The thing about Giant Trolls was that they were a big deal. All other things equal, they were massive, and could pick up massive things to swing around. If you stumbled on one and it wasn't asleep, you were probably dead, and also anyone near you. I myself had kind of started looking down in trolls in fiction, since they were so oafish and slow, but the Giant Troll I faced before fit neither description.

It stood to reason, then, that Rose's eyes instantly hardened as she shifted her focus to taking it down. Whatever beef she had with me could wait until a threat to the lives of 1000-some mostly-recruits was not bearing down on us. The battle was different from last time, with the human troops focusing on finishing off the orcs instead of fleeing from meteors, but ultimately it still came down to just Rose, me, and the few soldiers wiling to get stomped on in the name of bravery.

The troll's roar marked the start of the battle. Rose dashed towards it, drawing her sword, and I followed. My HP and MP had healed to full, largely confirming my earlier suspicion that my natural regen was pretty godly. As long as I could get out of a scrap, I would be back to full health in short order. Though I had to guess that insta-kills and psychological attacks were the most dangerous.

In any case, we reached the troll at the same time. I slashed away at its left leg while Rose went to town on the right. I might have made a joking comment about us being so spiritually connected we could silently communicate, but the reality was Rose just went for the right leg and I picked the left since it was the other one.

The troll stomped and swung its mace just like last time. I was thankful for my level 12 Dodging because without it, I probably wouldn't have been fast enough to duck my head under the swings and such. My moves were nowhere close to Rose's fluid weaving and fucking backflips (seriously what the fuck), but it was enough to keep me alive while I slashed away.

The funny thing about this predicament, as you could guess, was that I couldn't do much damage. The gashes my sword left healed over quickly, and I wasn't making any noticeable problem. However, damage wasn't everything—the troll still felt pain from my slashing, and that pain led to it sometimes swinging at me instead of Rose, which in turn let her do permanent (?) damage with her ice blade. Last time, Rose had been on her own, struggling to land hits amid all the dodging, but now she was on the offensive.

A major boon was that when I saw it swinging for me far enough ahead of time, I could Reverse the mace and stall it. Before, my magic had only been strong enough for a split-second pause, but now I had full MP and a higher Mysticism level. The mace would reverse direction for a solid half-second, which was more than enough of an opening for Rose to get some hits in. I tried to use Blind, but the magic armor apparently negated the effects (eye holes or no). It was hard to tell, but either way, it was a blessing the mace didn't have anti-magic properties itself.

The idea hit me when the troll's right leg was so fucked up and icy it looked like it would shatter if hit hard. "Distract him!" I shouted, without even needing to look to know she had given a brisk nod. The troll roared and lifted its mace in a what would be a very hard, very involved swing—the perfect opportunity. I waited until it was too late for the troll to shift its momentum, then dug my sword in deep down its bare left leg and created an opening. I held my free hand into the air and poured all my MP into a Darkness Ball, which grew so dense that it practically sucked the light out of the air. Actually, maybe it did; it was a bit hard to tell, but the area did feel more dim than before. Either way, I jammed the darkness ball into the hole I cut open with my sword and let it explode.

Meat chunks from the exploding leg shot everywhere, raining gore down upon the field. The troll wobbled on one leg while fighting to stay upright, standing straight up from where it had been bent over for the swing. Rose took my lead and utilized the distracted troll to pull her sword far to the left, then do a powerful horizontal slice with all her strength. The troll's right leg shattered in an explosion of ice, and it fell backwards.

Rose and I acted fast. We ran on either side of it until we were on both sides of the head. The eye sockets were there, but a diagonal stab from the side wouldn't be enough. We had to get above it, which meant leaning forward and losing our balance. Our solution? We jumped onto the head, and grabbed each other for support among the sliding skin; our hands clasped together as we used our spare hands to lift our swords and stab downwards. In that moment, with us pressed against each other, hand in hand, swords in the air, I thought I saw a small smile flash across her face.

And then there was blood, spraying into the air as we stabbed into the brain of a troll over and over. Ah, romance.

