After four regenerations—and five rounds of combat—the latest iteration of the constructs were far more dangerous. Each rebirth brought the enemies back with a new trick up their crystal sleeves. While the first round had been over in less than ten seconds, the following fight had taken nearly a minute, with each of the constructs seeing a significant durability increase.

  The rebirth after that saw them growing resistant to particular types of attacks—fire and lightning being a big part of that—as well as Hiral’s RHCs. The third rebirth somehow shared that defense across all four constructs, meaning changing up targets didn’t have the same effect the party had used to win the previous round.

  Now, having just witnessed a fourth rebirth—and having been battling for over ten minutes straight—it was the party’s turn to take damage. The constructs weren’t bothering with blocking, parrying, or dodging anymore, instead straight-on relying on their durable bodies to soak damage. In exchange, that left them open to focus entirely on offense.

  With their shoulder-arm-cannons seeming more accurate than ever, and weaved in with point-blank, melee attacks, the constructs made Laseen the most active member of the group very suddenly. Romin’s tactic hadn’t changed until he’d been forced out of his Onslaught form by the duration expiring mid-fight, though that had likely been for the best. Separating had reset his oath, and even he would’ve been hard-pressed to stand unflinching against the strikes coming their way.

  “How in the nine hells do we kill these things for good?” Seeyela said, a Bamf saving her from getting skewered by a crystal claw.

  “I’d say they were great practice,” Yanily added. His spear looked like a crystal disc as he spun it around him in a constant state of attack and defense. “But they’re progressing too fast.” Sparks from his successful strikes peppered the huge construct he fought, but the blows did little more than chip the crystal. He’d even pulled out the new giant-lightning-claw trick a second time—Cooldown must be a few minutes at least—and it hadn’t done anything more than briefly pin the construct in place.

  “Not progressing,” Laseen said, tossing out a pair of needles to heal Seena from a backhand she’d taken to the side. “Adapting. And that’s much worse. Boy, any idea how they’re doing it? They look like a Builder’s golems; are there rune shenanigans going on? Restoration?”

  “There’s something,” Hiral said, RHCs back on his thighs. The constructs had grown too resistant to the weapons to make them his first choice for the moment, and he’d fallen back on using his own runes more directly. Yes, he still had the Seeker’s Unmaking, but the last thing he wanted was for them to become resistant to that before he had a way to stop the adaptions. “It’s not Restoration,” he continued, dodging under a swiping claw—and setting off two Gravity bombs of his own while a Lost Echo formed—before driving a spike of Piercing into the construct’s knee.

  There goes it’s adventuring career.

  He was diving to the side in the next second—planes of pink energy acting as a floor for him to roll across—to evade another sweeping claw. Between the Lost Echo formed from that dodge and the previous, the pair of explosions forced the construct a stumbling step back.

  “If it’s not Restoration,” Seena said, back to hurling copious amounts of fire after the quick healing. “What is it?”

  “I don’t know,” Hiral said. “It’s actually my time runes that seem to be resonating with whatever’s happening.”

  “Can’t you use them—or their Edicts—to stop this?”

  “I’ve tried,” Hiral said, streaking out to the side at the same time he released a swarm of clones. “It’s not working. Whatever power they’re using is more powerful than what I’m throwing against them.”

  “More powerful than your Edicts?” Seena said. “That can’t be good.”

  “Means these have to be the Raze, doesn’t it?” Yanily said.

  “Not like View is telling us,” Right snipped, his fist colliding directly with a mirror blow from the construct he fought. Impressively, neither blow showed any sign of giving under the other—though small fractures spread across the crystal arm—while Left used the opening to bring both Daggers of En and Sath scissoring in on the titan’s neck.

  Given they weren’t weapons the double had used until this rebirth—and the long streams of hanging liquid behind him—the twinned explosions were enough to remove the head from the body. Not that that was enough to stop one of these things at this point, the headless giant continuing to attack blindly.

  “Why isn’t View working?” Romin said, his question clearly directed at the PIMP construct hiding behind Laseen.

  “I do not have enough information,” the construct said simply. “I do not know if these are the Raze or not.”

  “They fit the description,” Yanily said. “Big and crystal, check. Powerful enough to challenge even the Progenitors if they keep regenerating like this, check.”

