, but they were present. Well, Eliza was.

  “Enough, Sameer,” she was yelling at him. “You want to die. Look around us!”

  She had a point. The other reason Ray was continuing to move was that he was quickly running out of stable ground. He had to keep it up, keep going so that he didn’t fall through the holes appearing without warning everywhere.

  Sameer made sure to summon a gaggle of portals first before replying. They ensured he was not only protected, but that he also got some sneaky shots in at the Titan. “Just go on ahead without me. You know I can catch up with you guys.”

  “Not if they destroy everything in one go, you idiot!”

  Ray wasn’t sure who or what she meant by that. But he couldn’t worry about it. He had to figure out a plan of attack.

  Actually… no.

  He was the one who held the advantage. The one who wasn’t running out of Mana here. In fact, he was gaining more and more Aeon Mana with every passing second. Plans were well and good, but he didn’t want to waste any more time with the dungeon falling apart. He had to act fast.

  Ray stood still for a few more seconds until his Mana capacity had nearly filled up. Then he got moving again.

  As he rushed towards the monster, he tried to follow Gritty’s advice. He shouldn’t look at that thing with just his plain eyes. That was the mistake he was making. Instead, Ray focused Mana into his eyes, casting Eternal Pulse at the same time.

  That finally did it. As the first pulse of translucent blue energy crashed over the Titan, Ray found just what he was looking. Just what Gritty had mentioned.

  There was a thick thread of purple Mana running through the Segmented Titan, connecting each of its pieces even when they were separated. Ray wasn’t sure how seeing it was going to help, since he would still need to destroy it, and his spells only acted on the physical, corporeal parts of their targets.

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  Didn’t matter. Ray was going to try, regardless. He had all the power to do so.

  The monster didn’t turn to face Ray even as he approached. It hammered Sameer with its oversized weapons, sending chunks of rocks flying at him in a stony storm. Sameer protected himself with more portals, but he couldn’t counterattack. He was almost out of Mana. Had to be.

  With room to act, Ray summoned several constructs. Flying Windbane maws came to life round him. The only barrier to creating more was the ringing pain in his head that limited the number of his constructs.

  He sent the squadron of constructs to attack the Segmented Titan. Ray didn’t particularly care if Sameer stuck around or not. He was going to beat that thing.

  He was determined to win this dungeon.

  The monster’s segments broke apart and protected itself against the blistering salvo of deep blue fire from the Windbane heads. Just like last time, the attacks from Ray’s constructs couldn’t damage the monster much. The Tier of its defensive abilities was a little too high.

  Even worse, when the Segments retaliated with their stony weapons, their lunging body parts like wings and tails, the constructs fell quickly.

  But that was alright. Ray could summon more. Better yet, he could infuse them with more Mana, raising their Tier and making sure they were strong enough first. New Windbanes came to life around him, extra Aeon Mana creating the entire monstrous forms of the constructs instead of just their skulls. The roared as they assaulted Ray’s target.

  “You!” Sameer shouted. “What are you doing here? I thought you’d run away already.”

  “Looks like you thought wrong,” Ray said.

  He didn’t take his eyes off the monster, but he didn’t need to look at Sameer to make sure he wasn’t sneak attacked. A Scouring Eyeball was floating over the eye, providing security coverage over the entire place for Ray’s benefit.

  The Segments were having trouble now. Ray’s constructs were stronger, were making sure they were holding their own this time.

  Now, Ray himself had to step in.

  The only problem was Sameer. As alerted by the flying eyeball, he was about to attack Ray directly. A portal had come to life next to him. All it showed was a weird eyeball peeking through, the iris glowing brighter and brighter. That wasn’t looking good.

  “Sameer!” Eliza screamed from somewhere behind. “Now’s our chance. Let’s go!”

  Sameer didn’t escape, no matter how much his teammate pleaded. “You’re not stealing my victory from me!” he shouted down at Ray.

  Ray ignored the bastard. The monster was his real goal. With the Titan mostly occupied against the constructs, he called up a couple of Windbane heads around his hands with Aetheric Trace. Those purple Mana spots. That’s where he had to focus.

  Sameer wasn’t about to let him change his focus so easily. The bastard was trying to attack him again. Ray was about to cast a spell to defend himself when a thunderous crack resounded through the entire dungeon. A powerful tremor took hold, and a second later, the whole battlefield shattered and they all lost their footing.