We stabbed for a decent chunk of minutes, not because I was reluctant to release the plate armor digging into my side, but because you really wanted to be thorough with the destruction of troll brains. Or so I was told a second ago by Rose who said, "We need to be thorough with destroying the brain." I believed her.

Giant Troll Defeated!

Skill Up! One-Handed Blades Level 19!

Skill Up! Curse Magic Level 20!

Bonus: +5 Base INT + WIS!

Level Up! All Attributes Increased!

That was a pretty big boost in Curse Magic.

I signalled it was dead, for sure, and we climbed off its face. Both of us were covered in even more blood and gore than before, but at least Rose had on plate armor that blocked most of it. The splatter of blood surrounding her eyes was a good look, though. Icy blue surrounded by red. Hot and cold. Is this symbolism?

Pondering that could come later. There were, obviously, more pressing circumstances. First, was that the end of the loop? I used my accumulated skills and newfound trust in Rose to finally topple the troll together after learning a lesson in... not trying to fight alone, because fuck me if I could have won without Rose? That was good enough for me, not that I had expected to win this loop. Funny. Now that I think about it, if I had just let myself die back there...

My thinking was interrupted by Rose breaking the silence. "So. A Cursed Mage as well, are we?"

"Huh? Er, yeah. It's not so bad, you know. I mean, there's a lot of prejudice against it, possibly for good reason, but in my opinion you should hate the player, not the game. With the player in this case being those exploiting Curse Magic and the game being Curse Magic," I said, fairly quickly. Was Hilda rubbing off on me? Oh god, the gender chessboard had flipped and now I was on the other side.

She rose an eyebrow. "I have nothing against Curse Magic. It did just potentially save my life, after all."

"Nice. So, what's next? Finish off the orcs then retreat to the relative safety of the fort? Or just..." I gestured. "Go to the fort now? That's my recommendation, for you."

Rose looked into the sky. "I don't believe the fort is very safe right now."

"Why?"

"The Sword of Noon," she muttered, thoughts clearly shifted from this conversation to solving the next problem. I followed her eyes and saw why.

If I had to guess from context clues, the Sword of Noon was the ball of pure light forming above the fort. It was small-ish now, but clearly growing in size. It felt like one of those Level 100 mastery spells that changed the face of warfare forever, because you could just smash down castles and shit with it, until castles were then modified with anti-magic shields, blah blah blah.

Rose had already broken out into a sprint for the fort. I followed after. "What's the plan?" I said in between breaths. Even sprinting, the fort was a decent distance away.

"Evacuate. There are no anti-light shields in this fort, we haven't had time to build them yet and it's old. From there, we retreat to the nearest sister fort and fight off our pursuers."

"It can't be stopped? You can't reverse its momentum?"

"It could be stopped, if we had defenses prepared, but we don't, so likely not. You can't reverse the momentum of pure magic, the Reverse spell works only on physical matter, not pure mana constructs. I may be missing something."

"Hmm," I replied, gears turning in my own head. Meteors did have huge rock chunks in the middle of them, now that I thought about it. "Where do you think it's coming from?"

"If I had to guess, orc mages, forming a union to empower themselves. I had guessed they might be lurking at the back of the legions, but it seems they were hiding out around the fort instead. "

Ah. I hope the ones I killed weren't just re-summoned in a more tactically advantageous situation.

"Okay, I might have a plan," I said, observing the mix of soldiers and mages streaming fearfully out of the fort. "You guide the evacuation effort outside the fort, I'll see what I can do inside the fort."

Rose shot me a look. "Consider this your final test."

"Test? For what?"

"You'll see. Try not to fail."

OK.

We split up at the gate, her bringing order to the chaotic stream while I pushed through to the courtyard. There, in the corner, I found her. She had accepted death just like I had expected she would. It was time to get my hands dirty, and what I was about to do unironically made even me feel a little dirty.

"Hilda!" I yelled.

"Bwuh?" she replied, looking up from hugging her knees (as best she could with the obstacles in the way).

"It's you! It's really you! I've dreamed about this meeting for so long!"

