Ray moved as fast as he could. Things were shaking harder the higher he climbed, the sounds of battle getting louder and louder the closer he got to the peak of the mountain. At least Sameer wasn’t having an easy time of it up there.

  Of course not. This was a Tier 38 dungeon after all.

  Ray: Where are you guys? Everything alright?

  It took a moment for Ray to receive an answer. They hadn’t once interrupted his and Pierce’s battle against the Floor Lord. It was a little worrying.

  Ray tried to distract himself by taking a look at what lay on his path up the mountain. None of what he saw relieved him. A small army of corpses serenaded his ascent. Most were monsters he didn’t recognize. Probably more demons.

  But there were competitors among them too. Human competitors.

  Some of those did look familiar. The same ones who had attacked them earlier, before the Demon of Cowardice incident. Sameer—and possibly Karkatrix too—hadn’t showed them any more mercy than the demons.

  Gritty: We’re fine. We beat the last batch of demons, but there are other weird obstacles on our path now. But you were right, wingman. Eliza had no idea about Sameer’s actions, and screw me, but I actually believe her.

  Ray: Figured as much. Sameer acted independently.

  Gritty: Glad you’re alive.

  Ray: Me too…

  He went on to tell her about the Floor Lord appearing and attacking them.

  Gritty: That annoying ass just won’t leave you alone, huh? Glad he’s down for good.

  Ray: Well, I haven’t received the kill notification, so he’s not gone yet. And he was incredibly powerful. Gritty, we’re still not strong enough to fight back against everything on this Floor.

  She didn’t answer for a while. It was a sobering fact, in all honesty. Even Gritty couldn’t make light of it.

  Gritty: Then we’ll just need to get stronger, won’t we?

  Ray: I intend to. But I don’t know if we have enough time. This is the final dungeon. The Floor Lord finally attacked us outright. Things are coming to a head.

  Gritty: Whatever time we have, we’ll make the most of it.

  She was right. Moping and worrying wasn’t going to help anyone. Ray would need to see what opportunities awaited him, what he could do in the time and space he still had left, and act accordingly.

  Ray: You’re right. How’s Marcus?

  Gritty: Doing better… I think. He’s still kinda out of it, but he’s been weirdly silent for a while now.

  Ray: As long as he doesn’t get worse…

  They cut off the chat for now as Ray was nearing the mountain peak. The noise of battle was distracting him from the conversation. Gritty promised they would be there soon, and that Eliza wouldn’t do anything crazy like Sameer. Not on her watch.

  Moments later, Ray reached the actual peak. The final obstacle presented to him by the Graveyard of Sin.

  [Eternal Pulse—Dungeon Obstacle]

  Demon of Humanity

  The sum of all sins is what creates humanity. After all, take a sin and take its opposite, create the ideals that people live by, that people define themselves by, and arrive at the sum of mortal, human expression. Mastering this sum, mastering humanity itself, is the final barrier preventing a seeker from ultimate truth. From ultimate power. Defeat the sum of your sins, the sum of your being. Prove you are superior.

  Huh. Was the System finally telling him what to do straight up without needing to figure out some other way around the Obstacle?

  It looked like Sameer was definitely taking the description literally. He was fighting the Obstacle tooth and nail. Ray had to stand at the lip of the wide crater that formed the peak of the mountain with how furious the battle had become.

  Dozens of portals had sprung up all around the battlefield thanks to Sameer. They pushed out everything from roiling fire to lightning that the Floor Lord would have been jealous of to even waves of bright liquid that glowed toxic neon.

  And none of them had any effect on the demon Sameer was fighting.

  It moved incredibly fast. Ray was having trouble actually seeing what it looked like with how quickly it was zipping all across the crater. No wonder that most of Sameer’s attacks were failing to land, destroying the mountain instead and causing all the rockslides and shaking from earlier.

  But Sameer had recognized that he wasn’t going to hit his enemy so easily. Instead, he was now luring it into a location.

  A spot where Karkatrix could attack it directly instead.

  The two of them had been evading the demon itself using Sameer’s portals. Whenever the monster flashed at them, Sameer or Karkatrix dove into one of the nearby portals and appeared elsewhere on the battlefield.

  Ray shook his head. Just how much Mana could Sameer afford to expend?

  With the demon lured into the right location, Karkatrix attacked. His chains had extended over the majority of the crater, and now he pulled them together as they shone a brilliant silver. House-sized chunks of the rock pulled free from the mountain and slammed straight at the demon.

  There was no room for it to dodge. Sameer had flooded its rear with the sparking, bright liquid. He had also filled the air above it with a net of lightning as well as erecting a storming wall in front of it.

