Ray was having trouble deciphering just what the demon was doing. Was… it even a demon? All he saw everywhere was black smoke taking over the entire extended battlefield. Smoke that admittedly twisted and turned like it was alive, a hundred airborne serpents writhing through the air to ensnare their targets.

  He didn’t see any actual bodies. Nothing solid he could hit as he had done with the Demons of Pride and Intolerance.

  The notification about the Dungeon Obstacle cleared things up, but only slightly.

  [Eternal Pulse—Dungeon Obstacle]

  Demon of Cowardice

  Fear is a primal tool of survival. Overcoming it may be a target of many a tale, but in truth, it serves a very real purpose. Yet, that purpose cannot be one’s be all and end all. Especially when one might not truly know one’s fear either. Stop your fear, before your fear becomes your reality.

  Another unhelpful directive, but at least Ray was starting to get some clue about what that meant. Those smoky tendrils… he had a feeling letting them touch him wasn’t going to be good.

  But how else was he supposed to stop his fear before it became a reality? He could see that others were getting trapped in whatever the smoke presented. There were shapes growing within the smoke. It was too dark, too gloomy to properly make out, but several somethings were amorphously appearing in the dark clouds.

  The worst bit was that no one seemed to be doing anything against the vapour once they got caught.

  Which was pretty much everyone now. The smoke had spread fast, catching basically everybody, friends and foe alike, in its grasp. Even Lent was lost in it, his uniquely larger form still easily identifiable.

  Sighing, Ray got closer. He tried attacking. The blast from the Windbane head around his hand did nothing. Only separated the gaseous darkness for a bit before it rejoined and became one again. That pretty much solidified in his head that the only way to overcome the Dungeon Obstacle was by letting the smoke touch him too.

  Just before it did, he called up another construct and sent it away. Insurance. Just in case.

  Then he let the tendrils touch him.

  Ray wasn’t sure if he was still in the same place or not as liquid darkness wrapped him in a sensationless cocoon. It didn’t feel hot or cold. The gas didn’t activate the nerves on his skin. He couldn’t touch, smell, hear, or sense it in any other way besides seeing.

  Then it birthed a familiar figure. Ray frowned. He was used to seeing himself by now, considering how much use he made of the Imitator construct.

  But watching a version of him that he had no control over just appearing like that was still weird.

  “Don’t tell me my greatest fear is myself or something?” Ray muttered.

  The version of himself cocked his head. There was a grin on his face Ray really didn’t like. Did he grin like that at people? It honestly made him want to punch himself. He could almost sympathize with Sameer.

  Fake Ray wasn’t alone. More figures were appearing around him. More familiar figures. Sylvans.

  Ray twitched when the Sylvans used their Growth Mana, but none of it came at him. Instead, they all went to fake Ray, chaining him up, holding him imprisoned. Trapped. Under their control.

  The grin was gone. All fake Ray had was a ferocious scowl as he began struggling, fighting back against his captors.

  Ray wasn’t fully sure what was going on. Was being trapped supposed to be his true fear? True, it did drive a lot of his motivations, if he stopped to think about it. The very first thing he had said at the beginning of the Tower of Forging was that he wished to be under control.

  But he didn’t feel afraid of it. Not really. Sure, he’d hate to be in that position, but it wasn’t causing any sort of traumatic response from him. He didn’t feel some kind of primal revulsion at fake Ray’s condition, no matter how much he detested it on principle.

  Ray shook his head. Whatever. With the draconic heads still around his hand, he aimed it at the nearby Sylvans and fired.

  His actions helped free his fake version. The Sylvans fell easily, fighting back with far too little power to be any threat. They seemed to move so slow. Ray had to wonder if this Demon of Cowardice was simulating weak, lower-level Sylvans for some reason.

  Fake Ray roared as he freed himself from the chains of Growth Mana. He attacked the Sylvans with a ferocious, almost desperate anger as though determined to pay them back for daring to trap him. Ray was actually surprised at the aggression. He paused, just letting his fake take out the remaining the Sylvans.

