~~~
The necromancer's skeletal hand rose with terrible finality, dark energy coalescing into something that made Jin's enhanced senses scream warnings of absolute annihilation.
Fuck!
This wasn't another casual attack. This was everything—centuries of accumulated power compressed into a single killing blow.
The Death Beam manifested as pure black corruption streaked with pulsing crimson veins, wide enough to engulf both teenagers. The sound it made was wrong—like reality itself tearing at the seams.
Jin's exhausted mind scrambled for options, for anything, for—
Suddenly, powerful hands seized him—and before he could react, Jin was hurled clear of the strike. The world whirled around him as he spun through the air, helpless, eyes locked in horror on Rudy.
The shield caught the hellish light, and Rudy stood alone against oblivion.
"Not today, you bony fuck!" Rudy's voice carried across the chamber, defiant to the last.
Then—quieter, but Jin heard it anyway—"Live, bro. Just... live."
"Rudy, no—!"
Crimson flames erupted around Ruyd's body—the Asura path responding to mortal danger with savage power.
"WARRIOR'S CALL!"
The skill activated with a sound like a war horn carved from living rage. Red aura exploded outward from Rudy in concentric rings, and Jin felt the effect snap into place—an invisible tether binding the necromancer's attention solely to Rudy for the next ten seconds.
No. Goddamn it, no!
Time seemed to fragment. Jin hung suspended in the air, watching the Death Beam streak toward his best friend. Rudy stood his ground, shield raised, facing down death itself with nothing but stubborn determination and a piece of enchanted metal.
He's going to die. That attack will go straight through his shield and... and…
Panic threatened to overwhelm Jin's consciousness, clawing at his thoughts with icy talons—but then something broke inside Jin's chest—not physically, but deeper. Where warmth and hope had lived, cold rage flooded in like winter, claiming autumn.
The Eternal Sovereign's breathing pattern activated without conscious thought, circulating essence through his nearly depleted channels in rhythmic pulses. But instead of the usual clarity, this time it brought something else.
Coldness.
It seeped into his mind like frost creeping across glass, freezing every chaotic thought, every panicked impulse, every shred of debilitating fear. The terror crystallized into brittle ice and shattered. The desperation evaporated like morning mist under a merciless sun.
Only the task remained.
Kill the necromancer.
Breathe. Focus. Think.
Jin tapped into his meager essence reserves—the tiny fraction remaining after everything they'd already endured. It should have been impossible. His channels were burned, his core nearly empty, his body operating on fumes and borrowed time.
But impossible was just another word for not yet done.
Overdrive.
The world slowed.
Jin's perception shifted. Time, already moving like honey, slowed further until each heartbeat lasted an eternity. He could see individual particles of dust floating through the air. Could track the necromancer's skeletal hand lowering from casting position. Could count the cracks spreading through the chamber walls from the force of his attack.
His mind raced at superhuman speed, processing possibilities faster than conscious thought could track.
The Death Beam, halfway between necromancer and target, corruption eating through the air itself. The necromancer's burning eyes focused solely on Rudy, unable to shift attention due to Warrior's Call. Skeletal warriors frozen mid-step. Undead amalgamations turning their grotesque heads toward the conflict.
Ten seconds. The skill would last ten seconds. The necromancer couldn't change targets during that window—which meant Rudy would have to tank the full attack.
Unless I do something...
Normal attacks wouldn't work—the Death Beam was pure concentrated essence, not a physical projectile. Barriers would shatter instantly. Sorcery required time he didn't have and essence reserves he'd already spent.
But there was one option. One absolutely insane, never-been-done-before, probably-suicidal option.
If I can harvest crops, materials, and essence from corpses... can I harvest an active attack?
Jin didn't know if it would work. Hell, he didn't even know if it was possible. But Rudy was about to die, and that made the choice very fucking simple.
Jin's lips pulled back in something that might have been a grin or might have been a snarl. His hands moved before conscious decision, summoning the Chains of Harvest with the last dregs of his normal essence reserves.
"HARVEST!"
The silver chains manifested, blazing with desperate power. They erupted from Jin's outstretched hands like living lightning, crossing the distance to the Death Beam in a fraction of a heartbeat.
The Chains of Harvest latched onto the death beam—something that shouldn't have been possible, shouldn't have worked according to any magic Jin had ever read about. But his evolved Boon didn't care about impossibility.
