South posture. Marduk maximizes its intensification and accelerates at supersonic speed. Due to the circumstances of distance and energy, the human body is able to attack with much greater speed than it can move, which means that its cuts will be even faster. He rips the air and I throw myself back at the last second, then I take advantage of the gap and set the air on fire. Yellow flames consume the black earth and char it, throwing the warrior back. In the midst of them, his figure stands, now in the posture of the West, defending himself with the blade of the bone sword. I've fought that way before. Hoffstein trained me so that my body would cease to be fragile, but because of the affinities, I will never be able to match the physical strength of a specialized warrior. He warned me that throwing myself and getting close is a horrible fighting style, but my bad habit crystallized. But correcting myself would take a long time, so I cheated and specialized in something else.

  My veins continue to dilate from the previous blood attack, now thick and bouncing off the red skin. I intensify the speed of movement of the body's blood, heart rhythm, the production of adrenaline and related hormones. I increase the density of the fibers, I feel body creak inside as my anatomy fortifies. Hot. The body temperature rises to forty degrees. Then fifty. Cold mist envelops me, and steam is expelled. I can't overcome it, but I can fortify myself enough that I can withstand the pressure.

  I charge.

  I let myself fall into my own shadow so that an attack passes into the wind, I go out through the shadow of the warrior on his back and burst fire at the response of his blade. The impact throws us to opposite sides, so I take advantage of the acceleration to fly and expel smoke over the field. As the heat intensifies, rocks and pillars begin to melt. An impact from a distance explains to me that the warrior jumped, and in a second he appears over me. I raise the shadow below me so that it swallows him, but he crushes it. Strenght-based Metamagic. Just like I suspected, if he is stronger than my emission, he can ignore the ability.

  Northern stance, a heavy two-handed attack. I intensify my reflexes and use the blood-enhanced reactions to predict the attack and launch myself away. I turn the mist into steam and use pressurized wind blades to cut through the black smoke, he trims them with his own blade as he spins and runs after me in the southern stance. I stop, concentrate the mana on the ground, heat it up and make it explode. Lava geysers rise from the depths like heat tornadoes and block their passage to me. The warrior screams when hit and buys me a few seconds before it regenerates. I maximize the emission, charm, make the signs and conjure:

  “Firestorm.”

  The wind distorts and warms. Tornadoes of flames join the clouds with the haze and charred the face of the island until they converged into a single, large yellow storm at its epicenter. Thunder roars above me, and clouds disperse after being accumulated. An empty hole is formed, separating the entire island in two—and from it, the warrior jumps out and stretches. His body is burned, but only to the second degree. My Flames are not able to finish it. He regenerates, then smiles.

  “Is that all? You are a good fire handler, but you are a one-trick pony. Your variations won't save you from being beaten by someone with an opposite element or multiple elements. You look smart. Why didn't you specialize in something less primitive?”

  “Why do you care?”

  He laughs. “After all this time, you are the only one who gives pro spent. The others are boring. They have no appreciation for the struggle. You're different.”

  “I do what I need to do.”

  “Yes, yes. Of course, I do. You call me a liar, but wouldn't that make you a hypocrite? Wouldn't you be the only one who has the true passion for battle?” He frowns. “Or are you afraid to like what you like?”

  “It makes no difference. I fulfill a role. That's all that…”

  No. I decided to become a human. It makes no sense to say that.

  “Boo. Boring.”

  “… You're right about that.”

  “Huh?”

  “I don't like to admit it, but I like to fight. Strategy, Battle, violence. Maybe that's why I'm the one who needs to play my part. The others wouldn't understand.”

  He smiles. “Yes! Yes! Others are nothing to people like us! Stop being afraid!”

  “… No. Lust, anger, it doesn't matter. There is an immeasurable emptiness in all who seek the truth. You saw her. Without beginning or end, the absolute purpose of your destiny. Justify your duty, choose what pleases—changing the content of your tragedy does not alter its foundation. The result of a mountain of bodies is the same as a mountain of lovers. You will perish, irrelevant and outdated, with nothing of true result. And to stop this, you come to me. The Demon King. The red symbol that you have achieved something.” I smile. “I'm sorry, but I'm just a man. Ten years. A hundred years. A thousand years. It's not important. I'll be replaced. The Lion does not care about Sieghart as much as he cares about himself. And so, what will you have achieved with it?”

  The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

  “Eternity. An endless struggle against the cosmos, if this is its structure. But it's not. I don't want it to be, and in the face of my strength, it won't be.”

  I breathe in. The other elements are auxiliary. Without the flames, my only option is power that I still have no control over. But for now, he'll have to serve.

