'Not done yet.'
The thought arrived before the pain had finished registering.
Gareth on his knees, Valdris's charged katana pointed straight at him, his brain doing the only thing it knew how to do under pressure — pulling up information he already had.
'In my first run, Valdris killed me instantly with this exact attack. But that wasn't all... there was something else.'
'A fifteen percent perception buff. And a twenty percent speed buff, both with limited duration. I wrote them off as useless because the muscle damage left me unable to move.'
'Or so I thought.'
But he wasn't inside the game anymore. He was in a real body, standing in front of Valdris in person.
Maybe that buff was never meant to be used inside the game.
He closed his eyes.
And let Valdris hit him.
The world turned to black fire.
The burning shadow swallowed him whole and Gareth screamed — a scream that filled the entire room and bounced off the stone walls. He fell to his knees with his hands on the floor, feeling the shadow consuming him from the inside out.
Blood in his mouth. Vision narrowing.
And then the world slowed down inside his mind.
Not dramatically. Just enough to see every angle of Valdris, every pressure point on the floor, every micro-movement before it happened.
'There it is.'
He laughed.
Short. Genuine. With blood on his teeth.
Valdris looked at him. The six warriors looked at him. Malgrath raised his head from the throne.
"This is incredible!" His voice came out broken but he didn't care. "This is exactly what I always dreamed of! A real challenge!"
Everything burned. Every muscle protested. He didn't care.
"Speed. Twenty percent!"
"Perception. Fifteen percent!"
"I have them. With or without a system, I have them!"
He stood up.
Valdris charged before he'd finished rising.
Gareth saw it coming with a new clarity — the angle, the weight, the micro-movement of the wrist that told him exactly where the blade was going. He dodged by a centimeter and countered with his right blade toward the helm joint.
It bounced off.
But this time he'd expected it.
A lance drove through his back before he could reposition — clean entry, out through his left side, lifting him into the air. The scream that came out of Gareth filled the entire room.
They threw him. He hit the floor and left a red trail across the stone.
[Time remaining until the end of humanity:]
[00:10:00]
He got up.
Teeth clenched, arms shaking, a sound coming from his throat that wasn't quite human.
"I am Mourgare."
Valdris closed in and drove a fist straight into his abdomen — exactly where the lance had punched through. The world went dark for an instant. Gareth slammed into the wall for the second time.
He fell.
Silence.
Then the sound of someone forcing themselves back up.
"Mourgare never loses!"
His knees found the floor. His hands found the wall. His feet found something to push against.
Time stopped.
Floating in the frozen air in front of him was a raven.
Black. Completely black except for its eyes — two points of green light watching him with something he recognized but couldn't name.
"Well done, human." The voice came directly inside his head, deep and ancient. "You have proven yourself."
Gareth said nothing.
"You are entirely worthy of the name they have given you."
Gareth stood completely still, the words landing somewhere he hadn't expected.
And then the system — the one he had missed so much — appeared before him again.
[CONGRATULATIONS!]
[You have completed the Secret Mission: The One Who Shouldn't Be Here.]
[You have been selected to become a Buff Master.]
[Do you accept the advantages of being a Buff Master?]
[ YES ] — [ NO ]
Gareth stared at the message.
He laughed. Long. Genuine. Blood on his teeth, a hole in his side, the world paused around him.
"This is the recognition I've been waiting for." Almost a whisper. "What I truly deserve."
He pressed [YES] without a second thought.
[Identifying player user...]
[Complete]
[Welcome back, Mourgare the Buff Master!]
He stood there staring at that last line.
The system had never called him that before. Not the character name. The name he had built.
"I like that."
[Passive Buffs Activated]
[Emerald Edge (Claws of Marveth): +40% base damage / +10% critical hit / +15% attack speed]
[Road Fury: +40% base damage — 47:23 remaining]
[Runner's Speed: +20% speed — 08:14 remaining]
[Extreme Perception: +15% perception — 08:14 remaining]
[Activation Buffs Available:]
[Absolute Regeneration: 100% instant regeneration — Cooldown: 72 hours]
He activated it the moment he finished reading.
The hole in his side sealed shut. The cuts closed over. His shoulder found its place. The burning shadow vanished as if it had never existed.
And with the regeneration came something else.
Dorian's appearance was replaced by one truly worthy of his name — one he actually deserved.
Mourgare's skin. The one he'd always worn.
Gareth looked at it for a moment.
Then he raised his eyes toward Valdris, frozen in the stopped time.
"Time for round two." He smiled. "Don't you think?"
Time resumed.
Valdris registered the change in under a second and snapped his fingers.
The six warriors converged from every angle — six forms of shadow colliding, compressing, merging — until where there had been seven, only one remained.
The Executor.
Four, maybe five meters of condensed shadow. Armor built from seven suits of armor fused into one. A katana in each hand — Valdris's, and another formed from the others' lances, shorter but wider.
Gareth looked it up and down.
'Bigger. Two weapons. Slower on direction changes. And in the fusion — the joint between the left shoulder and the chest. The armor didn't finish sealing.'
"Much more interesting this way."
The Executor attacked first — right katana diagonal from above, all the weight of five meters behind it.
Gareth dodged left and felt the immediate difference of the twenty percent speed boost. It wasn't dramatic — it was the difference between one centimeter of margin and ten. Between reacting and anticipating.
The second katana came from below in the same motion, hunting the exposed side. Gareth blocked it with crossed blades, absorbed the impact bending his knees, and used the rebound to reposition.
The Executor spun and swung both katanas in a simultaneous arc — Gareth ducked under both trajectories, rolled forward out through the Executor's left side and drove his right blade into the shoulder joint.
Three centimeters.
The Executor roared with all seven voices at once and spun with a speed that didn't match its size, throwing Gareth back with its arm.
