Universe's End

Chapter 209: Alliance Rematch

"A mother fucking lightsaber…. That doesn't work." Rory sighed several minutes later.

I knew that went a little too smoothly.

Oh sure, for a few minutes, Rory had been waving the blade around, the oblivion light searing through rock with ease, and overall, a weapon of great violence.

The problem was that it only lasted three minutes, four tops. Burning through the reserves of liquid pneuma powering the repairs of the actual blade, the energy of the oblivion light quickly began to erase the metal from existence, and as the metal was erased, so too were the runes inscribed.

Sad.

That didn't make it a failure, but it was clear that the lightsaber was a prototype not intended for field use.

Back to, if not square one, square two or three.

With a sigh, Rory was preparing to sort his thoughts and hit the metaphorical design board when a knock near the entry to his current staging area rang out. Turning around, Rory arched his eyebrows as he noticed Zoey standing there, arms on her hips.

"Yo," Rory waved. "What's up?"

"Question," Zoey said sweetly. "Do you remember early on when we first began to work together?"

"Vaguely, unless I actually try to dredge them up. Why?"

"Do you remember something that I wanted taken care of?"

"Oh. Ohhh," Rory said as realization hit him. "Right."

"C'mon," Zoey beckoned suddenly.

"Where are we going?" Rory asked as he followed.

"We haven't sparred once since tier seven."

"That seems like an excuse," Rory chuckled, still following.

"It is. Here is the real deal. You owe me a trip back to my place. I've been stuck here for long enough, twiddling my thumbs. Still, there is only so much discovery to do unless we plan to tackle the other volcano bosses."

"We are tier eight; it probably wouldn't take literal decades."

"Sure, but there are still eight others." Zoey pointed out. "No, I need to check in with my people. Unlike you, I didn't toss a ticking time bomb on their laps when I left, so my gaggle of idiots has likely been fine. Plus, they were in a rather… safe location. But that doesn't change the fact that for as long as you were gone from your people, I've been gone from my people for even longer."

"And how does this have anything to do with a sparring session?"

"Well, I kind of want to punch you in the face a bit, won't lie about that."

"Usually, that's a sign you need a therapist."

"You know any therapists?"

"I do not."

"So, punch you in the face," Zoey laughed. "More importantly, while it's time for me to finally get my ass out of here, I reckon we don't leave unfinished business."

"Oh. You mean top of the mountain."

"Exactly," Zoey said, snapping. "So, you and your gaggle of nerds figure out the teleportation mumbo-jumbo, and while that is handled, we go kill the monster lord at the top."

"What about the Heart?" Rory asked.

"That sounds like business for the future," Zoey waved off. "And it doesn't necessarily sound antagonist based on what Jinn has cryptically said over the years."

"Wonderful," Rory chuckled. "I don't feel like walking."

"Huh?"

"Grab my arm."

Curious, Zoey did as Rory instructed, and a moment later, they found themselves on one of the uppermost rungs of the oversize volcano.

"Well damn," Zoey whistled. "You've been working on that new trick?"

"Taken a good few years to get a grasp of mapping points throughout the mountain. I can feel an outside influence almost weakening my already tenuous grasp. This is about as high as I can go in one jump."

"See, all the more reason we kill that mountain boss," Zoey said.

"You don't know that's the cause," Rory pointed out.

To which Zoey stared at him flatly.

"Alright, fine, yeah, doubt it's a coincidence. Anyway, does this look about good to you?"

"I don't see why not," Zoey answered as she watched any monsters in the vicinity begin to flee as the presence of two tier eights suddenly popped into existence.

"So, how are we doing this?" Rory asked, stretching his arms out as if there was any actual need.

"Three-point touch?" Zoey offered. "One tag, one point. Three tags, victory."

"What counts as a tag?" Rory asked.

"Anything that would be actually noteworthy in a real fight."

"No bullshitting that something wouldn't have caused damage," Roy said.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, you take me for a cheater?"

When Rory said nothing, Zoey smacked him in the shoulder, glaring.

"Ass."

Chuckling, Rory began to walk away from Zoey, putting distance between the two of them as Zoey did the same.

"Hope you've got some new tricks!" Zoey suddenly called out as they took their spots.

"I could say the same."

Smirking at each other for a moment, it was as if the two vanished in a split second. Between the two, Zoey was undoubtedly faster; her Sword Steel Skin skill allowed her to maintain her durability inversion while remaining more durable than most others would be, even if they were also durability invested.

But as fast as she was, fast wasn't the same as instant, as Rory began to blink about, a trick stolen from his bane.

"Hey, that's a little bullshit!" Zoey yelled, her cackle exposing how she really felt.

Rory would have shot back a witty response, except teleportation like this required all but one of his mental threads to be focused on the single task. At least that was the case while in active combat, when he was making rapid, small jumps and not a single focused jump.