Her jaw dropped.

"You came to me so often, visting my dreams like a goddess from the beyond, clad in the most beautiful black robes imaginable. You taught me so much about Cursed magic, and even life. I thought you were just a figment of my imagination, too good to be true, but you're here! Fate finally brought us together!" The trick was to say "dreams" while meaning "previous loops you forgot but I didn't." The key is to not outright lie, but say things easily misinterpreted.

She stood up. "I-I... You..." she stammered, struggling to dedicate her attention to either what I was saying or my appearance. (There had been a lot of STR gains since last time, which seemed to be more about honing the body than simply piling on infinite muscle. In terms of fantasy coverart, I was somewhere closer to Fabio than Conan now, and I suspected there was a hidden Chadness stat impacting my face as well.)

"But I need your help, Hilda. Only you and I working together as soulmates can form strong enough Curse Magic to destroy the Sword of Noon! I can't do it alone! Please, Hilda!"

Hilda's mouth opened and closed as she struggled to speak. She looked away from me, then back, then away, so fast it was honestly kind of funny to see her mass of hair whipping back and forth. "You're making that up. You're messing with me. Why would you do that? Why now? I was going to die and be free but now you're you're you're you're..." she stammered.

"I'm not. We spoke so much in the land of dreams. You told me of your times in the Arcane College, of the trials you faced, of your spells. It is one such spell that must be used now: the Darkness Ball. Ah, I still remember our first meeting when you showed it to me, playfully flicking a small one onto my forehead... Oh, the times we've had together!"

The vortex arose in Hilda's eyes as my words seeped into her. I hadn't said anything too specific, but referencing the Arcane College and "trials" gave an air of legitimacy that was clearly enough for her to start to believe. "A-Are you... Really...?"

"Take my hand, so we can be one."

Her eyes locked on my hand, which was only a little bloody due to my tactical pants-wiping. She reached out slowly, her hand shaking nervously. She retracted it, looked up at me, blushed, then focused on my hand again. Out her arm went. Closer. Closer. Her fingers brushed mine, and I gripped her sweaty palm. Holy shit it was so sweaty. She let out a little half-squeal half-choke, but I was already pulling her (gently) to the center of the fort, directly beneath the light.

Let me make this clear: I didn't do that to get a waifu. This situation is complicated. First and foremost, Hilda was all but the embodiment of despair, and it stood to reason that while she was feeling miserable in this backwater fort ostracized by everyone else she might choose to embrace the burning light of an anti-fortifications spell rather than choose to run with everyone else. She wouldn't jump to help when asked. Second, as indicated by our first meeting, she was fairly distrusting of anyone who didn't accomodate her to some extent, so I had to be a little manipulative somehow to get this done in the like few minutes or so that we had. Third, I learned this from our conversation earlier, but Hilda was actually a god-tier Cursed mage. I didn't know her skill level (or if she even had one), but being isolated and alone in your love for a subject really was a conducive environment for spending long hours grinding away at honing your skill. She was probably one of the top Cursed mages in the continent, though few people knew that, even her bosses, since she kept to herself and struggled to speak. Her help here was absolutely essential. Fourth, and most importantly, please recall my speech from before. What was forming here was not a bond of love or romance, but of temporary friendship, accelerated by the suspension bridge effect. We needed to use the power of friendship and bonds to power up our magic (there was probably a more scientific explanation, like sharing skill levels or something), and what was wrong with exploiting a little psychological phenomenon to make that friendship strong in the spur of a moment?

In conclusion, while manipulation is definitely not something I would say I enjoy doing (especially manipulation as blatant and heavy-handed as this), it was done out of necessity, and we would all laugh about it as friends later. That's why it's important to not lie. You can just laugh and point out how they accidentally misinterpreted you. OK.

Anyway, we got to the center of the fort.

"How do you connect to other mages for power?" I asked.

"Y-Y-Y-You," Hilda began, stammering so hard I thought she would bite her tongue off. I probably didn't even need to mention she was staring at a wall with her head turned ninety degrees. "Y-You hold hands, l-l-let your mana mix, and th-then say the chant together."

