Out of the darkness emerged the head of a beast. It had a lion-shaped head, and it was very large, easily twice the size of a man in height. It had eight eyes, and each eye had three irises arranged in a triangular shape. Then the head retreated into the shadows once more, but its presence did not diminish. It felt as if the beast was still in the room and this coupled with its unsettling appearance caused everyone and everything to cower in fear in some way. The howlers prostrated themselves on the floor, while the humans become stone-faced with hardened gazes.

Aren saw those expressions once. When Deucalion failed to intercept the pilum, the words intercept failed fell on the soldiers around Aren like a guillotine.

A roar resonated in the chamber.

[ The gaze of Aurora is upon you: May fortune favor the bold. ]

So that is how it was? Aren chuckled to himself darkly. He didn’t find it funny or amusing. It was simply that after everything that happened to him, this outrageous situation made him feel pity towards himself. For a brief while, he might’ve genuinely believed that he could have a normal adventure, at least, if not a normal life. But now they were fighting the demonic incarnation of a dungeon guardian, whatever that was.

It was too unfair.

Once again, Aren’s perception of time slowed down. When the death line snapped to something in the briefest of moments, the beast appeared from a nearby shadow behind Fang. It crawled out of his shadow in a way that was similar to what Camille did, but without dissolving into mist first, or reforming from the mist. To the beast, a shadow may have been just another gateway or path.

It stood at a height that made the titan class warrior, that Aren called Heavy, look like a child’s toy. It wasn’t so much its size at around twelve feet tall that made it look so oppressive, but its size in general. It had four limbs, but at the elbow of each was a giant scythe made of metal. Its head had two blade-like horns that curved backward. Finally, its tail was like a jointed whip ending with a large scything blade. It was as Ame said, and as Aren felt it — a creature made of blades. Even its lion's mane was made up of razor-sharp wires upon which the crystal-light refracted.

Fang reacted just in time, turning around and bringing his naginata in towards his body, angling it to receive a blow he sensed coming. Perhaps it was the sound, or a sixth sense, that warned him to the danger, but even so, it was not enough.

The beast whipped its tail around, smashing the bladed end into the haft of Fang’s naginata. Then the blade cleft the haft apart and nearly amputated Fang’s arm on its way through.

Fang’s expression instantly changed. That one blow was enough for Fang to learn the same thing that Ame did. They were ants. They were the arena champions of the ants. They were famous ants that other ants fought over.

Ame suddenly stepped next to the beast and his katana was shrouded in sparkling white light. He held the sword with both hands at shoulder-level and stepped forward with enough force to look impressive. With a shout, Ame slashed the blade straight down, towards the beast’s neck. His sword left a trail of black essence as it struck the beast’s neck, carving through one of the steel horns in the process.

Then his sword stopped, not even halfway through the beast’s neck.

Ame looked stumped. His lips moved soundlessly, mouthing the word “How?”

Aren understood. Nothing had probably ever survived that technique. It would’ve been the same if something survived Aren’s [Lightning Divider]. The blade did not make it even halfway through the beast’s neck — this was the best Ame’s ultimate killing technique could do.

The death line finally calmed down, solidifying into a death sentence. Except, there was one problem. Never before had Aren thought of the death line as having a direction, but this time, without a shred of a doubt, Aren knew that this death line was not his. This death line belonged to the monster, and Aren was its target.

Fang glared at Aren, his eyes conveying a meaning too great for words. “Aren!” he shouted. Run, his eyes tried to tell him, but not quite right. Run like hell was better, but not even close enough to capture the panic and terror in Fang’s eyes.

“Camille!” Aren shouted at the same time, glaring at his own shadow. This wasn’t a situation where he could afford to be subtle about things like these.

The beast slashed at Ame with a paw lined with long blades, carving into the blademaster’s left shoulder and nearly ripping his arm off. Blood sprayed on Fang’s face from Ame’s wound, and the eastern warrior was forced to turn his attention back to the beast.

Out of options, Fang tried to stab the beast with the bladed half of the polearm, but the beast turned with its slash against Ame, slamming Fang with its massive body and launching the armored warrior away as if he was little more than a balloon.

The beast roared in rage — or perhaps pain?

At this point, both Estella and Cassandra were staring at Aren after he shouted Camille’s name. But Aren wasn’t even aware of them. He wasn’t aware of Estella’s determined expression, or the golden halo that suddenly appeared around her, etched with magical symbols — a sign of her using [Divine Warfare]. He wasn’t aware of Cassandra trying to bring Nissa out of her fear-frozen state by shaking her shoulders. He wasn’t aware of Damien, lingering in the shadows and glaring towards the approaching horde of howlers, perhaps correctly reading the situation and realizing that the howlers would kill them first before the monster had a chance.