  But the Sylvans weren’t ending. There were more of them appearing, more of them popping up as the space around them expanded.

  Ray looked around, suddenly feeling weird. He wasn’t sure how to describe the sensation. He was unmoored, an uncomfortable twist in his stomach like he had moved too quickly in too short a time.

  The space created by the Demon of Cowardice was familiar again. It was Auction City. Ray wouldn’t fail to recognize that towering palace in the strange architectural style or the actual Auction Hall. But there seemed to be a lot more Sylvans than he had seen in truth. Not just the officials and warriors Ray was used to seeing. There were… civilians now. Families.

  What the hell was going on?

  Fake Ray was still raging. He attacked the Sylvans, lashing out at everyone. Several of the warrior Sylvans attempted to stop him, but he mowed them down.

  Then he was in front of a family.

  The situation was so surreal, Ray could hardly act. Intellectually, he knew that Sylvans surely had some kind of societal structure not that dissimilar from humans. Just because he only saw warriors all the time didn’t mean there weren’t farmers or bankers or schoolchildren.

  But seeing it live in front of him was a shock. He wasn’t expecting a Sylvan father who somehow gave the vibe of a middle-aged salaryman to pick up his small Sylvan child and hold him close as though fake Ray was some kind of monster stalking closer. A shorter Sylvan in a dress, clearly the mother, had knelt down to shield her daughter behind her.

  And fake Ray obliterated them all just as he had done the warrior Sylvans.

  “What the fuck are you doing?” Ray yelled.

  Of course, the demonic thing mimicking him didn’t even bother to reply. Instead, it went on continuing the rampage. The blasts from the mimicked draconic heads were burning through everything, killing indiscriminately, with nothing there to stop it.

  Save Ray himself.

  His hands itched to act. To shoot at that thing’s unsuspecting back and stop this stupid madness. This was such a twisted caricature of that need for control that drove him, it actually pissed him off.

  Sure, it was theoretically true that if he didn’t hold every single thing under his control, there would always be something going wrong that would make him act against his wishes.

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  Sure, the System had seen fit to declare him a Tower Conqueror as his Vocation to drive his Objectives.

  But this…

  Ray knew himself. He knew that he held onto reason. There was nothing that would ever drive him to act out so irresponsibly, so unthinkingly. He wasn’t some crazy berserker who would ever lose control of himself.

  He attacked himself. As he had suspected, it was pretty easy. A fiery laser from the Windbane maw around his hand struck fake Ray’s back and burned a hole right through his chest, killing him more or less instantly. Except, it wasn’t that easy to kill a demonic apparition. As soon as fake Ray fell, another popped up to take its place.

  Though, curiously, it started at the original position it had been in. Now, it was starting back at the original location Ray had first seen, back near the start of this whole fear-based illusion.

  Fake Ray ignored the real version and swiftly came back to the exact spot it had been killed, then continued on with its rampage. Angered though Ray had been by the Demon of Cowardice’s, now it was starting to feel ridiculous.

  Especially when he killed the fake version of himself once more and the process repeated again. And again. And again.

  The anger was returning, though it was more frustration now. Clearly, there was a different solution he needed to find. But it was annoying he couldn’t just kill the problem that so deserved a good beating.

  Ray took a deep, calming breath to focus. For a high-Tier Dungeon Obstacle, this was still mundane. Not really something of consequence. He was just viewing a vision of his fear coming to life, and as much as it did affect him emotionally, it wasn’t heavy. It didn’t have any real effect. Come on, he wasn’t even traumatized. Not even a smidge.

  With that realization in his head, Ray tried to focus on how exactly he was supposed to counteract this weird obstacle.

  He looked around. The space couldn’t be real, could it? He was in the dungeon, not standing in Auction City. That smoky fluid swimming through the air… he was starting to suspect it might have infiltrated his body and drowned him in this illusion. So even if he tried to break out of the bounds of this space, his real body most likely wouldn’t even move.

