With the Magma Serpent dead, most of the waiting predators slunk away and returned to their territories. Not all of them, though, and Arthur was forced to spend the next twenty minutes battling an increasingly bizarre series of monsters. Wovan was returned to his soul core to recover—while she was a force to be reckoned with, this wasn’t the carefully selected battle her first fight had been. The only purpose she’d serve here would be soaking up damage, and Arthur doubted he’d ever need someone to do that for him.

  Because of how varied his enemies were, Arthur was forced to constantly switch weapons when fighting them. The two dozen deepstone gremlins and three golems required his hammer while the army of giant corrupted insects needed the deft touch of his shadow and poison magic to handle. The final enemies he had to deal with, were creatures he’d only just met recently, Corrupted Undead Elves, the natives of this fallen world, deceased and brought back to serve its nefarious will.

  There was no correct way to fight these undead natives. Each of them was different, still in possession of whatever magic they’d had in life. They were also incredibly durable, their flesh and skeletons tempered by thousands of years under the oppression of the Daggerfall mountain range. The few he'd met so far had been incredibly difficult to deal with and the two he was currently facing were no different.

  It didn't take Arthur long to realise he was outmatched here. The elves were used to fighting as a pair, which was bad enough, but Maya was a light mage, completely breaking the stereotype of undead across the multiverse. Her domain completely erased every shadow in a 200m radius, eliminating Arthur's ability to travel the terrain rapidly with Shadow Step. He’d managed to get its activation time down to half a second, finally making it viable in high-speed combat, and suddenly being cut off from it was grating.

  It also prevented him from activating any of his shadow affinity skills, something he hadn’t even known was possible. The skills felt like they were locked behind a barrier, one that he might be able to break through if given time, but definitely not while fighting for his life. All things considered, Maya’s domain was incredibly weak considering her level—it was far too specialised to be viable against most opponents, but on the rare occasions it did work, it completely shut her enemies down. Case in point, Arthur Ward. Shadow magic, similar to darkness was an affinity that didn't mesh well with others. Someone who had it would rarely have access to another affinity which meant that Maya was quite literally the bane of all shadow mages.

  Fortunately, shadow magic only made up a portion of Arthur's strength, so Maya should have been easy to deal with, only she had an elf knight protecting her. Arthur would be the first to admit that he was a terrible spearman—he'd only trained with it for a few hours—but the monsters he'd faced since leaving the Locus of Power had made him forget that fact. Isaiah was helping him remember.

  While Maya could pass for a living elf dabbling in undead cosplay, Isaiah was very clearly dead. He was a skeleton dressed in rusted armour, with no flesh on his bones. Arthur didn't know why he was so different from Maya, but it made fighting him far more difficult. Flesh could be cut, tendons could be severed; a bleeding enemy was one that could be worn down. Isaiah possessed none of the weaknesses flesh came with and apparently hadn't lost any of the benefits.

  Skeletons, Arthur was rapidly learning, were also impossible to read. There were no eyes to track, no tensing of muscles that preceded a movement. Isaiah was the most unpredictable enemy Arthur had ever faced. He was also the first swordsman, wielding a massive great sword Arthur was certain should be two-handed and a kite shield that completely neutralised the force of any blow Arthur launched. It made his hammer useless, the merest touch of the kite shield arrested any momentum he managed to generate.

  When he'd seen Isaiah was a melee warrior specialised in perception, Arthur had thought the fight would be easy. How wrong he'd been. They were roughly equal in strength, and Arthur had a slight edge in speed, but Isaiah moved like they'd choreographed the entire fight weeks before. He was always a dozen steps ahead, always 'seeing' what Arthur would do five moves before he did it. He almost thought the skeleton had an ability for foresight, only Arthur couldn't sense any ether being used. Perhaps he'd been looking down on perception too much.

  Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

  Nothing Arthur did was working. Every strike of his soul spear was deflected, light bolts to his face constantly hindered his vision and his enemies had millennia of experience on him.

  While Arthur was durable, he wasn't invulnerable and Isaiah's great sword was a deadly weapon on par with his incredible kite shield. His flesh was covered in cuts, some of them almost a centimetre deep and he was pretty sure something important in his stomach had popped when Isaiah had stabbed him. Fluids were dripping from his nether regions and Arthur didn't think it was urine.

  With every failed defence, Arthur could feel his frustration increasing. His rage made him reckless, which led to mistakes and only caused him more pain. Five minutes into the fight, Arthur's spearmanship had descended into a sloppy mess that would have had Issania shaking her head in disappointment, the sort of wild swinging he'd been doing when he'd been trying to unlock his System.