He wasn’t aware of anything except for the shadow at his feet that rotated all the way around until it was right in front of him. Then his shadow opened its eyes, golden-red with eight pupils around the central one.

“I will help you,” his shadow — Camille — spoke. Then a blood mist burst out from his shadow and slowly coalesced into the shape of a sword — in fact, it copied the exact appearance of Ame’s katana, down to the smallest detail.

“Cover your ears.” That is all Aren said to his companions as he began pacing forward.

Fang wanted him to run? Run where?

Aren almost wanted to laugh — to pity himself some more. Although he couldn’t stop his body from feeling fear, fear itself was a luxury Aren could not have anymore. Running away was a luxury Aren couldn’t have anymore.

Camille understood this. She could read Aren’s mind, after all. What manner of unsightly things did Camille see in there? Could she understand the desperation and panic that the idea of dying in Singularity induced? Yet, Aren wasn’t afraid of death. Aren knew that one day he would die. The more he thought about the future the more certain he became that his path ends with a violent death. Maybe today. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe ten years from now. It did not matter.

Sure. He was afraid of dying.

But he was afraid of losing Priscilla even more!

Lightning crackled through the sword that Fang gave him, melting the metal non-ferromagnetic parts of the alloy and causing them to shed away from the blade. Then, electrical sparks shot through the pointed stick that remained, gouging into the ground.

The beast sunk into the shadows once more, but before completely disappearing, it locked its eight eyes onto Aren, and each one of its twenty-four irises glimmered with an unspeakable desire to kill him in particular. It was pure hatred.

Lightning flashed across the metal blade in Aren’s hands and then arced over again, as Aren released it and it came to float above his head. Estella and Cassandra immediately understood what this meant and the blonde crusader covered her ears. Cassandra, selflessly, covered Nissa’s ears, shouting at her to wake up. Damien, on the other hand, sunk into the shadows, much like the former guardian did.

Then, the spike of molten metal launched itself forward with a crackling boom that deafened Aren. Even though the chamber was larger, the sound was still so loud that it blew out his eardrums again. But that was fine. Aren didn’t have to hear. He didn’t have to feel pain anymore either; Or joy; Or even fear. He gave up all of those things when he decided to pursue this path. Leviathan gave him the choice: Die free, or live for a purpose.

The supersonic projectile of molten metal speared through the shadow that the guardian sunk into and a roar of pain echoed in the chamber. Not that Aren could hear it. But he felt it rumbling in his bones — it was the kind of sound that shook fear loose from the heart and made it fall into the pit of one’s stomach.

There was no damage notification, however.

“Estella!” Aren called out, and his own voice sounded strange to him. It rang in his head, but it didn’t have that reverb that the brain comes to expect. “Take care of the howlers!” He even pointed in the direction of the shadowy beasts approaching the group, to make sure she understood his request, in case she was also deaf.

His eyes, however, were on the shifting death line and where it suggested the guardian was. The closer it came to his delicate throat — surely for a decapitation — the heavier he felt. The death line itself began to twist and shimmer, shredding and reshaping itself as if becoming undecided about whose death it foretold — Aren’s or the guardian’s? It was as if they were playing a game of tug-of-war, mentally subjecting each other to various deaths.

The death line shifted from Aren’s neck to his chest, then to the center of his body, and finally back to his neck. It really was as if not only he saw the death line, but the monster as well, and as their theoretical battle progressed, so did the manner of the finishing blow.

The act itself would most likely be a formality — one strike to decide it all. The real battle was fought here, in this place, in the unquantifiable space between heartbeats — in the silence between the firing of synapses.

In the world of Singularity, then, was a smaller world. In this smaller world, there were no companions, no dungeons, no howlers. There was only the guardian, Aren, and the death line. Even though flashes of golden light behind Aren illuminated the chamber so brightly that it drowned out the light from the crystals overhead, it did not even register with Aren. Neither did the fact that a golden blade, made of purely divine energies, carving a new ravine into the ground where the howlers were register with Aren. In this smaller world, even if he were not deaf, Ame’s cries of pain would not reach him, and neither would Damien emerging from the shadows to attempt to drag Fang’s unconscious form to safety. It truly was a mostly empty world.

Then, suddenly, the death line’s loose form snapped tight, creating a taut, direct string of fate connecting the two.

Aren bounded forward, his hand closing around the hilt of the blood sword that Camille created for him. Lightning surged through the sword, and the blade — and only the blade — turned black, while the spine remained scarlet. Under the influence of lightning, spikes formed on the surface of the blood sword — very small ones — and they arranged themselves along the fields of the magnetic influence.

