The wind violently whipped at my face as I fell from the dark sky.

I was shooting at the creature alternating regular arrow shots in the sky or toward the rocks to Shadow Crystal Blow arrows aimed at the Titan.

Mine was a dance with death, everybody could notice, and I knew that at some point, some of the soldiers had stopped and started following my exchanges with the creature.

After a few of my jumps back to the rocks, somebody started offering me arrows.

But I did not know if these people were really counting on me to kill off the Titan or had simply given up in trying to damage the way too slippery beast.

However, regular or Shadow Crystal Blow arrows were just a joke against that creature.

They had no real impact.

Although they almost literally melted the other undeads I had faced, they were doing nothing to this one.

I could not understand why.

Also, every once in a while, something felt different about the creature, as if… it changed somehow, for a brief amount of time.

I could not really say what was happening, but I intended to find out.

After shooting the last useless Shadow arrow, I reached through the thin layer of Shade, connecting me to the regular arrow I had thrown in an arc toward the rock.

When I transferred this time, I had not given it enough time. I appeared still high in mid-air, a few meters from the rock's roof, yet I landed correctly.

I discharged the momentum landing with my feet on the ground; the rock under my new, uncovered leg cracked.

"Ouch…" I lamented for the sore sole of my right foot.

"It's way too slippery," said the lightning shooter.

"I thought I had hit it, I was sure. Did you manage to make an idea about it?"

 

He had presented himself as Peter, and he was a Flow-blessed. As I had understood it, he had yet to go to the war and thus had not had his Class promoted to Ultimate, but he was capable.

I did not know the Sun Empire helped Class Promotion that way in Sundoor. Still, one always learns new things.

And I couldn't help but like the guy. As it seemed, he was one of those horses Terence was relying on.

 

I shook my head, answering him, "It… feels wrong, as if it shifted… as if it-"

 

I understood it at that moment, slapping my forehead for not having understood it much sooner.

"Of course! The woman, the Tamer, she's a Green Tamer!"

"Alright, so?"

"So, she's lending to the creature an escaping ability, but which ability?" Terence McLamar had understood.

"She had many Skills tied to Ghosts. I believe she might have given it an ethereal shift or ghost shift transformation ability. It's just so subtle that I could not see it."

If I hadn't switched my borrowed Perception with Focus, I would have noticed much sooner. And now that I knew that Focus gave me so little, I would definitely go back to borrow Perception.

"That is actually a great find… I can't believe I hadn't noticed," said Terence McLamar, "I'm growing old."

"Peter! We change our approach!" He shouted.

"Yes, sir!"

He kept on screaming, screaming like a madman with his big voice, "Caitlin! Caitlin, come here, now!"

A young Flow-blessed girl came over from the other side of the rock. She seemed to be barely sixteen, but looks could be deceiving given Flow-blessed complexion and citizens' overall saner lifestyle.

"You will fly with our new friend here, Mr. Loke. And touch the Titan."

"Yes, Sir- What!? Sir…" The freckled girl wasn't really happy with her orders.

I couldn't hide that not only was I taken aback, but I would never comply with something like that. I would have no way to really move about with such a burden on me.

"How in the Abyss would I be able to move with that girl on top of me?"

"Oh, you'll be fine, don't you see how petite she is?" Terence said. He looked almost amused by the situation.

"But, Sir! How could we even… that thing will kill us!"

"Tell me something, Loke, would you be able to get close enough to the Titan to touch it?" Terence asked, entirely ignoring the girl.

"Of course, I can, but that's not the point; the point is that I can't have the same freedom of movement with a woman attached to my body."

"See, Caitlin, he said he's fine; just don't get in the way of his movements."

"But… Sir… we are going to die…" she said pleading.

Terence laughed. "No, you won't. This one is a capable little man. Haven't you seen how he reads the flow of the battle? You'll be fine as long as you do what he tells you to do; come on now.” Then once again, he shouted, "Somebody gets us a belt or two!"

A few moments later, I found myself getting tied to a petite girl with belts around my abdomen and crotch.

"This is unreal…" I said. I had no idea why I had even accepted… Why did I say yes to such madness? Had somebody pushed me into it? It was feasible.

"Did you bewitch me or something?" I asked Terence as Sunguards tied the girl on me.

"I don't do those things," Terence said, shaking his head. "But Lavinia does. Look, she's over there smiling at you, oh, she's waving, wave back, or she'll make you."

