For the first time in dozens of loops, Elijah found himself unable to take the next step. Behind him, the familiarity of the maze loomed, while in front of him was something he’d never expected to see. After all, the Primal Realm was called Labyrinth of Dead Gods, not paradise.

  But that was what he saw stretching before him.

  The terrain had a garden-like feel to it, with blooming flowers and ancient-looking trees. Even the buildings, stretching further than Elijah could see, were covered in vegetation, and the sweet smell of nature filled his nose.

  And then there was the monster that ruined everything.

  In some ways, it looked like a much more massive version of the automatons they’d fought in the maze, but it differed in a few major ways. The most obvious was that it was at least five-hundred feet tall and proportioned to match that height. Even from miles away, Elijah could see it. He could also feel the heat coming from the pulsing flows of ethera that functioned as its joints – a not-so-subtle hint that it was a demi-god on par with any he’d fought in the Broken Crown.

  It also featured three legs and the ability to turn a complete circle at the waist, which it displayed by destroying one of the buildings in the distance. Elijah watched as it ripped through the structure like it was no more than a child’s toy. And he saw hundreds of people – all blue-skinned and resembling the asharii, though more defined and wearing clothes – plummet to their deaths.

  There were others scattered through the garden city, though Elijah couldn’t concern himself with them. Not with another threat hanging in the sky.

  Like a miniature sun, a moon-sized golden sphere hovered over the city. Cloaked in a corona of blue ethera, it blazed with enough energy to destroy even the hardiest of Warriors. Periodically, arcs of energy escaped, searing through the sky and leaving afterimages behind as it plunged back into the sphere.

  It only took a moment for Elijah to peg it as the source of the explosion that had so often killed them.

  Benedict muttered, “It’s too much…”

  “Do you see it?” asked Hu Shui.

  “What?” Elijah asked.

  “The flows,” he answered, pointing to the right of the sphere. “Focus.”

  Elijah narrowed his eyes. More importantly, he followed Hu Shui’s direction, and after a few moments, he saw what the Astral Duelist saw. Barely visible to Elijah’s metaphysical senses were dense flows of energy connecting the sphere to something buried within the city.

  “How many do you see?”

  “Five on this side,” Hu Shui answered. “Probably the same number on the other.”

  “What do you think they mean?”

  Hu Shui knelt and closed his eyes. “The energy is flowing upward to the sphere.”

  “We’re meant to cut it off,” Benedict guessed.

  That seemed like an accurate assessment to Elijah. If the sphere was the source of the explosion, and it was drawing energy from below, then the most obvious solution was to sever the connection to its source of power. However, that was complicated by a few major issues.

  The first was the most obvious. The giant automaton wasn’t just there for show, and it would obviously oppose them. And with its power, the only person who could stand up to it was Elijah himself. He knew that down to his core. If he wanted to beat such a formidable enemy, he’d need to tap into every weapon in his arsenal.

  And even then, he wasn’t sure he could win.

  He probably could. He’d beaten enemies that were just as powerful. Yet, the goal wasn’t just to defeat it. Rather, he needed to do so while preserving his companions’ lives.

  Then there was the issue of time. Elijah wasn’t so na?ve as to think that the explosions would cease. In fact, he could already feel that the sphere was growing more volatile by the second. Even though they’d made better time with this loop than the last, they didn’t have much longer before it exploded again.

  Finally, there were Elijah’s own limitations. He was not all-powerful. And most importantly, he could not be in multiple places at once.

  All of that was complicated by a lack of information, which seemed like the first order of business that needed to be rectified.

  “Okay. I don’t think we have much time here, so here’s what we need to do. I think we should –”

  Just then, the sphere exploded. The shockwave of white light scorched through him so quickly that he never even had a chance to think. Instead, after only a brief moment, he was back where he started.

  “Fuck!” he shouted as he dodged the automaton’s sapphire bladed axe, then threw himself at the thing. He hit it as hard as he’d hit anything since coming to the Primal Realm, and he let his frustration guide his blows as he tore through the thing, killing it without any real assistance from his companions.

  When it fell, partially dismantled, its death was punctuated by a distant explosion from the core Elijah had thrown down the corridor. He ignored it, turning back to his companions.

  “I’m about to change the paradigm. Keep up. And don’t mind the bugs.”

  With that, Elijah embraced Eternal Plague, conjuring a thousand glittering blue locusts. They surrounded him, then swept down the corridor as they embarked on a search for the automatons. Elijah let them go, urging them on and guiding them with two facets of his mind. The others, he directed toward the problem at hand.

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  They needed to go faster. Much, much faster.

  Elijah’s solution to that was to send his swarm ahead. He didn’t think they would kill any of the automatons. Not for a while, at least. But what he did believe was that their afflictions could soften the creatures up for when Elijah and his companions arrived, speeding each kill by a significant amount.

  And maybe that would be enough to allow them to reach the garden city in time to enact the next part of his plan, which would necessitate splitting up. He would go for the giant automaton, while the other two headed toward the origin points of those beams of energy feeding into the sphere. With any luck, they would disable whatever mechanism powered them.

  “There’s no way we can do all of that in time.”

  “Do you have another plan?” Elijah asked Benedict.

  He shook his head.

  “Besides, when we first started, even reaching the end of the maze seemed impossible. This Primal Realm can be beaten. We just need to push ourselves.”

  As he spoke, his conjured swarm reached the next automaton. Most of them kept going, filling the corridors and searching out the next in line. But quite a few descended upon the enemy. Many were immediately destroyed, but enough managed to inflict their afflictions upon it that Elijah knew it would become a much softer target.

  Elijah added, “I don’t expect us to solve the problem during this loop. Probably not the next, either. But as long as we improve and add to knowledge base with every iteration, we can do this.”

