Reunion

Who in their right mind would send an ordinary man in a bat cosplay, a fighting chimera that had only recently learned of its nature, and an aspiring mage to fight the final boss! It's also a good thing that our friendly squad includes Forest's avatar by default, without whom Arcane can't be finally finished off.

And the sad thing was that there was a logic to it all. Only those who had been the least involved in the battle against Faust, and whose absence he would not immediately notice, went. Though sooner or later the disappearance of half of the squad would surely be noticed, and then all the nearest creatures would go in pursuit. In order to avoid this and to buy the World Salvation Team a little more time, Konstantin providentially called four already familiar to me inner demons and forced them to take our form. They could even fight and use weapons. However, they were not very good at close combat: demonic instincts took over. But now I have a picture of Bats in my collection, enthusiastically chewing on the torn off paw of one of the defeated mutants.

I had to cope with the disguise of the rest of the squad myself, but Abby came to my aid, whose natural mana was used to form the chameleon's charms. And here I should also say a few words of gratitude to Faust, to whom the acquired power finally turned my head. It was thanks to his active actions that the energy background turned into an indecipherable something, and allowed us to easily avoid the attention of energy-sensitive creatures, because I'm still not cool enough to create a full-scale camouflage complex on my knee.

You look at a blacksmith, successfully overpowering a quartet of far from weak minds with the help of spells pumped with dark mana and a few long tentacles of rot-infected flesh sticking out from behind, and you understand why such personalities are ready to sell their own souls as well as the souls of their loved ones. However, as appealing as it is to gain power quickly, it is a dead-end path. The powers obtained in this way will never fully belong to you, and you yourself become a hostage of some otherworldly entity, so you can not even dream of a peaceful postmortem or normal rebirth. Of course, no one canceled the various contracts, but demons are not idiots and do not do charity, especially if they managed to get to the rank of Lord, so the rare lucky ones manage to bargain more or less normal conditions. And the worst thing is that some conditionally light entities are also not afraid of such deals, but in their case, rarely anyone thinks about the price of power, perceiving it as a gratuitous gift. Like, nothing will happen if I pray to Zeus and he grants me the ability to throw lightning? But in the end the soul of such a naive reasonable person will go straight to the divine domain after death, where it will stay in sweet dreams for hundreds of years, serving as a battery until it exhausts its resource. Although such a fate is still better than falling into the clutches of the dark gods, who do the same thing, but instead of a pleasant illusion of paradise, prefer to extract ba-hion with the help of torture.

And so, thinking about all this, a logical question comes to mind. What if my System is a time bomb? Naturally, I haven't signed any contracts or communicated with any really powerful entities... At most, I've had sex with their avatar, but that's such a small thing, really... However, humor aside, the Me add-on literally works with my soul, and it also accrues experience points in a rather strange way that you can't spend properly. Here we can only hope that the magician who created it simply did not expect that his creation will fall into the wrong hands, so he made the interface, just to be able to use it, added help, in case of memory loss, and customized the basic functions to quickly regain its former power after rebirth. Or maybe his level of knowledge was insufficient to work properly with such delicate and complex matter, because not every god is able to create even standard soul add-ons.

Thinking about the sorcerers' idiocy and trying to figure out if my System was a gift from some Dark Bitch who might want to take it back, of course, with a couple of my Shells as compensation, the journey to Arcane's lair was like a blink of an eye. The surrounding scenery wasn't that interesting, though. The same gloomy biopunk-style corridors covered with moving guts of infected flesh, rare creatures crawling to Faust's aid, and destroyed devices of space civilization.

Uncle Abby, like any decent main villain, is stationed in the very center of the structure in an impossibly huge hall.

The place used to be full of yellow capsules containing human abductees, but now most of them had been broken, and the rest had been used as parts for the giant flasks of murky liquid at the far end of the room. The energy stolen by the ritual was collected in them, and slowly flowed through long tentacle-arteries into a huge ritual circle, whose center was a funnel going downward. Not far from all this splendor stood a ghastly throne made of incredibly badly deformed human bodies, where the main culprit of the nightmare was sitting.

