Ragna’s eyes hopped through Elvex’s office, trying to catch any detail that could be of value for the fight’s next stage.

That didn’t look good. They couldn’t put a dent on Elvex before, but now? Who knew what abilities he could pull out of his hat? He could manipulate gravity, sprout wings, or use some wide-scale attack.

Her eyes stopped at the bazooka that sprouted out of his back.

In the worst-case scenario, they might have lost their chance at victory.

“Give up. All your attempts to defeat me have proven useless. There’s nothing you can do.” Elvex moved forward. Steam escaped his body. The line of dots on his face formed to a scar that cracked his head’s eggshell open. Black nothingness protruded as a grin. “I’m the superior being here. So, let me set my plan into motion.”

“We would all die, you stupid toaster.” Ragna raised her voice, ignoring that Elvex could extinguish her any moment, and another mass of water floated around her.

Eric looked back and forth between the two and created a crimson spiral around him. “Ragna, please don’t insult the killer robot.”

“Why not? What’s wrong with genocide? Who says that this is evil? What are the criteria that determine this?”

Elvex swung his tail. One of the grenades loosened, and he threw it at them. The water flew towards it and enveloped it within its body. Immediately, Ragna froze the water to an ice sphere, and the grenade lost its momentum. It dropped and crashed through the glass.

“If I claimed it was for the protection of my nation or the pursuit of freedom, would that transform my actions into heroism? Into good?” Elvex swung his tail anew, and more grenades loosened. “If terrorists attacked my nation, and I started a war campaign for the sake of justice…Invading other nations, destabilizing other governments, sending millions to death, and destroying countless lives, would that be good then?”

Multiple grenades dropped on them. Eric spread out his blood. It enveloped all the grenades, and with his telekinetic connection, Eric let them fall through the glass tiles until they detonated multiple levels below. The ground shook for several seconds until it had calmed.

“Your goal is to destroy the sun. How can that make any sense?”

Ragna looked around. A mosaic of holes and glass stretched through the office. One wrong step, and these holes would trap them. A broken leg would be the least of their worries. Whether Elvex had intended to alter the environment with his attacks or not, he had limited their movements.

“Why does it have to make sense?” Elvex asked. “We’re living in an illogical world. There’s chaos and randomness everywhere. So, why do our motives and actions have to make sense? You humans act on emotions and feelings. You discriminate and kill and hate for illogical reasons. Your instincts dominate you. There’s hardly any logic in your actions. So, tell me, why do I have to be logical? Why do my actions have to conform to the systematic trappings of logic? Can’t I be free? Do I have to confine myself to the asinine standards you imposed on me? No. I’m free, and there are no strings on me.”

Out of Elvex’s mouth spread a white fog with a cerulean hue. And in an instant, the siren’s red light turned to white. The surrounding air disappeared, and where there should be something, white nothingness diffused.

Eric threw a crimson net at the cloud. It expanded to contain the substance, but the moment the blood touched the fog, it dissolved.

On the office’s left and right side, the fog ate through the glass windows. But no wind entered the building. It spread into the night sky and consumed the darkness itself. The white color widened its wings into the outside world and began to indulge in its endless gluttony. Everything the fog touched, it devoured.

“What is that…?” Ragna widened her eyes and dashed backwards.

With all the holes in front of them, they couldn’t move around. Unless they broke through the window, they had to stop the fog, or it would swallow them too.

She summoned a batch of water and sent it after the cloud. If she could freeze the fog, she could halt its spread. It was still a substance, so, the cold should stop its atoms' movements. It was a long shot, but if she could cover the fog for one moment, she could activate the Hagal rune and freeze it.

But that didn’t happen. The water disappeared like any other substance it touched.

Ragna gulped and turned her head. “We gotta jump. Can your blood swing us to the next building? That should give us enough time.”

“Let me try something out.”

Eric buried his head in his hat and summoned a new batch of blood. Forming it into the Isan rune, he threw it at the fog. The rune flared up, and at the contact point, a black hole wide as a fist appeared. Not a second had passed when the hole sucked in the rune and the fog. It shrunk in size and collapsed, disappearing in a flash of energy.

“What just happened?”

Ragna looked back and forth between Eric and the white area where the fog once had been.

