I activate my Titan's Backbone tattoo, and one out of the epic item’s three uses disappears. My eyes activate as well, and it’s with these preparations that I finally absorb the black orb of mana.

Immediately afterward the world slows down, my thoughts accelerating. Even with all the information I'm taking, I can barely feel the added strain.

I activate traps that I placed days ago, and a dozen extremely compressed javelins erupt from every direction, speeding towards my duplicate, each one creating a sonic boom.

The air around the duplicate vibrates as he uses all the collected kinetic energy to tear the weapons apart.

At the same time, two thin streams of extremely compressed thermal energy burst from him, sweeping across the city, cutting skyscrapers apart, and stopping just an arm's reach away from me.

I absorb their heat and redirect it at the Veil Guardian that’s been sneaking up on me, incinerating half of its body, yet the monster continues to press the attack.

Three Veil Guardians have ganged up on my duplicate, and he throws them away with a strong blast of kinetic energy.

At the same time, golden flames surround me and the duplicate, roaring through the air like a giant snake coiling around the two of us. Anything the golden flame touches gets melted or incinerated as my duplicate and I fight for control, power pouring from our Vortex Cores.

The air shudders from the heat, stone, and metal melting and dripping onto the street below as the flames burn hotter and hotter as we combine them.

Two Veil Guardians try to push through, only to be cremated despite their durability. Two notifications ring out informing us of the kills, as their voidsteel slicers fall to the street.

The duplicate lifts the damaged arcane ax into the air and channels his thermal energy through it, further strengthening his golden flames, and a giant wave crashes against me.

I don't even blink, as my eyes read everything, and I absorb all of this information, the knowledge strengthened by my own experience manipulating thermal primordial energy.

Redirecting the flames, I spin them around me, adding even more of my own power. I reach into my reservoir and send more mana through my heart, generating even greater flames, and straining my mind to keep it all under control.

Like a tornado of golden fire, the flames spin with us in the center, expanding and setting the ruined city ablaze.

The ever-present vegetation turns to ash, the stone glows, and the last remaining pieces of glass crack.

More Veil Guardians die just from getting too close, they’re not even a distraction anymore, faced with the combined flames of my duplicate and I.

And we're still fighting for control, and the flames wash over us in turns, only to be redirected each time.

When the last Veil Guardian dies, and the signal is sent to the Veil, we barely take notice and relinquish control of the flames, allowing them to seep into the city, turning it into a burning hell.

I activate another one of my traps, firing more compressed javelins at my duplicate, from the other side of the ruined city.

He redirects them with a forearm coated in an extremely dense variation of barrier. He also takes the opportunity to activate a few of the traps he’s placed, and an immense amount of mana seeps into the air, flowing through inscriptions in the stones nearby, hitting me with a strong jamming attack, a clear attempt to disrupt my mana.

It's the strongest jamming attack I’ve ever felt, each of the sources emits a different frequency with a staggering amount of mana to back it up. At that moment, the duplicate closes the distance, swinging down with his ax.

I quickly learn that I won’t be able to absorb heat from the ax, so I try to push my body aside with kinetic energy, but he absorbs it, nearly matching my reaction speed.

Yet I’m still just a little bit quicker, and I strengthen my body with the full force of my mana and dash to the side, through the molten ground and debris surrounding us.

Then the duplicate's signature disappears, and the only thing that remains where he stood is a small black orb, absorbing the mana hanging in the air, preventing me from tracking him. I sense a strong burst of mana from elsewhere in the city and before another erupts high above me.

There he floats, a calm expression on his face. Around him, six tricolored orbs float, and he launches them all at me, the orbs becoming a blur of mana, screaming as they pass through the air.

One of six orbs bursts far too soon, revealing its real state. Instead of a tricolored orb, its inside is filled with disrupting mana. When it bursts, I find myself unable to teleport and my external senses quickly become as unreliable as my eyes in this storm.

Countering it, my mind goes into overdrive and to fight against the five remaining orbs, I push my mana into a single one, concentrating it even further, turning that single orb black and launching it at the deadly projectiles.

My duplicate appears behind me, I don't have any idea how. I sensed nothing.

Our eyes meet, we’re both using Mana Wavelength Iris and we grasp each other with a burst of [Redistribution], altering the frequency each preventing the other from moving.

To counter my enhanced processing speed my duplicate radiates more and more mana, depleting dozens of mana batteries in the process. Then, while looking at me, he also touches the Veil, much more intensely than I did before.

I watch him smile as a huge section of the Veil over us changes, mana enveloping the city. The Veil reforms, a long purple tear splits the sky, and an arm pushes through, followed by three more.

The monster plummets through, crashing to the ground and even though it is only three times taller than me, it leaves a massive crater.

[Veil Weaver - lvl ???]

The duplicate disappears as the monster pounces, landing where he stood and attacks me. As the monster attacks, My duplicate launches a compressed mana javelin, and it crashes into the ground next to me, exploding into golden flames.