"Both hands?" I asked. The orc mages hadn't, but I figured it woudl be best to ask anyway.

"N... Y-Y-Yes. Both hands. That's important. Both hands."

"Okay." I slipped her other hand into my free hand, turning her to face me, and squeezed them both for good measure. We were now facing each other, both of our hands clasped between us, but Hilda was still staring sideways.

I was going to ask about mana-mixing, but I felt it start happening on its own (or maybe Hilda started it). A kind of sickly, energy-sapping darkness slipped into my body through my hands. OK. It was pretty unsettling, not going to lie. If I entrusted myself to the darkness I would probably be sapped of the will to live in a matter of seconds. I pushed against it instead, and got the feeling I was putting my mana into Hilda. I wondered if all mana was sickly and dark, or if mine would feel different for her. I shuddered to think of what my soul would feel like. Probably something edgier than hers. Bleak nothingness, maybe.

After a pause, Hilda said. "O-Okay. Now we chant." She looked up, and so did I. The Sword of the Noon was blindingly bright by this point, and could best be described as feeling like a miniature sun. "Keep saying the chant over and over, so the spells mix."

And so we did.

"Yamiyo tekionagure, yamiyo tekionagure, yamiyo tekionagure, yamiyo tekionagure..." we chanted together. An orb of darkness formed above us and began growing in size. If I remembered correctly, it only had to be 1/10th the size of the sun above to consume it. Hopefully my slightly buff mana and her immense Cursed experience would be stronger than the, like, 15 orc mages hiding out somewhere.

As the Darkness Ball grew in size, the drama of the moment was impacted by a few things. (Note that epic battle music was playing in my head as BGM. Think, final boss music.) First, Hilda's hands were so sweaty they were actually dripping, somehow, and it was difficult to not just accidently end the mana mixing by slipping out of her grasp. Second, if you're wondering why my hands would slip out of her hands, it was because I was trying to keep them in front of our faces while she was trying to force them to the side. Third, if you're wondering why she was trying to push them aside, it was because Hilda was pushing her... okay, enough euphemisms, Hilda was pushing her large, soft breasts againt my chest while she tried standing on tip toes to reach my face with hers. Fourth, if you're wondering why she was doing that, it was because she (seemingly) wanted to conclude this Friendship Power moment with a kiss on the mouth after we finished chanting, despite the fact that kisses were decidedly not symbolic of platonic friendship. There were many reasons I was resisting rather than embracing this, but chief among them might have just been stubborn attachment to my chessboard theory. Where did it all go wrong? Was I going to lose the moral high ground I had been pretending to have and care about for so long?

Wrestling match aside, the Darkness Ball had grown quite large. It wasn't a miniature black sun, but it was big, and easily at least a tenth of the growing ball of light above.

We kept chanting, and by the time it felt like my MP was running out, the Sword of the Noon descended. To my surprise it was a beam rather than the ball itself descending, but then again the name clearly wasn't Sun of the Noon. Either way, Hilda and I made eye contract, and did what we had to do. We said yamiyo tekionagure for the last time and unleashed the Darkness Ball into the sky. I don't think we needed to hold our palms up to the sky for dramatic effect, but by God we did. A glance to the side showed Rose and some others at the gate of the door, having abandoned retreat to watch the light shows, which seemed like a bad idea to me, but Rose had her helmet off, and her pristine face had a slight smile that screamed confidence. Assurance. A theory proven correct. I didn't know what she was sure of, but I didn't have the time to think about it.

The Darkness Ball collided with the beam of light, and rather than being eradicated, grew stronger. I had understood the fact that Darkness Balls worked by destroying light and fed off it, rather than being weak to it, but it didn't really hit me as true until I saw the ball grow steadily in size on its way up. A beam had been a poor choice; any chance to overwhelm the ball had been lost. By the time the Darkness Ball reached the sun of light, it had well and truly become a Black Sun in its own right. The two suns collided, exploding in a dizzying display of light and darkness, and that was that.

(I sidestepped and dodged the kiss.)