Universe's End

“It’s a fucking Gundam,” Rory said, eyes filled with wonder.

“Never got to watch that either,” Allison quickly said.

“Please don’t ruin this moment of wonder with your sad backstory,” Rory shot back. “I’m trying to revel right now.”

The mech, Gundam, whatever you wanted to call it, that had emerged was glorious. It was crafted from peerless metal, the same rose-gold color as the stone that had been covering it.

It was made only better when, standing to its full height, a set of wings flared outward, built from interlocking metal segments and plates.

“Holy shit!” Rory nearly giggled.

Yep, that decides it. Going to build one, someday.

Brandishing its arms, a jousting lance the size of a bus appeared, as its left hand reformed into a titanic shield, the entire mech coursing with glowing rose-gold light that pulsed through specially made channels.

“I don’t get the feeling this is a regular Oscuro enemy,” Allison said.

“What gave that away, the fact that its name is Will-O, as in Will-oh-Wisp? Or that it looks like something you’d expect some divine crusader to pilot? No, I think this bad boy is the enemy of Oscuro.”

“I feel like there is context I’m missing,” Allison frowned.

“Eon likes to do lore building at times. My guess is if you spent enough time scrounging through Oscuro you’d probably find a rather generic plot of some encroaching darkness that a moon-worshipping society attempted to fight back against, hence all the destroyed cityscapes in the Oscuro shallows.”

“You’re right, that is generic,” Allison agreed.

“But it doesn’t matter, because fucking mech!” Rory said, pointing excitedly at the mech that had otherwise made no move to attack.

“You really are a boy,” Allison sighed.

“Can’t be helped,” Rory shrugged. “I like what I like.”

“Can we just get this over with?” Allison asked.

“No appreciation for the classics,” Rory muttered. “Fine.”

You know, in hindsight, we probably could have set up well in advance before rushing the boss fight… Ehh, you live, and you learn.

Raising his staff, Rory called out.

“Sunder the Earth: Fulmination!”

The space- and time-ignoring reality slash appeared atop the Gundam… only to not appear directly atop it, the reality slash striking a glowing dome. Thrusting its shield forward, the mech shattered the magic that had found itself intercepted by some magical defense.

Well, that’s new.

As much as Rory wanted to nerd out over how damn cool the opponent was, there was a time and place, and now was the time for focus. Staff vanishing, Rory switched to bow, as an oversized spear arrow began to form.

Allison, meanwhile, had charged the mech head-on.

Which proved a mistake as, deceptively fast for a thing its size, its lance stabbed outward, striking her directly in the chest and launching her across the entirety of the crater, slamming into the crater wall opposite of them several miles away.

No, that wasn’t just regular speed.

Something about the speed at which it struck seemed off, though Rory wasn’t certain why, at least not yet.

“Nathair!”

Bow firing, Rory winced as it shattered.

Yeah, it’s about time to make a proper bow; these easily replaceable ones can’t hold up anymore.

A problem for a different time. The projected spear-arrow launched through the air faster than a sonic boom, before striking a golden barrier that flared into existence, sparks flying as the arrow attempted to pierce, one of his most potent attacks for precision damage.

The barrier seemed to struggle, the golden dome shimmering. In the end, Nathair still failed first, exploding. Notably, the explosion from the destabilized projection had less impact on the barrier than the physical damage.

Good to know.

As fast as they were at tier eight, Allison was back in the battle only a few seconds later, her heartbeat pounding as the world around her began to distort with the usual black-and-white lines.

Throwing outward, Rory tossed a spare spear from his inventory as the woman raced past him, snatching it as she attacked the mech head-on once more, now dual-wielding spears, something that should have been extremely clumsy, but she made it look easy.

The jousting lance stabbed forward once more, but Rory was ready this time, slamming his foot down as a spike of lunar stone stabbed upward and deflected the arm of the mech territory alpha.

Weird.

If the mech really was as fast as that initial strike suggested, it should have been fast enough to have struck before the stone spike intercepted it. Almost like it moved faster, the faster one-

Oh. Oh, that is NASTY.

Taking advantage of the space Rory had opened for her, Allison drove both spears forward, the secondary spear he’d tossed her striking first, the golden barrier erupting into existence, only for her second spear to strike the same spot a moment after.

Unlawfully taken from NovelPhoenix, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

The golden barrier flared dangerously as Rory clapped his hands together, two walls of lunar rock erupting from the ground and threatening to crush the mech between them.

Slamming its elbow joints outward, the mech shattered the stone walls that had been racing toward it like cresting waves. Attention focused on Allison, Rory sensed what was about to happen, as he grabbed Allison through space and forcibly flickered her away, something far more draining than his own personal flickers.

The mech for a split second had seemed impossibly fast, but as Allison vanished, it slowed once more.

Yeah, I think I figured it out.

“Relativity,” Rory said as Allison appeared next to him. “It channels the concept of relativity.”

“As in, Einstein?”

“Bingo,” Rory said. “The closer you get, the faster its relativity increases, allowing greater bursts of speed.”

“I can’t really fight from far,” Allison said.

“Yeah, which is why it also has that golden barrier; the easy answer would be to strafe it with magic from afar.”

“Which means?”

“Which means we need to bring down its barrier. After that, I think we can wear it down.”

“And what if it does- does that...” Allison sighed as the two of them watched the mech leap upward, its wings flaring as its jet boosters ignited, flying above them.

“Glider,” Rory said, as the glider appeared from his inventory as he kicked it toward her.

“Am I supposed to dogfight a mech in the sky?” Allison asked.

“You make that sound like a bad thing?”

