The wind at the top of the world screamed, tearing at the banners of the ancient Cultivation Pavilion.
A moment later, boots scraped against the final step of the white stone stairs.
House Vermilion crested the ridge.
They looked like walking corpses. Zenobia was heaving, her armour smoking and dented. The Shield-Bearers dragged their feet, their tower shields scraping sparks against the ground.
They looked up and saw us.
We looked even worse. My coat was torn. My face was smeared with mud and soot. I breathed in ragged, heaving gasps, standing protectively in front of a massive, chaotic pile of scrap metal and glowing rune-wires that resembled a half-built machine. Three wobbly water clones stood a few feet in front of me—our last, pathetic line of defence.
Behind me, the rest of the squad was in a frenzy. Grace, Finn, Kael, and Vespera were clustered around the machine, looking panicked. Grace screamed orders, wrenching a bolt into place while sparks flew.
Zenobia saw the panic. She saw the half-built golem. She saw a team on the brink of collapse.
"Don't let them finish the construct!" Zenobia screamed, her voice cracking with desperation. "Charge!"
"Hold the line!" I screamed at the clones, my voice cracking. "Buy them time!"
House Vermilion didn't stop to recover stamina. They surged forward, a desperate wave of crimson and steel. The War Dogs ignored the wobbly water clones standing guard; their eyes locked onto the pile of scrap metal that threatened to end their run.
I watched them come. I saw the whites of Zenobia's eyes. I saw the triumph on her face as she raised her sword.
I simply turned to Grace and smiled.
"Grace," I said softly.
Grace looked up from the pile.
I nodded.
"Now, Grace," I said.
"Bye," she whispered.
She pressed the button.
CLICK.
BOOM.
Earlier...
The transition through the Rift Portal felt like being squeezed through a cold, wet tube.
We stumbled out onto black sand. The air was thick, humid, and smelled of salt and ancient rot.
"Formation!" I barked, my hand instantly going to my sword hilt.
We stood on a narrow strip of beach at the base of the Ziggurat. To our left, a colossal, translucent wall of shimmering mana rose into the sky, separating us from the southern face of the pyramid. What lay ahead stopped us cold.
The Ziggurat towered above us, a mountain carved by giants. It rose in terraced layers, piercing the cloud layer above. The first tier was a dense, steaming swamp. Above that, crumbling white ruins. Above that, blinding yellow sand. And high above, wreathed in ash, the red glow of lava.
"That is... a lot of stairs," Finn squeaked, tilting his head back until his aviator goggles nearly fell off.
"Ten kilometres of vertical ascent," Grace estimated, her face pale. "With combat loads? We'll be exhausted before we hit the second tier."
CRACK.
A sound like a thunderclap came from beneath our feet. The ground shuddered violently.
"Look!" Pippa screamed, pointing at the shoreline behind us.
The island was failing. The ocean rose to claim it.
Thirty yards out, a massive chunk of the limestone foundation sheared off and collapsed into the dark, churning water. White foam geysered into the air.
And in that foam, things were moving.
Massive, serpentine shapes coiled through the surf. Trench-Maws. They were fifty feet long, blind, and hungry. One breached the surface, its mouth a circular nightmare of needle-teeth, snapping at the falling debris.
"We are sinking," Kael rumbled, his grey skin catching the spray. "The foundation is crumbling."
"Move!" Vespera shouted, reaching for her staff. "We need to run!"
"No," I said calmly.
The squad stopped, looking at me like I was insane.
"Murphy," Grace hissed. "Did you not hear the 'crumbling into the abyss' part? We need to go!"
"If we run," I said, checking the angle of the stairs, "we burn stamina. We burn mana fighting the trash mobs in the swamp. By the time we reach the top, we'll be gassed. Vermilion is a team of soldiers; they have better cardio than us. If we race them fair, we lose."
I twisted the silver Sponsor Ring on my finger.
"So we don't race fair."
I reached into the Green Core. I didn't pull a trickle; I pulled a flood.
Construct.
The air around me distorted. Six figures burst into existence.
Thanks to the ring, they looked like standard Water Elementals—faceless, shifting blue humanoids. But thanks to the insane density of my new Core, they were monsters.
Each clone stood seven feet tall. Their shoulders were five feet wide, rippling with hydraulic muscle. They looked like blue gorillas made of pressurised deep-ocean water. The sand crunched under their weight.