Anton Arcane... In my mind, I imagined him as an ordinary man who'd been carefully skinned, but in reality he looked more like some kind of ghoul or mortal. Two meters tall, disproportionately long limbs, a broad ribcage with prominent ribs, long black claws on his fingers, an overly large mouth dotted with sharp protruding fangs, more than thirty-two of them, two narrow slits instead of a nose, like Voldemort's, and his eyes were two eerie black orbs with blue sparks flickering mysteriously inside.

 - My girl, I didn't think you'd show up so soon," he said suddenly, glaring at us as we decided to get closer for a better shot at the darts. And that was despite the cloaking charms I'd maximized before the meeting. - She'd brought her friends with her, too.

"Uncle... - the dryad whispered quietly, and my palm felt all the charms of the multi-ton press. Fortunately, the stone skin withstood the test, once again pleasing me with its efficiency. But now I needed something else.

Unfortunately, I didn't have time to experiment with the protective tattoos, but their configuration, due to the presence of numerous nodes of concentration, slightly resembling acupuncture points, is much more flexible, so it is more suitable for the upcoming case. The drawing on my arm became a little more saturated with mana, strengthening my flesh on a molecular level, but I weakened the stone skin as much as possible so that it would not resist the transmission of energy with a dash of divine energy.

Huh, some fun memories for concentration and proceed to boost the mood of the cutie standing next to me.

"I've been planning a little family reunion for a while now. Come on, come closer. It's been so long since we've seen each other," Black's avatar continued to say.

"You... You're not my family. You never were and you never will be! - The girl replied fiercely, already feeling a pleasant warmth building up. - You're just a monster that should be destroyed!

"Ha ha ha! I know it! My girl, I wasn't talking about you and me. I was talking about other relatives," Arkane snapped his fingers, and the flesh on the flasks behind the throne parted slightly, revealing the babies floating inside.

The dryad's eyes glowed slightly green.

"It's... I feel a kinship..." the girl said lost.

"That's right, because they are your sisters... Your twins! I made them for you from you, ha ha ha ha. You don't know how hard it took me to find the right cells in that rotten body, but it wasn't for nothing that I bit you in the swamp, even though it cost me a hand," he examined his left limb thoughtfully. - I guess I shouldn't have let Holland settle in my town, and the Rot would have ruled the world a long time ago.

"Bastard," Abby let go of my hand and stepped forward, beginning to pump herself with Forest's energy.

The valve John had installed had finally collapsed, unable to withstand the mana pressure, as the Guardian of the Forest was able to cope with her excitement (not without a little help from me, of course). I didn't like the way Arcane was pissing her off on purpose. And even now he was still sitting on his throne, not showing the slightest sign of concern, even though an angry avatar is not the kind of opponent you can just brush off.

As if confirming my thoughts, the blacksmith didn't even think of shutting up, continuing to provoke the dryad.

"Yes, you've always been too naive and kind. Your pathetic attempts to ease the suffering of your victims only prolonged their agony and prevented the rituals from working properly. Honestly, if I hadn't been there for the birth, I'd be sure you were adopted. No, where else have you seen an Arcane who, instead of studying the darker facets of magic, would rather study botany and grow flowers? And the power? You just refused to receive Black's blessing when you would have been the perfect host. Rotten fruit, just like your mother," Anton shook his head disappointedly.

