A clowder of Noxes ran the edge structures of the paradox cube, crumbling walls along the way. As an additional result of the leveling up, not only did the familiar gain the ability to swarm, but each individual member had the same destructive power as the group. While Gleam and Dallion had been focusing on limiting Vend’s reach, Nox had slowly been moving closer and closer, slowly destroying the terrain in the process. This was part of Dallion’s long-term strategy—reduce the places Vend could go to up to the point that it wouldn’t matter how many instances he created. In effect, everything Dallion had done so far, even the seemingly reckless line attacks, and Lux’s destructive involvement, were with that purpose in mind. Now, finally, the results were starting to show.

Cocoon! Dallion ordered.

Immediately, the armadil shield extended, forming a metal sphere around him. Moments later, a series of flying knives bounced off the hard external surface.

Nice play, one of the knives said, as it bounced off.

There’s always next time, another added.

Despite his present state, Dallion couldn’t help but smile. There were a lot of things he imagined about this fight. Being taunted by throwing knives wasn’t one of them.

While waiting, Dallion attempted to raise his arms. Part of his muscles still felt sore, making it feel as if he were moving through jelly. However, he was at least able to move them freely now. It wasn’t much, but enough to allow him to hold a sword adequately.

You’re not ready, Harp said.

Not ready to fight him? Dallion asked. I don’t have a lot of choice. The trial won’t end until I defeat him.

You’re not ready to use line strikes. You’ve learned the ability, but even with my help you have to train a lot more.

I’ll have to use line attacks in the wilderness. That’s the entire point.

That’s why I’m telling you that you’re not ready. You can do one strike, possibly two. If you attempt a third, even Lux won’t be able to keep you conscious.

And falling unconscious on the battlefield is the same as death. I know.

All the harpsisword’s strings vibrated, displaying her discontent. As always, she was concerned for Dallion’s life well beyond the realms. The scary part was that in some regards, she knew him better than he knew himself. Up to a moment ago, he hadn’t even considered using line attacks in the real world. However, he also realized that once the trial was over, it was likely he would have. That was an attack too powerful to ignore, even if it still had serious drawbacks. Regarding his immediate challenge, though, it was out of the question. Dallion didn’t have the strength to go for a third strike. His battle against Vend was going to have to be far more traditional.

“Ready, Onda?” Dallion asked. “I’ll need you in a bit.”

Finally! The guardian sounded way too eager.

When I throw you, I want you to follow a curve. Vend won’t be caught in a direct attack, so you might have to do a few ricochets to reach him.

I don’t think I’ll hit him even with an indirect attack. The guy simply is too good.

“He is, though, not that good. By now he’s realized that I’m aiming to limit his movement. However, he won’t be able to protect both himself and the surrounding terrain. Aim for his feet. If he runs off, just hit it as hard as you can and tell me. I’ll summon you back.”

There was a moment of silence.

You’re crazy devious sometimes, Onda said. This was probably the best compliment he had ever given Dallion. Sadly, Dallion saw something that the guardian didn’t: now that Vend knew what the battle plan was, he’d adjust, which meant he would stop fighting from behind, but would engage in a swift attack.

You can wait him out, Vihrogon suggested.

Shield…

You don’t have daggers in your back anymore. You’ve pretty much won.

I'm only halfway there. I still have to face him. Open up.

The sphere detracted, returning to its original shield state. Dallion moved his shield arm around. The motion was mostly fine, even if it was a lot less comfortable than usual.

“Lux, get back here.” Dallion let go of his harpsisword. Just as the weapon disappeared, he summoned the hammer into his hand.

In the distance, the debris stopped bombarding the walls of the room. A bolt of blue light flashed onto Dallion, surrounding him with warm flames. Now, it was time for the final phase.

Dallion waited for a few seconds for the dust to settle. In the distance, Vend seemed to do the same. Suddenly, a green shield marker emerged in front of Dallion. Splitting into six instances, he rolled to both sides, and also raised the shield in front of his face. A knife bounced off.

Told you I’ll get you, the knife laughed as it fell on the floor.

Your owner is getting serious, Dallion noted, lowering the shield. Just in case he kept splitting so as to maintain six instances at all times.

He always was serious against you. You’re like, his star pupil and such.

I was his only pupil…

Nah. He liked the other two as well, but didn’t think they could reach his level. You, he thought, would surpass him. Not today, though. You’re still too slow.

Slow wasn’t the word Dallion would use, but he got the point.

“Boost me forward,” Dallion ordered. “As fast as I’d handle it. Take me straight through the dust cloud.”

The firebird hesitated. The “dust cloud” was a reference to the area that had been pommeled by debris fragments. As such, chunks of stone still floated freely, not to mention that crashing in any of the smaller elements at such a speed would feel like going through crossbow bolts.

“Lux,” Dallion adjusted his grip on the shield.

