A flash of brilliant green lit the darkness.
Arwin tasted blood. He tasted fire.
And he tasted sheer, relentless power.
A deluge of magical energy drove down Arwin’s throat. It flooded his body with a roar that filled his ears and drowned out every thought he had ever had. The entire world went green. His existence bent like a sapling caught in a landslide of mud. He felt every single aspect of his being creaking and groaning.
Everything that made him Arwin cracked. Hairline seams raced through the roots that bound his soul to his body. For a moment, there was nothing at all. He floated in space, so enveloped by the immense force rushing through him that there was no room at all for anything else.
It was… peaceful.
For that moment, there was truly nothing at all. The fight was gone. The worries and pain and fear was gone. His memories and desperation went with it.
Arwin was power. He was magic. And the magic was him.
Then his back hit the wall.
The world snapped back into its proper place.
Arwin’s eyes shot open.
He was on the far side of the room. Biting down on the crystals on the Deepmind’s skeleton must have caused an explosion — because he was a dozen feet above the ground and buried nearly a foot into the stone.
But all the pain he’d felt a few moments before hadn’t returned. It was still there, but more of a dull ache than anything truly bothersome. Little more than a fading memory in the face of the sheer strength that was now pumping without restriction through his body.
Blazing coils of green magic hissed all around him. Even the tendrils of magma extending from the back of the Gehenna armor had gone from black to green-tinted.
In the hole, the Deepmind clutched its chest in disbelief. Much of its robes had been burned away by the blast, leaving behind only a few tatters and five more bunches of crystal distributed along its body. Its sickly eyes stared down at the spot where there had once been a patch of crystal. There was nothing left but a few dull green shards and old bone.
“No,” it said. “That isn’t possible.”
Arwin pulled himself free from the wall in a single motion. He dropped to the ground, landing without even bothering to brace himself. The impact didn’t even register.
He felt great.
No. He didn’t just feel great.
Arwin felt amazing.
“Is something wrong?” Arwin asked, his lips pulling back in a grin. His gaze had already affixed on another patch of crystals upon the huge skeleton. “You sound unsettled.”
“Kneel!” The Deepmind roared.
All around Arwin, the other members of the Menagerie crashed to the ground.
But the Deepmind’s voice rolled right past him, no more effective than a prayer sent up to a dead god.
“No,” Arwin said. “I don’t think I will.”
Then he exploded forward.
The distance between him and the Deepmind evaporated in an instant. He leapt for the patch of crystals —
A huge hand slammed into his side, batting him from the sky.
Arwin hit the ground with a crash, cracking the stone beneath him.
Then the Deepmind’s other fist came crashing down on top of him.
The entire world went dark as Arwin found himself driven into the stone like a nail. An immense tremor shook the ground. He felt the force of the strike distribute out. Then he watched the hand pull back — and he sat up, barely even scratched.
He hadn’t felt the strike at all.
“This cannot be,” the Deepmind said. “No. How are you—”
Arwin leapt.
The Deepmind tried to knock Arwin from the sky again. But, before its hand could connect, a band of blue light snapped into being around its wrist. Shadows bound around its other hand as it tried to defend itself. The monster’s movements ground to a complete halt. For a moment, it couldn’t move at all.
That moment was all Arwin needed. He drove into the skeleton’s body, grabbing onto a rib as he bit down on the second patch of green crystal.
Another flash of brilliant green light split the dark room.
Magical power slammed into Arwin again, this time somehow even more intense than the first. Strength flooded his limbs. Whatever final remnants of pain and weakness that had once been in his body evaporated, nothing more than droplets before a scorching desert sun.
Thick green mist poured out from between Arwin’s lips with every breath he took. The power raced down his veins in electric currents. It pulsed beneath his skin, fusing further with him with every passing second. It was like nothing he’d ever felt before. More incredible than any level up, more significant than every single advancement he’d made in his life put together.
Arwin couldn’t just feel himself.
He could feel the world. The magic that connected every single living being was there, just beneath the surface of his mind, no farther away than a thought.
The Mesh. This is the Mesh itself.
I…
“You cannot do this!” the Deempind screamed. It brought both of its hands crashing down toward Arwin. “I am a God!”
Blue bands snapped into being around its wrists, but they shattered without even slightly slowing the strike. Lillia’s shadows leapt forth in an attempt to form a shield over Arwin, but they splattered like wet paint. The hands continued down as powerful tongues of death magic wound around the Deepmind’s skeletal fingers.
It wasn’t holding back anymore.
But it was far too late.
Arwin raised his hand.
The Mesh bent to his will.
A disk of brilliant golden light snapped into being above him. The Deepmind’s hands crashed down upon it with a reverberating boom. Pressure exploded outward, knocking the rest of the Menagerie back and sending them into the walls of the room.
But, though cracks exploded through Arwin’s magical shield, it held strong.