Realizing that I won’t get another option, I use Titan's Backbone tattoo again, feeling the first use start to run out, and I absorb more black mana, strengthening my [Focus].

In slow motion, I watch as the monster's fist swings toward me and golden flames burst forth from the javelin.

The entirety of my Vortex Core explodes, concentrated into a reverberating cone of compressed kinetic energy, damaging one of the monster’s four.

Golden flames burn my body, but at the same time, they activate my passive slowly healing the burns. Even then, the flames are stronger than my passive so damage starts to accumulate before I can absorb their heat.

My anchors get disrupted, so instead, I form a barrier in front of me, layering multiple times, and mana rushes through my body, strengthening it even further.

Even so, I get thrown again, sending my blood spurting into the air and my body rolling across the ground before I absorb the inertia of my movement.

Before I can do anything else, the monster reaches towards me, still standing so far away. Even though my natural barrier and construct should stop it, I feel my body pulled towards it, the strongest feat of telekinesis I’ve ever felt.

I fly through the air right towards it and barely identify the effect on me with my trait and disrupt it, stopping halfway.

The Veil Weaver moves two of its hands and the buildings to my sides crumble and fall, moving with all the speed of a bullet train and heading straight for me.

Locating my duplicate, I shoot a tricolored orb at him and push through the disrupting effect, creating an anchor far away and teleporting to it.

I watch the place where I stood get crushed, compressed, and totally obliterated. Huge chunks of stone and metal creating a giant ball of compressed material. The Veil Weaver tries to do the same to me and I feel pressure attempting to squeeze my body. To counter this I constantly radiate disrupting mana, stopping the attack by sacrificing a large chunk of my mana reserves.The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

The monster is strong, stronger than a Veil Guardian.

The Veil Weaver, unable to grasp me through my constantly resonating field, decides to track my duplicate.

It tears free another huge chunk of the city, toppling buildings as if a giant stepped on them. Through all that debris, a tricolored bomb hurdles at the monster, only to stop an arm's reach away as it gets torn apart by its telekinesis.

I sense movement above me and monsters pour from the rift in the Veil. Hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of veilshriekers passing through and falling to the ground.

The shrieks of an immense number of monsters mix with the sound of destruction caused by the extreme telekinesis. The Veil Weaver doesn’t seem to care, and its attacks kill hundreds of veilshriekers as it tries to catch my duplicate.

[Focus - lvl 47 > Focus - lvl 48]

[Perception - lvl 42 > Perception - lvl 43]

[Tether - lvl 34 > Tether - lvl 35]

I’ve finally managed to analyze the way my duplicate has been creating such sneaky anchors, and my domain expands as I place multiple of them. Even then some get destroyed by telekinesis, but others do manage to reach my duplicate.

Then, when my duplicate gets thrown away by a blast of force from the monster, I teleport behind him and grab the ax, cutting off his hand and teleporting away with the weapon.

“You’re such a dick,” he complains, looking at me standing on one of the buildings. Thermal energy already rushes through his body, slowly regenerating his hand.

“I wonder who summoned that asshole here to get me distracted.”

Without a speck of regret, he shrugs, “You did it first with Guardians.”

Both of us have a smile on our faces. I can hear the loud beating of our Thermokinetic hearts, fueling them with any mana not held by Mana Cycling, we’ve tapped into our Mana Reservoirs, we’re finally using all the inscriptions we’ve made, and leveraging all our preparations, making us stronger than ever before.

We teleport multiple times, the Veil Weaver swings its four arms, each swing tears buildings apart, compressing them, and throwing huge chunks at us. All while tens of thousands of veilshriekers scream, attacking us with deep hatred.

Large parts of the city are gone, the others are burning.

It may as well be hell.

With no need for words, my duplicate and I join forces, our Mana Reservoirs nearly emptying, all our mana rushing to our hearts, transmuting it into kinetic energy. The sheer amount feels impossible to control even with all our preparations, and yet there are two of us.

He slips; I cover him, I slip; he takes over.

We gather more and more kinetic energy, and then we start changing its frequency. A high pitch visibly reverberates through the air, and the two of us stand in the epicenter, as the waves of kinetic energy start crashing into the area.

Everything they touch vibrates and dissolves into dust.

We receive thousands of notifications informing us of the dying veilshriekers.

Our kinetic energy crashes into the impossible amount of debris being thrown by the monster. The huge chunks are impossibly condensed into extremely dense projectiles. The Veil Weaver lifts up an entire small city's worth of material high into the air blocking out the sky and sending it at us like meteors, some of which even manage to break the sound barrier.

Yet waves of our kinetic energy continue to reverberate into the area, clearing bigger and bigger parts of the city around us, leaving a smooth surface, leaving behind material reduced to fine sand.

The monster is strong, pushing us, forcing us to use everything and our skills level up. The notifications ring.

It's fun.

A single mistake and I'm dead, we are dead. Just him or me stumbling will cause it, neither of us having a chance to keep it up alone. But right now, together, we are stronger than the monster.