I couldn't believe somebody was indeed pushing me into doing this with their magic; Roana would not even work as a warm-up for that woman.

If she had really affected me, and Terence wasn't taking me for a fool, then I had to worry because I hadn't even felt a touch of her abilities.

"Fucking Psychomancer…" I found myself saying.

"Loke," Terence called, "It was a joke… nobody has used Psyomancery on you. I believe you are just that crazy. I mean, it shows from how you fight. You are enjoying all this more than that Titan Tamer down there, are you not?"

I gawked as I stared at him.

Fucking Abyss… not only had he made a fool out of me, but he was also right. The old, fat bastard was right.

But I couldn't admit it. "You are fucking with me… you are, right? I mean, somebody is pushing me into it."

"Nobody is. Now try not to get Caitlin killed; she has a peculiar Skill. Also, she's my personal protege. A growing Animancer.” He nodded in appreciation, appreciation to himself...

"I won't be able to go to school anymore… I'm about to die, Sir…"

"No. You are not. Come on, Loke. Go!"

Terence gently pushed us over the rock.

 

---

 

I was falling through the sky with a woman tied to my belly as I thought about what that man had said.

I was… crazy.

Yeah.

It kind of made sense.

If it wasn't so, I wouldn't have taken all the decisions I did until now.

It was the only explanation.

Facing a Sunguard, stealing a Titan's pug, destroying an Avian ship, kidnapping the daughter of a General, stealing Dark Crystals from a Gnoll's Warlord, and now this?

I was crazy… that was the only explanation.

 

"Mr. Loke!" Shouted the girl, "Weren't we supposed to fly!?" She was utterly terrified.

"We are."

"This is not flying! This is falling!"

The very next moment, we manifested a few hundred meters from on top of the Titan's head.

I launched another arrow then, following the ripples in the sands that the Titan left behind in his wake.

The girl screamed.

"Scream all you want, but don't puke on me, okay?"

I could feel her nod on my abdomen.

She was indeed petite and cute enough that if the situation wasn't as dangerous, the ordeal would have stimulated a different sort of reaction in me.

Sorry, Harlow… I found myself thinking.

"What is it that you are supposed to do?" I shouted so that my voice would break through the wind.

"Touch it!" She shouted back.

"That much was clear, but what will it do?"

"Solidify it for a few minutes! It won't be able to turn back into its Ethereal form!"

"Good! That was just what we needed!"

"Can we stop shouting!?" She asked.

"Of course not. Or we would not be able to hear each other!"

"Oh!"

We kept traveling through the air, following the Titan. Then it finally happened.

The Titan shot up from the sands to quickly snipe the rocks with another acid attack.

It was by far the easiest to intercept. But it had reaped quite a few lives; the only other attack that had made all those deaths until then had been the Sandquakes.

I shot an arrow as I intercepted the movement the creature was about to make since I was tracking it, and the very next moment, I was on top of its head; it was already quickly diving back into the sands.

"Do what you have to do! Come on!" I shouted, readying my arrow shot.

"I can't reach it; lay on top of it! Now!"

Damn, it was true; her hands were tied behind my back. What a fuck up.

Still, I literally threw myself back to the Titan.

"Done! Go! Go! Go!" As she shouted that and we were engulfed by the sands, I shot my arrow.

The amount of sand falling on us was too much, just too much. I felt I was suffocating.

Thankfully, I wished for my connection with the arrow flying in the sky and dove through it.

I freed myself with an explosion of Shade.

But when I appeared mid-air, I saw the girl who had been tied to my back until a moment before losing the grip she had on me and falling from the sky.

I realized it at that moment.

Freeing myself from the sands had also disintegrated the belts that I had not felt binding until that moment.

The girl's expression, Caitlin, was terrifying.

She knew she was about to die.

I was there, not moving a muscle in mid-air, standing immobile.

She was a Sundoorian, but she had done nothing wrong. She was young, too young… Did she deserve to die like that? Because I did not want to help her? Or did she deserve my intervention?

I thought about that, I thought about the young people I had killed in the southern Dump to save our hides and many other things, but my hands moved by instincts, and I shot a shadow arrow at her.

She had done her part. I couldn't just let her die like that. I wasn't that mean… I hoped.