Despite the interesting details about my beloved's past, I tried to pay more attention to my surroundings to understand the enemy's intent. And soon I found the answer, and I didn't like it one bit. The vortex in the center of the ritual pattern was not just an ordinary descent to the lower floors, but a half-formed breach into another dimension. It literally tried to bind the two worlds together like a giant needle two overlapping pieces of cloth. Let's just say that I believe in Dr. Fate's abilities and the power of Lord Order's magic, but if a protective barrier is trying to break through two powerful Elements at the same time, it's unlikely to hold up for long. And while it was not too noticeable, but the flesh guts lying not far from us were actively absorbing the green haze emanating from the Guardian of the Forest, becoming covered with tree bark and small green leaves, but the metamorphosis did not prevent them from continuing to work as transmitters of energy, delivering it directly to the flasks with the girl's clones floating in them. The latter, in theory, possess Abby's original abilities, which made her an avatar. So Arkane won't be short of natural mana.

"Bastard," the green-skinned cutie literally growled. In a short time, the Forest Guardian's body had grown one and a half times its size, acquiring an exoskeleton made of dense dark vines, which made her figure more massive. On top of the artificial muscles, a strong wooden armor with sharp thorns was additionally grown, covering the most vulnerable parts, and a horned helmet, something resembling a crown, appeared on her head.

"You're repeating yourself," the blacksmith grinned, displaying an impressive set of sharp fangs. - Who taught you such bad words? You're a big girl and it's too late to bring you up, but your "sisters" are still ahead of you. And they'll be obedient," he smiled even wider, obviously preparing some final trick. - I've done a lobotomy on each of them, removing most of their worthless brains and giving them obedient puppets. Ha-ha-ha-ha!

"Stop!" I shouted, not really hoping for results.

To my great surprise, the girl turned around, her eyes shining bright green like two spotlights, ready to burst into action. Apparently, I greatly underestimated the synergy of divine energy with the spell of calmness. Otherwise, she would have attacked me a long time ago.

"What?! I want to tear him apart! - The dryad's voice was slightly twangy and radiated power.

"Wait literally three seconds. I've been wanting to use my baby for a long time," I said, pulling a cool purple-colored RPG out of my pocket. Without giving anyone time to think, I immediately slung the weapon onto my shoulder, pulled the safety off, and squeezed the trigger.

~Pfuuuuuu~

The grenade rushed towards the throne, but was gently intercepted by the blacksmith.

"Really? You think I can be harmed by a mortal's weapon? - The man asked, eyeing the projectile with interest.

"Who said these are mortal weapons, and you're the one I want to hurt? Explosio Art est!"

A weak pulse of magic made the runes carved on the grenade flash with blue light, amplifying the explosive by an order of magnitude and creating a large gaseous cloud around it, consisting of fuel for the batship, and then there was an incredibly powerful thermobaric explosion.

~Bang!!!~

The blast wave instantly destroyed the throne, and also severely damaged the pods behind it, incinerating the flesh that bound the glass together, and even damaging the ritual drawing. Arkane was probably hurt too, but he recovered quickly enough, as evidenced by a wild scream of rage that threatened to sanction a green-haired gentleman who had thoughtfully put up a shield to protect his allies from the blast's effects.

"Raaaaah! I'll kill you!"

Shit, I probably should have added the anti-Decay toxin for more killing power, but it was too late to think about that now. It was time to save my own skin, for in the roaring flames I could see the slightly smoky figure of Arcane, staring right at me. Well, I congratulate myself on another ingenious act.

"Fuck," I said as a large bone spear slammed into my body, throwing me back against the wall.

"Jay!"

"Joker!"

A concerned Abby and Simon rushed over to me, while Bats took a defensive stance, holding a batinjector in his hand.

"I'm fine," I hissed, sliding to the floor. - But the suit didn't survive the spear," I added after a brief pause, when I realized that there was a hole at the level of my heart.

Still, stone skin with a protective tattoo is a real imba. But it's a real energy sucker. Just a second at maximum power, and a tenth of the reserve, like a cow with her tongue. And I was counting on thirty seconds of work, but it turned out that the mana consumption increases significantly during the damage. But it turned out to be quite relevant, because the strengthening, as it turned out, occurs not only externally, but also internally, as if all the organs are additionally fixed intangible mesh.