  But it turned to the demon didn’t need to dodge. It just flexed its rather humanlike arms and stopped the massive rocks flying in on either side of it with its bare hands.

  Ray’s eyes kind of goggled. It wasn’t just because he could now see what the demon looked like properly. Its extremely humanoid form—half white and half black with a neat divide down its centre—wasn’t that surprising. No, it was the demon’s sheer strength and power that took Ray aback a little.

  Those humongous rocks that Karkatrix had pulled up with the help of some skill could have sunk cruise liners. To literally stop them with its bare hands, with its arms moving a mere fraction of an inch at the impact, to completely eradicate their momentum like that…

  This thing was obviously living up to the Tier 38 dungeon billing.

  The demon wasn’t done there as well. Both Sameer and Karkatrix had been shocked at how easily the monster had stopped the attack. Shocked enough that they weren’t totally ready when it countered differently this time.

  Previously, the demon had attempted to attack them directly by reaching their vicinity. Now, it just sent the twin rocks it had capture in both its hands straight back at Karkatrix.

  Much faster too. Karkatrix had pulled in both house-sized rocks real fast with the help of his chains. But the demon did the same an order of magnitude faster. The gigantic chunks of the mountain crashed at Karkatrix far faster than he should have been able to dodge.

  Sameer was the only thing that saved him. Well, the portals created by Sameer, at least.

  A whirling rent about the size of Karkatrix cracked open right in front of the many-armed alien. It wasn’t big enough to swallow both the rocks, but the bit of the rock that sailed at the portal disappeared within the rent, leaving Karkatrix perfectly fine, if still a little shocked.

  The demon wasn’t done there. It continued to attack from range. This time, with pure power generated by its motion.

  Ray had to blink as he saw shockwaves travel through the air. Blasts of compressed air scoured the ground and rippled the area around the battlefield. Sameer and Karkatrix’s judicious use of the portals kept them safe, even from the rocks that the demon tore off and sent flying in their direction. Still. It was an incredible sight to see the demon using pure strength to attack from distance.

  For just a second, Ray considered joining. A part of him even wondered, with no small amount of relish at the challenge that the prospect presented, at how he would even fight this Demon of Humanity.

  This thing… it was even stronger than the Floor Lord. That was becoming evident the longer Ray stood watching the fight unfold.

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  The more the demon rushed across the battlefield with impossible field, the more its motion alone unleashed gales all over the crater, the more its passage tore up the rocks and sent them shooting like meteors in all directions. The more the demon fought, the more ferocious and powerful it seemed to grow.

  This monster was insane.

  Sameer and Karkatrix tried trapping it in the same manner as before. This time, it was Sameer who activated the trap.

  Once the demon had been cornered to a specific spot as it tried to avoid the various powers Sameer unleashed from his portals, he created more of them. All around the demon, a dozen portals popped open, cutting off all its routes of escape and releasing a torrent of various powers that detonated as they mixed into a roiling concoction.

  Lightning bolted in, fire compressed into thin lasers flashing into the gleaming liquid to vaporize it into sparking gas. All of it combined into a gigantic blast, a flash of heat and power and sound that made Ray’s ears pop and his eyes blink at the brightness.

  The demon was still fine.

  For a heart-stopping moment, Ray wondered if that thing was not only ridiculously powerful, but also impervious to all damage as well. But then, as the dust cleared and the battle resumed, he checked what had happened in the actual spot where Sameer’s last powers had exploded.

  There was a hole there. The Demon of Humanity had dug a hole deep enough that its bottom was shrouded in darkness in mere seconds. It had dug a hole like that in solid rock.

  At this point, Ray was honestly impressed Sameer and Karkatrix were still alive. If Sameer didn’t have those portals to conveniently disappear into at the slightest sign of danger, things probably would have looked a whole lot worse.

  Ray shook his head. Was he actually worried? No way. That asshole had betrayed him. Why the hell did it even matter?

  Then he realized it was Karkatrix he was worried about. Kind of, to some extent. He hadn’t been a part of his companion’s crazy plan to betray Ray, nor had he actually even intended to be in this fight. Sameer had just dragged him to it.

  Ray was honestly intending to stay out of the fight, even if a part of him was vacillating over whether to let Sameer regret his bad decisions or actually help Karkatrix before the six-armed guy got injured. But what he hadn’t counted on was being spotted even in the middle of a fight like that. After all, he wouldn’t have been able to shift his focus enough.

  Somehow, Sameer saw him. It was the only explanation for why a portal opened just a few feet in front of him.

