Infinity Is My Affinity?!?

/*Author’s Note*\

/Yeah... I uploaded 168 in place of 167.

This is the actual Chapter 168.

If you’ve already unlocked the previous one by the time I upload this, please go back and re-read it so you don’t miss anything.

My bad. Will be more careful from now on./

The first tentacle came in from my left at about knee height, eight meters of serrated Eldritch muscle swinging in a wide horizontal arc that would have taken my remaining leg clean off.

I jumped sideways on pure instinct and Precognition, and the second one was already coming down from above before the first had finished its arc.

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

I redirected one of the 30 MP streams of Fragmentation Pebbles upward, shredding through the descending tentacle mid-swing, the detonations sending chunks of black meat in every direction while the severed end dropped into the dirt and dissolved to black ash, and I hopped sideways on my one leg and kept both streams roaring into the mass of golden outlines pressing toward me.

There were thousands of them.

The Outsider horde that my strongest knight had been managing was now entirely my problem, funneling in from the treeline and across the basin in a continuous screeching wave, and the supporting knights were taking the brunt of it on the flanks but the flanks kept stretching as the horde spread wider, trying to go around, and every few seconds one would slip through and come at me directly and I would redirect a stream and shred it and go back to holding the center.

[Can’t let anything through,] I kept reminding myself, watching the golden outlines surge and recoil and surge again.

Another tentacle came in low, faster than the last, and I caught it in the stream just before it connected, the detonations tearing through it in a chain while black matter scattered across my leg, and the burning sting of the goo on my exposed skin joined the queue of complaints my body was running and immediately got deprioritized, because the queue was already very long and very loud.

My one leg was doing the work of two, and it was telling me about it constantly.

Every hop sideways to avoid a tentacle, every shift of weight to keep my balance, the hip and knee and ankle were sending up cascading objections that I was filtering through on reflex while I held the line and kept firing.

[You’re fine!] I told myself. [You’ll be fine!]

A fresh set of knights materialized from my Domain and threw themselves into a gap that had opened on my left flank, their greatsword catching a cluster of Outsiders mid-lunge and sending them sprawling, and I gave it half a second to confirm they were holding before pulling my focus back to the center, where the pressure was building again.

A tentacle came in at chest height, and I ducked under it, feeling the wind from the swing hit the back of my neck before firing both streams into the body it was attached to, and the detonations tore it apart in a rapid chain, and another one was already coming in behind it.

[This is fine...] I told myself, which was further from the truth than the last time I said that to myself.

All the while, the sounds of the fight on the far side of the basin were getting harder to ignore.

The monster and the strongest knight were trading at supersonic speeds now.

Even with Precognition and enhanced cognition through Ice Reinforcement, the eye could barely track the actual movements, just the aftermath of each exchange, the shockwaves rolling across the frozen dirt, even the sounds arriving a fraction after the movements that caused them.

-TANG-!-TANG-!-TANG-!

The knight moved with a cold, steady economy, each greatsword arc trailing visible waves of compressed mana that expanded outward and shredded the phantom claws the monster generated with each claw swing before they could find the knight’s frame, and when the original claw connected the knight met it with the blade, the impact of which sent both of them sliding in opposite directions.

But the monster kept trying to break away, disengaging mid-sequence and immediately changing direction toward me, those massive feet churning the ground, and every single time the knight was already moving to cut off the angle, the greatsword catching the monster in the flank and dragging it back into the fight before it could cross the basin.

[Good...] I thought, watching the knight drag it back for the fourth time. [Don’t let it through....]

While a fresh wave hit my center line, half a dozen Outsiders breaking through the supporting knights and coming directly at me in a shrieking cluster, and I collapsed both streams into a concentrated burst at the leading edge and detonated them in a chain that lit the ground in rapid strobing white, and when the goo landed on the stump that was my left hand.

[Damn it!]

It stung like a bee’s stinger, and through sheer grit, I ignored it and spawned another fresh set of knights into the gap before the horde could push through. [The knight’s got about half left...] I estimated, watching the knight’s glow across the basin dim, before pulling my attention back to the tentacle coming in from my right.

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

The stream caught it, detonating it, and the severed end dissolved while I hopped backward, while a supporting knight on my left went down in a cascade of dissolving gold as three Outsiders hit it simultaneously.

Spawning the replacements to take their place, I redirected a burst into the cluster before they could capitalize on the gap.

The line was holding, but the pain had settled into something constant by now; the arm stump was now a hot pulsing throb always there underneath everything, while the gut wound kept spiking every time I twisted to redirect a stream.

My left eye socket was cold and itching, while the knee above the missing leg was doing something that I wanted to classify as fatigue, but I knew if I focused, I would find something much worse.

[Just hold the line, dude...] I told myself. [Just keep holding it.]

While across the basin, the monster had stopped trying to break away.

I caught it in the gaps between engagement, the half-seconds when both streams were close to handling the line, and I had a moment to glance over.

And what I saw over there was different from what it had been ten minutes ago, the monster fully committed now, both of them trading at full speed with no breaks, no disengagements, nothing but sustained collision after collision that sent shockwaves rolling across the entire basin.

The monster swung wild and fast, without any conservation of effort, generating three phantom claws with each swing so that every attack was actually four simultaneous strikes spreading across a wide area, and the combined force was enough that when the knight blocked a full exchange, the impact drove it back three meters before it could arrest the momentum.

But the knight gave every hit back.

A counterstrike after the block that it sent in a wave of compressed mana rippling outward, hitting the monster square across its chest, staggering it, and then swinging a direct follow-up strike to the shoulder that cracked the bone-white plating with a satisfying crunch, terin out a roar of agony through its maw.

[There!]

I grinned, feeling something carefully adjacent to hope. But the monster recovered and came back harder, a full-speed dash into a wild overhand swing, and the knight brought the greatsword up to block.

The collision sent a shockwave rolling across the entire basin, rattling through the dirt and up through my one good leg hard enough to make several supporting knights stumble mid-engagement alongside me.

They separated through the sheer shock of it, both of them skidding backward across the ground, and then the monster dashed again before the knight’s weight had fully settled, going low this time, ducking beneath the greatsword’s arc and driving the claw upward into the knight’s chest.

And my heart sank.

-CRUNCH-!

The sound of it hit me as though the claw had pierced through my own chest.

I stared wide-eyed as the claw drove through the plate, lifting the knight off the ground through the sheer force it carried before slamming it down into the ground with a resounding crash.

The monster was already on it before it had even hit the ground, pressing one massive foot down on the knight’s chest while it pulled the claw free in a spray of shattered gold plate and-

-GHRRRRAA-!!!

[Get up,] I thought.

The monster raised the claw for the follow-up, and the knight brought its left arm up in a blocking sweep that caught the claw mid-descent before-

-SCREECH-!

The sharp, final sound of the claw cutting through metal screeched across the basin.

The knight’s left arm came off at the shoulder and dissolved into gold light before it even hit the ground.

The knight was down, with one arm and a gaping hole in its chest, while the monster drew back its claw for the next strike.

And the gold glow flickering from the knight’s seams told me everything I needed to know about the damage it had just absorbed.

[Get up! Please...] I was practically begging now.

And just then, from somewhere deep inside both ears simultaneously, came a series of small, distant pops.

Before I could even finish registering it, the itch started, racing across my skin from my fingertips up my remaining arm, down my torso, and up my neck, and along with it came a crawling warmth, and I knew exactly what it was before I had consciously named it.

And my already sinking heart sank even further.

[Mage’s fuckin’ Folly...]