"Whoa," Finn whispered.
"Green Core density," I explained, flexing my hand. "Each of these boys has the lifting capacity of about sixteen men. If they get tired, I can just make a new one, and they run faster than a horse."
I pointed at the looming stairs.
"Backpacks on, Squad. We aren't walking."
Vespera stared at the hulking blue monster standing in front of her. "You... you expect me to be carried? Like a sack of grain? I am a daughter of House Winter-Moon!"
"You can be a dignified daughter at the bottom of the ocean, or a winner at the top," I said, climbing onto the shoulders of my own clone. "Your choice."
Another chunk of the beach fell into the sea with a deafening BOOM. The water rushed ten feet closer.
Vespera looked at the water. She looked at the clone. She sighed, a sound of pure, aristocratic defeat.
"Fine," she snapped. "But if he drops me, I will freeze you."
"Mount up!" I ordered. "We have a hill to conquer."
The ascent began as a launch.
My Carry Clones didn't take the stairs one at a time. They vaulted them in sets of ten. Their massive, pressurised legs acted like pistons, driving us upward with a rhythmic, hydraulic THUD-THUD-THUD that shook the stone beneath us.
We blurred past the first hundred feet of the Swamp Biome. Vines whipped at us, and the humidity was suffocating, but we moved too fast for the environment to catch up.
I looked around at my squad. It was the most ridiculous convoy I had ever seen.
To my left, Grace was the only one not being carried. She piloted a monstrosity she had whipped out of her dimensional bag—a Spider-Walker made of brass pipes and gears that scuttled up the vertical surfaces with terrifying speed. She looked grim, her goggles down, focused on the path.
Behind me, Kael looked surprisingly content. The clone carrying him strained, its blue knees buckling slightly under the Berserker's density, but Kael didn't seem to notice. He was cradled like a baby, staring at the canopy with a small, peaceful smile. For a guy who had spent his whole life being the "Big One," being the little spoon was clearly a religious experience.
Pippa had checked out of reality entirely. She was buried deep in the chest of her clone, eyes squeezed shut, clutching her medical bag. She looked less like a soldier and more like a stowaway.
And then there was Finn.
"I am a bird!" Finn yelled, his arms spread wide like the figurehead on a ship.
Usually, the Sky Knight puked if he stood on a chair. But now? He was being carried. He didn't have to look at his feet. He didn't have to worry about gravity. He just watched the sky rushing closer.
"You're luggage, Finn!" I shouted over the wind. "Sit down before you fall off!"
"I love this!" Finn screamed back, ignoring me.
Ahead of us, Vespera was having a significantly worse time.
She was slung over her clone's shoulder like a sack of stolen grain. Every time the clone leapt, she bounced. Her pristine white robes were bunched up, and she held her staff with a white-knuckled grip, trying desperately to maintain the dignity of a High Noble while her butt was in the air.
I rode high on the shoulders of the lead clone. The wind was in my hair. The Green Core pumped limitless energy into the system. It felt good. It felt too good.
I got bored.
"YEE-HAW!" I screamed, kicking my heels into the clone's chest.
The clone stopped dead.
The momentum almost sent me flying over his head. The entire convoy skidded to a halt behind us.
"What?" Grace yelled, braking her spider-bot. "Ambush?"
My clone reached up. He grabbed me by the back of my coat. He hauled me off his shoulders and dropped me unceremoniously into the mud.
SPLAT.
I looked up. The clone—who had my face moulded out of blue water—looked down at me. He narrowed his eyes. He radiated a profound, soul-deep irritation.
He gave me a look that said: Really?
Then, out of pure spite, he dispelled himself.
SPLASH.
Gallons of water collapsed onto me, soaking me to the bone.
"Oh, for fuck's sake," I sputtered, wiping mud from my face.
"Did... did your spell just quit?" Finn asked, staring.
"It has a personality," I grumbled, standing up and wringing out my coat. "Apparently, I find myself annoying."
I twisted the ring. Construct.
A new clone appeared. He crossed his massive arms and waited.
I climbed back onto his shoulders. I cleared my throat.
"Mush," I whispered softly.
The clone turned his head. He glared. Don't push it.
"Please," I corrected.
We started moving again.