  “And really damn annoying,” Seeyela cursed. “Oh, forget this holding back thing.” As soon as she spoke, the green glow of her Fangs of the Lady turned black, and she Bamfed away from the construct. The instant she reappeared, her arms swept inward in horizontal slashes, releasing arcing blades of black energy that raced toward her target forty-feet distant.

  As usual, the construct did nothing to block the incoming attack. Already, they’d shown a worrisome resistance to the venoms Seeyela had used so far. This wasn’t one of them, though. No, this looked like the attack from the weapons she’d taken from the Infested in the Tower of Dynamic Trials. The Decrepit Reapers.

  When she’d had the chance to absorb them with Final One, One Above All was a question for another time. The bigger question for now was whether or not they would do anything. Seeyela had said the particular venom the Infested had used made things older. How exactly would that work on a construct?

  Not at all like Hiral had expected, the black crescents striking the crystal chest without any attempt to stop them. Given the construct’s reaction, it probably should have tried something, the four clawed hands going to its chest as it let out a roar of what could have only been… pain?

  Thin black lines etched across the crystal chest where the attacks had landed directly, while what looked like black worms burrowed their way out from there. As the infestation spread, the construct’s four, clawed hands scratched at its own chest like it was trying to physically remove the ailment.

  This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

  More importantly, whatever the party had done to the constructs in the past, nothing had hurt them. Removing limbs? No reaction. Holes punched in one side and out the other? No reaction. Decapitation? No reaction.

  This—whatever Seeyela had done—was different. It was agonizing.

  And, as Hiral watched, he felt that same sort of twang from his time runes. This wasn’t Time Contraction or Time Dilation, but there was something related going on. Too bad whatever that something was, it was also more powerful than the attacks Seeyela had levied at the construct. It hurt it—it hurt it a lot—but it wasn’t killing it.

  Already, Hiral could feel that unknown force pushing back. It wasn’t a full-on regeneration or rebirth like when the constructs ‘died’, but it was opposed to whatever Decripify was trying to do to the crystal.

  “Seeyela,” Hiral said at the same time he ducked under a vicious hugging gesture from his own opponent. Cupped hands and runic cocktail he usually saved for mountains billowed a growing sphere of destructive tendencies straight into the construct’s gut, flattening it around the expanding bubble. Crystal chipped, frayed, and turned to dust across the outer layer of the monster, but Hiral knew it wouldn’t be enough to truly stop it. Just to buy him some time.

  “Hit all four golems with whatever you just did to that one,” he instructed.

  Seeyela—to her credit—didn’t question the instruction. Didn’t ask why he wanted her to do that, with her initial target already recovering from the attack. Instead, she acted, Bamfing from engaged target to target, lashing each of them with at least a pair of the scything blasts. No sooner had the blades struck—even Hiral’s opponent—than they all started writhing in pain. Claws scratched and tore at the crystal skin exposed to the burrowing-worm-like energy.

  “We’re leaving,” Hiral told the others, scarves of energy snapping out to grab each of them. The next second, he was a thousand feet away and speeding up. At the same time, all around him, Hundred Handed scrawled runic equations in the air, lines of light hanging behind him like a trail.

  “What good is running going to do if you’re leaving breadcrumbs for them, boy?” Laseen asked.

  “Just have to finish…” Hiral said, and called on his Edict of Separation. With the pulse of power, the tailing equations snapped around to catch up to the group flashing above the storm clouds, then curled around them like an untangling ball of string in reverse. As the last equation locked into place, there was a second beat of power, before Hiral dropped the group straight down into the clouds below them. “Yan, can you help with this a bit?”

  “On it,” the spearman said, his own flash of solar energy forming a pocket moving in the clouds right along with them.

  “Is hiding in the clouds going to work?” Romin asked.

  “We’re not just hiding,” Hiral said. “I’ve Separated us from whatever they were using to track us.”

  “Do you know how they were tracking us?” Laseen said.

  “No.”

  “Then how do you know you removed it?”

  “Separated,” Hiral said. “At S-Rank, with the Edicts, it’s conceptually possible. Especially with Eclipse’s help.”

  “OP,” Yanily said.

  “As is this moving cloud bubble,” Seena said. “I’d ask since when you could do this, but I know the answer would be just now.”

  Yanily gave her a thumbs up, proving her guess was entirely accurate.

  “Even without those four chasing us,” Romin said. “What if there are more?”