 

---

 

Just a few more meters and the impact would break her neck. I threw the last regular arrow, aiming right at her stomach, then a shadow dagger somewhere. I was hoping for the best outcome.

When the arrow impacted her abdomen, not enough to penetrate her Inquisitor's apprentice Armor, I manifested near her, gripping her with my clock-arm then we both passed through the Shade to reach the Shadow dagger I had thrown.

We rolled for a few meters on the sand, entangling limbs and breaking our breaths for the impact.

"I'm… I'm alive?" She asked.

"Yeah... but we need to get out of here, now."

The Titan was very sensible to vibrations in the sands; it turned toward me the moment it felt us roll on the sands.

I acted fast. I scooped her up with my clock-arm and started throwing dagger after dagger up toward the rocks.

It was much slower than doing it with arrows, but at least I wouldn't have to recover Spectre's Dignity every time I transferred myself. I could simply manifest a new one. Still, the battle was taking its toll, even on my improved Stamina.

A lot of Shade was passing through me, not counting only transfers, conjuring Shadow arrows, and adding the doubling effect of basic Trick Shot to it, was chipping away at my Stamina. My Stamina not only governed my energy reserves, but if I had understood it right, it also helped preserve my body heat.

 

Yet, the creature followed behind us, and at some point, jumped from the sands.

For Sun's sake, it was massive…

How in the Abyss could such a thing propel itself in the air like that?

It almost got us.

As I saw the beast's beak about to slam into us, I felt the girl's screams of terror, but once again, I pulled us through my knife.

But we had jumped too close now, far too close.

Our reappearance matched with the Titan's dive in the sands.

The wave of sand it generated splashed on us, and my throw fell flat.

We were pushed aside, I lost my grip on the girl, and we ended up tumbling on the sands once more.

This time we found ourselves too distant from each other, too far apart.

As I immediately rose up, I knew that the only way for me to escape alive was to use my bow to shoot an arrow as far away high in the air as I could.

So, I let an arrow immediately fly into the sky, then started running to the girl who had seen me and was also running toward me with her arms outstretched.

She was crying like a baby.

I would be able to take her then transfer us high into the air, but rarely was life fair with me.

My plans went to shit when the sands started shaking, and our feet got submerged in quicksand.

We would not be able to move, I would have to let go of the arrow flying in the air and conjure something else to throw to her or die.

The fucking Titan was giving it its all to kill us. Or more like Kaleeki was.

Oh, she was going to pay for that headbutt, and my leg… she was so going to pay for that.

With a sigh, I conjured a dagger, the arrow flying high, disappearing completely.

Then I ported toward the girl whose name I had already forgotten, tackling her and manifesting another dagger to throw.

We barely missed an explosion of sand reaching where we just stood.

Sand rose up in the air like a massive pillar, then like a haze, it started falling back, obscuring my vision.

Thankfully, I knew where the creature was. It would soon attack us again from the bottom.

It was disgustingly fast for its mass while under the sands.

Another series of dagger throws got us near the rocks; the closer we got, the less the Titan could expose itself. It would be our salvation.

But the Titan changed its approach.

I did not know why Kaleeki had started getting more serious at this moment until my eyes reached a conclusion by themselves.

Dawn was almost upon us.

Fuck.

She expected the cannons to start blasting at full might as soon as Flow got back into the atmosphere. And she was right; it would happen exactly that, so she wanted to end it all.

That was why when I saw the Titan about to jump toward us, I had no way to react at that moment. I knew we were practically done for. We wouldn’t possibly survive the impact.

Yet, black lightning struck the Titan in full.

It did nothing, but soon after, the whole battalion threw at it whatever they had to throw.

A quick succession of Skills, gunshots, and arrows reached the Titan.

They amounted to nothing in the great scope of things but what was important was that it had been struck with the High-Inquisitor decaying ability.

It would start a slow descent into becoming an undead puddle of unidentifiable matter.

I had no idea how long that would take, but surely it wouldn't act fast enough to save us from our current predicament.

 

However, when a powerful blast feeling like a Flow-cannon blast came from somewhere, the creature was thrown slightly to the side. The beast’s body avoided us for a hairbreadth.

Yet, the air displacement sent us flying and rolling over the sands.

Damn, it hurt…

Caitlin had fainted, and I was trying to get up, but I felt weak.

And as my hand slipped, I understood that between the rush to get to the Sand-Crawler in time, the implant, and the fight, my Stamina had just hit rock bottom.