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Zoey attempted to chase Rory down, but his ability to appear and disappear at will frustrated the woman, who nearly growled after a while.

"Bah!" She shouted before raising her fist.

Why do I feel- oh shit!

Slamming her fist downward, for a split second, space warped around her fist, the entire concentration of her durability focused into a singular point like the core of a planet, a point of untold gravity so powerful that she briefly broke space.

Which was enough not just to shatter the ground for two hundred meters in any direction, but also to momentarily cause his teleportation to falter as space was destabilized by the gravitational warpage.

Fuck!

With a wide grin on her face, Zoey shot forward, like a tiger ready to pounce on its prey, as Rory was unable to escape in time with her inverted attributes.

But.

But Rory wasn't that easy. A moment before Zoey could tag Rory, his staff appeared in his hand, rings of metal element surrounding it as electrical discharges crackled.

Still smiling, the only thing that had time to react was her eyes widening as she was launched away from a railgun being fired point-blank into her chest.

Watching the woman be sent flying nearly a mile away, Rory felt his own grin widen. He remained standing there, hands on his hips, as off in the distance he saw the small hill of shattered stone from where she'd impact get tossed aside as Zoey dragged herself out, spitting out a glob of blood. Waiting for her to return— even at a jog, she covered the distance in mere moments—she glared at him.

"That was on you," Rory pointed out as the two took a quick time out.

"You were never that fast on the draw with that one before."

"Yeah, at tier seven."

"Bleh, fair," Zoey sighed as she spat out another glob of blood. "Your point."

"Speaking of tricks, since when the hell have you used a pneuma-based attack?"

"Oh, Seismic Impact? Created that bad boy when battling my bane at the end of tier seven. Focusing my durability into my fist, with a nice helping of pneuma, I can drop a planet's core on you. A teeny, tiny, baby planet core, but a planet core all the same."

"Uh-huh," Rory rolled his eyes at her colorful description. "It breaks space."

"Yeah, that part was something I actively had to work on getting to work, but I prepared it in case your demon fucker ever wants to mess with me again."

"Valid," Rory laughed.

"Didn't expect you to go and become like it."

"Tier eight," Rory said with a shrug.

"Tier eight," Zoey agreed.

The two silently stared at each other for a moment before the battle erupted once more. Charging after him like a rampaging rhino –that much hadn't changed about Zoey— Rory switched from blasting her with a railgun magic to instead launching a torrent of lightning streaking toward her. Lightning was usually one of her biggest weaknesses, given its ability to partially nullify durability.

Except Zoey shot straight through it, and the moment she did, Rory's eyes widened as he caught the 'scent' of a concept he hadn't expected from Zoey.

World Ichor?

Every time a lance of lightning struck her, it was as if for a moment her steel skin glowed, a flash of molten orange that absorbed the electricity without pause.

Bypassing his lightning without problem, when Zoey came in close to tag Rory, Rory once more attempted to fire a railgun shot at her.

Except that she was prepared for it this time, Zoey crossed her arms, and her durability reverted just before the railgun round struck her. As powerful as the magic was, it was as if Zoey had increased in mass hundreds of times over, only shoved back several feet as the metal slag dropped to the ground. When Zoey uncrossed her arms, she was smirking at Rory.

"Nice, right?"

Seeing it as a challenge, Rory began firing the attacks rapidly. Once upon a time, an onslaught of rails from a railgun had been enough to completely dismantle a tier eight Iasilisk.

Zoey was not an Iasilisk.

Zoey was bloodied up; she wasn't literally invincible, but bloodied up was far from beaten, as she suddenly raced forward and tapped Rory on the chest. She had capitalized on the moment's lapse that he needed to 'cool' his staff after rapidly blasting away with railgun magic.

"Two-one, your lead."

"Oh, you're giving me a point for that?" Rory asked, surprised.

"No shit, you think I ate that all up casually? Fuck no, that hurt."

Again, they went silent, and again the violence reerupted as the third round of their little game began. The space destabilizing effect of Zoey's Seismic Impact had faded, and taking advantage of the fact, Rory once more began to teleport about as Zoey attempted to hound after him. It was all going well, right up until the moment Rory thought he saw an opening, teleporting behind Zoey as he pointed the staff at her neck.

Or he was about to until his clock was rung from seemingly nowhere.

What the fuck?

The stars cleared a moment later as he saw Zoey standing over him, hand outstretched.

"Two-two, fucker."

"What the hell was that?" Rory groaned as she yanked him to his feet.

"Fused two skills, Shield Strike and Air Shield. New skill, Solid Air. I can impart a portion of my durability into a fragment of air and use it as a projectile, or let it linger."

