“Why are you grinning, idiot? Don't you know you are doomed?”

  “I'm not grinning, you are,” Rafe fired back, rather maturely, he thought.

  The queen tilted her head, her shadow throne visibly pulsating like a living thing.

  “Try again,” she said in a low voice.

  “Oh…” Rafe scratched the back of his head. “...I'm not an idiot, you are,” he said, his tone inquisitive.

  The queen looked him up and down, her mouth starting to curl up. She threw her head back in a sudden movement that had Rafe tensing, but all she did was laugh, laugh. And laugh.

  “How interesting? I thought you'd be stiff like dear old daddy there. Tell me, boy, do you like to die? Do you like the pain? The cold that seeps into your bones, your soul?”

  Rafe was a little slow in answering, thinking back to all his deaths and how much she knew about the feeling.

  “No…it's not the best feeling.”

  “And yet you've managed to do it more than a hundred times in my trial.”

  “Your trial? This is Noid's trial.”

  “Bah, Noid's trial, Liam's trial. They are all my trials. I mean we are Skyholm. We are like family, we share everything.”

  “Cool. So when do we get to fight?”

  “How many more deaths you got in the tank?”

  “I dunno, mostly I think none, but it is your family's trial so…”

  “Do you know what happens if you die and you have no resurrections left?”

  Rafe stopped to think for a moment, not entirely sure where this was going.

  “I…don't.”

  The queen rose from her throne, and the shadows dissolved into the ground. She shrugged, the picture of nonchalance.

  “Well, neither do I. Enith will want to see the limits of this trial though, so I can't hold back any more than I already am, okay.”

  Rafe took a stance, crouching to keep his enemy in sight. The shadows quieted, the room quieted. The shadows fell, the queen seemingly letting go of them. Rafe watched them seep into the ground, his own shadow too.

  He stared at her. The woman grinned. Then she melted into the ground as well.

  Rafe launched skyward, and that was probably all that saved him from her first ambush. She'd done it on purpose, warning him about his shadow. He landed a fair distance away.

  “It won't be that easy, huh?”

  “Are you trying to play into my new favorite hobby of combat banter, perchance?”

  “Nah. I'm just trying to teach you a lesson. You only banter when you're the overwhelmingly powerful individual.”

  And the shadows rose, holding knives, slashing in the same direction. In his direction, they were slashing in his direction. Rafe scoffed, seeing how uncoordinated they were even though they were myriad. It was certainly impressive, but not dangerous.

  A sword barrage had him deflecting all the weak attacks. A sense of foreboding took him a minute before he would have been skewered, and he turned just in time to avoid a stronger better-controlled stab from the real queen.

  Only, two more such stab attempts occurred simultaneously, and he only avoided one of those. An attack took him through the ribs, puncturing a lung.

  He cried out in pain as he bounded away, trying to keep the dagger in to prevent further complications.

  “Overwhelmingly powerful,” the queen said as she paused her attack to smile at him.

  “You already had two shadow clones at level one hundred?”

  “I had my shadow clones early, which is why I rarely used them when I ventured into the universe. They were…the old clothes you can still wear but you'd rather not if you can help it. It was always a surprise when I whipped them out.”

  “But you're an emerald rank. You're not supposed to use concepts.”

  “Hey, I didn't figure you for a whiner. What is it, afraid you can't win? If so, I understand. I am a badass, after all.”

  “So you're using concepts?”

  “Of course not. I can and am using peak insights though. For instance…”

  She lifted a hand and made a come hither motion, and the dagger in Rafe's lung burst out with a gush of blood.

  “...shit…” Rafe managed to get out through gritted teeth even as he tried to staunch the bleeding with his hands.

  “That's what you can do with an insight into possession. I see something, I want it, so I snatch it. Good old purse snatching, just a little easier.”

  “Oh, I see,” Rafe said with a nod, trying to keep the pain from his face. “Can you tell me more about your insights?”

  He needed to staunch his bleeding somehow. Sure, the pain was debilitating, but he'd fought with worse. One lung could work just as well as two.

  “Yeah, that time you felt a hint of danger? That was all me. It's an insight I cultivated to draw attention away from myself. Oh, and also…”

  He wasn't listening. He was busy covertly trying to heat his sword with one of the torches. With the sun getting ever lower, the queen had probably ordered the arena to be lit so she'd have shadows to play with. Rafe was benefiting from her generosity and her verbosity.

  He put the red hot blade on the side of his chest, it steamed and hissed, the queen noticed.

  “Hey, did you just trick me into talking my head off so you could make some emergency repairs?”

