This was a battle he could not win.

Before him, merely thirty paces away, the monstrous muspel cocked its head in predatory curiosity. The spikes that adorned its skull and neck jutted out at odd angles, frill-like and menacing, making it appear larger than its correct size. Lava trickled down its body, kissing its skin like water, with an iridescent glare shooting out of its bony eyes. Jagged, serrated teeth loomed from its jaws, dripping thick, viscid lava to the ground. It had two pairs of hands, like one of those ancient Hindu Gods, and looked like the wrestler that juggled a train engine as a casual exercise. There was fire within it. Fire exploded outside it. Fire was it.

Lukas’s attention, however, was not focussed on those trifle details. Instead, he was gazing at the monster’s eyes. There was a feral cunning to those glowing orbs, an inhuman, alien intelligence that was primordial yet strangely disconcerting.

This wasn’t a stupid brute awaiting its turn to mindless attack and slaughter, like the ifrit herd. It was aware of its surroundings, to a level perhaps even greater than Lukas himself. Something about its stare spoke of a alien intelligence, almost as if it had shed off its structured and logical conscience, and replaced it with a shrewd, bestial wit, much like the flames that exuded out of it.

It was superior to him, and it knew it.

Lukas had faced impossibly powerful beings before. The Guardian of the Crypt. Solana. Ryu. And of course, Inanna herself. But even with the Goddess, he had never lost his defiance.

But standing before this monster, Lukas could admit he was unnerved.

“Yeah…” He said, “shit’s really hit the fan this time.”

Like Solana, there was something utterly unnerving about it. Unlike Solana, the power exuding out of it was utterly unrestrained. This was a destroyer in the genuine sense of the term. If there was anything that would be an accurate test of his abilities, this was it.

Faster than it took a normal person to blink, Lukas went through his Prototype Array, verifying every single monster he knew,right down to their meanest skill, but nothing came even remotely close to being useful. The only thing remotely close was the dranzithl with its instant regeneration, but even that would be useless if that thing actually attacked him. Just its will alone had been enough to crush him into a crater. The only option was to run, but how could he outrun something that could attack him faster than he could perceive it?

No. No monster prototype could fight this.

Neither could his strength. Nor Inanna’s kinetomancy, nor Hreidmar’s gravity. Nothing.

As if sensing the turmoil in his mind, it took a single step in his direction, the motions heavy with menace. From the corner of his eyes, Lukas spotted the other muspel standing in ceremony backing down. The ifrit populace had already escaped, their prey-instinct overwhelming their desire to hunt.

As soon as it sees me running, it’ll scorch me to death, Lukas mused. It knows it’s cornered me and wants me to react. I’m its entertainment. The only option is to keep its flames from touching me.

The monster clawed another menacing step towards him.

Yes. That was the only way available. He had deflected flames before with minimal knowledge of kinetomancy. He had grown since then, but the flames he’d face now would be magnitudes, no, a dimensional greater than Quonnan’s. Nothing he could use — lifeforce, terramancy, pyromancy or aquamancy — nothing would be remotely useful against this monster. None of his monsters would last even five seconds against this titan.

Lukas focussed on Blob, connecting with its constitution.

Shield me.

Blob rose out of his form, expanding in all directions, forming an exo-suit to cover him, head to toe, leaving his nostrils, eyes, ears and mouth as the only openings available. Aqāru would not be a moderate choice of armor against lava, and wouldn’t last long against flames this potent. Not even when augmented with lifeforce.

But perhaps, he didn’t need lifeforce for this. Aqāru was a metal that conducted all elements. And against these flames, Lukas could only think of one.

Earth.

The terrain.

Terramancy.

His fractals went into overdrive, churning out Earth-mana in massive volumes, the mana covering every inch of the aqāru armor — reinforcing it, filling in the intermolecular spaces, increasing the attraction between them, the density between molecules, the bindings between multiple molecular layers that made up the Aqāru.

What was once a fluid was now denser than diamond.