“You were almost a God,” Arwin said. “You can’t keep hold of it, can you? You’ve got no body. No way to properly store all the power you stole. So when I take it from you… you can’t get it back.”
“You are nothing before me!” the Deempind roared, bringing its hands crashing down upon Arwin a second time. Its fists burned like two meteors as they plummeted toward him. The sheer amount of death magic exuding from the ancient lich was so thick that it might have killed Arwin from mere proximity just a few minutes ago.
But this was no longer a few minutes ago.
Arwin exploded into motion, not even bothering to try and block the strike. He blurred through the air, driving into the lich’s ribcage and sending it tipping backward. Its hands reached for Arwin, trying to grab him before he could make it to another one of the crystal clusters, but he was too fast — and his eyes were already fixed on a bunch of crystals on its inner rib.
He leapt, the green power he’d stolen from the Lich transforming to a brilliant gold as he carved through the air.
The monster’s hand passed by him, a moment too slow.
Arwin’s jaw slammed shut.
There was another flash, another torrent of power. The storm building within him magnified into a thunderous roar. Arwin could feel it pressing into his flesh, trying to break free.
This was more magic than any living being had ever been meant to hold. More power than anyone had the right to hold.
But the Hungering Maw took it all. There was no limit to its desire.
Arwin barely even noticed the Lich’s hand slamming into him. He only registered the fact that he’d landed on his feet in the center of the room. There was so much power bubbling within his mind that he was starting to find it difficult to concentrate on what he’d actually come here to do.
He could feel the Menagerie. He could sense Lillia’s wound eating into her life just as he could sense Anna’s magic desperately trying to cure it. He could feel Koyu he they stood before the two women, trying to absorb as much of the force from the fight as possible to let Anna work.
Arwin could feel the guildsmen racing down the spiral staircase toward them. He could feel the Guildwall. He could feel the plains and cities that stretched around it. He could feel the animals, the monsters, the dungeons, everything.
It was too much.
And yet, it wasn’t. It was incredible.
With just a little more power like this, Arwin could do far more than simply defeat the Deepmind. He could rewrite the world itself.”
His lips pulled apart in a cold smile.
“You shouldn’t have been so greedy,” Arwin said. His words reverberated through the room as he lifted into the air, coils of golden magic swirling around his entire body. “If you’d just spent magic to kill us when you had the chance, you might have gotten what you wanted. But I suppose greed is your nature.”
“How can you hold it?” the Deepmind demanded. “How? It’s impossible! A mortal body could never be powerful enough to contain that much magical energy! You should be a bloody stain on the ground!”
“So you didn’t know,” Arwin said, laughter bubbling up from his chest. “You never did. All you could do was spy on a few measly little fragments of information. Were you so desperate to keep every scrap of it to yourself, so desperate to make sure nobody else could take it, that you never had the chance to truly taste the strength you took?”
“Arwin?” Reya asked weakly from the side of the room. “Aren’t you getting a bit villain monologue-y?”
Arwin ignored her.
The Deepmind could do nothing to him anymore.
Unlike the lich, he could actually use the power.
And, finally, he knew the answer to the question that he’d been asking since the moment he’d first woken up outside Milten, covered in mud and desperate to consume a single pathetic magical item to survive.
This was what the Mesh had created his class for. This was why he had the Hungering Maw. And this was the only way he could ever truly silence its hunger.
Arwin had been built to consume the Mesh itself.
The Deepmind had been flawed. A bundle of wretched memories clinging to life, desperately gathering power that could never belong to it.
But perhaps that had been the point.
Maybe this was the world’s way of righting the cycle.
Perhaps this power had always been fated for Arwin. He was the only one that could fix it. The only one who could rule in a way that would prevent what had happened to him from ever happening again.
The Deepmind could not become a god.
But with a little more of this stolen energy, Arwin could.
“No,” the Deempind whispered.
Finally, it understood.
But it was too late.
Arwin willed himself to move.
There was no time for the ancient lich to even register his arrival. One moment, Arwin had been floating in the air in the center of the room.
The next, he was upon it.
Crystal crunched as he bit through it.
Arwin swallowed every scrap of the power. He consumed it in an instant.
His knowledge grew. His understanding expanded.
His power multiplied.
The skeleton pitched back. It crashed against wall, sending dust and debris raining down from above.
“No,” the Deepmind whispered. Its voice was ragged, defeated. Every word dripped with terror and disbelief. “No. No. No. I was so close. You can’t do this. I earned this. It’s mine! It isn’t fair. It isn’t f—”
Arwin moved.
He appeared before the final patch of crystal, emerging in a bundle right where the ancient monster’s heart would have been. It screamed, flinging itself back desperately. The movement felt like it unfolded in slow motion. It was so pathetic, so pointless, that there had never been really any point in trying at all.
Arwin bit down.