  “You do love the sound of your voice,” Rafe said with a shrug.

  She laughed again. She seemed to always have a laugh handy.

  “I like you, kid. If we still had the mantle, I'd vote you take it. As it stands, I can only hope you make it on your own. I'll welcome you with open arms, as a Skyholm.”

  The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

  Rafe frowned when he heard that. To become a Skyholm. To join this, self-proclaimed, legendary pantheon. He hadn't considered it. After all, there were hundreds of millions of people going through these trials across the multiverse, at least according to Noid, and yet only one could become the next Skyholm. Could he do it? Maybe. At least the queen seemed to think he could.

  He shook his head firmly, saving those thoughts for later. Right then he had a god to fight.

  She saw him get ready, waited, watched.

  Once he charged, she seeped into the floor. Rafe's sword clanged off dirt and rock. He swung blindly, turning around with wide, frantic eyes. She was nowhere to be seen.

  He didn't let his guard down, didn't stop trying to find her. His breaths were more painful than helpful in the moment, but he couldn't not breathe. That would be stupid.

  She burst out of the ground with an explosion of shadow, once more showing off that overwhelming power she'd talked about. Rafe wondered how she'd ever been considered a low-level adventurer only good for her storage skill. She didn't need a concept to kill the masters of this world, perhaps even survive a grand master.

  The shadows fell on him, and he was still trying to frantically search for his opponent. The shadows cut him. They were shallow like paper cuts, but they would add up. She was the monarch of the shadow verse, even before she'd completed the risky metamorphosis that would make her a universal powerhouse. Rafe had forgotten that for a second. Forgotten who he was fighting against. And now he was bleeding because of it.

  “You will die!” a charging shadow queen yelled as she fell on him from above.

  With a diagonal slash imbued with his suspected heavy blow skill at the last second, he cut the shadow clone in twain.

  He cut the shadows around him too. He would have felt he was doing a better job if he had access to insights, but oh well.

  “Hmm. Your cuts are pretty sharp for someone without insights, and with very limited information on their skills.”

  “Thanks. I practice. A lot.”

  “Tch, don't get too cocky, brat. I'm still winning this duel.”

  His old strategy wasn't working. He couldn't cut her down as easily as he hoped. Cutting shadows was useless. It was like cutting water, nothing but a source of frustration. The queen was toying with him.

  He needed to get out of his trance, to think.

  “I guess having no information on your passives could create such problems. The skill is controlling you, instead of the other way around.”

  Rafe didn't answer. He fought his brain, forcing it into coming up with a plan on the fly. He always processed information fast, courtesy of a high coordination stat, but he never really actively planned during combat. He never had the time. He preferred to go in fast. Today was different. He was chasing his own shadow. He took a breath and took a step back. He studied all the information he had on hand.

  Shadows, nightfall, lightly obscured moon. Force her out, or at least reduce the sharpness of her shadows. He weighed his options, all the while swinging at nothing. He bled from a thousand tiny wounds. Wounds the queen had delivered almost as little jokes, to annoy him. The shadows were starting to chuckle at his flailing.

  He didn't let it bother him. He took another breath and slowed down. That was the use of his coordination, wasn't it, to experience time slower? He hadn't focused on it as much as his speed, and maybe that had been a mistake. Having high speed and low coordination was a recipe for disaster, for poor control.

  Rafe needed to more consciously use his second highest stat, or at least more efficiently. He did use it to react to last-minute changes in the field on most occasions, to make sure he wasn't surprised mid combat. It was perhaps what made him so hard to hit. But he hadn't used it to its full potential yet, to always keep the battlefield in control. To coordinate the battlefield, so to speak.

  He sped up, aiming for a bracket set in a wall. He cut it up before the shadows could react. Was it just his imagination, or was he going just a bit faster? Fast enough that an agility-focused assassin was just barely keeping up with him.

  “What are you doing?!” she cried. “Fight me head-on, you coward!”

  Rafe wanted to snort. He had already cut down ten torches and he was already aiming for more. He thrust his sword, his movement technique helping him clear ten feet in a moment. He raised his sword and lowered it in as strong a swing as he could manage. His sword clanged off a knife that came out of the shadows.

  The shadow queen had chosen to nip his plan in the bud. He didn't know how he knew, but he was sure it was her. She'd come to him personally.

  Fast as thought, his sword came up and down, a last-minute heavy blow infusion overpowering the queen's defense. Her eyes widened. He'd surprised her. Her hand was forced back with an audible snap, and the sword continued downward, cleaving through her shoulder. Blood spurted out even as he continued his cut. He had won. For a moment, he believed he had won. Then his slash lost all resistance, passing through the woman as easily as it would have passed through air.