  The only explanation for why the Demon of Humanity was bursting out of it with the same incredible speed and power it had displayed so far during the battle.

  Ray’s use of Temporal Passage was instinctive. He was not going to get hit by that demon. He disappeared, only to reappear about a couple dozen feet away next to one of his Windbane constructs that had followed him from the battle against the Floor Lord.

  “You thought you’d just watch like a useless spectator, did you?” Sameer yelled. “Well, think again, you asshole.”

  “I’m the asshole here?” Ray shouted back. He really shouldn’t be losing his cool at a time like this, when he was facing an opponent like this demon. But Sameer was making it almost impossible. Honestly, it wouldn’t have been surprising if steam had started billowing out of Ray’s ears. “You’re the biggest cu—”

  “Focus!” Karkatrix yelled. “It’s attacking.”

  He was right. The demon didn’t care about their petty arguments. It had whirled around after being tricked by Sameer and missing Ray. Now it was punching its arms in the air in rapid succession so quickly that its limbs simply blurred. Ray could only imagine what it would have felt like to get hit by something like that.

  It didn’t matter that it was nowhere near any of them to hit directly. Every single punch was sending out a blast of air, creating a torrent of storming winds that was already forcing Ray back.

  And then the punches grew even faster. Now, the demon was attacking with shockwaves just as it had done not long ago.

  They all had defences against it. Sameer and Karkatrix had their portals. Ray cast Mottling Aeonguard to slow down the attacks and save himself. It wasn’t just the blasts of compressed air shockwave-ing at them. The demon had kicked the ground too, which caused broken rocks to rocket in every direction.

  Of course, Ray couldn’t shield himself behind his Aeonguard orbs, as much as he would have liked. So, he kept moving. That was key to surviving this brutal battle. Because even as the air and rock blasts were stymied, the Demon of Humanity rushed them all down physically.

  Ray took a page out of Sameer’s book and began teleporting. It would be most effective if he had a bunch of spots all over the crater to go to, so he cast Resurrect Recollect to create several Windbane heads and send them flying everywhere. Trying to attack with them was pointless. Ray just needed locations that Temporal Passage could reach.

  A part of him considered arriving behind Sameer. When the bastard was distracted by the demon, Ray could give him a little taste of his own medicine.

  But he wasn’t that much of a prick. Plus, Sameer could actually be useful here. Was being useful already. If he hadn’t been here, Ray would be a far more significant target for the Demon of Humanity, and he would really like not to be.

  “What is it doing now?” Karkatrix said.

  Ray paused his teleporting to check for a moment. Seeing that its attempts thus far wasn’t working, it had now changed tack.

  For some reason, the demon was drawing in a huge breath. It was inhaling so much, its body was expanding, and the air around Ray was actually trying to suction him in. The sight would have been comical if the unknown prospect of what it was going to do next wasn’t pretty horrifying.

  “Take cover,” Sameer yelled.

  That was their best bet. Ray was trying to think of what exactly the demon was going to do next as he cast more Mottling Aeonguard and prepared to use Temporal Passage. Inhaling meant it had to exhale. Could it have some sort of breath power, like the Windbane maws with belching out their compressed flames. At this point, nothing would surprise—

  The demon screamed.

  Okay, now that was surprising. Needless to say, Ray had zero defences against a sonic attack. The demon’s piercing shriek lasted for a fraction of a second before both of Ray’s eardrums burst with a pain that sent spikes crucifying his brain.

  If the sharp pain and tinnitus in his ears were all eh had to go through, Ray might have been fine with it. Even the sudden rush of fluids down either side of his head was alright.

  What wasn’t okay was the way his vision turned warped for a second, the severe pain making everything he could see twist vividly. The colours did weird things, like he was high or something.

  Thankfully, it only lasted for a second, and everything was back to a blurry normal. Other than the massive pain in his head.

  More importantly, Ray was aware enough of his surroundings to use Temporal Passage again, even as he saw and understood what had gone on. The demon had used a sonic shockwave yelled straight out of its humanlike gullet. If that blast had been aimed at Ray, he was pretty sure the effects he’d have gone through would have been a ton worse.

  Instead of him, it had been aimed for Sameer. He ate the full blast of the attack, but then immediately disappeared into one his portals. Though, not before Ray had seen a veritable waterfall of blood weeping out his ears, nose, and even from his eyes.

  Was that fucker even alive after that? Considering Ray’s state after taking an indirect sonic blow…

  The way the demon’s mouth was still open wide made Ray think it was still screeching.

  “Can’t hurt me when I’m already deaf, you asshole!” Ray shouted. He didn’t really hear himself speak so much as feel the words vibrating through him.

