“We must have him! We must have him!” the humanoid monster swung its sword and spine whip more frantically at Jason trying to strike him down. But somehow, to its worry and concern, the more attacks it dished out, the easier it became for Jason to dodge and block.

The throbbing pain from Jason’s right eye was still tormenting him, it was as if someone was jabbing at his brain with a sharp spike, and he could easily imaging his physical body having endured similar injuries in the real world, just that in this limbo the pain was a manifestation of injuries to his mind, spirit and even soul, not a warning sign about his actual physical injuries. But on the other hand, something in Jason was constantly reminding him that he should not give in to the pain, and he should always remain calm and sane, and just like the advice he gave to the officers that were trapped inside this limbo, he needed to focus in order to survive.

There were multiple broken shards from his weapon lying on the floor. And having had the reconstructed weapon from the shard that was once in his right eye poked into the ground for a long enough time, he was able to infuse the ground around him with his power of mind and will as well as some Xuanli, which created some sort of “friendly soil” in the area, where he could more easily detect and strategically deflect the enemy’s moves, while at the same time, observe the energy signature of the enemy and the limbo itself as well as the energy flow in the environment.

Swiftly shifting from side to side, Jason drew a silver symbol in the air and struck it with a palm, six silver chains emerged from the symbol and enclosed upon the humanoid monster from six different angles. The monster swung its spin whip in the air like a ribbon, an invisible force field appeared in the air which caused four of the chains to be pulled into the circle formed by the spine whip and eventually curled into a ball without tangling anything. The other two chains wrapped around the longer arm of the monster and temporarily restrained its movements. Then with a snap of Jason’s fingers, silver spikes grew out from all six of the chains, and the two that wrapped around the monster’s arm just locked themselves in place.

“Come with me!” the monster let out a hoarse scream and pulled his longer arm with brute force trying to break free from the two silver chains. The silver symbol collapsed from this push, the two six chains were removed from their anchor point, and the monster itself lunged at Jason again with the sword aiming at Jason’s shoulder and neck: “Come with me!”

A shield appeared in Jason’s left hand, and he pushed the shield upwards at the incoming sword. The brute force of the sword broke about one third of the shield as they clashed, but Jason was able to parry the strike upwards and make it barely miss his head. With the shield broken and his position pushed back by the strike, Jason flipped in the air, lowered his body in the process and tossed his pen-spear on his right hand at the stomach of the monster.

The monster retrieved its shorter arm, dragging the spine whip along and tried to block the pen-spear. The tip of the pen-spear got into contact with the handle of the spine whip and made an ear-piercing scratching sound. This changed the course of the pen-spear and it only left a long cut on its waist.

“Fuck!” Jason cursed in anger and distress, and the tail end of the spine whip flailed down like the actual tail of a snake and lashed him to the ground.

“Come with me!” the monster’s face turned all smiley and was about to charge at Jason.

“Back off! Back off!” the sound of gun fire occurred in the empty room, the detective wearing a canvas jacket and the uniformed officer Jason thought he sent up the stairs a while ago came back with their guns blazing. The humanoid monster had to stop midway and defend itself from the energy bullets using both its sword and its whip.

“What are you doing?! Go!” Jason coughed some silver blood and yelled at the two officers.

The two officers did not flinch and kept on roaring and firing at the monster, their figures quickly started to get pale and even flickering like holograms losing their power source.

“The One despises you! You are not welcome! ” the monster conjured an armor of fog around its body and flailed its spine whip at the two officers. Jason tried to conjure a silver wall in front of them, but that did not do much besides introducing a momentary delay to the motion of the spine whip and allowing each of the officers to open fire one more time.

Immeasurable wrath and hate filled Jason’s heart like never before when the figures of the two officers were turned to glowing pieces like shattered glass sculptures. And seemingly instinctually, he slammed both his palms on the ground, and released two pulses of energy shockwaves.

The shattered shards from his broken spear all floated up into the air, and each of them slowly grew and changed into the shapes of pen-spears in the process.

The humanoid monster turned around raising its sword after killing the two officers, its pale energy gathered around the sword and building up to a powerful attack.

But just as it was about to swing the sword down, a loud cracking sound exploded from above, and a long and smooth crack appeared both in the ceiling and wall of the room and the monster’s body. Some kind of mist started seeping out from the crack, and the monster stopped his move midway and let out a groan of pain.

Jason’s left eye glowed in bright silver light, his left eye socket and parts of the left side of his face cracked up like porcelain due to his power in overdrive. All the silver pen-spears floating in the air all shot towards the monster at the same time from all different angles. The monster tried to defend itself with his sword and the spine whip again, but he could only stop half of the pen-spears, while the others just impaled its body.

Jason pushed both of his hands forward and released a vertical crescent-shaped silver energy blade at the monster when half of the pen-spear struck true. The monster tried moving his weapons, but the pen-spears in its body had already locked it in place.

When the silver energy blade split the monster completely and cleanly into two halves, Jason sensed an intense gaze of rage was laid upon him. When he looked close at the crumbling room around him, he saw a blurry shadow of a monster face arose from the fallen two halves of the monster.

“How dare you! How dare you!” an angry voice resounded in Jason’s mind, and he recognized the blurry face - it was the same face of that ugly wooden sculpture monster.

With the surrounding crumbling and breaking down, Jason realized that the limbo was breaking down as well - and at a rate that was alarmingly fast.