Everyone looked up as the colossal hand slowly descended from the fractured sky. But before anyone could process what they were seeing, a cacophony erupted from the woods behind them.
Snarls, crashes, and the heavy thud of running footsteps signaled the arrival of a horde. Creatures of all sizes burst from the tree line, blindsiding the miners from every angle.
Ash was about to spin around when he noticed the dark entity crouching near the pit. To his surprise, the entity calmly picked up the pickaxe Ash had left behind. It smoothly spun the pickaxe in its hand, testing its weight with unnerving familiarity. There was something terrifyingly human about its intelligence.
Suddenly, Max grabbed Ash’s shoulder in panic.
"What are you waiting for?! Do something!"
Ash looked at him, completely bewildered.
"What do you want me to do? We’re cornered!"
Max’s eyes narrowed behind his visor.
"Do you want me to die here? Quickly, activate Lightning Space!"
Ash’s eyes widened. It had been a long time since he had even heard the name of that ability, let alone used it. He couldn’t remember the last time he had willingly tapped into any of his abilities. Just thinking about activating this specific one sent a cold shiver down his spine.
But Ash couldn’t let his brother die here, even if the idiot deserved a lesson for tracking him down to this death trap.
’Dammit.’
Gritting his teeth, Ash scooped Max up into a sudden princess carry and bolted. He tore away from the pit and plunged into the surrounding forest. As his feet left the dirt, he reached inward with his consciousness and activated the ability. A voice identical to his own echoed through his mind.
[Ability: Lightning Space]
Instantly, time itself seemed to slow to a sluggish crawl. The forest around him became a frozen tableau. Leaves hung motionless in the air, branches stood suspended mid-sway, and the monsters bursting through the trees became grotesque statues. Even Max in his arms seemed almost completely frozen
Ash, however, could still move. Just barely.
[Lightning Space] accelerated his perception far beyond the normal flow of time, but his body couldn’t keep up. To move faster within the distorted flow of time, he had to force more Soul Energy into his movements.
Ash poured Soul Energy into his legs.
His body responded immediately, his movements accelerated, but so did the violent surge of electricity beneath his skin. Agonizing pain tore through his muscles and nerves as the ability punished him for forcing his body beyond its natural limit.
The faster he moved, the more Soul Energy he burned. And the harder he pushed, the more his body suffered.
Ash clenched his jaw. He had expected it to hurt, but he had forgotten just how brutal the toll was. That relentless cycle of pain was exactly why he loathed the ability.
Every ability came with a burden, a drawback meant to balance its strength.
The stronger the ability, the heavier the burden. And for a reality-bending ability like [Lightning Space], the cost was a nightmare. Not only did he have to endure an intensifying electrical agony the longer he held the state, but the activation completely stripped away his hearing, plunging him into absolute, dead silence.
Despite the brutal drawback, Ash couldn’t turn it off. Turning off the ability now would mean certain death at the hands of the oncoming horde. He poured even more Soul Energy into his legs and pushed himself faster through the frozen world. The strain was unbearable, as though his muscle fibers were being torn apart one by one, yet his skin remained completely unblemished. The pain was so intense that death felt like a mercy.
To Ash, even his accelerated sprint felt agonizingly slow compared to his perception of the frozen world. To anyone watching, however, he had vanished into a brilliant, flickering blur, crossing hundreds of meters in seconds.
With his hearing completely gone, Ash risked a glance over his shoulder... and froze.
The forest behind him blurred into a maze of frozen trunks and suspended leaves. Hundreds of meters away, the monster horde crashed through the trees, each movement slowed to a crawl. But what truly frightened him wasn’t the beasts.
It was the thing leading them.
The dark entity raced between the trunks with the stolen pickaxe in hand, weaving around trees without slowing.
Worse, it was accelerating.
Despite [Lightning Space], the creature was steadily closing the gap.
’What the... What the hell is that thing...?’
Ash gritted his teeth and pushed his body past the breaking point, trying to outrun the creature, but the distance closed relentlessly. The pain coursing through his body became unbearable. Realizing he couldn’t maintain the ability much longer without collapsing, Ash threw Max forward out of harm’s way and spun around to face the oncoming strike.
The pickaxe was already descending.
Ash didn’t have time to dodge. He threw both hands up and caught the pickaxe by the head and shaft. The sharp, rusted point stopped mere inches from his nose. The dark entity pressed down with immense strength, its face inches from his.
Ash gritted his teeth against the agony and twisted his torso, redirecting the weapon’s momentum and forcing the entity to stumble past him. The moment he was out of reach, he deactivated the [Lightning Space] ability.
The sudden return of reality hit like a physical blow. A ground-shaking scream and the deafening roar of the battlefield slammed into his eardrums.
Shaking off the sensory whiplash, he barked at his brother.
"Quickly! Get the hell out of here!"
Max was sprawled on the dirt, coughing as he scrambled to pull himself up. Ash didn’t have time to check on him. He turned back to the entity standing between them and the approaching horde.