 

As I lay in the sands, almost unable to sit up, I felt a powerful, terrifying guttural scream. It was the Titan's roar.

Then chaos, as it finally decided to slam itself into one side of the rocks.

If the Titan had never attacked the Sand-Crawler from below was simply because the bedrock from which the rocks sprouted was likely much too thick. But the peaks jutting out from it were weak enough to be brought down, although with a good amount of recoil on the Titan's body.

So shooting from the sands like an arrow, it slammed on the right side of the rocks.

Boulders exploded everywhere.

The Sand-Crawler disappeared in the middle of rockslide while fragments and boulders came flying through the sky, pelting the territory around us like one of those volcanoes-things I had once read about.

But why did it act now? Because of the Dawn?

Still, one of those boulders was flying right at us, Sixth Sense flaring in a warning.

I barely managed to find enough strength to conjure a Shadow Crystal Blow arrow when I realized that my bowstring had been ripped.

With a weak "Tsk," I generated a grenade instead and barely managed to launch it in time.

The rock was just a few meters from us when it impacted with the flying Crystal grenade.

The explosion fragmented it, but fragments still washed upon us, hitting my forehead, chest, and wherever else they could reach.

Bleeding, I crawled over to the girl, still fainted and now bleeding too.

I did not know why, but I tried waking her up.

In front of us, most Sundoorians had been thrown to the sands and were rising up to stand against the Titan. But the Titan was still faring too well to stop from attacking Sunguards.

When it jumped once more in the middle of a group of Sunguards, I knew it had reaped quite a few lives.

All the while, I heard somebody come rushing at us; I was still trying to shake the girl awake when Terence neared us; a man was following him, a Flow-Blessed I hadn't seen before.

"Boy! Take her away from here!" He shouted. "Go with Azim!"

But I was almost delusional; I just looked at him with what was left of my energy; I felt... empty.

He snorted a sigh. "Azim, metallify, now!"

But he had shouted too much.

I could feel the Titan come our way; my Tracker was not failing me.

It would soon jump from the sands and eat us.

However, the sands became as dense as metal in an instant.

My weakened gaze followed the man responsible for it. Likely Azim. He was disturbing the Shade under the sands by imbuing them with Flow.

Yet, the range of solidified sands was not enough. It would cover us from attacks that came from directly under our feet, but the creature could melt us to kingdom come with one spit of its acid.

We were finished.

 

As the creature stopped and shot up from the sands, I could see the damage of its half-broken body; the impact had weakened it greatly.

But that pose he was taking meant death. I could already feel Sixth Sense screaming at me, but I had no way to escape from that situation; I was just so tired.

My last thoughts went to Nova.

As I saw the acid come at us, my life flashed in front of my sight.

It seemed to go so slow, but really, it wasn't.

Hundreds of images appeared one after the other in my vision, Synaesthesia bringing me back in those worlds by reminding me of the scents, the texture, the sounds of them.

They started with my mother's kiss, then my father holding me up in the air, but, in the end, the vast majority of them were about Nova.

My little monkey was everywhere. Her presence had given meaning to my life. I already knew that, but those visions, bringing tears to my eyes, reinforced that knowledge even.

I was lucky I could say goodbye to this world by thinking about the only reason why I had yet to give up on it.

I knew I had accepted my end at that moment, and although with red eyes and a knowing smile on my lips, that end never came.

 

The sky blazed in fire at some point, and then the sound of what seemed to be a blast more powerful than a cannon blast could ever be tore through the acid that had come to end us, then it hit the Titan full on.

The massive Wyrm was thrown to the side, its skin exploding in gore.

I knew it hadn't killed it, but it was in ugly conditions now; the blood it left on the sand as it burrowed inside of it was proof of the damage it had received.

The only question left to answer was, what had hit it?

I turned to the side toward the direction in which the blast had come from, expecting a Sand-Crawler.

But what I saw was not a huge tin can as the High-Inquisitor had defined; it was a man, a tall man with white and Flow-blessed hair.

Bathed by the first lights of dawn, the man dressed in a burgundy tunic smiled at us.

“Just in time,” he said with a gracious smile.

Then Terence spoke, "Took you a while, didn't it? But I'm glad to see you today, Lester."

 

Lester... That was Lester Teriman.

Standing in front of me was the strongest man in the whole of Sundoor.