We hit the transition zone between the Swamp and the Ruins. The trees thinned out, replaced by crumbling white arches and aqueducts.
SCREE!
A shadow detached itself from a pillar above. A Stone Gargoyle, heavy and fast, dropped straight toward the clone carrying Grace's Spider-Walker.
"Incoming!" Finn shrieked.
The clone didn't stop. He didn't look up.
I felt the Tingle in my skull. Threat. Twelve o'clock high.
Because these clones were me, they shared the network. They shared the reflex.
The clone carrying Grace didn't dodge. He waited until the stone claws were inches from his face.
Phase.
The clone's head and shoulders vanished into the Inventory.
SPLASH.
A burst of water erupted from the empty space to sell the illusion. The Gargoyle slammed through the water, expecting resistance, and over-rotated. It crashed face-first into the stairs.
The clone stepped over the stunned monster, reformed his head, and kept running.
"Smooth," Grace noted, not even looking up from her gauges.
But I felt the cost. A sharp dip in my stamina bar. Phasing twenty-four separate entities wasn't mana-intensive; it was physically exhausting.
Two hundred yards up, the clone carrying Vespera started to flicker. His form wavered, losing cohesion.
He's burning out, I realised. Too many phases.
"Murphy!" Vespera yelled, feeling her ride destabilise.
"I got you!"
I snapped my fingers. Dispel.
Vespera's clone vanished. For a split second, she fell through the air.
Construct.
A fresh clone materialised directly beneath her, catching her mid-fall without breaking stride.
"Warning next time!" Vespera shrieked, clutching the new clone's neck.
"Cardio check!" I yelled. "Keep moving!"
We crested the Ruin tier. Finn made the mistake of looking down.
"Oh gods," he whispered.
Below us, the Swamp biome had vanished.
The base of the Ziggurat crumbled. Massive, city-sized chunks of limestone sheared off the pyramid and slid into the black ocean below.
CRACK-BOOM.
The sound was apocalyptic. The ocean churned, white foam boiling as the Trench-Maws swarmed the debris, snapping at trees and rocks.
"Don't look down!" I ordered. "Eyes on the prize! Next stop: The Desert!"
The air grew thinner and hotter as we vaulted past the cloud layer. The yellow sands of the Desert Biome gave way to the jagged, obsidian teeth of the Lava Flows.
Rivers of molten rock cascaded down the sides of the Ziggurat, glowing angry red against the black stone. Ash rained down like snow.
"Heat shielding!" Grace shouted, deploying a runic umbrella from her Spider-Walker.
My Carry Clones didn't slow down. They stomped through the ash, their water-forms hissing as stray embers struck them.
We rounded a corner and skidded to a halt.
Blocking the path was a Magma Golem. It was asleep, curled into a ball of cooling slag the size of a cottage. It snored, puffing rings of black smoke.
"Go around," Vespera whispered, terrified. "Do not wake it."
I looked at the Golem. I looked at the path.
A terrible idea formed in my head. It was the kind of idea that usually ended with me exploding, but the payoff would be too good to ignore.
A few minutes later, we crested the final rise. The air cleared, and we burst onto the Summit.
It was massive. A flat, pristine expanse of white stone ringed by statues. The Cultivation Pavilion stood in the centre, serene and untouched.
We were the first ones here. It was empty.
"Drop us!" I ordered.
The clones knelt. We slid off, legs shaking. "We made it," Finn breathed, kissing the white stone.
I walked to the southern edge of the platform. Far below, on the South Face, I could see flashes of red and lightning. Nothing stopped us from going to their side now.
House Vermilion was climbing. They were slow, methodical, and disciplined. They cleared the Ruins Biome, moving in a tight phalanx.
"They're too healthy," I muttered. "They haven't burned enough resources."
I looked at the stairs leading down the South Face.
"Grace," I said, turning back to the team. "Start setting up the kill box. I need to go make some friends."
"Friends?" Grace asked, already pulling tripwires from her bag.
"I'm sending a welcoming committee."
I twisted the Sponsor Ring.
Construct.
Twelve new clones burst into existence. These were Runners—lean, aerodynamic, and designed for speed.
"Listen up," I told them. "Your mission is simple." I stopped myself as all of them gave me a combined look of disappointment. Then I realised my clones already knew the plan, so I shut my mouth and just said, "Go!"