Eh, magic is amazing, though. I'm thinking about the fact that a strong blow can damage internal organs like hell. Magic does not ask such questions: it says to strengthen, it strengthens, and it strengthens, and complexly.

However, right now I should not be thinking about the possibilities of magic, but about more down-to-earth things. I should be thinking about more mundane things, like how to survive when an Element avatar tries to finish you off, because my unexpected performance had much more serious consequences than I had planned.

I was just getting back on my feet when the spear came at me again. This time I managed to demonstrate the wonders of reaction and flexibility, dodging in the style of Neo, but immediately afterwards a fist, its knuckles decorated with stylish bone spikes, came towards my face. I was saved by my trusty cane, which I managed to get under the blow. It was so strong, however, that I was knocked to the floor, and the cane had an elegant curve to it.

"Ahem..."

Damn, that was stronger than a bone spear, as hinted by the taste of blood in his mouth and the noticeably sagging mana.

No, of course I expected to disrupt Arkane's plans, but I didn't expect that the thermobaric explosion would just destroy the clones gathering the surrounding energy for the ritual, and even the seal itself would be affected. And the saddest thing was that my friends couldn't help me, because the bastard used magic instead of a fair fight! The shadowy bindings that emerged from the floor and swaddled Simon were a big surprise. Bats successfully avoided them, but his offensive power was poor, so there was no need to hope for his Mousehood. Abby, on the other hand, had not expected her uncle to be so quick, and was thrown aside by the first blow.

"Die! - A fist comes at my head again.

"Ha-ha-ha, you'll get over it," I stupidly kick the bastard somewhere near my knee, poke him in the thigh with my cane, mentally praying to the Creator that the toxin would slow this thing down a bit, and at the last moment I manage to roll to the side.

~Boom~

A hole appeared on the metal floor where my head had been a moment ago, echoing the silhouette of a fist.

~Fshuh!

A shot to the temple with an icy spear causes the avatar to shake his head, shaking some of the muscles but not the bones in his skull, and then my outstretched arm is in a firm grip.

"Gotcha! - He roared triumphantly.

~Bah-bah-bah-bah~

I put three bursting bullets into the bastard's shoulder, turning him into a mush of rotting meat and bone, but the arm couldn't be saved properly, and now it hangs as a whip, because the stone skin couldn't survive the pressure, and I changed the protective tattoos on purpose for the sake of the now useless spears. Eh, still at my level a regular revolver is much more relevant than magic.

"You're a quick one," Arkane muttered under his breath as his arm and head rapidly returned to their original appearance.

A second of staring, during which he easily fended off a sideways batarang, and then my damaged limb was almost caught again. Luckily, Abby arrived and took down the monster with her carcass, which had acquired several plant tentacles. I took my chance and began to pelt the bastard with lead while casting banishment charms, which was a huge mistake, because without energy my body wasn't much stronger than a normal human.

The battle between the two avatars was more like a mortal combat between two powerful beasts, with no hint of any tactics at all. However, Arkane proved to be more resistant to Black's influence, so he took only a moment of his precious time to remove one annoying factor, launching another deadly projectile into flight.

"Kha..." I stare in surprise at the huge spike sticking out of my rib cage right at heart level.

My eyes blurred slightly, and there was a subtle squeak in my ears. I tried to cast the cure, still in disbelief, but my strength left me too quickly to concentrate. Even the cheerful memories don't help, only a wry grin.

"Jay! - Swamp Girl, noticing my condition, is distracted, which Arcane takes advantage of by grabbing her head and slamming her into the floor, and then another, and another.

Damn... How stupid... Abandoning useless attempts to heal myself (one shit, with a punctured heart do not live long, and I am conscious now only at the expense of a pile of points in the first beginning), finishing the last symbol of exile charms.

"Tueri... mundum... a malo..."

The light finally fades and I fall into a cozy darkness.