Replicus’ keen sockets watched as Nedalia sacrificed Creeds in order to make the Secondary assault function of Cryptic Axiom Chasm charge faster and become ready for use instantly.

Replicus had caught a whiff of the possibility of something like this when he initially declared that he would kill Nedalia before she could use her Secondary assault function.

He hadn’t believed that she’d waste Creeds on him, given that the voyage was only just beginning, and there were larger threats than him out there, but the reality was manifesting before him right now.

Nedalia’s opinion of him had changed a lot more than he expected during the course of their exchange.

The pseudo redhead managed to break out of the loop of his attacks and darted high into the sky through her mirror shards. Her body, made of battered and torn mirrors forming a shapely figure, didn’t repair itself. Nedalia didn’t give herself the time.

The moment she caught a breather, she locked her fingers together, and the howling of energy throughout the Territory intensified, finally becoming more apparent to even those aboard the colossal ship in the distance.

Replicus prepared to counter whatever she was about to throw, but even he didn’t anticipate what Nedalia did next.

“This is my Creed!” she screamed. “Let THEM be brought here!”

…!

At once, the mirror shards through the entire Territory hurtled upwards towards the unseen upper edge of this dark space!

Almost at the same time, from the blank black above, thousands of figures appeared out of nowhere, falling with shocked faces towards the crowded mirrors which seemed to be rushing to receive them.

With a glance, Replicus could tell that all these people were real, and though they were adorned in regular clothing, they were anything but regular themselves. Among them were Advancement Stagers and Masters of differing varieties, with the occasional Foundation Stager!

‘What does she intend to…’ Replicus thought, before the answer was quickly brought to his attention. His desire to act now was stifled immediately. The outcome would be uncertain if he did.

Half an instant after he thought about what this was all about, the mirrors that flew up to play host to the newly arrived did the unthinkable.

Each allocated itself to one of the men and women dropping down, and emitted an ominous foggy light that devoured the figure of the target!

The space above became too brilliant to look at for several moments, and when it finally returned to normal, the number of figures above… had doubled.

Each of the previously seen men and women was now a corpse, and just beside them, was a ghost of them, dull and docile!

Oddly, each of these ghosts wore ridiculous sets of clothing, some more comical than the others – more often than not featuring unrealistic proportions.

Replicus didn’t know what to make of this.

Did it represent something?

Just as he wondered, Nedalia stared down at him and regained her mirth.

He snorted and with what was likely a mental command, she drew on a portion of the thousands of ghosts towards her and they turned into streams of pale grey energy that dissolved into her rapidly!

Nedalia let out a loud, blissful moan.

It was apparent that she was giving herself a tremendous boost in strength. If she could allow the ghosts to possess others and morph their figures, then the same should be possible for herself, right?

“She only used three ghosts before? Does that mean that she can’t store more ghosts on her person?!” one Replicus’ thought phantoms questioned.

“I think so! So she must keep live people, captives, that she can then kill to fuel her powers since she can’t store many ghosts at once! She used a Creed to drag all these people from a storage prison somewhere and brought them into the Territory! Crafty sockethole!”

Replicus thought it checked out.

The absorption process he saw only grew more aggressive, and midway through, the Penetrator watched as several hundred of the ghosts were funnelled into the half-man, half-serpent figure that had been fighting with Nedalia.

It too began to change too.

“Ah! We should have thought of this! The greatest strength of this woman’s Hidden Class is strengthening a single body with more than one ghost! That’s why they seemed so weak before. Now…” a thought phantom called from above Replicus’ head.

…!

Replicus was suddenly smitten by a thick column of foggy light with a degree of force so enormous that sent him whirling away rapidly!

Before he shuttled even ten meters from his original position, however, he felt a massive presence appear somewhere near him, and grant a particular nasty blow that felt more like the strike from Lambent Phosphor than a physical hit!

He sped like a shooting star in another direction and felt the same presence waiting for him along the path to his destination!

Thankfully, using the Astral Blizzard corridor, Replicus crossed into another plane, shifted the course of his movement and appeared in an alternate direction before he could be hit!

His momentum died down, but just when he thought he got a second of reprieve, he felt the same hostile presence behind him.

It was Nedalia, her whole body other than her face made from mirrors that revolved in several different directions, making her look like a bland kaleidoscope.

Her hair had adopted the same reflective look, as well as her eyes which reflected Replicus’ starry armour as she gazed him.

“How does it feel to be on the receiving end now?” she said with grin, and her fist, covered with a bulbous flow of Lambent Phosphor smashed into Replicus face!

There was a spectacular shockwave the shattered the mirrors close to the two, but this time, Replicus wasn’t sent flying.

He weathered the force of the blow, and remained floating in the space, much to Nedalia’s displeasure.

The face of his helmet began to turn into a mirror though, much like the rest of his armour had been when Nedalia had been using Lambent Phosphor like an unavoidable whip.

“I see…” he said as he gripped Nedalia’s wrist. “You’re using Lambent Phosphor to avoid hitting me directly. Are you scared that your physical hits will rebound like last time?”

Nedalia’s eyes narrowed a little.

“How do you know that name?” she asked in a serious, startled tone.