  Ray looked at how his fake was now attacking a large building. A bunch of innocent Sylvans had rushed in, attempting to barricade themselves. Dozens of them lay dead outside, having failed at their attempt to stop fake Ray.

  And now fake Ray was besieging the building to destroy both it and everyone inside it. Really. At this point, this evilness was starting to look comical.

  Ray was honestly embarrassed he had been angered by this. But his mind focused on what mattered. He clearly couldn’t stop that thing by killing it. So instead, what if—

  Gritty: Did you get over your stupid fear yet, wingman?

  Ray was a little startled out of his thoughts.

  Ray: Wait, are you free already? That was fast.

  Gritty: Why are YOU still inside? You need to get out, NOW.

  Ray: What’s wrong?

  Gritty: This demon… it’s not as simple and easy as I first thought. I’m free but like… we’re not done with it. We’re not really free. It’s trapped us in, Idk, someone else’s fear? You need to come out and see.

  Ray had no idea what exactly that meant. Wait, was that even the real Gritty, or was it just another part of this illusion? No, that couldn’t be right. He didn’t need to be paranoid. It was unlike that this demon could simulate something like the System Chat.

  Ray: I’ll be there soon. Just need to stop myself going crazy.

  Gritty: LOL, so you got the same flavour, huh? Lemme tell you a secret, wingman. You don’t stop your fear by killing it. Well you can, but that’s not really overcoming it. What you gotta do is make it so it can’t affect you anymore. You need to make it ineffectual. Just like your fear makes you.

  Ray blinked. Ineffectual. That’s what the fear really was. The inability to affect anything, of things being completely out of his ability to affect.

  Out of his ability to control even in the slightest sense.

  Ray laughed. He had been completely taken in. Wow.

  Ray: I think I know what I have to do now. Thanks a lot, Gritty, you’re brilliant.

  Gritty: Kick ass, wingman.

  If only he could do so literally. Ray settled for the next best option. He decided to obstruct his fake version. No matter what it did, no matter what it tried, he was there to block its efforts.

  Really, the idea was simple. How did one stop a being that couldn’t be killed? He just needed to get past the idea of killing and focus on restraining instead.

  This wasn’t a fight against himself. He wasn’t back in the mimic dungeon way back at the start of the Second Floor. His fake version didn’t seem to acknowledge that he was present or trying to impede its efforts in anyway. It just tried to get past however it could.

  Ray destroyed the spells it shot at innocent Sylvans by sending Aeonguard orbs to temporally swallow them up. Any constructs called forth by fake Ray were viciously attacked and destroyed by the real Ray’s constructs. Ray clipped off fake Ray’s fake Soaring Wings, cut off its fake Viledrake tail, and even physically restrained it with real Petrified Vines.

  The last was pretty effective because the Vines ate away at fake Ray’s Mana so even its attempts to free itself just fed the Petrified Vines to let Ray cast more of them. Pretty funny.

  Eventually, it worked. There were no more deaths. Any effort his fake version made it continue its rampage just ended in failure. Ray had effectively stopped his fear from having any effect even in this illusion that the Demon of Cowardice had constructed.

  Ray’s fear was overcome.

  The illusion fell apart. He was a little surprised—and also a little relieved—there wasn’t more to it. But then again, Gritty had said it wasn’t done.

  Which was exactly what he found when he returned to where he was supposed to have been in reality.

  Ray frowned at the chaotic sight around him. It was the Tier 38 dungeon, the same corridor of the mountainside where they had met the Demon of Cowardice. There was still that dark smoke everywhere, though they were stationary now. Hanging motionless in the air.

  That wasn’t what had caught Ray’s attention. Instead, it was the very solid-looking figures forming around them. Solid, real, and familiar.

  There was Gritty there, and Marcus, Karkatrix, and Eliza too. And… Lent? The boulderlike alien was there too. They were supposed to be present in the vicinity, but these weren’t really them. They had a slightly smudged, grey quality to them, like the smoke had condensed to create their likenesses with unerring accuracy.

