The last two days had been going terribly for Rosano. Mysha’s wild goose chase had led them far from home, to an entirely new realm even, and if his terrible luck had anything to say about things, to their deaths. His partner in crime had been insistent that they travel to the deadliest place on Haadran, the Daggerfall Mountain range, hell bent on the idea that their wayward Originator would be just as suicidal as they were.

  Unfortunately, Mysha had been correct. Just as he’d been ready to call it quits and finally pronounce Arthur Ward dead, the monotony of Haadran was finally broken.

  Rain began to fall.

  The anomalous weather was caused by a powerful monster, that much was as clear as day, but it was the distinct scent of something far more terrifying that told him they’d found their lead. Rosano could sense traces of the Ender. It was a distinct presence, one that would be impossible to forget and impossible to mistake.

  Wherever the Ender was, surely the Originator would be there too. Covering a dozen odd miles as fast as possible, they’d arrived at the scene just in time to see the battle's conclusion, an explosion of soul magic that seemed just as likely to kill Arthur Ward as the Storm Wyvern he was battling. Against all odds, the Originator managed to survive, fleeing along with the Haadran native. This was the second time Rosano had observed Arthur in battle, and he was starting to begrudgingly respect the man.

  No matter how screwed a situation he found himself in, Arthur always managed to find a way to survive, somehow stumbling ass-backwards into a fortuitous encounter in the process. The trail had gone cold for a while after that, but once again, patience bore its fruits. That, and Arthur Ward made a lot of noise for a man who was supposed to be dead.

  Rosano had thought his modified body had long become immune to mundane heart attacks, but when the System started ordering him to execute an Originator who was succumbing to corruption, the mechanised organ keeping his blood flowing stopped beating. Literally. All his systems entered self-preservation mode, becoming as silent and stealthy as possible in response to the perceived threat levels. The implications of that System warning had been beyond terrifying.

  If Arthur became fallen, his pet Ender would follow, spelling destruction for everyone and everything, the entire Myopan realm and perhaps beyond.

  “Has the plan changed, or do we still wanna take the gamble?” Mysha’s words had been the rope to pull him out of his mental fugue, and he’d shaken his head no. This was their last chance, their only chance, really, at freedom, and he’d be damned if he squandered it serving the objectives of his slaver.

  That was why, when they’d located the fortified city, managed to slip by the anti-teleportation wards and sabotaged the eastern gate, Rosano didn’t attack the Originator straight away. Instead, they'd waited and watched as Arthur awoke from whatever crazy experiment he’d managed to pull off. Those two minutes of delay cost him dearly, the directives planted in his brain and the oaths marking his soul like brands burning fiery pain through him. If ever he stood before Lady Melania again, she would know of these two minutes of insubordination, and he would suffer greatly for it, perhaps even fatally considering how much value she'd put on the mission.

  The blasted soul blade had found its way into his hands, practically begging him to be used, but still, he held off. It was only after he saw the Ender and how she had changed that he allowed himself to sigh in relief. She remained uncorrupted.

  Arthur Ward did not have to die.

  Rosano had long since learned what to expect of his butchered body when he ignored his directives to such extremes. While it housed his soul, his physical form served another master, and so when the mechanical parts of him flashed with power and seized control of his biological functions, it came as no surprise.

  Slave Time is what he'd taken to calling it, 93 seconds where the control of his body would be stolen from him and operate beyond peak efficiency to fulfill the last orders given to him. And right now, that was to capture Arthur Ward, dead or alive.

  Randar's Lament was a Legendary weapon with a Mythical-grade damage output, limited only by the fact that it had a ten-second lifetime. Mysha's ether washed over him, and the next moment, they were displaced into Arthur's room. For the first time ever, Rosano was able to get a good look at the Originator who had shaken up the balance of power so much. His sensors ran a quick diagnostic scan over him, gathering data more accurate than the best of hospitals ever could, which would be carefully stored away until it could be transmitted to Lady Melania if and when he ever set foot back in the Myopan realm.

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  Arthur looked surprised, a small frown on his face. He was unsettled, but not aware why. Rosano would change that. It cost far more than ether to go against his directives during Slave Time, but freedom had no price. His life force burned away, stripped away by the harshest of oaths—three years for a half second of freedom. That was enough.

  Rosano released a puff of ether, the little he could steal away from his body, but it was enough to get the Originator's attention. He threw his will at his right arm, the mental fortitude he'd built over years under the scalpel, decades of resentment. The muscle fibres there were supposed to be dead and unresponsive to his input, but they twitched, just a little, throwing his dagger's course off by half an inch. That was enough.

