Yet Derek’s real focus was rooted to a spot directly in front of him, even as the action of the fights grew more intense. While everyone else had moved to fight each other, the Grey Lich had simply drifted forward, its eyes always locked onto the growing crowd in the area around Derek. And now it was nearing them, only five meters away from him and the rest of the crowd.

And as its corrosive aura became apparent, people noticed the threat and began to scream.

With a curl of its lip, the Grey Lich raised its hand to make an attack.

Before Derek could even think his way through what he should do, he was midair. He finally opened his right hand and spun out the three Mana bombs that he had been preparing. The distance was short, so they almost immediately arrived in a triangle pattern in front of the Grey Lich’s chest. There was no space in Derek’s chest for fear; he needed to push that aside in order to act. Because if he had not, the people around him would have been killed.

Sorry, buddy. I need to give these people a little extra time…

BOOOM!

The explosion felt just as powerful as the others that rocked the stadium in the last few minutes, but Derek knew that was only because he was only a few meters away from it. He stumbled backward as he landed, barely able to keep his feet. As the smoke cleared, the Grey Lich’s surprised face was revealed.

Other than the emotion displayed on its dried skull, it was basically unharmed.

Even as the gaze of the Lich plunged Derek into a frozen swimming pool, two other figures wearing the symbol of the Order Valorem landed next to Derek. It seemed that he wasn’t the only one who had noticed the threat. They gave Derek a nod of acknowledgment and then raised their Mana Rifles and unleashed a barrage of projectiles on the Nemesai.

Snorting, the Grey Lich waved its arm.

Derek felt like a rhinoceros had lowered its horn and charged directly into his chest. Before he could even grunt, he was sent flying backward and smashed into the low wall at the edge of the stands. He felt the stone of the wall shatter and cracks. Two thumps indicated that the people from the Order Valorem suffered the same fate.

Releasing a ragged breath, Derek checked his situation; wounded, but nothing that would kill him. But he had been knocked backward with enough force that his vision was swimming. Still, it could be worse.

Of course, that sentiment was ignoring the floating form of the Grey Lich that continued forward without changing its speed. It’s fuzzy form slowly resolved itself to clarity as Derek’s vision recovered and it neared him. “To bar my path? Insolence-”

Further villain trash talking was stopped as almost everyone in the stadium looked upward to a bright surge of light that filled the sky above them. A pillar of energy rushed downward to impact the stadium with all the combined force of one thousand Raid Bosses.

Above him, Derek heard someone shriek in horror. “They are shooting Mjolnir at us?!”

Then the beam of energy landed with a sound like several beaches’ worth of waves crashing at once. There was a rumbling around the barrier that blocked the stadium off from the outside world, but it was a surprisingly sedate experience. The vast energy with no focus pressed against the stadium until it had run its course. Then it slowly dissipated.

No one could find anything to say as the greatest weapon of Zone 1 was spent without having affected the situation at all. Derek pressed his eyes closed as he felt his System empowered body begin to slowly heal the damage he had sustained from the wave of the Grey Lich’s arm. That’s why images are so important. In the System, it takes a lot of energy to overcome a firm image…

The Grey Lich had paused to look up curiously at the blast of energy from Mjolnir, but soon continued to float forward as the attack didn’t hold the lich’s interest. Alana had rushed past the struggling Thea toward the Winged Serpent but had been intercepted by Straud. Although Alana’s image wasn’t as powerful as the Jade Prince’s it possessed a strange sense of resilience that let her fight toe to toe with Straud with her strength burning at its brightest.

But she could not pass him. Her spear met his fists and could proceed no further.

The man with the iron ball earned a horrible gash on his back from the Bandit King but managed to push past his opponent and arrive to help Alana. But even with two of them, they couldn’t break past Straud and his powerful fists in those few short seconds. And soon Thea and the Bandit King came at them from behind. Under the combined assault of the three, Alana’s brilliant image began to flag even with the man’s assistance.

The Jade Prince hadn’t yet recovered enough to overcome the Obsidian Duke. Ghost’s mecha couldn’t quickly beat the giant blood werewolf. Decklan had given up hiding and was now using two daggers to unleash a flurry of blows on Hank. As such, Hank didn’t have time to fire another powerful revolver bullet.

The stone wheel had begun to pulse with power. In Derek’s clearing vision, he could see that drops of blood were floating in the air, slowly being drawn toward the giant wheel.

“Dad!”

Derek had thought that he couldn’t be in a sorrier state than he currently was. He was wrong. His whole body spasmed as he heard Tim’s voice. He turned to look and saw that his son had walked out of the referee booth and was now glaring at the Grey Lich with the sort of all-consuming hatred that could only be planted in a child’s heart.

Adrenaline Rush. Second Wind. Derek heaved himself to his feet and grabbed one of the dropped Mana Rifles from the Order Valorem guards. The model was new, but Derek still remembered how to use his Mana to burn through the sensor that would detect whether the holder was the true owner of the gun. After all, the security measure had been designed to stop petty theft, not a trained professional on a chaotic battlefield.

The Grey Lich’s skull turned to look at Tim. Derek raised the rifle and pushed all of his remaining Mana into the chamber rather than relying on the battery. He might not have much Mana remaining after the bombs, but he sure as hell could condense his Mana to a denser form than the standard-issue battery packs could manage.

And for his son...

