Infinity Is My Affinity?!?

The crumpled space-time I was leaving in my wake with every Temporal Step spread across the basin like shattered glass, each ripple smoothing itself back out after a few seconds but overlapping with the next before it could fully settle, drowning the monster in crumpled reality.

And the damned thing was moving through a battlefield that was deeply wrong to its perception of where things were and where they had been.

I could tell because the claw was missing.

Not by much, just a fraction of a second, but for something that had been zeroing in on my new position within one second of every teleport, a fraction of a second was the difference between the claw finding my back and finding the air.

And tonight had taught me a deep appreciation of the value of even a fraction of a second in combat.

-Kzzzt-!

I blinked behind it and spawned sixteen knights at distributed points across its back and shoulders, each one pouring its full 60 MP into a single concentrated strike the moment it materialized, and the collective impact sent a shudder through the monster’s frame.

The shallow cuts accumulating across the bone-white plating were getting less shallow in the places I kept hitting, and I told myself that meant something while I blinked again and watched the monster wheel toward a position I was no longer at.

-Kzzzt-!

The crumpled space-time from the previous blink hadn’t fully smoothed out yet, and the monster stepped through it mid-turn, and its movement stuttered for a fraction of a second, its massive head swinging left when I was already on its right as I spawned another wave at the exposed flank while the window lasted.

[This is working!] I grinned, which was technically true and also the most aggressively optimistic framing of a situation I had ever applied to anything.

Because the cuts were shallow, and the monster was getting more agitated and less confused with every exchange as whatever passed for its senses recalibrated to the spatial distortion.

And the adrenaline that had been keeping the full accounting of my body’s damage report at a manageable distance was filing an increasingly urgent series of complaints that I was running out of ways to ignore, and across the basin, my strongest knight’s gold glow was visibly dimmer than it had been a few minutes ago.

[It’s going to run out soon,] I thought, blinking again while the claw carved through the air behind me. [And when it does, every single one of those Outsiders will come straight at me... and when they do... I’m dead.]

I spawned another wave, watched them hit, watched the shallow cuts deepen by fractions, and did the math again and came up with the same answer I had been coming up with for the past several minutes.

Which was: Checkmate.

Unless...

-Kzzzt-!

I materialized on the monster’s left side and held the exit point for just a fraction longer than necessary, long enough to let a genuine thought finish forming instead of just reacting.

And the thought that was taking shape was one that made my remaining eye go wide.

[Maybe I can do this...]

The solution was so obvious that I almost laughed... would’ve laughed if I wasn’t too busy blinking away from a claw swing.

And from the next Temporal Step, I stopped circling.

Instead, I started moving in a straight line, spamming Temporal Step toward the far side of the basin, toward the sealed mine entrance, away from the strongest knight, away from the Outsider tide it was managing, each blink covering ten meters while I put as much distance between the monster and the knight as I could.

-Kzzzt-!-Kzzzt-!-Kzzzt-!-Kzzzt-!

The monster came after me immediately, because of course it did, and I could feel it gaining ground even through the teleports, its massive strides eating distance faster than my ten-meter blinks could sustain in a straight line, the deep rhythmic -THOOM- of its footfalls getting closer with every exchange, shredding the ground behind it in long parallel gouges while the mine entrance grew larger ahead of me.

And at the same time, through the subconscious network, I sent the strongest knight a single directive.

Start moving this way.

But not in a straight charge that would make the Outsiders peel off and chase it immediately, just a gradual drift, a slow repositioning that looked like it was naturally following the flow of the fight rather than deliberately crossing the basin.

And the knight responded the way I would’ve, already adjusting its movement while it kept its sword swinging through the incoming waves of Outsiders.

The basin was wide enough that from the mine entrance side, I could see the full layout of it, gold outlines of the Outsider tide pressing against the knight from every direction on the far side, the supporting knights holding the flanks, the monster twenty meters behind me and closing.

And the very next second, I changed direction and began circling around it until the monster was between me and the mine entrance, which meant there was nothing between the knight and me, and that is exactly what I wanted.

-Kzzzt-!-Kzzzt-!-Kzzzt-!-Kzzzt-!

I began blinking in a straight line towards my knight with the monster hot on my trail, while the knight dashed straight at me, peeling away from the horde, and the gap between us rapidly closed from opposite ends of the basin.

