Lucid gritted his teeth, still holding Pilt back with the chain wrapped around his wrist. The pressure between them hadn't eased.
"What's your name?" Mercyros asked, his voice carrying quiet curiosity as he studied the woman standing before him.
"No!" Pilt yelled, straining against Lucid's grip with everything he had left. "Please, I beg of you. Do not do this."
The woman looked back at him. The corners of her lips tugged upward, curving into a smile that seemed unbefitting of her otherwise sharp, striking appearance.
"You had something, didn't you," she said, addressing Pilt directly. "I thought you were nothing but some runaway noble kid."
"But I was wrong."
"Keep trading, Pilt," she said, her voice carrying quiet finality. "Be the company executive you were meant to be. That is her final and last wish."
"Whose wish?" Lucid asked, though nobody answered him directly.
She turned back toward Mercyros.
"Mira..." she said.
"Mira Sinclair."
Lucid threw Pilt back, hard, just as golden light erupted violently around them, churning and burning everything within its immediate radius.
Lucid launched himself over Pilt's prone form, manifesting a spherical chain lattice that imprisoned them both within its protective structure.
Pilt looked at Lucid with an expression carrying fear, anger, and frustration all tangled together after everything that had just happened, after what Lucid had just prevented him from doing.
Golden light, like living flames, found their way between the chain lattice, pressing against the barrier Lucid had constructed.
Alice's voice cut through his concentration, strained. "It hurts."
Lucid started bleeding, thin lines running down from his nose. His eyes turned red, the strain of maintaining the barrier visibly taking its toll on his body.
Suddenly the pressure relinquished. The barrier dematerialized around them.
Lucid fell to the floor, breathing heavily, his chest heaving with exhaustion.
Pilt pinched Lucid's face suddenly, aggression bleeding through his desperate expression. Lucid saw the attack coming, weakly intercepting it with his palm. Another strike came from Pilt's left hand, but Lucid's body felt weary, teetering on the verge of collapse again. He felt tingling numbness spreading through his limbs.
Alice was dealing with the overall strain, along with regeneration and fate essence management simultaneously, and diverting resources toward one area inevitably caused others to lack sufficient support.
Pilt's fist connected with Lucid's face.
"What did you do?!" Pilt yelled. "You useless fuck!"
Lucid stood up slowly, weariness evident in every movement. He tried to formulate an explanation, but the words wouldn't come. He fell silent instead.
Alice's voice returned, her tone carrying wrath now. "Lucid, remove this mortal presence. I do not like this companion of yours. They dare defy us."
Lucid shook his head and looked back toward where the woman had been standing.
Nothing remained. Dust faded into the air where she had once stood.
Worm-like appendages began crawling their way toward the platform where they stood, emerging from cracks spreading across the ruined floor.
Bare feet touched the marble surface.
The figure stepping down wore ebony robes wrapped around the waist, feet exposed against the cold stone.
Lucid looked at him directly. His runes glowed more intensely than Lucid had ever witnessed before.
Mercyros flexed his fingers, hand raised, looking directly at Lucid.
'We are so dead,' Lucid thought, recognizing something dangerous in Mercyros's transformed appearance.
Mercyros had apparently absorbed something that granted him renewed, threatening power.
Pilt broke free from Lucid's grip suddenly and ran toward Mercyros. A chain shot out immediately, wrapping around Pilt's waist, restraining him, pulling him away from what would have been a devastating gravitational pull directed at his position.
The chains swung Pilt momentarily, suspending him briefly in mid-air.
Another attack came. Lucid found himself caught in Chrono Stasis.
Mercyros stepped forward and punched Lucid cleanly in the gut, the impact devastating despite Mercyros's apparently weakened state moments before.
Lucid staggered backward, tumbling over the edge of the platform.
Pilt hung suspended above him.
"Hey!" Lucid yelled out, trying to catch Pilt's attention.
Pilt looked down at him, then looked away deliberately. Something passed between them, an unspoken animosity that hadn't existed moments before their confrontation began.
"Don't do it!" Lucid yelled, though he wasn't entirely certain what he was warning against.
Alice spoke again, her voice carrying dark satisfaction now. "This child, Lucid, he dares defy us. Defy me specifically."
"Lucid, take Mercyros's authority and—"
Lucid raised his hand, summoning a spear with a chain wrapped around its shaft. He swung it forward, throwing it into a nearby pillar, using the resulting tension to swing himself in a wide arc.
He landed right beside the platform, gaining a clearer vantage point from which to observe everything unfolding around him.