Replicus merely chuckled.

His figure vanished just in time to avoid the massive fist that came crashing down where he had been before.

The half-man, half-serpent creature had grown twice as large, and the armour it had wore, pale and lifeless as it looked, now decked its entire body to the tip of its tail!

A foggy light oozed off its large mass, the very thing Replicus had dreaded last time.

‘That light. I think it is capable of turning anyone hit by it enough into a ghost. It’s an instant kill mechanism for weaker opponents. Ghosts must use it differently. Perhaps this woman is the only one with the ability to kill someone simply by directly exposing them to the light,’ Replicus thought.

Again, a large column of light smashed into him with a staggering force, but he darted into the Astral Blizzard corridor right after, avoiding Nedalia who had hurtled forward to bash into him again!

However, even though he changed course, she had become so fast that there was only a momentary delay before she whizzed like a demonic wind behind him, and sent a blow livid with Lambent Phosphor!

Replicus took the attack to the back, heavy as it was, but with Astral Blizzard Motion, he performed an incredibly intricate micro-motion, turning behind him, and slamming a right hook into Nedalia’s jaw!

The force to the woman once again felt otherworldly, as though the surface area of Replicus’ punch was larger than it looked, and sharper than it should be! Fragments exploded from her face, but she sent another blow to Replicus which he ate, and returned one of his own!

‘He’s still able to keep up with me physically?!’ Nedalia thought in mounds of Hidden surprise.

For a full three seconds, the two hammered each other with dozens of blows strong enough to level a small city each, and then Nedalia dashed back and whipped with her fingers across Replicus’ image before her!

A bright pillar of Lambent Phosphor smashed heavily against Replicus’ armour, and it finally caved in, breaking apart across the chest, having been turned into mirrors beforehand!

‘She got me…’ Replicus thought, half-amused and half-annoyed.

A split of a split moment later, a heavy fist larger than his head crashed into the side of his helmet with mountainous might!

…!

The half-man, half-serpent possessed had finally landed a hit, and just as Replicus expected…

[PRIME PERPETUATION : 24,478/60,750]

His Health, known now as Prime Perpetuation had dropped viciously!

‘Heh! If I hadn’t gotten an affinity towards Lambent Phosphor, I would have probably been brought close to death by that attack,’ he thought as he flew like a comet downward, clouds billowing from the gap in his armour.

He felt his assailants soar rapidly towards him.

The situation was terrible.

With only Null Life Essence, and Null Life skills that applied to him alone, Replicus was at a heavy disadvantage.

However, he, like Nedalia, had been stalling for time as well.

[High level concept detected. ‘Lambent Phosphor’. To learn the greater fundamentals, an investment of 29,340 Null Life Essence is required]

There it was!

Different from Distorted Gravity, Spatial Lightning and Stagnant Space which were constantly absorbed by the Kindling Heath back on Deign, it took several hits for [Epiphany] to grant him access to higher degrees of affinity with Lambent Phosphor!

The price to learn was higher than his current capacity of Null Life Essence, but there was a lot in reserve on the ship, and he drew it into his body!

In an instant, Replicus paid the price while replenishing his supply, and the affinity for Lambent Phosphor turned from ungraded to C completely bypassing D!

Replicus chuckled. Even if Lambent Phosphor was a high level concept, it likely wasn’t as complex as Distorted Gravity and Stagnant Space!

At once, a major portion of his armour turned into mirrors before, reverted back to normal, though the gap over the chest remained!

Nedalia didn’t miss this detail, and Replicus saw it when he changed his course via Astral Blizzard Motion.

She looked wary, her anxiousness carrying over from Replicus’ inexplicable knowledge of the name of the foggy light she could create.

As such, that was when she decided to put her ready-to-use Secondary assault to work!

“Rage of Truths!” she called suddenly.

Instantly, the entire Territory was dyed with a foggy light so brilliant, it threw Replicus off, stalling his thoughts for a moment!

It seemed to have washed out from the glowing arrowhead mirror in the distance, spreading out like the initial coat of Nitros when a Territory was projected!

Then…

Replicus found himself lost for a moment.

Odd. How odd.

He was back in his weaker, less impressive Fulgurant Bone Penetrator body.

He was standing on a firm ground, overlooking the image of a hot, charred-looking scape with strange vegetation of its own – dark trees with wisps of flame as their leaves. Behind him was a cliff, with a pool of orange-pink lava, and to his side, was a familiar young lady.

Replicus’ body quivered at the sight of her.

She had strangely unclear features, but he found himself uttering…

“Camilla?”

She anxiously looked up at him. She was very scared.

He felt sorry for her, thought many doubts kept springing through his head.

They were offset by the scorching wind about, which immersed him into the present.

“What should we do, master?” she asked with a tremble.

Replicus’ spirits lifted at her vulnerability and he was about to answer, as he should, given where he was…

But did he know?

He was in a Cluster, right?

This was a mission he chose from the Guilds Association, but he had decided to tackle it with his Penetrator form in order to reduce the gap between it and the newly acquired Hybrid Luman.

That’s right.

That’s right!

So now…

All he had to do, was get on with it, with his sister Camilla!