  The realisation was so jarring that it shook Arthur out of the battle haze he'd descended into. He turned and glared at the elf mage, finally sensing the secondary aspect of her domain. She was messing with his emotions, making everything he felt more potent and removing his impulse control. It was an insidious magic, even knowing it was happening didn't stop it. In retrospect, that made sense. Knowing your emotions were being intensified didn't stop you from feeling them.

  His momentary distraction cost him a deadly slash across the ribs and he winced at the heightened pain. It took all his self-control not to return in kind with a wild swing of his spear that he logically knew had no chance of connecting. Arthur took a mental step back and let his body go through the motions of battle. His technique would suffer, but no more than it already had. He analysed the fight so far and tried to look at things objectively. Isaiah was a great warrior, yes, but not one he couldn't beat and Maya was a poor excuse of a mage that could only provide support. No, shit. That's her magic at work again... Or is it?

  Arthur abandoned that line of thought before he could descend further down that rabbit hole. Simply put, each of his enemies posed him little threat alone. It was only when they worked together that they gave him so much trouble. A sword strike to his forehead almost threw him into a rage again, but he took a deep breath and calmed himself down. The injuries he was receiving were certainly painful, but they weren't as debilitating as he'd been led to believe.

  That changed everything. The realisation that this wasn't a battle with his life on the line helped ground him. He would suffer, but he wouldn't die. With his brain finally working again, Arthur immediately came up with two solutions to his current problem. For starters, Wovan wouldn't be as helpless here as he'd initially thought. Using her space affinity, she'd be more than a match for the elf mage, or at least distract her long enough to give him the breathing room to deal with Isaiah.

  He could also use a technique he hadn't tried out in quite a while, namely his water shot-soul spear combination. That was a sure way to victory, or at least far better than his current plan. Arthur chose to do neither. Now that he had a way out, this fight didn't seem so terrible. It was painful, but the best spars always hurt a little. This is a training opportunity, not a life-or-death battle. Telling himself that changed the way he felt about his circumstances and so changed the emotions he was currently feeling. Now he just had to worry about going to the other extreme and becoming too complacent.

  Arthur wasn't exactly deceiving himself either. Skilled humanoid combatants were difficult to come by—he hadn't faced one since leaving the Locus. Issania was a great teacher and an incredible spear user, but Arthur had to reluctantly admit that Isaiah had the edge in skill. He really was just that good. With that new outlook in mind, Arthur settled in for the long haul.

  For the first hour of combat, Arthur struck Isaiah a grand total of zero times. The elf's premonition was simply too difficult to deal with. Even if they'd been matched in skill, Arthur was sure he'd have run into the same roadblock. One positive of Haadran was that it had the necessary ether density to maintain his existence and so Arthur wasn't burdened with reduced regeneration rates. Besides mental fatigue, he could fight at this pace for days. The same couldn't be said about his enemies. Half an hour later, he felt the elf mage's domain splutter and die. She'd run out of energy.

  Arthur chose to continue fighting as he was without being under the influence of any magic. Following that, the domain would come back online in short five-minute bursts every forty minutes or so. The first two times it caught him off guard and ruined his rhythm, but by the third, he'd recognised the pattern and adjusted to it. By this point, Arthur had been cut and healed so much that the rock beneath him was slick with blood. Even in the oppressive heat of the Haadran sun, his blood didn't congeal easily.

  Arthur managed to land his first proper strike in the sixth hour of the fight and so the clang of his soul spear on a rusted breastplate marked the beginning of the end of the longest fight of Arthur's life. Now he'd managed to hit his enemy, victory was an inevitable certainty. That was what it meant to fight The Perfect Homunculus. He had the tenacity to fight for days on end and his propensity to use his soul spear meant that he would win all battles eventually. That was what made soul mages and by extension himself, such a terrifying opponent. The longer you fought him, the weaker you would get.

  Arthur's spearmanship had also improved significantly in the few hours that had passed, far more than most gifted geniuses would have. It was a quirk of Armaments of the Soul, one that he hadn't been able to capitalise on before. His learning speed was greatly accelerated with whatever weapon he used his skill with. In his eighth hour of battle, Arthur felt like he was evenly matched with Isaiah. The skeleton's armour was destroyed and he'd long since discarded his shield to favour a two-handed grip on his great sword. All great things had to come to an end, and finally, Arthur's spear pierced through the ancient elf warrior's skull.

  "I would have wished to meet you in life. Thank you for the lesson."

  Links to the audiobooks.

  Etherious: Originator

  -

  Here

  Here

  Here

  ?Goodreads

  Here and read 8 chapters ahead.

  Patreon