  Even as Elijah said as much, he felt the weight of the countdown on his shoulders. There were only forty-eight loops left. In a vacuum, that seemed like a lot of chances. Forty-eight lives. But given the situation, he worried it would not be enough.

  He shoved those issues to the side and, after a few moments, reached into his Arcane Loop and retrieved three pastries. Each one shimmered with ethera. He handed one to each of his companions, saying, “I knew I’d need a mobile meal. Eat those. They should keep you going for the duration of this loop.”

  Then, he took off, eating one of the pastries as he sprinted along the familiar path through the maze. He knew every inch of the place, having memorized it over the course of more than fifty lives. He didn’t know exactly how long they’d spent in the maze, but he suspected that their time had already stretched into months. That did beg the question of whether or not time moved the same outside as it did in the Primal Realm. Normally, it did. But with the loops, there was no telling until they conquered it and emerged into the real world.

  Until then, Elijah had to assume that each day inside the Labyrinth of Dead Gods was countered by a day outside the Primal Realm.

  And Elijah had long since realized that his perception of the outside world was very limited. He could barely feel his domain, and what he could feel was only possible when he concentrated. Being so cut off left him irritated, and it reminded him just how much he’d come to rely on those senses. So, he had no idea what was going on out there, which included the passage of time.

  In any case, he wouldn’t know for sure anytime soon, so he pushed those thoughts aside and raced through the maze. When they reached the first automaton, the fight wasn’t much different than normal. Only a little easier, but that was enough to allow them to defeat it slightly faster than normal. The next was even easier. And the next after that was barely capable of standing.

  But that was the limit. The conjured insects weren’t capable of finishing the automatons off. However, it was enough to speed their path by a significant degree, and they reached the garden city – which Hu Shui had taken to calling Eden, which seemed as appropriate as any other moniker – with an entire day to spare.

  They didn’t hesitate to split up and head in opposite directions. Hu Shui went left. Benedict took the right. Meanwhile, Elijah shifted into his dragon form and headed straight toward the giant automaton in the distance.

  The second he took to the skies, he garnered the thing’s attention. It let out a roar that shook the buildings, then raced to meet his charge. Buildings crumbled before its every stride, and the curious, blue-skinned natives fell to their deaths.

  Elijah couldn’t concern himself with them, though. He needed to save himself first. Then, he could worry about survivors, if only because he suspected that preserving the natives might contribute to his grade.

  The distance between the two melted in only a few seconds.

  Then, its chest opened up and let loose with a massive beam of pure energy. Elijah tried to dodge, but the combination of the beam’s diameter and the automaton’s proximity meant that he didn’t have time.

  It hit him with the force of an erupting volcano, hot enough to melt even his durable scales. The comparatively less durable branches of his wings turned to ash in only a moment, and he plummeted to the city below, charred and broken. He hit like a meteor, cratering the avenue and crushing a half-dozen fleeing natives in the process.

  Elijah shunted the pain of the attack to one of the leaves within his mind, isolating and ignoring it so he could focus on mending the damage inflicted upon him. A trio of healing spells – along with Grove Conduit – enveloped him. His emerald scales healed, though not without significant scarring.

  He ignored the grisly damage as he pushed himself to his feet and climbed out of the crater. A shadow passed over him, and he scrambled out of the way just in time to avoid being crushed by the creature’s massive foot.

  Then, a thousand, needle-like shards of ethera descended from its outstretched hand. They fell like hail, piercing Elijah’s body and sending his entire system into chaos. He could scarcely think, much less act.

  Thankfully, he activated his Mantle of Authority on instinct, and the needles broke down a second later. Elijah shook his head as he extended the branches of his soul, protecting him from the shards raining down on him.

  They were just like the ones used by the asharii, though far more powerful. Most of the blue natives had scattered or died, but they couldn’t escape the automaton’s shards. When they were pierced, they fell, their bodies losing all cohesion after only a few seconds. The same was true of the dead bodies surrounding Elijah who were subjected to his Mantle of Authority, suggesting that the creatures had more in common with the asharii than he’d first suspected.

  He dodged another stomp, then raced toward the automaton’s leg. Wingless, he leaped upon that appendage, then began his climb. With every step, he felt tiny pinpricks of ethera invading his body. They couldn’t endure the touch of his Mantle of Authority – not for long, at least – but Elijah knew that, without his soul’s protection, he would have been doomed.

  He climbed, but not without opposition. Smaller automatons – dozens of them – climbed free of the much larger creature’s body, then attacked him. Unfettered by the restrictions of the labyrinth, Elijah was free to use his much more powerful dragon form. And he did so with all the wrath he could muster. He ripped the things apart, climbing ever higher until, at last, he reached the thing’s chest.

  It opened again, and a second later, threw another column of ethera at him. This time, Elijah was ready for it, so he had no issues dodging.

  But when he tried to reach the core, he found it protected by a dense corona of roiling ethera that was at least as destructive as the planetary core from the Broken Crown. Even with his healing spells still ongoing, Elijah couldn’t withstand that much energy.

  Not in his dragon form.

  He shifted into the Shape of Spores, then activated Mycelial Regrowth. Armed with much-increased regeneration, Elijah leaped into the most destructive force he’d ever encountered. It ripped into him with such fury that he was very nearly ripped apart before his regeneration could counter the damage. He lost consciousness for the briefest of seconds, but then he plunged ahead, practically swimming through the semi-liquid energy.

  He lost track of how long it took, but eventually, Mycelial Regrowth ran its course. After that, he survived for longer than he expected, and he caught a glimpse of the creature’s cubic core just before his body disintegrated.

  A second later, he was back where he started and facing a sapphire-bladed axe.

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