The two opponents locked eyes for a fraction of a second before the creature lunged again, swinging the pickaxe in a lethal arc. Ash sidestepped the blow and drove a counterpunch toward the entity’s jaw. But the creature anticipated it flawlessly, snapping its head back to avoid the fist while simultaneously bringing the shaft of the pickaxe around to strike Ash’s ribs.
Ash dropped low, dodging the counter and sweeping his leg to take the creature down. The entity instantly leaped over the sweep.
’What is going on here?’
Ash was an elite hand-to-hand combatant. It took an extraordinary opponent to match him in close quarters, let alone some alien beast he’d assumed was mindless. No. This creature wasn’t mindless at all... It was smart. But Ash had fought creatures that utilized human-like tactics before. This was entirely different. This creature knew his exact movements before he even made them... blocking, dodging, and striking with impossible precision.
’Dammit, why can’t I land a single hit?!’
His fist struck empty air again. In the same motion, the creature reversed its grip, driving the blunt end of the pickaxe straight into Ash’s shoulder. Ash gritted his teeth against the pain, using the impact to plant his boot into the creature’s chest, kicking it back to buy himself some distance.
The entity recovered instantly, racing toward him again.
Before Ash could reposition, Max’s voice cut through the noise from behind.
"Ash! What are you doing?! You’re battling yourself! Use that knowledge against it!"
Ash’s eyes narrowed as he ducked under a lethal swing.
"Myself...?"
He looked closer at the pitch-black form.
Beneath the void-like skin, the proportions were identical to his. The stance. The shifting center of gravity. Even the counters he hadn’t thrown yet.
Everything was a flawless reflection of Ash himself. He had spent so many years hating his own existence that he had completely forgotten what he actually looked like.
’Man... I look horrible.’
The dark copy lunged again. Ash rolled out of the way, his mind racing. Even knowing its identity didn’t solve the problem. How was he supposed to defeat a perfect copy of himself when he was already exhausted and wounded?
"Hey, Max!"
Ash shouted, barely dodging a downward thrust that shattered the stone beneath his feet.
"I can’t beat this thing!"
He threw a desperate counterpunch, but the copy effortlessly parried it, raising the pickaxe to finish him.
Just as the weapon began to descend, a pinpoint blast of energy streaked through the air, striking the pickaxe and knocking it clean out of the entity’s hands. From the dirt, Max fired some kind of weapon mounted on his wrist.
Ash didn’t waste the opening. He tackled the entity, driving it into the dirt and locking its arms down with his legs. Pinning the copy beneath him, he poured the last of his Soul Energy into his right hand, invoking his second ability.
[Ability: Fire Palm]
Brilliant flames erupted around his hand. With a roar, Ash slammed his blazing palm straight into the creature’s face. The impact unleashed a concussive blast, obliterating the entity’s head into a cloud of black mist that scattered outward.
Breathing heavily, Ash let his burning hand drop and slumped to the side. He could feel his Soul Energy Reserve draining rapidly. The ability had consumed far more Soul Energy than he’d expected. But he couldn’t afford to rest. The vanguard of the monster horde was closing in.
’Wait... why hasn’t the Soul Space registered the kill?’
A cold dread washed over him. He snapped his head back toward the corpse, but the black entity was already moving.
Before Ash could react, two pitch-black hands clamped tightly around his throat, squeezing with vice-like pressure. Ash thrashed, trying to break the grip, but the creature perfectly mirrored his previous tactic, pinning his limbs to the ground with its legs.
’H-How...?’
Ash stared up in helpless horror. The creature was completely headless, yet it was operating with flawless precision. Despite the situation, Ash couldn’t help but think about this nonsense. Was his immortality curse really this absolute? If this thing was a perfect copy of him, did that mean Ash couldn’t be killed by decapitation either? What was the point of trying to kill himself all this time if even his body refused to die?
Suddenly, searing heat erupted around his neck. The headless copy had just activated [Fire Palm].
Black flames seared the flesh around his neck as Ash writhed in agony, his vision beginning to blur into darkness.
Suddenly, a concussive shockwave slammed into the creature’s side, tearing it off Ash and sending it flying into the tree line. Max stood over him.
"Ash! Now!"
Ash fought to clear his fading vision and activated the [Lightning Space] ability for a split second. In the absolute silence of the slowed world, he lunged across the dirt, grabbed the discarded pickaxe, and drove the pointed end straight through the creature’s exposed chest.
He deactivated the ability immediately. Ash braced himself for the entity to rise again, but the moment reality resumed, the copy convulsed before its body shattered into a cloud of dark smoke.
"Huh...?"
Ash was surprised by the sudden death. Embedded on the iron point of his pickaxe was a small, polished black crystal. Before he could examine it, his legs gave out, and he collapsed into the dirt.
The familiar voice echoed within his mind:
[Vanquished]
[You have defeated a Tier 4 Ascended Night Stalker.]