“Men,” Allison sighed before boarding the glider and taking off into the air, hard light cannons already strafing the mech as its golden barrier appeared. For a moment, Rory watched as the mech pursued Allison. Say what you would about the G.S.A.C, it was fast, far faster than a mech that relied on cheating with relativity shenanigans.

Alright, new plan.

Nathair had impressive punching power… For the time it was originally made. But Rory was far beyond that now. Much like Dragon’s Fall had been updated over time to drop more meteors, it was time to update how Nathair operated.

First was to cut out the parts that were simple accessories. Nathair was an ‘arrow,’ so Rory had always relied on a bow to channel the attack.

But.

But was the bow aspect necessary?

No, not really.

Reforming his understanding of one of his earliest ace moves from the ground up, he changed the ‘structure’ of the attack in his mind.

Timing. How do I feel about the timing?

Nathair had never been a fast-charging attack, and, frankly, Rory liked that. It was meant to be a high-power piercing attack; it didn’t need to be incredibly spammable. He had other forms of magic or attack for that, such as generic projections or just non-magic bows and arrows.

So, let’s keep that baked in—next, structure.

Nathair was primarily a reinterpretation of Eia, the tip of the arrow-spear and the coiling haft, invoking serpent characteristics. But again, the arrow aspect wasn’t necessary, nor was the spear part.

What about nails?

Rory could remember memories of removing the stupid oversized staple-nails from one of his apartments, and the ‘forked’ quality of those staples resonated with the imagery of Nathair as a ‘serpent’ attack.

And what better nail than a nail from God?

There had been a theoretical weapon system from Earth's days that essentially boiled down to dropping tungsten rods from high altitudes. Rod from God, or Nails from God, the shared conceptuality tickled his brain.

And thinking about the rods from God, how could Rory forget the time when both he and Zoey had turned themselves into living rods from gods, using skyblazer suits to rapidly gain speed through acceleration gates.

Yeah… Yeah, that feels right.

Pieces of the puzzle clicked together. Rory turned his palm upward as a magic circle bloomed far above, with several more magic circles appearing in front of the main one.

From the primary magic circle, an elongated piece of metal that coiled upon itself began to form slowly, as if it were being 3D-printed from the circle it emerged from. The projection magic was particularly slow as Rory made sure to condense, fold, and alter the pneuma utilized to the utmost limit.

The magic circles in front of the main projection circle began to appear fuzzy as clouds of earth elements fused into the circles, magnetizing.

And just a little more.

Allison had made another strafing run when the mech suddenly spun 180 degrees from the hips, the entire thing apparently able to rotate without turning its entire body.

Now!

Reaching through space, Rory snatched her from the glider as Will-O barely missed striking her with its jousting lance. Appearing above the mech, Allison oriented instantly, driving both spears downward and striking the golden barrier as it flared to life.

“Nathair Chthon!”

Without relying on any magical gimmicks or conceptual manipulation shenanigans, the attack Rory unleashed was the fastest he’d ever used. There was a single split second from the falling nail emerging from its projection circle to passing through the first acceleration ring. Then it was as if it simply appeared, slamming into the still faltering point of the golden dome that Allison had struck.

Between her twin assaults and the new and improved Nathair, the barrier, designed to resist magic rather than physical attacks, failed.

Shattering, the dome vanished as Nathair struck the mech, the entire thing slamming into the ground from the backlash of its barrier shattering and the physical force of Rory’s newest attack.

Better.

Years ago, he had seen Nathair's limitations in his battle with Allison, so it was long overdue.

Feeling exhausted, Rory took a moment to withdraw a brew from his inventory, helmet vanishing as he sucked it down.

Better.

For good measure, he threw back an ossified gem. Nathair Chthon was damn strong, but holy hell did it take a lot out of him.

Rory considered switching back to a bow, but a part of him didn’t see the point. If he wasn’t augmenting arrows or the bow with magic, he wasn’t exactly a super-special archer; his arrows had about as much oomph as he could muster with his base attributes.

Which really wasn’t that much, at least not compared to someone like Allison.

Normally, this would be where he would switch to melee combat to give himself a chance to recover somewhat from the magical exhaustion. Still, the mech's relativity shenanigans would all but guarantee he’d have to rely on flickering a lot if he didn’t want to get manhandled.

You know, maybe it's time to revisit the idea of firearms.

Rory hadn’t really bothered after he’d gotten the hang of railgun magic, which was just a fancy way of saying manipulating magnetization using projection magic, basic pneuma manipulation, and Earth Soul. But perhaps there was more worth to it now, especially with the fact that the biggest detractors from railguns or other firearm-style weapons were how utterly overpowered they were compared to those who could use them. Except, now as a tier eight, there wasn’t the huge gulf in abilities; hell, railguns were probably weaker than what he could do himself.

Doesn’t technically need to be railguns either.

A thought for a different day, if only because there wasn’t much that he could do about it right now.

As much as Rory’s wandering thoughts made it seem like the battle was over, it was far from the case; in the distance, sparks were exploding as Allison shot across the battlefield, able to attack the mech directly. Whatever the metal it was made of, it appeared surprisingly soft, tailored for non-physical combat, if Rory had to guess, given how her spears left dents and nicks all over it. Even the ‘relativity booster,’ the nickname Rory had decided upon for how the hell it was manipulating relativity, seemed non-functional as Allison’s heartbeat had really started to pound, her physics-defying aura not just for show.

Which meant that while she was still forced to attack with utter perfection or risk taking a hit from a territory alpha, it wasn’t ‘breaking cause and effect’ levels of fast anymore.

After spending another minute or two resting, Rory finally felt himself recovered enough to perform magic without suffering from pneuma-wrack.

Twisting his palm upward, Rory took a deep breath.

We’re in for a long one.