Extremely few of the Rune tools reached supreme tier in any category, and those which did came with clear downsides or exorbitant costs. One of the most common downsides was needing extremely responsive control, something the sealed Alkuthuzen couldn’t satisfy. Whether such an injured body withstood the high-power requirements also came to mind. They sat there with minimalist movements just as he had done to stay alive in the frozen sub-realm. He already identified that all current protection came from these 113 pieces of equipment with subpar combat ability, not a single one of them with any form of intelligence. That didn’t make things easy.

A rapier, twin scimitars, dagger, halberd, and bastard sword attacked without direction or teamwork. These attacks weren’t all too bad since the weapons only pursued with simple attacks when uncontrolled, that made each one a nuisance at most, however, his problems came with the other six weapons alongside them.

These similarly lacked collaborative skills, but utilised their magical abilities. A mace, sceptre, grimoire, glass beaker, calligraphy brush, and a spiky black ball resembling sea urchins.

He mostly ignored the mace and sceptre, both of which tried to hit him, and failed to read his movements. Wilful inattention cloaked the grimoire, beaker, and brush until later.

Casual flight already fixed his mobility issue. All melee equipment chased after him in straight lines, only changing from this behaviour in close proximity, at which point an improvised manoeuvre dodged the strikes themselves. None of that dealt with the nightmarish final weapon, an almost funny-looking spiky ball. But if even one of those extensible spikes connected…

Just don’t let it close, no other advice helped.

Akevorax noticed the next set of attacks, planning accordingly, but first used a hard push forward to maintain speed. His head lowered, almost curling into his body, and both wings folded for just a moment… A rapier from the side stabbed towards his neck, right behind a dagger jabbed into his folded wing, and just behind he saw the mace smash down onto his back.

Nothing too bad, a common thought he gave to most attacks. Eyes and thoughts relatively calm, as much as one could be in the situation, remained this way to always observe.

Air suddenly smashed against his face again, and a wing opened in the face of such mismatched forces. Turning into the wing, his body threw itself sideways at a sharp angle, at the same time his head raised itself as the air resistance vanished once more.

A fine, pointed rapier undershot his neck and double-edged dagger completely missed the folded wing from his sudden turn. While that final weapon, a spherical mace of solid metal, missed for an identical reason, such gargantuan momentum carried the object downwards until meeting the sea. On contact, water threw itself high like a detonation beneath its waves.

Wings flapping several times to recover lost speed and height, already the twin scimitars arrived alongside that bastard sword. A quick roll with folded wings evaded the pair of curved swords, but he could only block against that heavier, straight edge with his orb.

Right after blocking the strike, it ran off into the distance once again.

Ahead of him flew a sceptre cast from black metal filled with streaks of gold, his eyes rolled as he spread out both wings to stop completely, and ascended vertically with heavy beats. Neck moving right in the process just barely dodged another rapier stab, and he almost swore as the pocket watch activated. Another 20 times acceleration lasting just a percent of a second.

That valuable 0.2 seconds pushed him a couple hundred metres forward, and in the ocean behind him, another hole appeared. Water filled that gap as always, and he continued onward.

Absolutely abhorrent. For 3 minutes now, without a moment’s rest, he ran around evading simple-minded attacks without any recourse.

Several tests revealed that the eye never fired if a Rune tool remained in the beam’s range, additionally, the sceptre’s power only affected living organisms. These were the two most abusable factors at first. Theoretically, it worked on the eye, but he doubted any easy solution existed. The mace’s power hurt him more than anything else as it applied seals on contact. Eye of Truth revealed some sort of spinning array which randomly cycled through effects too. Fortunately, all but the three strongest were currently active. He had yet to take a hit, but none of them appealed to him.

Eight bright spots of power appeared above him, quickly followed by blinding balls of orange light at their centres. Mana transformed into luscious fire elements and runes coated them all…

Flying up to meet the attack, multiple more slashes and stabs diverted him, but trending upwards wasn’t too hard by now. On the way he complained to himself, “It can use at least 4 spells then…” The crown’s engravings flashed once, and two blasts of Domination Force attacked the red magical dimension.