  “We’re not just separate from whatever was tracking us,” Hiral said. “I’ve Separated us from Terminus entirely. Kind of like what Amin Thett did with his little domain, without pausing everything around us. As far as this world is concerned, conceptually, we’re no longer even on it.”

  “Did I mention overpowered?” Yanily said. “If I didn’t, let it be stated for the record.”

  “Not as crazy as you might think,” Hiral said.

  “Pretty sure it is,” Laseen said flatly.

  “Really, it’s not,” Hiral assured her. “If somebody could see us, the effect would break. It’s kind of like the tattoo Olimpas had, Veil of the Forgotten, in that as long as we’re out of sight, we’re out of mind. It doesn’t make us invisible or noiseless.”

  “Could you do that?” Seena said.

  “Uh, maybe?” Hiral said, considering. “Even if I did, though, I don’t know if the effect would be powerful enough when exposed to anything S-Rank.”

  “All that aside,” Seeyela said. “What in the hells were those things?”

  “Again, they had to be the Raze,” Yanily said.

  “Could we have won if we’d kept fighting?” Romin asked the question nobody else had dared, even though it had to be on everybody’s minds.

  “Not if they kept adapting like that,” Laseen said.

  “I’m not so sure about that,” Hiral said. “For two reasons,” he continued at one look from Seeyela. She didn’t like asking. “First off, all their adaptations were done in stages. It took them four rebirths to get to where they started to be a real challenge. Even then, secondly, those changes only really made them tougher.

  “You probably also noticed that each time they got more durable, they also got slower,” Hiral said. “There was a cost to the evolutions that made them tankier. It’s also one of the reasons I figured we could escape.

  “It’s also why I don’t think those were the Raze.”

  “If you thought we could beat them,” Seena said. “Why did we run at all?”

  “Because we’re not here to fight them,” Yanily said. “We could’ve kept throwing down like that, figured out their weaknesses, and come out on top, but how long would it have taken? Would more have shown up? I still think they might be the Raze. I also think Hiral was right to get us out of there. At least until we know if they’re actually our target, or just trash mobs.”

  “If those are the trash,” Laseen said. “I’m a little nervous to see what orders them around.” The cackle that came after didn’t have the same carefree attitude as normal.

  “Or what made them,” Seena said. “If they’re not the Raze, are the Raze Builders then?”

  “If they are,” Hiral said. “They didn’t instill those things directly with runes. There wasn’t a single one inscribed on them, and I didn’t feel them trying to use the runes. As far as I could tell, other than the shoulder cannons, those things were pure brawn.”

  “Huh,” Yanily said. “Putting it like that, I’m starting to agree with you more those weren’t the Raze.”

  “And somehow you look excited at that,” Seeyela said.

  “Well, of course,” Yanily said. “What’s the point of a story like ours if there isn’t some unfathomable challenge for us to overcome?”

  “I think we have enough of those,” Seena pointed out. “With Genesis being in a dungeon already. And, we need to warn Nivian and Ilrolik about those things.”

  Which was exactly what she did.

  Maybe because they hadn’t improved an S-Rank weapon or had an advanced class evolution, neither of the other groups had attracted that kind of attention. Yet. As Nivian’s was the only group moving, they kept it in mind as they travelled, while Ilrolik’s group put more effort into keeping watch while Sera worked.

  As for Hiral’s group, he kept them to the clouds as they continued to follow the rivers of runic energy. It was slightly slower going since he didn’t want to risk using too much power to race through the clouds. Even though he’d spoken pretty confidently about his little bubble of Separation, it was just that—a bubble. One that could pop if he strained it too much from the inside with his own power.

  There was also the physical risk of altering the shape of the surrounding clouds if they weren’t careful, too. Yanily agreed with the speed they were moving, and his ability to maintain the cover. As much of a savant as he was for learning new skills, this was more of a practice and perfect kind of situation.

  Besides, for anything less than S-Rank, they were moving. And, it gave Hiral time to mull over what had happened with those constructs. What had he sensed from them? How was it related to his time runes?

  Something related to time was the obvious answer. Seeyela had said Terminus stood frozen at the literal last moment of time. Another second forward would see it all come to an end. Had the Raze somehow done something similar with their constructs? Basically looped their physical forms into a constant, never-ending cycle?

  Sounds familiar.

  If that was the case, though, and those constructs were the trash mobs—with that ability—just how dangerous did that make the Raze? And, could they do the same thing for themselves?

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