He paused on the allocation for the first ti. Four hundred and twenty-one Agility had solved the runner problem, nothing in the column was outpacing him anymore, and the last Mirescutters to try had died with thirty ters of open basin between them and the passage they’d been running for.
Everything else needed feeding. Cragshell carapace cracked under his blades but not fast enough, because two hundred base Strength hit differently when the fighter swinging the sword had two-sixty Agility and the arms couldn’t cash what the legs were writing.
Gluttony’s drain windows ran short when his Endurance couldn’t sustain the contact, and Pride’s glyphs cost mana he could feel thinning with every cast. Three stances pulling from three different wells, and a body that swapped between all of them mid-combat couldn’t afford to let two-thirds of its foundation crack while the third climbed.
’Eighteen Strength. Twelve Endurance. Eight Vitality. Mana and Magic next.’
[Strength: 200 ➣ 218.]
[Sin Fusion multiplier active. Strength (boosted): 320 ➣ 349.]
[Endurance: 180 ➣ 192.]
[Sin Fusion multiplier active. Endurance (boosted): 288 ➣ 308.]
[Vitality: 175 ➣ 183.]
[Sin Fusion multiplier active. Vitality (boosted): 280 ➣ 293.]
Both Cragshells in the next wave went down in the first three seconds, his blades punching through layered stone that had cost him ten seconds per kill an hour ago, Wrath detonations blowing the carapace apart from inside because three hundred and forty-nine Strength did to stone armor what three hundred and twenty hadn’t.
The Veilstalker lunged from the haze and Alice’s beam pinned it mid-strike before its fangs found his throat. The three Mirescutters fanned wide across the basin and died in the order they arrived, because the thing hunting them was faster than anything the column could field and now had the raw power to make the speed lethal on the first hit.
He was not grinning anymore.
The grin had burned away sowhere around the twenty-fifth wave and left nothing behind it, his face beneath the rebuilt blood mask flat and blank, Wrath-red eyes tracking motion with the chanical sweep of a body running on [Combat Drift] so deep the person inside it had stopped mattering.
The skill had been with him since the vampire dungeon, the one the system had handed him when [Instinct Overdrive] rolled wrong and he’d cursed it as a downgrade while a certain noble ’lady’ beat him half to death with the better version.
Quiet and constant since then, sharpening every fight by fractions so small he forgot it was running, and now, over an hour into the hardest sustained combat of his life, the fractions had compounded into sothing that moved and killed and moved again without consulting the mind underneath.
The stream chat had been unreadable for half an hour.
[Viewers: 51.4M ↑]
— Thirsty247: He’s been shirtless for twenty minutes and it has not gotten any less distracting. every kill makes it worse.
— TouchGrass: Gay
— Thirsty247: N-no...
— KaisBicep: He’s covered in blood! Whyyy is it so sexyyy?? 💀💀💀
— xo_valkyrie: Is it normal to find the serial killer energy attractive? Asking for a friend
— MoonlitSinner: It’s not normal but we’re all here so 🩸🩸🩸
Kaiden did not see the chat, for he was already killing the next wave.
A Cragshell’s carapace split down the center on the downstroke of his right blade, the stone armor that had given him trouble fifteen waves ago now parting like wet chalk under Wrath and the new numbers behind it.
A Veilstalker lunged from the haze behind it and he took its head without turning because Alice had called the approach two seconds before it committed.
Two Mirescutters broke for the passage in tandem and a blood crescent caught both at the throat from thirty ters, the construct wide enough to span the gap between them, shaped and thrown without breaking stride because his hands knew the weight and the distance the way they knew how to close around a hilt.
The next wave ca and died before it cleared the basin.
Then, between one kill and the next, the chi the last hour had been building toward landed.
[Level Up! Level 59 ➣ 60.]
[You have 40 unspent stat points.]
Level sixty. Forty points, each one fatter than the last, the system compounding the difficulty gap into yields no one at his tier was supposed to earn because no one at his tier was supposed to be alive in a column forty levels above their head. Multiple levels in one hour, and the system was paying him for the audacity.
For the first ti in twenty minutes his hands stopped, both blades hanging at his sides while the basin sat empty between waves. The physical stats had eaten every point for three levels straight, and the wells his spells drew from were feeling it. Pride’s glyphs cost more than they should. Alice’s Conduit link ran thinner than he liked. The body was fed, but the engine underneath it was starving.
’Twenty Mana. Twenty Magic.’
[Mana: 160 ➣ 180.]
[Sin Fusion multiplier active. Mana (boosted): 256 ➣ 288.]
[Magic: 158 ➣ 178.]
[Sin Fusion multiplier active. Magic (boosted): 253 ➣ 285.]
[Phase Ti Remaining: 00:48:44.]
[Dungeon Ground Held: 50%. Enemy Forces Eliminated: 27%.]
Forty-eight minutes left, and the terrain was his again. His mother’s lattice at the front and his interceptions across the width had held ground at fifty for the past half hour, the Mire’s toxic layers resettling now that the magma fires had cooled, and the next wave was going to walk into poison it hadn’t needed to fight while the column behind it ran lower on bodies to throw.
Alice’s voice ca soft against the inside of his skull, quieter than she had been all fight.
’Mm.’
He exhaled behind the mask. The faintest pull at the corner of his mouth, the first expression to cross his face in twenty minutes. ’You’re half the reason I can do any of this. And why the thirsty misses get to see...’
’How many headpats?’
’Yes.’
she admitted, grudging and honest in the way only Alice could be mid-war.
’Na your price.’
’You play gas?’
The question ca out before the tactical part of his brain caught up with the rest of it, and Alice’s telepathy spiked with the indignation of soone whose credentials had just been questioned.
He didn’t ask why his little sister had hired a top-ranked coach for a hobby she’d never once ntioned to him. The answer was hovering above his head in a gold-violet halo, and it had been obvious since the day she attached herself to his existence.
’...Deal.’
Alice’s halo flared bright enough to push the Mire’s toxic haze back a full ter, gold-violet light pulsing in a rhythm that had nothing to do with combat and everything to do with a little sister who had just won the only negotiation that mattered to her.
Even here, even now, hovering above his head as a literal support class in the middle of the hardest fight of his life, his little sister’s idea of a perfect gaming night was buffing him so he could shine brighter than anyone, and she could stay by his side... So things ran deeper than obsession.
This was just who she was.
’...Yeah,’ he said softly, and the pull at the corner of his mouth behind the mask was not faint anymore. ’Sounds good, Alice.’
Kaiden twirled both blades at his sides, harvested blood singing along their edges, and turned toward the entrance of the Virulent Mire with four hundred and twenty-one Agility in his legs, three hundred and forty-nine Strength in his arms, and forty-eight minutes of war remaining.
The Paragon of Sin intended to enjoy every one of them.
But then...
’Huh?’
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