Destabilisation took over two of the eight shining balls of deadly flame, and he dove downwards as fiery explosions chased behind. The mace, bastard sword, and beaker caught in that explosion shrugged off such damage, not even a spot of black on their surfaces. Unlike the two weapons chasing downwards, the beaker remained high up, gently stirring in the air and occasionally shaking with violent tremors. Coloured gases escaped the opening every now and then, incredibly odd as the beaker was perpetually empty.

However, not long after, with Akevorax in the middle of dodging a dagger aimed for his eye, the beaker erupted.

Black droplets spewed out from the empty glass object, thrown about to create a dense rain of fluid. The previous rains of yellow and green fluids sent him scurrying to dodge every last drop, but this one… He could use this. Just how to contain it?

As these thoughts came to him, nothing stopped the incessant slicing of blades. The barest gratitude had to be given to the fact he regenerated any damage they caused near-instantly, but even just a tiny slip up easily compounded into further injuries. Unfortunately, what usually saved him in these situations was the orb, currently somewhere as it zipped around the surrounding half kilometre at all times. Pouncing repeatedly on the spiky black weapon which raced towards its victim like those other weapons.

“You can handle it?” He suddenly spoke aloud, seemingly to no one, but a reply from the spirit confirmed its beliefs. Without many seconds left till the rain arrived, he accelerated himself once more. Rushed to complete several actions as soon as possible.

In just a tenth of a second, he entered the mental space and returned with two tendrils of condensed mana. Both of them freely morphed to his wishes even outside that unreal world, and from here they formed a curved plane over his body in flight. Affixed to his centre of mass, it protected him from the black rain with dire consequences. Above that thin layer of controlled mana appeared a golden coat as Origin Force washed over the surface and bonded together. A stable homogenization, unlike the raw transparent elements freely floating.

When the black liquid struck, sparks of gold spread throughout the fluid and it quickly stuck on top. Once merged, it was completely under the spirit’s control. Akevorax dashed through the shower of liquid to maximise the layer of black atop. While 90% of it vanished into the ocean waters, what he gathered was easily a few gallons.

Who knew if this alchemical fluid possessed a name or not, but just a glance at its elemental and runic composition told him enough to know what it did. Partially… Sort of.

Alchemy wasn’t a simple matter of ‘two good things equal a better thing’ and the compounds created sometimes reversed everything entirely. Many liked to teach apprentices the idea of poisons being used as medicines, but at all levels of alchemy there existed cases where products filled with poisonous compounds lost any harmful effect. The reverse also applied.

Identifying purely based on elemental constitution only worked for simplistic creations. However, the runic structures visible in most high tier products gave an additional source of information.

It also helped to know the flask’s autonomous arrays only created dangerous substances.

With the black fluid available, he directed his spirit to carefully move its portion in tandem with his own. Using the base of mana as a protective coat, he wrapped it around his body as the blades prepared their next attacks.

The rapier pierced through the black fluid and into his neck, just the resulting force carried onwards and blew a hole open on the other side. Chunks of ice cream and scales sprayed out while the rapier swiftly rotated inside the wound and cut out of his neck. This healed easily, and in exchange for minor damage, the rapier soaked in black-gold began to visibly corrode. It reacted routinely and shook off the substance, even using mana reserves to strip or burn away the mess…

But he’d never have been wary of such a flask otherwise. The polished blade with a white-silver depth now turned dull like lead, gaining a roughness of rusted iron, and even sprouting little deposits of greenish-blue crystals on its surface.