Pilt was running toward Mercyros.
A worm-like shape composed of intestinal material began building itself, forming something resembling a person's lower half, grotesque and unnatural.
Lucid summoned a pair of chains, channeling Divine Wrath through them, and slammed the combined technique into the platform beneath his feet.
Debris scattered everywhere from the impact.
"Enough!" he shouted, shattering the remaining half of whatever creature had been forming.
Pilt ran and leapt over the debris, tip-toeing across unstable footing. He managed to jump across the gap and reach another section of the platform where Mercyros stood.
A woman hung suspended in the air, her hair pulled back forcefully, floating unnaturally above the ground.
"What are you doing to her?!" Pilt demanded.
The golden, weathered man, his skin tanned and ancient looking, looked down at him with cold indifference.
"I've grown tired of governing human commerce," Mercyros replied simply.
Suddenly Pilt put his hand forward, palm open.
"Oh, you're going to pay double interest for this," he said, his voice carrying dark promise.
Mercyros stepped closer despite the threat, his yellow energy hand extended purposefully toward Pilt.
"Do it," Mercyros said, something almost mocking in his tone. "I am the concept of interest itself."
It felt like he was deliberately taunting Pilt, daring him to follow through on his threat.
Pilt summoned something terrifying, a box of pure yellow, sparking energy that seemed to strain against its own containment, desperate to escape.
He hurled it toward Mercyros and ran directly at him.
Suddenly a massive gravitational pull could be felt, distorting the air around them.
Pilt was struck hard in the face, blood spewing from the impact.
"Maybe I can trade your life for a little bit of solitude," Mercyros said. "Don't worry, your colleague will make a great conduit."
Pilt yelled, pushing against the gravitational force despite the pain.
He pulled.
For an uncertain future.
Pilt tightened his gaze, a swirl of fate essence overriding his left arm and eyes simultaneously, the strain visible even on his transformed features.
"Interesting," Mercyros muttered.
He took a step forward.
Mercyros threw his hand into a yellow opening that materialized in the air, retrieving a blade from within.
"This is the Sword of Infinite Ledgers," he announced. "Each strike will turn you into gold."
Pilt ran through the attack regardless, refusing to retreat.
Mercyros slashed, a golden swing rippling through the air toward Pilt. Pilt dodged, stepping to the side, using a nearby pillar for cover, then lunged toward Mercyros directly.
He shoved a briefcase forward, which Mercyros cut cleanly with his blade.
It turned to gold.
Pilt wore a snarling smile despite the danger, fate essence resonance manifesting visibly as Illuminated energy output surged around him, forming a visible stag-like silhouette above his position for just a moment. In that instant, Pilt had become completely overridden with desperation, determined to defeat Mercyros regardless of cost.
He had begun exhibiting characteristics typically associated with Enlightened status, power surging beyond his normal capabilities.
He wa over-resonating his thread of fate.
Pilt put his hand forward.
Time stopped.
"Chrono Stasis," Mercyros said calmly.
"No," Pilt replied, defiant despite the restriction. "Future investment!"
He saw a Future, his eyes flaring gold.
And pulled.
One where Chrono Stasis didn't apply to him.
And so, Pilt moved anyway, blood bursting from his joints under the strain, wearing a grin that could be described as nothing short of uncanny given the circumstances.
"You won't," Mercyros said, though uncertainty crept into his voice for the first time.
Suddenly it exploded.
Pilt fell, burned from the yellow explosion that had resulted from his forced movement through the stasis field. A pair of hands caught him before he could hit the ground.
Lucid launched himself forward, dismissing his spears entirely. He channeled his arm with Divine Wrath, recognizing that hand-to-hand combat would prove much more effective against a sword, regardless of the sheer impracticality of such an approach against a divine weapon.
Mercyros looked up, unscathed, his stature growing twice as large as it had been moments before.
He pointed the blade toward Lucid directly.
Lucid punched the blade with red light and aura manifesting everywhere around his fist.
The blade broke.
Mercyros looked down at the shattered weapon with indifference.
"As to be expected," he said calmly.
Mercyros pulled at the air, shaping something around his forearm. He revealed a golden slice in the air, a space containing hundreds of weapons suspended within it, from which he retrieved another blade.
Lucid dodged the incoming attack, his Chain of Heart activated in passive mode, allowing him to perceive everything happening around him with enhanced clarity.
This was his first time fighting an actual Monolith directly, and the realization settled into his awareness with grim certainty.