Nate floated in the purple sky of the Fifth Hell as a golden-blue rune the size of a warehouse swirled above him. The Concepts of Joy and Love permeated the air, driving back the sense of blood and violence that was the namesake of the layer of Hell dedicated to Wrath. The calm lasted barely a second.

Hulking, obsidian skinned, with huge draconic wings stretching behind him, the Demon Lord Hast’durin’koth, Keeper of the Endless Fury and Greater Divine of the Fifth Hell, unleashed his wrath. The burning ball of red emotions cracked Nate’s rune like a rotten egg, blue and yellow fragments of Divine Energy and mana raining down and being absorbed back into the environment.

Kiri appeared out of nowhere, still covered in the red dirt that she had been buried in by Lord Hast’s last attack. Kiri’s counter punch was blocked by a scaled wing, Hast barely moving an inch, before he spun striking back with an earth-shattering blow. Kiri rocketed off into the distance again. Only seconds had passed but that was enough time for Nate’s mind to be hard at work.

The Demon Lord was stronger than Nate hoped, but not outside of his estimations. A third evolution Divine, which put the demon at the higher end and meant that it was somewhere between levels one-hundred and eighty and two-hundred and forty. Nate suspected it was somewhere in the middle, with almost as much Divine Energy as Nate and Kiri. Of course it had more Stats, more powerful Skills with more Divine improvements and that meant it was getting more per Divine Energy it spent than they were. Or so it likely thought. After all, Nate and Kiri weren’t using Class Core granted Skills. Their Abilities were less static, which meant Nate could modify them on the fly. Or improve them.

Nate needed two things. He needed to slow Demon Lord Hast down and he needed Frick and Wulfgar to leave the battlefield. Protecting them while also protecting himself was going to become a problem.

With Kiri flying off into the distance, Nate knew he was the next target. Reinforcing his Barrier was the right decision as Demon Lord Hast appeared in front of him, Nate unable to track him visually. The demon's titanic, black fist crashed into Nate’s barrier and Nate felt a spike of fear as the barrier crumpled and Nate was sent flying down towards the ground. Pain wracked his body and he realised he was only looking out of one eye. The other was fractured, along with his skull, and the entire lower half of the left-side of his body was a mangled mess.

Life Imitates Art bloomed, shining with blue and golden light through his skin as Nate once more rewrote Reality. His body, a moment ago mangled beyond recognition, was restored to his idea of perfection. Within his spatial space, deep in the depths of his gallery, a painting transformed. What had once been a self-portrait, now showed a mangled and brutalized Nate on the edge of death with a fractured skull ready to leak out his all-important brain matter. Next to that painting was another self-portrait, and another, stretching back in row after row of paintings of himself.

Using his Gravity Control rune he slowed his descent, landing on the ground in time to see the goop and paste that had once been Jemima slide across the ground slowly, coalescing back into the woman. Nate sighed internally. He should’ve suspected the old witch would have some sort of life-saving Skill. Whatever it was, it came at a cost, as she still looked weakened from the ordeal.

Nate wasn’t the only one to notice her as Lord Hast turned his attention on to the Alchemist, but Jemima immediately threw up her hands.

“I will serve!” she screamed.

Lord Hast chuckled, floating in the sky with wings stretched out, large as a jumbo jet.

“Very well. Then serve. Kill these upstarts, and perhaps I will keep you around as a pet.”

Nate couldn’t even be bothered to frown at the betrayal, if it could even be called that. Jemima had consistently shown that she would do literally anything if it meant she got to live. She’d seen the battle so far and decided Demon Lord Hast was likely to be the victor. So, she had thrown her lot in with him. For a moment, Nate wished she had just died. He knew she deserved death. But after spending time around her, he didn’t want to be the hand that delivered it.

Thankfully, he didn’t have to be.

“I’ll handle her, lad. I’m just a distraction for you against the Greater Divine. But I can handle that hateful bitch!” growled Wulfgar from nearby.

“Take it away from here,” supplied Nate before turning back to Demon Lord Hast.

Wulfgar was a red blur as he charged across the ruined landscape at Jemima, the two slowly moving into the distance as Demon Lord Hast waited in the sky with a cocky smile painted across his fat purple lips.

“Not going to save your new pet?” asked Nate curiously.

“If she can’t survive the Bloodborne Executioner then she is too weak to be worth keeping around anyway. You’re all like insects, annoying little insects that just don’t seem to understand when you’re beaten. Why don’t you crush your little escape tokens and leave while you still can?”

Nate could sense Kiri bounding back toward him as he acknowledged Demon Lord Hast’s words. It was obvious to Nate that the Demon Lord was finding them a harder nut to crack than expected and was concerned that the return on Divine Energy for killing them would be less than the cost of putting them in the ground. Nate wasn’t wasting time as he spun a new painting within his Regalia, waiting for the inevitable attack.