  Ray was a little too surprised at the sudden plummet. His heart pounded, panic barely kept at bay. Everything was falling. It wasn’t just him. The Segmented Titan, its many pieces, all of Ray’s constructs fighting against it. Even Sameer was plummeting through the air.

  Then his mind reasserted itself. Ray cast Aetheric Trace again, calling up Soaring Wings. His descent slowed, though he wasn’t suddenly flying instead of falling.

  But he could at least control his fall now. The panic rearing its ugly head was pushed back as Ray could actually take note of what was going on. He looked around, trying to see if he was now going to fall to wherever the very bottom of the Floor was, far beneath the sea of floating islands had been spending all his time on.

  As he looked around, he noticed Sameer cursing as he finally gave in to Eliza’s former demands. He disappeared into one of his portals.

  At least the asshole was finally gone.

  Relief crashed like a wave inside Ray’s chest as he noticed the falling rocks coming to a rest on a large shelf of stone. It seemed the whole dungeon island hadn’t broken apart. Yet. Ray could see fissures snaking through the cliff they were about to crash onto. This was going to fall apart before long as well.

  As Ray’s plummet slowed down thanks to his wings, his attention was hauled back to the monster falling with him. It shrieked out loud as it struck down, and for a heart-stopping moment, Ray wondered if the impact had just destroyed the shelf of rock too. He didn’t even pay attention to the way his ears were bleeding again, with how all noise was muted a bit.

  But no. The island was still stable. The rocks were still solid. Ray still had some time to kill the thing. To win the dungeon.

  So that was what he focused on.

  Gritty: Wingman. I saw the other team come out. Where the hell are you?

  Ray: Getting us the treasure we deserve.

  She might have had more questions, but Ray couldn’t even focus on the System chat. It was time to end this.

  Most of his constructs had survived the fall too. They were full-on Windbanes now, armed with huge, spectral wings. Of course they would be able to save themselves just as Ray himself had.

  As the Titan crashed down, unleashing a huge cloud of dust and rocks, the constructs rushed in with ferocious aggression. Ray ordered them to focus on the purple spots he had seen earlier. Those were the vulnerable areas. That he was pretty certain about. Plus, the fact that they were of a higher Tier meant they could really harm the Titan now.

  The most important factor was the fact that there were no more petrified vines bringing it the resources of the dungeon. It had no more reinforcements. No further ability to heal itself.

  Unlike Ray himself.

  He cast Aetheric Trace again, pulling out more of his own spectral petrified vines to pull in his surroundings as Mana. It was dangerous. He was actively ruining the structural integrity of a place that was on a precarious precipice.

  But fuck it, this thing was going down. Here and now. Like with Pierce, Ray cast Eternal Gravity.

  Not that the monster was going down easy. It was the strongest thing Ray had fought on his own yet. Of course it wasn’t going to die just like that.

  The parts of the monster took umbrage against Ray’s varied methods of assault upon it. It broke into individual segments, each of them battling back against the Windbane constructs. Huge weapons smashed in, storm of stones flew about, massive wings and tails and claws swiped and slammed about. Its fight was furious.

  Ray targeted the brain. That huge, half-reptilian, half-feline head that was yawning wide to fire off another laser of amethyst energy.

  He countered with his Windbane maws around his hand. Twin lasering breaths of compressed, blue fire met the monster’s belching blast. Ray’s attack was faster, though the resultant explosion covered the entire area.

  No worries. Ray had the construct of a Duskshell to encase him in its protective shell, making sure nothing of the detonation reached him. The same couldn’t be said for the Titan. It was hit head-on by the huge blast, its head cracking open like an egg. The Titan began bleeding the purple energy Ray had spotted earlier.

  With the head down, for now at least, Ray could take care of the other segments. A few of them had defeated his Windbane constructs, even after Tiering them up with the Mana Infuser ring.

  Fine. Ray would kill them himself.

  They attacked him first. As soon as the explosion had ended, huge weapons and limbs swung in. The Duskshell cracked and bowed under their combined might. But it didn’t give way.

  Allowing Ray to focus purely on firepower. He targeted the offending segments with precision, focusing the lasering breaths from his hand-Windbanes at the points where the purple energy was thickest.

  Bless Gritty for pointing it out. Just as she had suggested, the Titan’s segments were weakest there. They fell back and died as soon as Ray struck them at their vital spots.