"So I-"

"You teleported directly into a trap I placed. Another little thing I thought up for dealing with your bane. You borrowed maybe too many tricks."

"Bleh," Rory said, sticking his tongue out childishly at Zoey. "Time to go big?"

"Time to go big."

It was an agreement that with this final round, they'd bust out the trump cards; there was no point in dragging it out any longer if they were both at two points and not genuinely fighting to the death or anything close.

Once more putting distance between the two of them, they prepared. For Zoey, she raised her fist in front of her, turning a shiny black and radiating the crushing gravity of a planetary core.

For Rory, he held his hands out as a magic circle beneath him, a spot gem in the palm of either hand.

"You sure that's a good idea?" Zoey called out, at least a little hesitant as she recognized what it was he was about to do, a hit of nostalgia.

"No," Rory cackled as the gems rose, beginning to rotate one another.

From one, a point made to represent an infinite density, the other, a vacuum of boundless zero. Rory purposely left out chant-boosting the magic, which seemed entirely overkill.

As two merged into one, a paradox blossomed, and from that blossoming paradox, Oblivion was born.

Bringing his wrists together as if he were about to fire some sort of energy beam from his hands, Rory launched the Oblivion Point toward Zoey. Unlike last time, where Rory had still been a baby tier seven with zero comprehension of Oblivion or much of any of the forces involved, this was a tier eight Rory who'd spent several years now bettering understanding space and Oblivion.

Instead of avoiding the point of immense danger, Zoey saw it as a challenge, charging directly at it, her fist glowing black. Not in the blast radius, Rory watched as Zoey's fist snapped forward, colliding with the Oblivion Point.

That was all that was needed, an outward explosion of null light erasing matter for half a mile. Had it been anyone else, Rory would have been sure he'd just committed a murder.

Instead, Rory leveled his staff, counting the seconds off as he prepared.

Three…. Two…. One…

Right on command, like a demon from hell, Zoey appeared, a mangled mass of flesh, her armor -armor he had made her- was erased from existence, with several layers of skin and flesh scrubbed away.

But her fist was still raised, black light from an all-consuming star.

Figured as much.

Rather than avoid the attack, Zoey had decided to withstand the initial explosion of oblivion energy with her damage nullification skill. A skill that just so happened to grant ten seconds of decreasing damage reduction after the initial nullification. Rory had pretty much expected her to purposely take the attack as a measure of her own durability. Last time around, with it being destabilized and caught in the radius of his own attack, the magic had been far briefer, but Zoey this time around had been forced to withstand a full ten seconds of it.

That was impressive, beyond impressive to be honest.

But it was also precisely what Rory had expected.

Prepared to bring her Seismic Impact-infused fist down on Rory, Zoey never got the chance as she suddenly found herself lurching to a stop, an outcropping of stone having twisted around her instantly as she stepped into his prepared trap, chains of pneuma encircling her as well.

"When you concentrate your durability in your first like that, you don't leave enough left over for brute forcing your way through something like this," Rory said, sounding exhausted. While he may have made it seem easy, blasting away with his railgun magic, teleporting all over the place, and unleashing an Oblivion Point, was exhausting. Unlike his bane, after all, he didn't actually have a teleportation skill or ability.

While Zoey may have looked maniacal, she clearly hadn't lost a bit of sensibility as she sighed, her fist returning to normal as her durability was restored.

"Three-two, you win." She grumbled, her mangled flesh stitching itself back together in real time. "Mind releasing me, by the way? Unless you're trying to catch a peek at this bare maiden."

"Whatever," Rory rolled his eyes as he turned around. She was technically naked for the moment, but that included skin and flesh, so it wasn't exactly the most artistic rendition of a woman's body in Rory's humble opinion.

Several moments later, he heard Zoey grunt.

"I'm good."

Turning back around, Rory saw that Zoey was clothed once more, clothes that he had also made her in the past. She was a bit pink, given how her body had undergone the most intense exfoliation process in existence, but that was a minor point.

"Nice to see you got a grasp on using it as a real attack," Zoey pointed out.

"I would say I can't believe you decided to take that head on, but I absolutely can, which is why I won."

"Uh-huh, whatever," Zoey rolled her eyes. "In a real fight, I wouldn't take one of those on purpose, and I doubt even at tier eight you're throwing those around casually."

"Not without chanting," Rory confirmed.

"Thought as much."

"More pressing," Rory said, slightly miffed. "You totally just let the armor I made for you get destroyed for the hell of it."

"Not for the hell of it, I had a very good reason," Zoey said, hands on her hips in defiance of his assumption.

"And what could that reason have possibly been?" Rory asked, jokingly exasperated.

"That's obvious. I needed an excuse for you to make me a new set," Zoey said, beaming innocently at him and batting her eyelashes.

And Apostolos thinks I'm the only immature one. If only he knew.