Our combined effort reaches the Veil Weaver, for a moment stopped by its telekinetic barrier as the monster puts four arms in front of it, its palms facing us. Two invisible forces clash against each other, sending shockwaves into the ruined city that damages it even further.

I take over, the eyes activating to a higher degree and frequency changing dozens of times in quick succession until one of the arms explodes.

Then another one.

The monster stumbles, losing control for a moment and its body gets torn apart immediately, with barely anything left behind.

[You have defeated Veil Weaver- lvl 329]

[Lvl 234 > Lvl 237]

I lift the ax in my hand, and it absorbs a laser-like stream of thermal energy shot by the duplicate. Teleporting towards him, I swing the ax, releasing that energy and melting the ground under his feet as he dodges.

When I try to teleport again, he disrupts my attempt, and multiple of his projectiles crash against me and the barrier I create.

He opens his mouth, and I immediately tilt my head to the side; an orb I was unable to sense shoots from it, creating a deep, bloody gash on my temple.

His voidsteel slicer and the ax I hold crash against each other, our primordial energies swirling around, waiting for opportunities.

I also open my mouth, and a mana orb I was compressing there buries into his forearm he lifts to protect his chest.

A mana stone somewhere on him activates, and I disrupt most of the attack, the invisible slash with mana still cutting into my side.

There isn't a single veilshrieker left alive. Third of the big city turned to ruins, and the material the buildings were made of mostly turned to dust or burning.

I shoot kinetic energy from my feet, sending a bit of that dust towards him, covering the view. At the same time, I create a fake mana signature to my right, inspired by the twins. When I reach him and slash against him, my weapon passes through the air, him having done the same, and the fake signature disappears.

Armor forms on my back, slowing down the voidsteel slicer just enough so I block it with my own before it cuts into my flesh.

Up close, both of us create dozens of mana projectiles, barely an arm's reach from each other. The projectiles shoot, all boosted even further by kinetic energy, and keep crashing against our bodies. They get either disrupted or blocked by small pieces of barrier that we barely activate just for a split of a second.

As I feel my tattoo and black mana slowly wear off, I push ahead, letting him stab my thigh with his weapon, and in exchange, I swing the ax with both hands, letting go of my voidsteel slicer.

He tries to teleport, but I disrupt it, and with the full force of my body, the ax crashes against his blade, which is held by a single hand only because of the other one I cut off.

The ax buries into his shoulder as I redirect it at the last possible moment.

Breathless, both of us stand there facing each other, even now our mana crashing and disrupting each other's, and primordial energies exploding through the air and being absorbed.

I know if either of us pushes just a bit more, it will be a fight to the death, but I won't step back. He will either give up, or one of us dies.

That's it.

The tattoo's effect disappears, and the black mana as well, the aftereffects hitting me even though the tattoo alleviated most of it. My mind feels sluggish, the world feels empty, and even mana feels less vibrant than before.

More and more of my thermal energy pushes through, heating up the ax stabbed in his shoulder, pushing through his attempts to absorb the thermal energy that keeps healing him while also burning him.

"Fuck, you are dumb," in the end, he curses and takes a step back, letting go of the voidsteel slicer stabbed in my leg, and the ax I hold pulls out of his wound.

I do not stop him when he starts using thermal energy to heal his wounds.

Slowly, both of us start using a bigger part of [Focus] to block some of our emotions again instead of keeping up the skills. The world regains more of its colors and the sounds that the skill blocked come rushing in.

The air is heated, moved by wind, dust that used to be buildings flies through the air, and fires rage in the distance, but I take a deep breath.

Then I breathe out slowly.

I live.

"Good luck," I tell my duplicate.

He stands there, wounds all over his body, cuts, burns. Inscriptions used, mana stones cracked, and batteries emptied. His eyesight blurry because of overuse of his trait. His hand is missing, and his leg seems to be broken. Yet, he stands proudly, and even now, he feels more dangerous than the monster we killed together. What an opponent.

“I will see you when you come to Vega’s planet,” he says simply, and then he leaves to attempt his other plan.

With barely any mana remaining, I move towards where Vega is, on my way avoiding all the monsters while my mana slowly replenishes.

On a few spots, I get mana batteries I hid there just in case our fight got so far. I absorb my mana stored inside and repeat the same with a few more filled with kinetic or thermal energy. I have placed plenty of them, and by the time I reach the place, my reserves are in a much better state.

Getting into the range of my anchor, I connect to it and teleport to where Vega is, appearing in the darkness.

The place is one of the old bunkers we have found while moving around. The bunker is similar to the Sanctuary, just much smaller, and every entrance to it is destroyed and covered by tones of rock and stone. The only way inside is through a teleportation skill, and to place the anchors, we had to extend [Mana Domain] to the limit in a single direction.

Vega lifts her eyes up from the mana stone in her hands and smiles at me. It's a mix between a happy and sad smile.

“Will he be okay, master?” she asks quietly.

To that, I decide to stay quiet.