The order was absolute, and since Lux trusted his owner a lot, the familiar propelled him straight forward. The armadil shield extended, covering the entire front side of Dallion. Fragments of various sizes—from peas to basketballs—slammed into the hard metal surface in an attempt to push it back. However, that didn’t happen. Instead, thanks to the firebird’s propulsion, Dallion pierced through the cloud as if it were a sheet of paper. When he did, he found that Vend was standing there, patiently waiting him on a floating piece of roof.

There were a lot of things that they could have said to each other: banter, friendly comments, even reminiscing about the past. As far as health was concerned, they were on an equal footing. Without the daggers in his back, there was nothing to reduce Dallion’s health; and thanks to his splitting skill, Vend had avoided any potential damage from Lux’s orbital bombardment.

A thin smile formed on the lieutenant’s face, followed by him splitting in thirty instances.

Focusing every drop of mental fortitude at his disposal, Dallion split to match him. This was the limit of his present abilities. If he was in better physical condition, potentially he would manage about a dozen more. However, his illusions that he could go toe to toe with his former teacher were quickly dashed, when Vend doubled the amount of his own instances. Even with the vastly diminished battlefield size, facing that was going to be a problem.

“Harp, Vihrogon, I need your help,” Dallion said, his voice brimming with determination.

Are you sure you can trust us? The armadil shield asked. This is a trial about betrayal.

“That’s right, and not trusting you when I’m supposed to is a betrayal against myself as well.” Dallion removed the shield from his arm and summoned his initial buckler. “I don’t want you to win the battle for me, just even the odds, so I can.”

Harp was the first to emerge. The nymph stood beside Dallion, a four-foot saber made of water in her hand. The dryad was next, wearing his usual light armor of a sword marshal. Unlike the nymph, Vihrogon immediately split into a hundred instances, significantly surpassing those of Vent. Not for long, though. There was another massing combat split, only this time it was Vent who had added a hundred instances to the scene. The ultimate split fight had begun.

Split-fighting was always a weird thing. Dallion had only marginally experienced it so far, mostly as an observer when Vihrogon had faced the last of the World Sword guardians. Back then, Dallion’s only goal was to disrupt one of the instances of the enemy, so that Vihrogon could gain the advantage with his instances and break down the other’s defenses.

In reality, wiping an instance from existence didn’t cause any damage; what it did was eliminate part of the options for the party involved. Remove one weak link and suddenly several instances had a much greater range of flexibility, and in turn eliminate even more instances. Dallion and his dryad guardian were doing precisely that, attempting to outplay their opponent in a vast game of chess. Meanwhile, Harp’s only goal was to defend Dallion in the time between instances. That was a good strategy, especially since Vend had several attempts to break Dallion’s instances, thus shifting the distribution of power on the field.

“Not bad,” Vend said. “You’ve put everything on the line for this.”

Daggers were flying all about like rain: a dozen thrown every second by every instance of Vend. All of them had one single target—Dallion. That wasn’t fair by any stretch of the imagination. However, fairness wasn’t the point. Vend didn’t need an instance to survive, he needed one to manage to deal damage to Dallion at a low enough cost. And on one occasion, he managed to do just that.

MINOR WOUND

Your health has been decreased by 5%

MINOR STRIKE

Dealt Damage is increased by 10%

Two red rectangles appeared in unison as both Vend and Dallion got injured. Normally, that was supposed to be to Dallion’s advantage. However, after a few moments it became obvious that Lux was incapable of restoring his health.

“A friendly piece of advice—you’re not the only one with fancy weapons,” Vend said.

A second dagger made its way dangerously close, but this time Harp reacted, slicing it in two before it could deal any damage.

Dallion’s heart froze. Although the dagger was only broken in an instance, he felt the pain as if it were real.

“Don’t break them!” Dallion shouted to Harp. “Just deflect.”

The nymph looked at him with a look expressing nothing but deep sadness then obeyed. She wasn’t going to destroy any items in this fight, even if she very well could.

“You’ll have serious difficulties following that path,” Vend said, while pushing on. He had started to slowly retreat, pushed back by the combined instances of his opponents, but despite that was still attempting to sink as many daggers in Dallion as possible. “Even the dryads’ chosen fell in the end.”

Dallion didn’t respond, even if he found it amusing that Vend was tempting him to betray the Green Moon during a trial that dealt with betrayal, among other things. Gritting his teeth, he kept fighting on, guiding each of his instances in such a fashion as to slowly chip away at his opponent’s advantage. It was starting to look like victory would be his. At this point, Dallion was fighting on will alone. Pain and fatigue had long become a thing of the past, his only focus was to achieve victory. Just when it was almost in his grasp, Vend’s instances suddenly vanished.

“What happened?” Dallion asked. “Did any of you do anything?”

It was unlike Vend to have such a low exhaustion threshold.

Thinking the same thing, the dryad attacked the lieutenant with three dozen instances. In a sudden blur of motion, all of them vanished. For a split-second Dallion thought he could see multiple instances of Vend’s arms performing multiple actions, as if they had multiplied.

“Sorry, Dal.” Vend took a step forward. “There are still a few tricks that I only shared with Eury.”