  Instead of slicing through his throat, the soul dagger slashed through Arthur's raised arm instead, the severed limb falling to the ground with a dull thud. Randar's Lament shattered in his hands like brittle glass. It was supposed to last for ten seconds. Less than a tenth of that time had passed, but what were Legendary weapons when pitted against the man who'd fathered an Ender?

  The severed limb at Rosano's feet disappeared, no doubt stowed away in a storage space. Arthur Ward looked angry. Very angry. Anyone would be if they'd just lost an entire hand to true soul damage. Hopefully, they could explain themselves once this was all over.

  If they managed to survive the next 92 seconds, that was.

  ~~~

  Arthur finally got a good look at his attackers, a man and a woman, both slightly larger than average. Even though his physical eyes could see them, as clear as day, they remained completely undetectable to his magical senses. This was some serious stealth they had going on. His hand now sat in his soulbound ring, and thankfully, his trusty bowl prevented him from leaving any DNA samples around. There were a few drops of blood on the floor, but not enough that a little cleaning wouldn't fix it.

  There was something off about his attackers, something inhumane. They looked like ordinary humans, but the way they stood, the way they breathed and shifted their eyes about was wrong; subtly enough that they could pass as normal, but still detectable to those with good senses.

  That was all the time Arthur had for thinking before the pair attacked. No conversations, no demands. Just straight to the violence. Arthur could appreciate the simplicity of it. Casting his domain as far as he could, Arthur finally learned where everyone else had disappeared to. The east gate had been breached, and hordes of corrupted monsters were flooding the streets. Ordering Wovan to provide backup, he turned his attention back to his own battle just in time to duck under the man's wild haymaker.

  At least, he'd thought he'd ducked it. His head was still smashed to the side, vision flickering momentarily, before about a million volts of electricity rushed through him. Arthur hadn't even seen where the attacks came from, nor did he have the time to figure it out. This time, it was the woman who caught him, a deadly teep right to the solar plexus, only the sole of her boot felt like it had a rocket attached to it with how much force he was sent flying backwards.

  His momentum was arrested, not by a wall, they weren't durable enough to stop him, but by a magical shield, more of a bubble, really, that completely wrapped around every surface of the room. His shirt had been burned away, and his chest was a little singed, but otherwise, he was fine. Arthur tried to teleport outside his room, but the magical shield completely cut off his ability to sense the shadows outside. It left him feeling a bit sick, though, enough time that the assassin pair were able to get a few good hits on him.

  Arthur finally realised what was so uncanny about the two. They moved like machines, like cyborgs straight out of a sci-fi movie. They clearly weren't planning on talking to him either, if they were even capable of speech in the first place. Being trapped in such a small room had neutralised one of his greatest weapons. A spear's range would prove to be a detriment at such close quarters. The battle went about as well as he expected from there.

  He was a great fighter, but these two were the best of the best. That, and he was struggling to adapt to suddenly losing 10% of his stats and an entire limb. Their cybernetic bodies were capable of keeping up with his current speeds, though the way their flesh was tearing and shredding as they did so suggested that such outputs couldn't be maintained for long. They also weren't capable of truly hurting him. With the exception of that first weapon, everything else they'd thrown at him was survivable.

  Arthur managed to get a few good licks in, too. He'd completely destroyed the woman's left leg with a well-timed kick, significantly reducing her ability to manoeuvre around him, and he'd claimed the man's right hand as compensation for his own. Arthur was well aware that he could use some powerful magic to put an end to this fight very quickly. The magic barrier they were trapped in was pretty durable, and it would serve as the perfect container for a shadow nuke that would surely kill his attackers.

  Something stopped Arthur from taking such drastic measures, though. The male attacker had hesitated during that first attack, stopping himself from conducting the perfect assassination. Arthur was sure of it, now that he'd experienced first-hand just how clinical the man's movements were. Luck hadn't saved him. Or fate.

  It was a man's decision.

  There was nothing mechanical about the desperate rage in his eyes, or the dying hope in the woman's. There was something more going on here. Arthur's restraint was finally rewarded when the man suddenly froze, as if he'd been short-circuited. His limbs lost all strength, and he crashed to his knees, the muscles in his face finally moving as a human's would.

  "My name is Rosano," he rasped, before falling unconscious.

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