  The demon’s rampage was far from done. Ray could avoid its rocks and air blasts and even the demon itself when it attacked directly thanks to Temporal Passage. He just had to remember to crush an Aeon Mana crystal to top himself up, because there was no way he’d have a chance to replenish his stores using Petrified Vines in a battle like this.

  But where Ray was fine, Karkatrix was not. Sameer hadn’t reappeared from wherever he had gone through his portal. The many-armed alien was practically defenceless without portals.

  He had tried to erect a strange barrier made of chains before him. That might have worked under normal circumstances, but there was no hope for that against this Demon of Humanity. Especially not when it was inhaling heavily for another massive piercing yell.

  Cursing his stupid heart, Ray used Temporal Passage and disappeared to reappear just behind the barrier of chains.

  Karkatrix said something, but Ray was fucking deaf just then. Not that he minded, particularly. The fact that he was still conscious through the pain spasming in his head like his brain was giving birth to a smaller version of itself was a blessing.

  Although, the way Karkatrix was talking made him wonder if the six-armed alien’s eardrums were still fine. Maybe they didn’t even use eardrums to decipher sound into legible signals for their brains. Did they even have brains like humans?

  Before Ray could consider if the pain was starting to make him delirious, he grabbed hold of Karkatrix’s shoulder and cast Temporal Passage again.

  Not a moment too soon. Another sonic shockwave ripped through the spot where they had been just a second ago. Ray really ought to have congratulated himself for evading that. He was dodging literal sound. If he hadn’t been partly panicking and greatly in pain, he would have been proud.

  The demon was of course not about to let them go so easily. It rushed after them in person again, forcing Ray to teleport with Karkatrix once again.

  Ray had to rely entirely on his eyes now, which meant he had to move his head way too much. Always hard to appreciate how integrally useful something like hearing was until it was gone. Ray could only hope he hadn’t lost it permanently.

  Karkatrix was yelling something at Ray. Why didn’t he understand Ray was deaf? There was blood literally falling out of his ears for crying out loud.

  There wasn’t even any time to get into the System and find a way to chat with Karkatrix. They were literally being chased down by a relentless, overpowered demon. If Ray had time to talk, then—

  Karkatrix kicked himself free all of a sudden. Outraged as Ray was at the treatment, he wasn’t stupid enough to continue going after the guy who had just kicked him. Especially not with the demon shifting its direction of travel in an instant like momentum wasn’t a concept that existed in its dictionary.

  With its mouth still open in scream, the Demon of Humanity rushed down Karkatrix. And Ray had no way of helping.

  Not that he needed to. A millisecond before the demon reached Karkatrix, a portal popped to life in between the monster and its target. One of Sameer’s portals swallowed up the demon and snapped closed.

  Except, there was that change in momentum Ray had seen seconds ago. An instant before the portal snapped shut, the demon managed to reverse momentum and emerge back out of the portal.

  Ray was a little awestruck. Not only was the demon incredibly fast, it could recognize, understand, and react incredibly quickly too.

  What kind of monster was this thing?

  The only progress they had made—or rather, Sameer that bastard had made—was drawing a small wound at the end of the monster’s leg. Fast as the monster was in reverting out of the portal, the rift had still snapped closed just quickly enough to catch its limb.

  Although, Ray wasn’t sure he could call it progress. Not really, when the blood that started spraying out of the wound like a broken faucet started flaming.

  Started dissolving everything.

  Everywhere it touched on the broken crater, things were melting and going up in flames. Smoke pillared into the sky. Lava spread fast, as runny as it was devastating.

  “Fuck,” Ray muttered.

  The demon itself was screaming, though of course, just as was the case with his own words, Ray didn’t hear it. A quick look showed that both Karkatrix and Sameer were retreating, and Ray followed suit. The way the demon was raising its arms as though preparing for some kind of attack sent alarm bells ricocheting through his head.

  Both of the demon’s arms fell like hammers. Upon impact, the flaming magma shot outwards in a tsunami of molten lava, charging in every direction with the speed of a bullet train.

  Ray froze for a second. The heat bathing him grew exponentially more intense with every heartbeat, but he didn’t move for a moment. There was nowhere to dodge.

  Except forward.

  A split second before the lava hit him, Ray used Temporal Passage and disappeared. He reappeared behind the lava wave in the next instant. Everything was still burning hot, but at least he himself wasn’t on fire.

  He just hadn’t foreseen how quickly the demon would pounce on him.

  The second after Ray had reappeared, before he could even think to use Temporal Passage again to stay alive in his current circumstances, the demon flashed in and struck. It punched him right in the chest.

  Punched right through him.