It harvested.
Dark essence flowed backward through the chains, siphoned from the attack's remnants with violent efficiency. Jin felt the corruption flooding into him, felt his Boon's power dissipating sixty percent of it automatically, breaking down the necromantic energy into raw essence.
The conversion was terrible—maybe one part usable essence for every ten parts violently dissipated into nothing. Wasteful beyond measure under any normal circumstances.
But the necromancer's sheer power made up for the terrible conversion ratio, and energy flowed into Jin, simultaneously burning his channels and refilling his reserves. Pain beyond anything he'd experienced lanced through his body as foreign essence contaminated his own, but he held on.
Sixty percent. I need to negate at least sixty percent, or Rudy dies.
The Death Beam struck Rudy's shield.
But it wasn't the full-strength attack the necromancer had launched. Jin's Harvest had eaten away more than half its power, reducing the killing blow to merely crippling. The impact still sent Rudy flying backward like he'd been hit by a truck, his enhanced armor cracking audibly, his shield arm bending at an unnatural angle.
Rudy hit the far wall with bone-crushing force and crumpled to the ground. But he was alive. Unconscious, bleeding from everywhere, but breathing.
Jin hit the ground near the necromancer's throne with twenty percent essence reserves and a body burning from the inside out. Essence's Edge was already in his hand, the dagger blazing with every scrap of holy attribute he'd harvested from the blessed scrolls.
Essence flooded into Essence's Edge—the dagger blazing brilliantly white as every scrap of holy attribute Jin had carefully accumulated over the fight concentrated into its crystalline core. The blade became a physical manifestation of purified divine wrath.
The necromancer tried turning toward Jin—but he couldn't. Warrior's Call was still active, the invisible tether keeping his focus locked on Rudy's unconscious form. Karlcamahac'Ohsa's burning eyes widened with something that might have been fear.
"Impossible! Thou canst not—"
Jin lunged with a snarl.
Three meters. Two. One. The dagger screamed through the air like a comet.
Essence's Edge pierced into the necromancer's side, penetrating between ancient ribs to sink deep into the core. Holy attribute exploded outward through the undead's body, searing corrupted flesh with purifying fire.
The necromancer roared—a sound that belonged to no human throat, alien and raspy and filled with centuries of malevolent existence suddenly experiencing genuine agony for the first time in ages.
"Wretched mortal! Thou darest—!"
Dark essence coalesced around the necromancer's skeletal hands, condensing into another killing spell aimed point-blank at Jin's chest. But even as the power built, the ancient mage's burning eyes couldn't quite focus on him.
But the necromancer hadn't survived centuries by being inflexible. Recognition flashed in those burning red eyes—the understanding of an ancient entity who'd prepared for every contingency.
The condensed necromantic energy exploded outward in an omnidirectional burst. Not a targeted attack—an area of effect that promised to obliterate everything within ten meters regardless of who or what occupied that space.
If he couldn't kill Jin specifically, he'd just erase everything within ten meters.
Time still crawled for Jin. He had maybe half a second before the AOE vaporized him. Not enough time to run. Not enough essence for another desperate gambit. He was going to die with his dagger stuck in the necromancer's ribs.
Unless...
His hand reached out—not physically, but mentally, desperately, grasping for the one thing that might save him.
Reduvia. I need you.
The infant shadow spirit responded. Jin felt Reduvia's consciousness brush against his own, young and playful and absolutely thrilled by the chaos and danger swirling around them. The necromantic burst reached Jin's position with annihilating force—
And Jin dissolved into living shadow.
The world went black and silent, existence compressed down to pure concept without form or substance. Jin existed in the space between shadows, traveling through the realm where light feared to tread.
One heartbeat.
Two.
Reality snapped back like a rubber band, and Jin emerged from the shadow on the necromancer's blind side. Holy attribute flared at maximum output, every scrap of divine power he'd accumulated blazing like a miniature sun.
The necromancer recoiled, skeletal hands coming up defensively. But Jin saw it—the desperate movement toward the ancient mage's chest, where a gem the size of a walnut hung on a chain of blackened silver. An escape route. Another instant teleportation that would let him flee even from this losing battle.
Oh no, you fucking don't.
Jin raised Iron Howl one-handed and fired. The single remaining bullet, coated in concentrated holy attribute, crossed the meter between barrel and target in a blaze of purified light.
The gem shattered.
