Infinity Is My Affinity?!?

The itch became pain within seconds.

It started at my fingertips, spreading inward and outward simultaneously, like a crawling, burning sensation that moved through the skin and into the muscle, then even deeper.

I kept both streams roaring on pure reflex, alongside producing new knights, because the golden outlines were still pressing in from every direction, and stopping was not something the situation was going to allow me.

[Mage’s Folly... now of all times...] I thought, and the dread that came with it was the kind with a history attached to it.

I shoved the history down hard and kept firing because if I let myself think about what Mage’s Folly meant at the cellular level while I was standing in the middle of an Eldritch siege with one arm and one leg, I’d probably detonate a Fragmentation Pebble on my own face.

The pain climbed my remaining arm and hit my chest,, even my vision smeared at the edges while a tentacle came in from the left that I shredded on reflex.

I had barely taken a breath when another came low that I hopped over before a supporting knight went down on my flank, which was replaced the instant it died.

And through all of it, the burning kept spreading, millions of tiny teeth biting down through the skin from the inside, and my hand was starting to shake against the spell streams in a way I couldn’t entirely suppress.

[The potion... right...] I stumbled even on the thought as I reached into the inventory before a shimmer of blue light engulfed my remaining hand while the streams kept firing on their own momentum, and my fingers closed around the vial.

The Grade 2 Healing Potion was small and intricately designed, the blood-red liquid inside it catching the moonlight mixing with its own ethereal glow, and I knew with complete precision that 0.5 mL was enough for thirty seconds of full immortality, which meant the 2.5 mL I was holding was five of those, and the careful and responsible thing to do was to measure out exactly what was necessary and not a single drop more.

But I wasn’t in a state to measure it, so I just took a sip and downed half the vial.

The effect hit immediately, spreading outward from my throat in a wave of clean warmth that moved through every part of me at once.

The millions of tiny teeth biting down through my skin and muscle simply stopped as the burning cooled and went quiet within seconds until all that remained was gentle warmth that moved through my body, finding everything and addressing it.

[That was way more than needed...] I exhaled slowly through my nose, keeping both streams roaring before it hit me, [Wait... don’t I still have that capsule with the exact 0.5mL dosage? Fuck...]

[Not the time... I’ll cry about it later...] Behind me, the fight between the knight and the monster had changed while I had been dealing with the Mage’s Folly, and when I caught it in the half-second gaps between engagements, what I saw was... well, not encouraging to say the least.

The knight was still standing and still fighting, but with a hole in its chest and just one arm, the sword arcs had lost their full range.

The strikes were coming in shorter and at tighter angles while the monster pressed into every opening it could find with the same reckless abandon it had been bringing since the moment this shit show began.

My knight was burning through what it had left at a rate that was visible from where I was standing, the knight’s gold glow noticeably dimmer than it had been ten minutes ago.

But the monster was moving with the same explosive speed it had started with, and the simple arithmetic was as simple as it gets.

"This can’t keep going," I gritted my teeth, watching the monster drive forward into another exchange that sent the knight skidding three meters across the ground before it arrested the momentum and counterstruck. [It won’t last much longer, and once the knight is done, I’m done... and so is everyone behind that barricade.]

So I decided to risk everything and made the call.

Through the subconscious network, I sent the knight a single directive, clear and without qualification.

[Everything. One strike. All of it, now.]

The knight received it without hesitation, and what it did next was something it had not done once in the entire fight.

It jumped back from the fight.

Thirty meters in a single leap that covered the ground in a fraction of a second, before landing.

Planting both feet on the ground, it brought the greatsword up with its remaining arm, and started shoving everything into the blade.

The gold light that had been flowing through its seams reversed direction entirely, flowing inward, converging on the sword from every point in the frame at once, while the blade began to change under the accumulating pressure.

The sword started building light rather than shedding it, the compressed mana stacking and stacking with nowhere to go, while its brilliance became brighter, and kept becoming brighter.

The brightness spread outward from the blade in expanding pulses that hit the entire basin all at once, filling it with a deep, warm gold, and even from forty meters away with the Outsider horde still pressing toward me, I felt the mana pressure of it washing over my back in a wave that made every hair on my body stand up.

That particular quality of power that bypassed everything tactical and landed somewhere much more instinctive, and this was not Nom-Nom, this was a construct I had built with my own mana, and yet the sensation rolling off that sword was in that territory.

[If this fails...] I thought, gritting my teeth while a tentacle came in low, which I shredded without looking, [I genuinely don’t know what I’d do next.]

Even the Outsiders pressing toward me had slowed, I could see the golden outlines through Amaterasu’s Blessing shifting and pulling back slightly from the light pouring across the basin, and the only thing moving with full commitment was the monster.

And the damn thing was not retreating.

It stood in the full wash of that golden light with its massive claw raised and its maw open, and it let out a roar that rolled across the basin, and there was nothing in that roar that sounded like fear or hesitation; it was a challenge, and the message in it was unmistakable.

And the knight responded in kind-

-BOOOM-!!!

The wave that came from that downward slash was a wall of pure gold mana and a sheer force of nature that expanded outward from the arc, crossing thirty meters before anything had time to register it had moved.

And the second, it drowned the damn thing before lifting it clean off its feet, carrying it across the basin floor.

The tsunami of pure force crashed into the mountain base with a thunderous impact that I felt through the ground.

And alongside the tsunami, the monster bashed into it too.

The impact point crumpled inward in a cascading series of structural failures, collapsing the entire mine as the mountain took the force of it all, squashing the monster between an unstoppable force and an immovable object.

The cloud of dust and shattered rock that erupted from the point of impact rose more than thirty meters into the freezing night air.

And as the golden light faded from the basin, and the dark came back, and I stood there with both streams still firing while I conjured new knights with my remaining eye wide and a grin stretching across my face that pulled at every wound on it.

"YESSS!" I yelled it out loud to the freezing, empty air, loud enough that even the Outsiders nearest to me flinched, but I did not care at all.

Behind me, the knight dissolved as its twelve-foot armored frame came apart in slow drifting embers of gold light that rose and caught the moonlight for a moment before going dark, each one burning briefly before fading until it was gone entirely with nothing left of it but the deep gouges in the dirt where it had planted its feet for the final charge, and terror that been screaming in my chest went quiet with it.

The Outsider horde was still pressing toward me, and I was still holding the line, and there was still a full night’s worth of siege to get through, but the monster was done.

And I let myself have a few seconds of the grin before the quiet part of my brain cleared its throat.

[Wait,] I thought, still grinning, [... Why didn’t I get an EXP notification?]

Outsiders spawned back at the Nexus when they died, which was why killing them had felt like bailing a sinking boat all night, but the turned cultist was a person before he seppukued which meant it couldn’t respawn at the Nexus, which meant if it was dead, I should have gotten a notification, and there was no notification.

The grin slowly started sliding off my face as my brain began looping it all, hoping I had missed something.

And the next second, from somewhere deep inside the collapsed mountain, from beneath meters of fallen rocks and everything the knight had poured into that final swing, something worked its way outward through the rubble, and my hand started shaking, even my throat went dry in the space of a single heartbeat because-

-AGHARRRR-!!!!!

"Motherfu-!"