And yet, still not enough.

Lifeforce burned bright within him, pouring more than he’d possibly need. His muscles became denser, more agile, more resistant to tear and fatigue. The bones of his body hardened. His senses got dialed to eleven. His current form was nearly impervious to conventional weaponry, his skin was strong enough to deflect Bergott’s blades. Even most kami-based attacks designed to kill would bounce off him.

It’d all be moot if he couldn’t deflect the flames first.

“Let us fight, beast,” Lukas said, “You might be the top dog in your world, but I’m an Outsider.”

He raised his arms.

“And I’m invading!”

…

…

A sea of flames crawled towards him. Fiery shadows. They might be part of a greater whole, but they themselves could incinerate a muspel by mere touch. They weren’t independent existences, but mere manifestations, called into existence by its will. Malignant growths, like the diseased skin of a plague victim, burst towards Lukas, ready to incinerate him, disintegrate him, until he was nothing but the smallest atom. Like open wounds in the fabric of existence, these shadows began vomiting more fiery shadows of the brightest crimson.

And then he heard it.

The chanting.

The constant hammering of the clubs on the terrain.

The muspels were slamming their fiery clubs down on the ground, yelling in loud voices, chanting what was obviously his death-knell. No man should ever hear the noise they made. The muspels didn’t even care to attack. There was no need for it. Lukas, in their eyes, was a dead man.

“Fire and blood,” they sang. “Fire and blood!”

This was his death.

And it was coming for him.

Lukas braced himself. Reinforced himself to the nth degree. Surrounded himself with a dome of rocks. Created a shield of pure inertia that could stop a running train in its tracks.

It barely halted the first blow.

Lukas was almost knocked back by the sweltering heat, his senses overloaded by its sheer intensity. Sweat poured down his brow, beads of perspiration clinging to his face and running down his cheeks. Despite that, he did not falter, did not take a single step back. He weathered the heat that would have evaporated a river and faced it with sheer, defiant will.

The flames stopped suddenly. Not because the beast was tired, but because it was observing him. Like it was a scientist, and he was the guinea pig.

Then came the second blast. It launched from the sides in a wide beam of liquid crimson, scorching the rocks themselves, smashing against the dome in waves of concussive force, buffeting it with fire so thick that it obstructed the world from view.

His eyes watered. His skin blistered. The dome was half-molten already.

The monster let out another growl. It came across as mocking in Lukas’s ears. A mocking, steely, howling laughter.

“I am not so easily killed, beast,” he spat back.

The monstrosity craned back its head. It stared down at the warrior as it challenged, its fiery pupils flashing. With a rumbling growl, it struck with all its might.

The world went red and howling.

Lukas raised both hands, touched upon the reservoir of power that the anomaly had gifted him, and called upon Ether.

Ether was the most dynamic element in the universe, capable of changing into all other elements, as well as transforming the unreal into the real. It was what allowed spiritual creatures like ifrits to bear physical form and embody physical properties. Ether was best used to create and protect, and what he had in mind was going to take a lot.

Cold blue light shone from within him. Within his thoughts, Lukas merged the power of Ether with raw, undiluted anomalous energy.

If Ether was the most versatile element in the universe, Anomalous Energy was the very fabric of creation. It didn’t make things more potent, but it made them more real. And when combined with Ether, the results could be pretty interesting. Had he not been fighting for survival, Lukas would have worn a pair of lab goggles, gotten a workbook and begun taking notes.

Activating Monster Prototype Marid

Initiating Consciousness Shift…

Enact.

Within a microsecond, Lukas accessed the Marid’s skills. He already had them listed in his arsenal, but he was really looking for the kami’s instinct more than anything else. Lukas grabbed the surge of Anomalous Energy and Ether within him, and with a command that could only be from the Marid’s instinct, coupled with a Level-3 Water Manipulation skill, pushed it out all at once.