The innocent dagger, twin scimitars, and bastard sword all came next. Through all of this, that left one bladed weapon… A rarely seen halberd. Strikes few and far between, the last one occurred in the split-second of halting as Domination Force suppressed that large fire spell. And when it appeared, every strike sought to decapitate or obliterate one of his important organs. The thin rapier fell into the ocean after three coatings, dagger taking nine thinner layers, each scimitar endured seven times, and the sword a generous dozen. Unable to do much to the mace at a distance, he let it strike his tail before cutting off the sealed section of his body. That mace lost its sealing ability after just one smacked tail, and from there he endured three more strikes before it splashed like a bomb into the murky waters.

‘Become hard.’ The Auric Spirit’s emotionless statement entered his thoughts.

“Drop half of it. We don’t need much now,” his calculative statement given as he stared at the intact objects. The ones he could see or sense at least.

A beaker still frivolously concocted in the sky, what it created next completely unknown to a newbie in alchemy like himself. The sceptre still flew about and tried to invoke a domain of some sort, in this case a monarchal domain rather than some magical effect in the area around it… Ah, it technically applied in both cases then.

Did that all sound rather quick?

Certainly, he acquired that black alchemical fluid after just five or ten minutes of this… But it took over half an hour to finally corrode and destroy each weapon. Differing materials meant specific control and application to cause enough destruction before in-built cleansing functions pushed away such substances. He got caught by the eye’s beams twice in that time, losing a wing and half his back the first time. The second one disintegrated the whole lower half of his body, instantly reducing it to pure energy. Meanwhile, a glass beaker very kindly released another 10 showers of fluids, one of which only activated after dissolving into the ocean to release highly toxic fumes. Just flying over that region melted away his underside in seconds. Fortunately, the runes in these concoctions lacked the intensity required to maim him. Expulsion of the physical product negated a majority of their effects.

More concerningly, falling to just 15% of his Domination Force caused the single largest worry. It was lowered so far after blocking 14 more spells from that grimoire. And with every single spell being unique, who even knew how many Alkuthuzen stuffed into it?!

On the plus side, he had yet to let that nasty spike-ball near him once more. That soul armament saved his life more times than he cared to admit, but this was a rather special case where the extremely dark-green substance blocking its true form helped most. Its battle couldn’t really be seen as he almost entirely depended on long-range senses to direct attacks.

Rather noticeably, one weapon had yet to show up in this whole battle. That was none other than the calligraphy brush, perhaps the best weapon of them all.

Why would he detail it as the best?

Because the moment it approached, all hostility vanished and it took the initiative to jump into his storage ring… To confirm, this brush was unintelligent without any doubt.

Alkuthuzen’s disgust at that sight still amused him.

Since that happened almost half an hour ago, he semi-confirmed what caused this interaction. Exactly why or how fell outside his expertise but who cared? He just got a Rune tool for free!

In that ring laid the unnamed tool created by the Nexus, and something about its existence caused this brush to revere that mountain. This wasn’t even a wilful desire to bow down to greatness, but rather like the arrays and engravings accepted it as object of higher order. The behaviour mimicked that of a follower in front of their lord, but functionally showed a slave unable to dispute its master.

Brushes like these obviously exist for calligraphy, but some drew their arrays through intricate and flared styles using them. The end result between creation methods is the same, outside of certain intent-based arrays. High tier brushes like this existed to create such arrays. Now, that brush found an array beyond all ordinary logic…

Just some guesses in the end. He had a vague idea it was related to all this, but nothing suggested made sense.

Regardless, the battle with just five weapons left.

Important news finally appeared as he tracked down the unknown grimoire that disappeared early on. It hid itself in the bowels of that flying ship. Virtually impenetrable already, but truly so with the nuisances still attached to him.

What mattered now was the halberd and spiky ball. One attacked irregularly while the other never sat still, alone something he hardly worried about, but every part of him believed that he couldn’t beat that orb in any way. Dealing with the final two depended on multiple factors and theories, and if he gave into his ego for a moment, just a couple slices of cake… Then came time to target Alkuthuzen directly. Perhaps it was time to use one of the crown’s abilities while it had enough power.