Fragments of the gem scattered across frozen bone, each piece smoking as divine power consumed whatever dark magic had been woven into the crystal. The necromancer's escape route crumbled to ash.
"NO!"
For the first time, genuine fear colored Karlcamahac'Ohsa's voice. Not concern. Not surprise. Fear.
Good. Be afraid, you bastard.
Jin didn't give him time to recover. Every bit of rage—at Vienna's coming destruction, at seeing Rudy nearly die, at being forced into this nightmare situation—focused into a single point of absolute fury.
The Chains of Harvest erupted from Jin's outstretched hands, but these weren't siphoning essence or materials. They drove directly into the necromancer's core—not his physical body, but deeper, where essence and life force and soul intertwined.
And Jin harvested.
Not essence. Not power. But the dark mage's life itself.
"WHAT ART THOU DOING?!" The necromancer's scream held notes of horror that shouldn't exist in a creature centuries old. "STOP! THOU KNOWEST NOT WHAT THOU—"
The chains of Harvest tore into Karlcamahac'Ohsa's accumulated power like a chainsaw through flesh. Centuries of stolen life force, countless souls consumed, the entirety of his ORDER III aura—Jin ripped it all away with savage efficiency. The ancient mage's essence began flowing into Jin's core, mixing with his own.
Jin's essence turned murky, contaminated. He could feel foreign thoughts pressing against his consciousness—ancient, malevolent, hungry. It was contaminating Jin's own essence, convoluting his life force with centuries of accumulated necromantic taint. Black veins spread across Jin's arms, his chest, crawling toward his heart like invasive vines seeking purchase.
Don't care. He dies. That's all that matters.
The necromancer's roar shook the chamber with fury and horror and disbelieving rage.
"IMPOSSIBLE! NO MORTAL SHOULD POSSESS SUCH POWER! WHAT ART THOU?!"
With the last scrap of will keeping him conscious, Jin drove Essence's Edge—now blazing white-hot with accumulated holy essence—directly through the necromancer's eye socket and into his skull.
Holy attribute detonated inside the ancient mage's head.
Ten seconds elapsed.
Warrior's Call's duration ended.
The necromancer's skeletal hands shot forward, wrapping around Jin's throat in a crushing grip. Centuries of accumulated strength squeezed, trying desperately to tear this infuriating mortal away, to remove the dagger that was killing him from the inside out.
Jin grinned through the chokehold, blood streaming from his mouth.
"Got you... you bony... fuck..."
His vision was going dark at the edges. But his hands stayed locked on Essence's Edge, keeping the blade buried deep in corrupted bone.
His skeletal jaw opened impossibly wide, and from within his skull came words in a language that predated humanity—arcane syllables that made reality itself flinch. Black energy shot through with red lightning began coalescing around them both, building toward something catastrophic.
Jin recognized the spell being formed. Four-circle magic. Death Ray. The necromancer's most powerful single-target attack, channeling every scrap of remaining power into one final killing blow.
The red lightning reached outward first, wrapping around Jin like burning whips. His exposed skin flayed where the energy touched, muscle and fat burning away in strips to expose bone beneath. The smell of cooking meat filled the chamber.
Jin's consciousness began to fracture. His grip on Essence's Edge loosened. The Chains of Harvest flickered, their connection to the necromancer's life force weakening as Jin's will failed.
But his body had nothing left. Overdrive was consuming what remained of his life force to sustain itself. The soul contamination was spreading toward his heart. His vision tunneled to a single point of fading light.
At least... I got him... good...
Through vision going dark at the edges, Jin saw something impossible.
Rudy was standing.
His armor was shattered, hanging in pieces. His left arm dangled uselessly. Blood covered him from head to toe. He shouldn't even be conscious, let alone on his feet.
But he was standing. And his greatsword was burning like a red sun.
The Asura path had gone beyond its normal limits—pushed past injury, past exhaustion, past everything that should have kept Rudy down. The flames wreathing his blade weren't crimson anymore. They were Red, blindingly bright, fueled by pure desperation and brotherhood.
Rudy's purple eyes met Jin's across the chamber. Just for a heartbeat. Long enough to convey everything that mattered:
I got this. You did your part. Now it's my turn.
Jin's consciousness failed.
The last thing he saw before darkness claimed him was Rudy charging forward, that blazing greatsword raised high, coming to finish what they'd started together.
Then there was only black.
~~~