  Southern posture. He moves forward. It manipulates the mist and solidifies it, a prickly wall of ice stands between us and is pierced by the onslaught. He jumps on a wind blade and spins between fireballs to grab my face and punch me to the ground. I feel my back burn, but I struggle to maintain consciousness and grab his arm with my legs. I wrap my body in flames and expel steam. Red Aura solidifies in the form of chains and traps him to the ground as he struggles to break his arm, but due to metamagic, he manages to weaken the spell enough that it begins to resist. I explode backwards and use blood manipulation to close the wounds, then conjure an illusion on myself. A dozen other 'I's' invest through the dense smoke, along with animals and other demons. The Barbarian attacks the copies while channeling and swapping places with them through the shadows. By concentrating, the warrior maximizes his emission and intensifies perception, traversing the illusion and vowing against me. His blows are heavy and create craters in the heated floor, he breaks through the ice and gets rid of the prisons of the Earth. I ionize the air and pull electricity from the clouds above, electric Spears fall against his back and crush him to the ground incessantly, but he grits his teeth and refuses to stand still.

  Monsters serve only as cannon fodders. The illusion buys me time to attack him, but none of my spells hurt him beyond what he can recover from. Again and again and again. My arm breaks before the pressure, my shields are pierced before the tempest of bone and magic. Invincible. As long as the fight continues and his physical strength is superior, he will be able to reach me and kill me before the opposite happens. There is no escape unless you force it to stop with something that stops that growth.

  Then I feel my stomach throb. I manipulate my body so that my skin becomes strong as iron. Layers of scales coat me, and the buffering liquids inside my body prevent attacks from piercing me. I feel my muscles grow each time the bone sword collides with aura's. I adapt the growth of the skin so that it does not tear. Red tails, more arms, more eyes, more claws. I rely on the bodies of the monsters I can summon. Its best features. The density of his bones, the strength of his flesh. Growing, growing, and growing. I let go of the worry about permanent damage or what it will cause when I return to my normal form. As long as I can win, it will be enough for me.

  He charges—how many times has he not?

  I hold your hands with my own in raw, boiling flesh. A distorted bear comes out of my throat, and all I feel is the animalistic instinct to bite and tear off his wrist. He screams and punches my jaw, I return it with the cut of a claw in his throat. I advance, with iron wings of my own blood to defend myself. I intensify the new body, each attack containing enough heat to vaporize steel in an instant. I rip out your liver, pierce your stomach, resist the cuts in my spleen even though my heart is exposed. Ice binds him, then chains, then blood tails and bursts of heat. But he overtakes me but once, hurling me against a mountain until I cross the miles of raw rock. Not yet. Stronger. I need to stay longer-

  Don't lose your mind.

  I breathe in. I try to control mutations, but my body refuses to obey me. I cut off the auxiliary limbs and extra flesh, force the changes to leave me as a normal human until I mend them back to where they were. It's not perfect, but I'm not dead. I manipulate the pieces and create elemental obstacles to stop and next lunge, then exhale and move forward to launch the severed pieces of the mutation. They cling to it, consuming him like a disease.

  “What is this?!” He says, and my sense of time returns.

  I don't know how long it's been since the battle started. Something tells me it's been hours. I lost track as soon as I turned my brain by accident. The destruction is incalculable. Dozens of completely sunken islands, as far as my eyes can see. The toxin from the blood along with the growth penetrates the barbarian's body and corrodes him from the inside as if they had a life of their own. A flesh monster consumes him as I watch him scream in terror. “WHAT IS THIS?!” He says again.

  But it was too late. He looks at me with different anger than he has done so far. “Coward! YOU CAN'T LEAVE ME HERE! YOU OWE ME THIS BATTLE! FINISH IT! FINISH IT!”

  But I wouldn't. Yes, I turned into a monster, but my goal was never to end the fight that way. By intensifying the smoke toxin we are fighting, I have weakened the Barbarian's internal organism and his nervous system. I let the fight continue and dragged it out until everything was in the right place. The last blow would never be dealt, and the pleasure of the conclusion of the battle would not be offered to him. Poisoned, bound by ice, chains and whatever my blood has done to him, that is his end.

  I push against the fog, leaving him paralyzed as he screams and then sinks into the ocean. The island breaks apart, collapsing, and I abandon it.

  Again, the distance becomes palpable, and the place of intention takes me to where I want. This place is-

  Wander takes a deep breath, kneeling in front of a grave. He says his last prayers and then stands up to watch me.

  When I land, everyone stares at me. The enemies are long gone. Teachers offer assistance to students and the mobile base is prepared to leave as quickly as they can.

  “… What…? Who…?”

  The doctor looks away. “Joseph is dead.”

  “… I see.”

  I didn't make it in time.