Ever seen a tidal wave crash against a volcano? Lukas hadn’t either, but if he had, he was pretty sure it would look like this.

His head exploded with raw agony as the energies met and fed upon each other, growing into a thunderstorm in his thoughts. With a kick, he pushed himself into the air, bent his knees and went into a crouch, crafting an orb of pure lifeforce all around him, just in time for the wave to crash against the legion of fiery shadows that was the beast’s skin, and turned into an explosion of steam. Lukas could see the flames raging all around as the explosive force caused his defensive orb to shoot up like a cannonball through the sky. The entire area behind him exploded sky high, raining down broken rock fragments and flames all around.

Nearly a thousand feet above ground, the protective orb reached its apogee and then fell back towards the ground. Lukas hissed in pain from the stress of maintaining and controlling the shield. The Marid had no clue what to do in this situation and so Lukas let it dissipate.

Switching to Monster Prototype Svartalfar

Initiating Consciousness Shift…

Enact.

Yes. Level-5 Alpha Condition was a wonderful, wonderful thing.

Seamlessly, the instincts of a kami trapped in mid-air vanished, replaced by one that was so comfortable standing in mid-air that his fellow compatriots called him a sorcerer for it. Hreidmar’s instincts sharpened his focus, and instantly exacting its position ‘with respect to the center of gravity’ of the terrain. He’d need to make sure he didn’t overdo the height, or the speed, or else the sudden change of pressure would cripple him. However, even being temporarily disoriented was significantly preferable to being incinerated violently by that fire titan.

Higher. Higher. Higher.

He rose through the sky at tremendous speed. He couldn’t consider what he was doing to be flying. Flying was the action of keeping off of the ground. A process. What he was doing was merely adjusting the position of where he was and keeping the object he was on a constant relative to the ground. His changing in location was merely applying a velocity to the constant that was the sword he had made. It would be immensely difficult to perform terramancy like this in the air, with minimal proximity to the terrain, but Lukas had the advantage of drawing from his Omphalos reserves. He was moving higher and higher.

He did not notice that his lungs were not taking in enough air. They already had trouble with that because of the wounds he had suffered. He did not notice the damage his body had undertaken in trying to survive the past blows. Instead, his entire focus was down on the ground where the fire titan was looking up at the ground and—

“█ ██████████ ██████████”

With an earth-shattering roar, the beast charged forward, hunched down, and then launched itself up into the air at its prey that was rising at speeds that would kill a normal human being.

“Shit!” Lukas swore, seeing the giant rapidly approaching him at an impossibly fast velocity. He had put enough distance between the two that he had thought he might have been out of reach. Turns out he had once again ignorantly forgotten how little such beings cared for the laws of rationality and physics. As it stood, Lukas only had a few seconds before it caught him unless he did something quick.

And only one thing came to mind.

“Push!” he grimaced, preparing his already battered body for the strain that was about to hit him.

A wall of pure force expanded between himself and the beast. Of course, it did absolutely nothing to the beast, but that was expected. Instead, it was the reactive force — Newton’s law at work, that pushed him in a parabolic trajectory far, far out of its reach. How he stayed on all fours and not black out or break his limbs as his body rocketed away. He would never know, but that was exactly what happened. The moment it hit him, Lukas’s entire being felt like it was being crushed and his vision temporarily went white from the strain. Breathing was a luxury as the unwanted pressure on his body forced his brain to focus on ensuring his vitals could still function properly, and this was after he had reinforced his body beforehand. His only salvation was when the giant stopped moving upward and had instead dropped to the ground, roaring its dissatisfaction at letting its prey escape.

And then he heard it.

In massive wingspans of the darkest black, and a power not unlike the one he had just deserted on the ground below, was a behemoth that ruled the winds with the same ruthless efficiency as the one beneath did flames. And in the middle of the ethereal creature’s gigantic form, encased with the center of its two pairs of eyes like a crystal—

Was Tanya.

“I…” said Lukas, “have absolutely no idea what I’m looking at.”