  The other difference was that they were trying to merge with the real ones.

  Of course, the actual versions of them were busy resisting to the best of their abilities. The resistance wasn’t difficult in the moment. Gritty simply killed her weird, fake version by driving a mace of spiky bones in its face. The others were similarly successful.

  The problem came in the sense that it was relentless. This was just like the fear that Ray himself had faced. Ineffectualness.

  Ray frowned. He reached Gritty before long. “You have any idea whose fear this is supposed to be?”

  She greeted him with a smile. “Take a look to the left.”

  Ray turned his head in the indicated direction. Then his frown grew deeper. “Is that…?”

  “Yep.”

  It wasn’t Lent’s prone form lying on the ground that had caught Ray’s attention, though the way the boulder-like alien’s body looked like a cracked egg was definitely something. No, what had truly hooked his attention was the figure next to Lent, curled in on himself.

  Pierce.

  “Don’t tell me… this is his fear?” Ray said.

  “We’ve got no other candidates.” Gritty was about to say more, but her tone changed. “Oh look, it’s you.”

  Ray turned again and noted that it was indeed a fake version of him coming at him now. He took it out without preamble, shooting it with a Windbane around his hand. Although, he noted his fake’s appearance before he killed it. The thing was a few inches taller, possessing longer hair and a very unkempt beard. Its skin was craggier, the robe haggard and ruined.

  What kind of fear was Pierce enveloped in that it had reeled everybody else in the vicinity into his fear as well?

  “Oh, shit!”

  The sudden curse wasn’t from either Ray or Gritty. They both turned in alarm to note Eliza faltering back from Marcus, who was standing stock still like a plank.

  Gritty groaned. “Please don’t tell me…”

  Marcus slowly turned to face them with a grim expression. His form was changing too, his skin growing ashy and his hair turning the colour of steel. Great. Marcus had actually succumbed to one of the fakes and was most likely now being possessed. If he wasn’t dead already, that was.

  Ray swallowed. “Anyone know if he’s still alive in there?” He turned to Eliza. “Can’t you tell your boyfriend to snap out of it?”

  Eliza looked like he had gone mad. “He’s your teammate more than my… anything.”

  Oh, boy. Marcus was going to be crushed when he heard that.

  Further discussion was derailed when Marcus attacked. He possessed the same abilities that he had showcased thus far—and probably more that Ray hadn’t seen or paid attention to—but all of them were beefed up.

  When Ray tried to restrain Marcus with his Petrified Vines, it didn’t work. The golden shielding aura around Marcus stopped the vines from even reaching him.

  Then he barrelled into Ray and punched the living daylights out of him.

  The spell interactions were absolutely weird. Ray had used Mottling Aeonguard to prevent Marcus from getting a good hit in. The singular deep blue orb touched the golden aura first and even overcame it. Ray’s eyes had widened at the small opening. But then, Marcus had taken advantage of it faster than Ray.

  His punch burst through that opening to strike him in the chest, sending him staggering back. Ray cursed. Pain bloomed on his chest like he had been struck by a metal bat. At least nothing felt broken yet.

  The others rushed in to restrain him as Marcus went ballistic. Of course, nobody wanted to really hurt him. Eliza’s destructive time powers were useless, and Gritty and Karkatrix both had to hold themselves back. But a possessed Marcus wasn’t even the real problem. No, they had something even more sinister to deal with.

  Marcus’s fall and subsequent attempts at attacking them meant they were all distracted from the rest of the demonic apparitions trying to possess their real counterparts.

  Ray staggered away as his fake version tried to take him over again. It was getting annoying. He killed it pretty easily, but that wasn’t making it go away, of course. Not for long. Not permanently. Not while they were stuck in someone else’s fear.

  He turned to where Pierce was still curled around himself.

  “Hold him back for now,” Ray said as he rushed over to Pierce. “I think I know what to do.”