The twelve clones nodded. They grinned my grin and vaulted over the edge towards House Vermilion's side.
From the high vantage, I could follow most of them. Clone 1 found a nest of Fire Bats. He threw a rock at the matriarch. Screeeech. The swarm took flight.
Clone 4 found a sleeping Stone Drake. He yanked its tail. The Drake roared, blasting fire that missed by an inch.
Clone 7 found the Magma Golem, the same one we had woken up earlier. He t-bagged it.
The clones turned and sprinted towards the other team.
But they weren't alone.
The mountain was moving. A tidal wave of monsters—Drakes, Golems, Bats, and Gargoyles—thundered down the stairs in a blind, rage-filled stampede. It was an Aggro Train the size of a natural disaster.
"Here comes the choo-choo," I whispered.
The clones sprinted into the blind spot and dispelled themselves an instant before the confused Vermilion squad could spot them.
A heartbeat later, the monster horde skidded around the corner, furious and hunting for a target. They found House Vermilion standing there, frozen in horror.
"Oh, scab it," Zenobia said, her voice heavy with absolute defeat.
Then, the chaos hit.
I stood at the very edge of the summit, peering down through the haze. I couldn't see the individual details through the smoke and ash, but I could feel the vibrations shaking the stone beneath my boots as Zenobia's squad collided with three biomes' worth of angry wildlife. Grace and Finn joined me.
A blinding flash of white light erupted from the stairwell below, illuminating the clouds.
"That's her Ultimate," Finn noted, shielding his eyes. "She just burned Hellfire Slash."
A roar echoed up the mountain—a Stone Drake dying. She had cleaved it, but the mana vacuum that followed was palpable even from here. She was running on fumes.
Seconds later, a dome of golden light flickered into existence further up the path, holding back a swarm of Fire Bats, before shattering into sparks with a sound like breaking glass.
"Mass Restoration Wand," Grace diagnosed, standing beside me. "One-time use. That's their big heal gone."
They were fighting their way up the final flight of stairs. The explosions got closer, but weaker. They were bleeding. They were furious. They had used every defensive cooldown they had just to survive the train.
The sounds of combat died down, replaced by the heavy, rhythmic scraping of boots on stone.
"They're dry," I whispered. "No shields. No ultimates. No heals."
I turned back to the team. "Grace, how's that bomb coming along?"
"Wired and dangerous," Grace replied, holding up the detonator.
The summit was quiet again. The wind whistled through the stone feathers of the hawk statues.
"Paint the floor," I ordered.
Grace didn't need telling twice. She emptied her dimensional bag onto the pristine white stone in front of the Cultivation Pavilion. Gears, twisted copper pipes, half-charged mana batteries, and a broken steam piston clattered onto the ground.
It looked like a junk heap. To an untrained eye, it was garbage. To a soldier looking for a threat, it looked like the skeleton of a half-built Siege Golem.
We had a few minutes before they cleared the final rise, so we got to work on ourselves. We tore the hems of our cloaks. We smeared grease and mud onto our faces. We needed to look worse than they did for the trap to work. We had to sell the struggle.
As the sound of dragging footsteps grew louder, I gave the signal.
"Wire it," Grace commanded Finn and Vespera.
The squad scrambled. Kael, Finn, Pippa, and Vespera crouched behind the mass of golem parts near our entrance to the platform, frantically arranging scrap with mock panic. They were visible enough to sell the "engineers hard at work" narrative, but protected by the bulk of the "construct."
I stood alone a few feet in front of the pile, summoning three wobbly, pathetic Water Clones to act as my "guards." They were positioned to look like a desperate, last-ditch delay tactic.
Then, I waited.
A moment later, boots scraped against the final step.
House Vermilion crested the ridge.
They looked exactly as I expected—wrecked. Zenobia was heaving, her armour smoking and dented. The Shield-Bearers dragged their feet, their tower shields scraping sparks against the ground.
They looked up and saw us, immediately assuming we had been through the same hell they had. They looked at our desperation and figured our cores were just as empty as theirs. They saw the panic. They saw the half-built golem. And in their exhausted eyes, I saw the bait take hold.
"Don't let them finish the construct!" Zenobia screamed, her voice cracking with desperation. "Charge!"
"Hold the line!" I screamed, my voice cracking. "Buy them time!"