  Still. They weren’t dead. Several were getting back up. The head was the first to rise, growling despite its wound, ready to fight back.

  “Seriously?” Ray said. “Why can’t you stay—”

  His question was interrupted when another dangerous crack ripped through the area. This place was about to shatter apart any minute now. Ray cursed.

  With another roar, the Titan and several of its Segments rushed at him altogether.

  Ray fired one of his hand-Windbanes straight up. Just as the monster reached him, he disappeared with Temporal Passage. His teleportation took him right above all his enemies. Ray began to fall, but as he did so, he cast Resurrect Recollect again to call upon the Duskshell once more. Extra Aeon Mana meant the entire monster was forming around him.

  The construct had always been about defence. But right then, a sudden idea of crushing the Titan down had popped up in Ray’s mind.

  So, as he fell on the monster and its segments, he used the mass of the enormous Duskshell to bear down on the Titan. His construct’s gargantuan weight now trapped his target in place.

  The Titan shrieked out in protest. Its maw opened wide again, pulsing with violet energy to blast out its laser strike.

  Not on Ray’s watch. He cast Momentous Domain, right on the spot where Eternal Gravity had been. The spell ripped through time to bring back all the power energy ousted out into the area over the last minute. All the lasering blasts from both Ray and the Segmented Titan, all the temporal spirits of Ray’s constructs, all the stony storms from the monster.

  Just as with Pierce, they all came back in one spot. They all compressed and combined together.

  Just as with Pierce, everything exploded again.

  Good thing Ray had remembered to use Temporal Passage. He might have encased himself with a Duskshell, but it wasn’t going to be enough. Not against a blast of that much concentrated power.

  The only spot that Ray could reappear was where he had been casting Aetheric Trace a while back to draw in more Mana with the petrified vines.

  A spot that no longer existed, of course.

  Essentially, Ray just appeared in free space. There was literally nothing around him but open air. Naturally, he started plummeting. Again. But he had his wings on, so just as before, he was able to slow down his fall as he landed at the spot he had been moments ago, after the explosion ended.

  [Enemy Defeated—Segmented Titan]

  Tier 34 Monster: Segmented Titan [Level 72] x1

  Essence: +24,480

  Knowledge: +3

  Aeon Mana Restored: +2,448

  Essence to Level 51: 69,760/262,000

  Knowledge to next Threshold: 2,545/3,500

  Ray breathed out harshly. There. The damn monster was finally dead. It was actually a little hard to believe that he had really done it. Although, the changing circumstances definitely helped.

  Speaking of—

  [Dungeon Cleared—Vine-Choked Valley]

  There was a lot more after that notification, but Ray ignored it for now. His eyes were fixed on the dungeon’s treasures appearing right where he had finally killed the Segmented Titan.

  Where two strange objects had materialized.

  Where a familiar style of portal was now popping to life. A rent in space that was about to spill the biggest asshole on the Third Floor.

  Ray’s breath caught in his throat. He cursed, used Temporal Passage, appearing right on top of the treasures. Even that wasn’t fast enough.

  Sameer was shooting out of his portal, a manic grin on his face as he aimed straight for Ray’s treasures.

  Cursing, Ray lunged too. They collided together. Ray rolled, getting back to his feet. He came away with one of the blocky treasures. Only one of them. Fuck. Sameer had still gotten the other one.

  “Give that back, asshole!” Ray shouted. “What are you even doing here?”

  Despite not claiming the second treasure, Sameer’s grin wasn’t going down. “How does it feel, huh? How does it feel to have all your hard work stolen?”

  “You fu—”

  The ground collapsed under them. The rest of the dungeon shattered, breaking apart. Ray wouldn’t have been too worried about it, his mind focused on recovering his treasure from Sameer, except for the message he received from Gritty at the same time.

  Gritty: Where the fuck are you, wingman? GET OUT OF THERE!

  Ray: I’m trying. I just beat the—

  Gritty: DOESN’T FUCKING MATTER. JUST GET OUT. THEY’RE DESTROYING THE DUNGEON.

  Ray: What? What are you talking about?

  Gritty: The Floor Lord. He’s destroying the dungeon because it’s apparently too dangerous for their whole floating islands schtick. If you don’t get out now, you’re fucking toast.

  Ray cursed again, watching as Sameer disappeared into another portal, as he fell.