“Hey fucker, take this!” Derek roared. A bolt of cobalt energy shot forward out of the barrel. The Grey Lich didn’t even turn; it simply reached up and flicked at the bullet and dissipated it instantly. The lich’s eyes were on Tim. Yet as Derek frantically considered charging toward the Grey Lich in order to keep its attention away from his son, another party intervened.

“Labyrinth of Mirrors!”

Strange, folding panels of glass shot down from above, surrounding the Grey Lich and Tim. Suddenly, Tim’s worried face splintered and fractured into dozens of duplicates as it was reflected by the panels. Space bent and warped around the Grey Lich, as though the user of the Skill was trying to bind the Nemesai.

The Grey Lich shook its head in disgust. “A Domain with barely any image weight? Did you truly think this could stop me? Let me show you the unending horror of eternal life. Fall to your knees, worm.”

And as the Grey Lich spoke, Derek felt it. Its image blossomed like a pale lotus. He felt what it would be like to live without meaning or hope of an end. Eternity was a heavy weight. It was a dark expanse of misery that pressed against his forehead with enough weight that he could feel his skull creaking. Shivering, Derek struggled to stay conscious underneath the weight of the image produced by the Grey Lich. But for Tim…

The reflections warped, but they somehow withstood the pressure. The reproduced sight of Tim’s face became somehow horrifying, warped by rage, despair, and an alien hatred. Yet it was clear that the Labyrinth of Mirrors had managed to contain the spread of the opposing side’s image. The Grey Lich frowned. “How… resilient. But your desire to protect this child only means I will try that much harder to-”

Crack.

This time the stadium didn’t rumble, but the strange noise carried clearly even through the sound of fighting. Once more, the entire populace looked upward to the sky. There was no bright beam of energy this time, just a silhouette. Despite the distance, increased Perception gave most anyone who turned their head toward the sound a perfect view of a dark figure who had impacted the dome.

Cracks silently shuddered and spread from the spot where the shadowy figure had driven his right arm, which was just a long spear of bone, directly through the protective dome around the area. The coloration of the figure’s skin was strange; it seemed to be corroded at the exterior of his body to a black-grey but skin lightened along his arms to a pale white on his torso. A tail flicked both at his waist and at the base of his head. He was currently raising his heavy left hand, his long talons stretching out awkwardly from his balled fist.

Derek felt extremely strange as he looked up at the figure. Because almost everyone would recognize the face. No one could live in New Earth without hearing legends about Randidly Ghosthound. Whether it was being as the leader of the Order Ducis, the creator of Kharon the wandering city, or as the individual that every powerful fighter said was the strongest on Earth, Randidly Ghosthound had left a trail for others to follow and admire.

He was, in Derek’s opinion, also a visionary by encouraging the widespread adoption of images as part of combat training. No matter how today’s terrorist attack ended up, one thing Derek was sure of is that even Zone 1 wouldn’t dare slacken its pursuit of images any longer. Their power had been laid bare to the world.

This man probably never feared condensing a Fate...

The form of his body was monstrous, but everyone recognized the only person who could show up now and immediately change the situation. The people of Donnyton smiled. The Nemesai glared. Straud frowned upward. While everyone watched, Randidly brought down his fist and smashed it against the barrier.

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!!

The stadium buzzed for several seconds from the force of the blow. The cracks doubled in size in an instant as Randidly Ghosthound struck the barrier. Then, as everyone below watched, the Ghosthound reached down and ripped several large chunks of the barrier that had completely stopped Mjolnir out of his way. A path had opened for him to enter into the stadium.

Even though Derek knew nothing of images, he felt the change in the air almost immediately. It happened in his chest and it happened to the people above him in the stands who had managed to escape from the bloodbeasts for the moment. The people of Earth saw Randidly Ghosthound and felt hope. It filled the air with power that lessened the furious oppression of blood that Straud had maintained thus far.

Yet as Derek looked upward, he frowned. Yes, that giant wheel is definitely pulling all the spilled blood over to it...

Straud licked his teeth and then began to laugh as he looked up at the Ghosthound. “You? Do you think you can still interfere here? You are banished from this place, Randidly Ghosthound! Wait quietly for the portal to be opened. My God has requested your body for experiments!”

Instantly, energy flooded upward and created a vortex around the flaw in the barrier. Straud unleashed another beam of energy that shot up toward the Ghosthound. However, this one was such a dark shade of maroon that it was almost black. Derek stared upward. He could feel the hope of the people here flickering like electric lights in a ghost movie as Straud’s confidence hadn’t been shaken at all.

Yet he watched as Randidly Ghosthound’s figure abruptly… intensified. Every line of his being seemed to become impossibly saturated with its color and shade. His eyes burned emerald even from the almost fifty-meter distance between them. Every shadow on his face seemed vast and mysterious. Strange black motes of energy wafted outward from his silhouette.

Randidly Ghosthound floated downward and seemed to melt the barrier. And when Straud’s attack neared him, he simply reached out with his huge claw and ripped it to shreds. Then the Ghosthound laughed and it was a cold noise. “A Coin of Territory doesn’t make you all-powerful… it simply gives you a home-field advantage with your image. And that is not enough for you to tell me what I can and can’t do.

“Congratulations, Straud. You have surprised me with your fucking idiocy. And for that… you have an undivided third of my attention. I hope you appreciate how much of an honor this is.”