The Outsiders noticed the knight moving, some of them peeling off to follow, but the supporting knights were cutting those off before they could build momentum, holding the tide back by sheer rate of attrition while the strongest knight dashed across the basin like they weren’t there.

Even with the teleports, the monster was close enough now that I could hear its breathing, if what it was doing could even be called breathing, a deep rhythmic rasp that carried in the freezing air and was getting louder with every blink.

[Come on-Come on-Come on...!] I chanted like a maniac as I spammed Temporal Step.

And the next time I materialized, I could feel the displacement of air from the claw as it came down barely a meter behind me, and I triggered Temporal Step immediately without even locking a full exit point, pure instinct pulling me ten meters forward while the impact sent another tremor through the ground.

And just as I materialized from that blink, the strongest knight crossed my path.

It came from my right at a full run, its massive frame moving with a momentum that made the ground shudder with each stride, and I felt the air displace from its shoulder as it zipped past me with its mana-blazing greatsword already in a wide horizontal arc when it passed.

And just as the monster raised its claw for the strike that should have been the end of me, the greatsword connected with its torso.

-TANG-!

A massive, grinding impact that was more collision than strike, resounded throughout the basin as the slash from the knight’s ten-foot blade shoved into it with the full momentum of a twelve-foot armored construct at a full sprint.

And the monster left the ground, those massive feet lifting entirely off the ground from the sheer force of the swing, sending it hurtling more than 10 meters through the air before it finally crashed into the ground with a roar of agony tearing through its throat.

The impact sent a shockwave rolling outward in every direction, throwing up a cloud of dust and debris that swallowed it whole.

But I didn’t stop moving.

I immediately pulled out fresh conjurations from my Domain, sending a new batch of knights out while simultaneously swapping Temporal Step’s Spell Splice slot to two split streams of 30 MP Fragmentation Pebbles as I turned to face the Outsider tide, and I let loose.

-TA-!-TA-!-TA-!-TA-!-TA-!-TA-!-TA-!-TA-!

The twin streams of supersonic, unstable ice tore through the leading Outsiders in a rapid, overlapping barrage that lit the basin in strobing white flashes, each pebble detonating on contact and sending shrapnel and black matter in every direction.

I held the line between the Outsider tide and the basin’s center with both streams running at full rate while the knights I was conjuring closed in from the flanks to reinforce the line I was building.

The monster was in the dust cloud on the far side of the basin, with the strongest knight standing between the monster and everything else.

While the Outsider tide was now on my side of the basin, being held back by my ice streams and the knights.

And I was standing in the middle of it all, one leg, one arm, panting through the freezing air while the pain from every wound pressed in through the adrenaline in steady, insistent waves that I was absolutely not paying attention to right now.

[I flipped it...] The thought looped in my mind as I watched the strongest knight face the dust cloud where the monster was already stirring. [I actually flipped it!]

And now, the Outsider tide was being held by forces that could actually handle Outsiders, and the monster was about to deal with the only thing on this battlefield that could actually match it.

And I had done it with nothing but a straight-line sprint and timing, which was either tactical genius or the most desperate improvisation I had ever committed to, and I’m not gonna be examining which one too closely.

But the relief lasted exactly as long as it took me to make sense of the strongest knight’s glow.

It had been burning brilliantly when I first deployed it, blazing gold pouring out of every gap in the armor in rolling waves, and it had been dimming steadily ever since.

And what it was burning at now was considerably less of what it had started with, and the monster in the dust cloud was already moving, already rising, already shaking the impact off with the ease of something that had taken that strike and processed it as a setback rather than damage.

[More than forty percent gone...] I calculated, doing the math. [And that thing is going to get up and go batsshit crazy... and if the knight loses, I’m dead... and I can’t do shit about it.]

The dust cloud shifted as the monster stood back up, and my strongest knight raised its sword before it.

While I held both streams and kept conjuring new knights, watching with gritted teeth and held breath, trying to find something I could do, only to come up with nothing.

Yeah, I exchanged the war fronts, and it had been the right call, and it had bought me everything it could buy me, but the rest of it was now entirely out of my hands... hand.

[Don’t you dare run out of mana, you beautiful bastard...] I glared at the knight with a sincerity that was fully aware of how useless it was. [Don’t you dare.]