  She appeared a ways away, breathing hard. He stared down at the shadow clone he'd just cleaved in two. No, the shadow clone that had taken her place at the last moment. Just when his sword had almost reached her heart. She could switch places with her clones. Just what the doctor ordered.

  “Are you despairing yet?” she quizzed as shadows wrapped her damaged shoulder up.

  She had a rogue class, focused on agility, but she was also very dependent on magic. That meant she had to funnel most of her energies into three different stats. Her strength was still higher than his, and maybe all her other stats too. But still, her strength was much lower than her agility, as was her endurance and vitality. And with having to focus her energy distribution on three stats, they also weren't as through the roof as they should be for someone past level one hundred.

  Rafe breathed. He really could do this. He charged the still visibly recuperating woman. She reeled as she noticed his thrust coming. Then, in a very surprising turn of events, she fled.

  Rafe froze for a long moment, much longer than he ever had in a fight. He couldn't believe it. Then he shrugged and let the surprise roll over his shoulder and down. Sure, he could believe it.

  He took a painful breath, pretended to lunge at her, and instead went after another torch. She came for him on the third torch again, and she escaped once he was focused on her. He didn't even bat an eye as he aimed for a torch opposite where she was going.

  “Oh, come on, it's not fair for you to be actively growing as a fighter when you're fighting me.”

  Rafe engaged her and her clone, fighting more defensively than he'd like but not taking any wounds.

  “When else am I going to improve if not in such a high-stakes battle?”

  “High stakes? You are immortal.”

  “We both know that's not something I can rely on at the moment.”

  “Bah, we don't know what will happen if you die, but how can it be worse than what you've already experienced a thousand times? I do have it on good authority that the death simulator in Noid's trial is very realistic.”

  “I'd rather not find out if that is true if I can help it.”

  “Oww, you're no fun.”

  She withdrew a bit. It was like she didn't know the name of the game by now. With the barest of space, Rafe charged to the next torch and extinguished it. He had sputtering in the background as he moved on to the next one.

  “Fine. Let's end this if you're so determined to die.”

  And then the shadows rose from around the arena, congregated on Rafe's position, penning him and the torch in. The queen appeared, engaged him for a second, then disappeared back into her shadows. He didn't get a moment before she attacked from behind. And then he was dealing with attacks from the whole shell of shadow.

  And they weren't the uncoordinated knife work of the barely corporeal shadows he'd destroyed in the beginning. They were all shadow clones.

  “You…aren't limited to two?”

  “No,” she said. “No, I'm not.”

  “I see. Then it's good you haven't seen everything I can do too, isn't it?”

  “You don't scare me—”

  Rafe unsheathed his last dagger, took a familiar stance, and started to whirl. His balance was off, but he still managed to create his twister for a couple of seconds. Shadow clones were destroyed, and true blood poured over him, both his and hers. She had managed to get in a few cuts, but Rafe had destroyed numerous shadow clones, injured her critically, and cut the light from the torch off.

  Being in the darkness didn't affect her a lot, according to his calculations, but it reduced the potency of the shadows. It made them harder to wield, to control. He had been right. He charged her, or where he assumed her main body was as it was covered in still bleeding wounds. She attempted to blend in with her shadows but by the time Rafe reached her, she was only two-thirds of the way gone.

  He was already stabbing with his dagger. He felt it penetrate her body before the resistance disappeared. He'd injured her again, and he was going to—

  She stabbed him in the back, in the side, everywhere. He whirled and started cutting but she did not relent. She was screaming, shouting profanities. She was there in person with her blood clones, a bout of anger having taken her reasoning.

  Rafe felt like a leaking tank, but in her anger, she'd only stabbed nonessential parts of his body. Her? Well, she'd left herself open. Not something a fighter with her kind of build should be stupid enough to do, but her anger was in control.

  She collapsed to her knees, blood spouting from everywhere, even her mouth. She coughed and something solid and wet landed on Rafe's cheeks as he aimed to help lay her down gently.

  “I…lost? Huh!” she said, even as her breaths became more laboured. “My name…is Xamanthia….The others call me Sam… I…will…I suppose I'll see you in a bit, then, trial taker.”

  And then she was gone. Rafe had won, killed his opponent first, but there was no way he was surviving himself. Both his lungs were gone, and his gut, liver, kidneys were all critically injured. She'd even managed to open up his belly somehow, his intestines not looking intent to stay in their place unless he actively tried to hold them in.

  “Ahh, shit…” Rafael Kingsley groaned as he bled out on the ground.