Aren felt a great power from the sword and he immediately realized that Camille created it with incredible macros and aliases. They were tailor-made for him. Unlike the shadowblade of earlier, this sword did not have unnecessary things within its sub buffer.

Aren poured his reserves of lightning energy into the sword.

The beast appeared in a shadow behind Aren, and slightly to his left. It lunged out of the shadow as if it was a physical space to the beast, with platforms to launch off of. Its claws gleamed with the embers of burning violet and scarlet flames, the cold cyan glow from the crystals, and Estella’s golden-glowing sword.

The death line settled on Aren’s neck.

Aren tilted his body sideways, an action that was more instinct than a conscious decision, just as the sequence in his buffer completed. Lightning discharged through the blood sword and into the ground, but also arced between Aren’s neck and the metallic blades on the monster’s paw, just as they grazed the soft, delicate flesh of his vital area. But that is all the claws did — they grazed him, not so much as even inflicting an insignificant wound.

But then Aren caught a glimpse of the bladed tail and the way it whirled in the air. The incredibly thin blade itself disappeared in Aren’s vision as it angled itself perfectly. Aren lifted his left arm to try and block it — he at least had some iron and leather bracers on — but he suspected it wouldn’t be enough. Even then, he was calm.

Then the bladed tail struck his neck and part of his bracers, and Aren felt warmth pool around his neck immediately, while a deathly cold crawled through his body.

[ Injury sustained. Severity: Fatal. ]

Then the blade snapped off the tail and went flying across the room. At the moment before it separated from the beast’s body, Aren saw a ring-shaped mark of molten metal at the blade's base as if something burned and punched through it. Aren realized what happened. That is what he struck with [Lightning Driver], weakening its structure!

[ Fatal strike negated! Severity: Mortal wound. ]

Then Aren recoiled, and he slashed at the beast with [Lightning Divider]. The sword, in that one moment, transformed into pure lightning. The sword impacted the guardian’s neck, right next to where Ame’s sword was, and the lightning discharged into the atmosphere, striking the ceiling like a lightning bolt. The hilt of Ame’s sword fell to the ground as the rest of the blade melted inside the guardian’s wound.

[ Injury inflicted. Severity: Fatal. ]

But then Aren’s sword dispersed into a mist of blood and iron particles, losing cohesion underneath the powerful electrical currents of [Lightning Divider] fueled by almost his entire lightning energy reservoir, just before he managed to completely cut off the guardian’s head. The sudden change in resistance caused Aren to stumble a few steps.

[ Fatal strike negated! Severity: Mortal wound. ]

They glared at each other then, as the death line began to shimmer and twist again, Aren’s two eyes unyielding against the cold, ancient glare of the guardian’s eight eyes. The two shared this moment, which to them may have even been everlasting. They both technically died here. They shared this moment not only as two predators but also as two warriors who found true fulfillment in mortal combat. Aren may even go as far as to say that he might have begun to enjoy this exhilarating feeling of standing on the precipice of death. He would probably never admit such, though.

The death line shimmered again, becoming as taut as a piano wire.

Aren’s [Lightning Cleaver] carved through the guardian’s remaining blade-horn and then across the guardian’s face, cutting through vertically and destroying two eyes, just as the guardian’s elbow blade connected with Aren’s outstretched left arm and lopped it off at the forearm.

With his buffer open, Aren could ignore most of the tremendous pain that he felt, but not to the point where he could pay attention to the damage notifications.

Thinking quickly, and aided by his heightened perception, Aren snatched the blade-horn out of the air, and with the same motion drove it into the guardian’s neck, sheathing the entire half-meter length of the steel-keratin blade into the guardian’s vital area, causing both of them to topple to the ground, and roll into the pool of water in the center of the chamber, surrounded by flames.

Aren tore out the blade-horn from the guardian’s neck, causing a shower of blood to erupt from the wound, and then he tried to plunge it into the guardian’s vestige core.

The death line snapped.

Before he could drive the horn-blade into the guardian’s core, the guardian dissolved into the shadows, retreating beyond the wall of fire that Cassandra put up.

Aren panted heavily, slumping over until his head rested on the shore of the small pool. The crystal clear waters around him began to turn red. He had lost so much blood, his mind began to wander. For some reason, he thought of that moment when he first met Priscilla and the way her laughter brightened up each day following their meeting. He thought of her and even saw her elegant form through the foggy twilight of his life coming to an end. He thought of her final words and thought of how she must still be waiting for him somewhere.

He wanted to keep his promise that he would find her. He really wanted to.

I wish we had more time.