It was the right tactical call, based on the information she had. If that Golem woke up, her exhausted team would lose. She had to end it now.
She led the charge. The War Dogs surged forward, ignoring the wobbly water clones, focusing entirely on the engineers.
They crossed the kill line.
I watched them come. I saw the whites of Zenobia's eyes. I saw the triumph on her face as she raised her sword, thinking she had caught us in time.
I smiled.
"Grace," I said softly.
Grace looked up from the pile. She held the detonator. She looked at me, a flicker of hesitation in her eyes. I didn't move. I didn't try to run. I was the bait. If I moved, Zenobia might flinch.
I nodded.
"Now, Grace," I said.
"Bye," she whispered.
CLICK.
The pile of scrap metal was a Claymore the size of a carriage.
BOOM.
The explosion didn't just push air; it shredded the fabric of the summit.
The Blast-Runes detonated the Alchemist's Fire, creating a thermal shockwave that flash-vaporised the water clones instantly. But I didn't get the mercy of vaporization.
I felt the shrapnel.
I felt every single jagged gear, copper pipe, and iron bolt as they accelerated to supersonic speeds in a focused cone of destruction.
The hit was dirty, jagged, and ripping—a physical wall of hate. The pain dampeners didn't trigger. The damage spike was too high, too fast. It blew past the safety protocols and went straight to the nervous system.
One second, I looked at the terror in Zenobia's eyes. The next, my world turned into red mist and agony.
I slammed into the stone floor, rolling like a rag doll.
Silence.
The world was muted, wrapped in the high-pitched whine of blown eardrums. Smoke drifted across the platform, thick and acrid, smelling of burnt ozone and copper.
I tried to stand up.
I couldn't.
I looked down.
"Oh," I wheezed.
My coat was gone. My shirt was gone. And below my waist... There was nothing. Just a ragged mess of cauterised flesh and shattered bone where my legs used to be.
The pain hit me a second later. A consuming fire started at my waist and screamed up my spine, white-hot and blinding.
I didn't scream. I didn't panic. I just closed my eyes and breathed it in, recognising the texture of it. It was raw. It was absolute.
'It's been a while, old friend,' I greeted the agony.
It felt twisted, but after months of safety protocols and pain dampeners, the suffering felt almost nostalgic.
"MURPHY!"
The scream pierced the ringing in my ears.
Vespera stumbled out from behind the statue plinth. Her pristine white robes were stained with soot. She looked wild, her eyes wide with unadulterated horror. She scrambled over the debris, sliding on her knees to get to me.
She froze when she saw the damage. Her hands hovered over my missing lower half, trembling, terrified to touch me.
"Murphy..." she choked out, her face draining of all colour. "Your legs. They're... you're..."
I coughed. A glob of thick, dark blood spilled from my mouth, running down my chin.
I looked up at her. I couldn't feel the cold stone anymore. I couldn't feel much of anything except the fading thrum of the Green Core trying desperately to fix a body that was beyond repair.
I gave her a bloody, jagged smile.
"Did... we... get 'em?" I gurgled.
Vespera looked up. Her expression shifted from horror to shock.
Through the haze of smoke, a figure walked past us.
It was Grace. She was limping slightly, her goggles cracked, her face streaked with oil. She held a heavy wrench in her hand.
She didn't stop to check on me. She walked toward the pile of groaning bodies that used to be House Vermilion.
Grace didn't hesitate. She stepped on Zenobia's breastplate to pin her down. She raised the wrench.
CRACK.
Zenobia stopped moving.
Grace stepped over the body and moved to the next survivor. CRACK.
My vision started to tunnel. The grey sky turned black at the edges. Vespera was shouting something, maybe calling for Pippa, but her voice sounded like it was coming from underwater.
I closed my eyes. The pain finally let go.
The darkness took me.
GASP.
My eyes snapped open.
I sat up, sucking in a lungful of clean, sterile air. The pain was gone. The blood was gone.
I was sitting on a white bench in the resurrection antechamber. I looked down. My legs were back. My coat was clean.
I checked my chest. My heart was hammering a million miles an hour, the phantom memory of the explosion still echoing in my nerves.
Above me, the speakers crackled to life.
"HOUSE VERMILION: ELIMINATED."
"WINNER: HOUSE ARGENT."
I leaned back against the white wall and started to laugh.