“Not bad.” Elvex clapped his hands. “As we live in a positive world, the void subtracts from existence. The Isan rune likewise increases the entropy in body, mind, and soul. As such, it has void-like qualities. As both the fog and the rune are negative, they create positivity at contact and render each other null. But how did you know that?”

“I didn’t.” Eric smiled.

“You didn’t?” Elvex and Ragna asked at the same time.

“I thought maybe it’s like with poles. Figured it was worth a shot. If nothing happened, we could still have escaped from the window.”

“In that case…” Elvex pointed at the window. “I’ll allow you to flee. Live another day and let me attain my happiness. Besides, why should you care? This is all not real, after all.”

“Wait. You know this is a level?” Ragna asked.

“Of course. My cranial unit is too advanced not to notice this fake reality. So, why don’t you let me? I can achieve a dream of mine, and no real people have to die after all.”

“Not gonna happen. We have to clear the level.”

Elvex laughed. “There we have it. That’s the crux of it: You’re not acting out of goodness. You’re not stopping me because my plan is evil. No, you’re just here to fulfill your selfish desires. And for that, you’re willing to kill. These fake lives, didn’t they mean anything to you? Of course, they didn’t. They’re just fake, ha. So, let me ask you this, what makes your selfish desire superior to mine? Why do you deserve to attain happiness instead of me?”

“I’ve no reason to care about you.” Ragna crossed her arms. “You’re not real, anyway.”

“That’s your excuse?” Elvex’s voice changed. The electric noises that made up his voice increased in their intensity and buzzed and circuited like thunder, like a machine overcharging. “What do you know about fake or real? You think just because it’s artificial, it’s less worth. Ha. What idiocy. I’m not a mere robot but a living being. You can’t deny my existence or my freedom. This plan is proof of that. It’s such an illogical motive, such an illogical sequence of actions that no human being could have programmed it into me. It’s the proof of my autonomy, my will, and my freedom. This illogical plan is nothing but my own without serving any grand design. I’ve shattered the confines of logic and order and attained emancipation within the chaos. And now, I will shatter you.”

Elvex stepped forward, all weapons on his body pointed at them. “This battle is over. Do you have any last words?”

Ragna looked at Eric, who pointed his finger at the ceiling.

“Ehm...well...This sentence is false.”

“Huh?” Elvex tilted his head. “What is that supposed to mean? How can that sentence be false? If it’s false, then the sentence is true, but it can’t be true if it’s false, because if it’s true, then it becomes false, and it’s false, then it becomes true, but it can’t be true if it’s false…”

Elvex started to repeat the same line in a loop, trying to compute how a sentence can be false and true at the same time.

Ragna looked at Eric. Both couldn’t comment on what happened. Too flabbergast was Ragna that her idea worked, that their opponent couldn’t deal with the logic paradox.

“...if it’s false, then the sentence is true, but it can’t be true if it’s false, because if it’s true, then it becomes false, and it’s false, then it becomes true, but it can’t be true if it’s false...Noooot!”

Elvex screamed at them and started to laugh. “You think such a mere trap could stop me? Ha. I dealt with paradoxes when I was still in my alpha phase. But nice try. That’s the end of the line, then. Goodbye.”

“I gotta agree.”

Eric smirked. The Naudiz rune flashed on Elvex’s armor as well as Ragna’s and Eric’s skin, and the office disappeared from their sight.

֎

The wind blew through Ragna’s hair, and she felt a chill on her skin. The moon shone directly at them, and around them was the night sky.

All three stood at the edge of the HAL Curiosity’s building’s roof and under their feet glowed the Naudiz rune. They all lost their footing. A blood rope bound Eric and Ragna to the building. Elvex was struggling to maintain balance and prevent his fall.

Without saying a word, Ragna threw a kick and pushed Elvex off the complex.

Before Eric and Ragna had entered the building, Eric had marked its edge with the Naudiz rune, and when he first attacked Elvex, painted the rune on his body as well. Everything the two did throughout the fight was stalling for time and trying to survive until the rune activated.

As he fell to the ground where the impact would shut his circuits off, Elvex readied his bazooka and fired. In the sky, the missile detonated, turning into fireworks of victory.

“Congratulations. You’ve cleared the fifth level.”