He landed on his feet. Two steps back.
'There's the weak point. Every hit needs to go a little deeper.'
What followed was a hunt.
Gareth never attacked head-on. He moved in circles that gradually tightened, forcing the Executor to turn constantly, to commit to an attack only to find the target was already gone. Every time the right katana swung, Gareth was already moving left. Every time it compensated, Gareth was already under the arc — close, too close for the katanas to be useful.
And every time he got close, the blade found the shoulder joint.
One centimeter deeper each time.
The Executor began losing coordination. The two katanas stopped moving in sync — seven separate wills inside one body starting to contradict each other.
Gareth saw exactly when it happened.
'Now.'
He waited for the Executor to throw its most desperate arc — left katana wide diagonal, sacrificing precision for coverage. He ducked under it, sprinted straight toward the chest, climbed the armor using his blades as anchor points and reached the left shoulder in two seconds.
He drove the blade in to the hilt.
The Executor disintegrated — the seven warriors separating into pure shadow that evaporated before it touched the ground. Both katanas fell and became ordinary stone the moment no hand held them.
Complete silence.
Gareth stood in the center of the throne room. No wounds. No blood. Buffs active. Blades in hand.
He breathed once.
Then he looked up at the throne.
Malgrath was watching him. Motionless as always. The two red points of light fixed on someone who should never have made it this far.
Gareth extended one blade toward him slowly. Pointing straight at the throne.
A smile.
"It's time, old friend."
A pause.
"Shall we dance?"
Malgrath rose with the slowness of something that hasn't needed to hurry for anyone in centuries.
The scepter hit the floor without a care. The crown fused to his skull cast red reflections across the walls. He extended his right hand toward the void and the shadow answered — condensing from the air itself until it took shape in his palm. A long sword, black blade, with a luminous crack running down its center like a wound that never healed.
'Eternal Ruin.'
The weapon he had used to reach floor thirty-five before his fall.
"There it is." Almost to himself. "That's the answer I was waiting for."
Malgrath charged.
The first strike against Gareth's crossed blades shook the entire room.
A column split in half behind him — the shockwave going in every direction, black dust filling the air. His arms screamed with a pain the regeneration couldn't cover in real time.
"You're so much stronger than the Executor! I love it!"
He slid back and Malgrath was already on top of him — Eternal Ruin diagonal from above. Gareth threw himself right. The blade grazed his shoulder and cut clean through the column behind him.
'If that lands clean there's no amount of regeneration that saves me.'
He blocked a horizontal cut, used the rebound to create distance, dodged a thrust by a centimeter. He countered at the side of the helm — left a line in the armor but nothing more.
'The armor holds. I need the weak point.'
Malgrath swung Eternal Ruin in a wide arc — Gareth jumped over it, landed on the shoulder for just an instant and drove his right blade into the neck joint.
Three centimeters.
Malgrath threw him back with a shoulder roll. Gareth landed rolling, came up moving and dodged the next strike at the last instant. Eternal Ruin hit the floor and the stone cracked in every direction.
'Neck joint. There it is.'
"Yes!" He shouted it without thinking. "This is exactly what I always wanted!"
What followed wasn't an organized fight.
It was pure chaos and Gareth loved every second of it.
Eternal Ruin straight down — he rolled left, the impact pulverized the floor where he'd been, three columns fell at once. Gareth burst out of the dust running straight at Malgrath's chest, blocked the counter with crossed blades and drove his right blade into the neck joint through the blind spot.
Four centimeters.
Malgrath roared and brought his elbow down. Gareth dodged by half a centimeter — the elbow hit the floor and the shockwave launched him three meters back.
He landed on his feet.
He laughed.
"I haven't felt like this in years!" He dodged another arc sliding under it. "I can feel every single hit! The impact up my arms, the weight of the blades, everything! It's all real!"
Malgrath spun and caught him with the back of his armored hand. Gareth flew five meters, hit the wall, fell.
He was up before he'd finished falling.
"I don't want it to end!" He screamed it at the ceiling. "For the first time in my life I don't want it to end!"
The fight destroyed what was left of the room.
Columns falling. Floor cracked over cracked. Statue fragments turned into obstacles Gareth used to change direction and Malgrath crushed without breaking stride.
Block, dodge, counter, fly, get up, repeat. Same energy every time. Screaming every time.
A hit he couldn't block opening a line across his side — regeneration sealing it in seconds, he screamed anyway.
'This. This is what I always needed. Not the ranking. Not the record. This.'
Malgrath raised Eternal Ruin with both hands.
Gareth watched it charge — the blade growing so dark it swallowed the light of the entire room. And instead of stepping back, he ran forward.
Straight.
He reached Malgrath's chest at the exact instant the attack released. Two forces collided — Eternal Ruin driving down, his blades driving up into the neck joint, his full body weight and every active buff behind them.
The shockwave went upward.
The ceiling didn't hold. It tore open to the night sky in an explosion of stone and black dust — light flooding into the temple for the first time in centuries.
Gareth ended up at one edge of the broken roof, standing on a fragment of wall that had survived. The night sky of Eldralid open above his head.
Malgrath at the opposite edge. Eternal Ruin still in hand. The two red points of light finding Gareth's eyes through the settling dust.
Silence.
Gareth checked the timer.
[Time remaining until the end of humanity:]
[00:05:23]
He exhaled slowly.
"I'm having the time of my life." Almost quiet. "Years waiting to feel something like this. And it was here the whole time."
He looked up at Malgrath.
"But my life is on the line too. And Mourgare the Buff Master doesn't die here."
The Claws of Marveth caught the light of the night sky.
"We still have unfinished business, old friend. Forty-nine more floors, to be exact."
He took his stance.
"Let's end this."