When Nate failed to respond, the Demon Lord’s patience ran out.

“So be it,” roared Hast, vanishing from the sky as Nate finally got a sense of the Concepts at play in the Demon Lord’s Skills.

Soul and Wrath. Somewhat similar to Frick in that respect. As Hast appeared in front of Nate, two things happened simultaneously. Nate vanished, activating Life Imitates Art as he repainted his location in Reality, and a blast of Divine Paint from Nate’s Regalia was left where Nate had been standing.

The punch from Hast that would’ve blown through Nate’s barrier for the second time, instead, blasted through Divine Paint which began to slither and crawl across the Demon Lord’s black skin. Forming into an image of chains, the paint snaked over Lord Hast even as the demon tried to remove it with his claws. But he only had two hands and Nate’s mind could split into twenty different tasks when he was using Concepts.

As the Divine Paint finished covering Demon Lord Hast, Nate activated his Art Imitates Life ability fueled by Divine Energy. The painted chains became real, created with the Sigils for Reinforcement, Durability, Soul, and finally Destruction. Demon Lord Hast tore at the chains, trying to remove them even as he released a blast of Divine Energy. Before the links in the chain could be broken, Kiri appeared above Hast, launching herself off of thin air and unleashing a blow empowered by her Regalia and all the damage she had taken. Hast careened into the red dirt with the force of a small bomb, cratering the already fractured valley as red dust concealed him. Nate could still detect the Demon Lord within the dust storm, though even with his senses muted the scream of pain and anger would’ve let him know Hast wasn’t dead, far from it, but he was definitely injured now. Injured, and restricted. The painted chains continue to crawl over him, tearing at his soul, as the destructive elements within left the Demon Lord in constant agony.

Before he or Kiri could move, two ruby red blasts of wrath, streaked with golden energy, exited the dust storm. Kiri evaporated under the ball of wrath, disappearing in a burst of blood and viscera.

Nate’s barrier was destroyed for the second time, though it bought him a moment which was enough that only his skin was melted off of him instead of being vaporised like Kiri. Another application of Life Imitates Art, a touch of Divine Energy, along with another self-portrait gone, and Nate was back to normal. Kiri reappeared, a small amount of Divine Energy flowing into her, as she flashed a smile at him. Acting as if there weren't pieces of her scattered over the area.

Demon Lord Hast came stumbling out of the red dust storm, anger writ on his face and black blood leaking from his mouth.

“Why won’t you two DIE!?”

Kiri smirked, “Because I’m immortal, bitch!”

Nate rolled his eyes and finally unleashed the rune he had been building ever since he painted the chains into existence. A golden rune filled with Divine Energy and laced with the darkness of pure destruction appeared from his Regalia. The beam of purified and empowered Destruction was incredibly expensive and would’ve been hard to land if it wasn’t for the painted chains pulling Demon Lord Hast down and Kiri choosing that moment to kick out the demon’s leg before it could try and escape. The black beam sizzled through the air, destroying everything in its path as Demon Lord Hast’s head vanished.

A moment later a small amount of processed mana and a noticeably larger amount of Divine Energy flowed out of the fallen Greater Divine as notifications went off in Nate’s vision.

Congratulations on defeating a Greater Divine while still a Lesser Divine.
Your achievement has been recorded.

There were more, covering the Challenge.

System Challenge: Bloodthirsty Demons (Fifth Hell)
Waves defeated: Fifteen (including Greater Divine Demon Lord)
System Challenge Rewards: Points will be awarded to each surviving team member upon exit. Peak-Divine Artifact - Fury-filled Demon’s Heart.

You will be automatically ejected from the System Challenge in two minutes.

The fury-filled demon’s heart appeared on the ground between them. The appearance of the divine artifact was a ruby the size of Nate’s head that pulsed with an angry inner glow. Being so close to it, Nate could feel the anger within. He wanted no part of it. A glance at Kiri told him she felt the same.

“All yours, Frick,” muttered Nate as he looked into the distance where Wulfgar was putting the final nails in the coffin that was Jemima.

Frick appeared out of Nate’s spatial zone where he had been hiding to avoid getting in the way. Scooping up the Peak-Grade Divine Artifact, the little Spirit vanished back into the spatial zone, ferrying his treasure towards his own little hole in the ground.

Nate brought up his Status, checking how much Divine Energy he had used. The answer made him sigh. He’d hoped his mental tracking had been wrong and that he’d had more. It would take over a week to recover.

He’d gone through over a hundred Divine Energy. Kiri had been similar, since she’d been empowering herself the entire time just to try and get close to keeping up with the now dead Demon Lord.

To distract himself from the cost of defeating the highest possible level of the System Challenge, Nate opened his mouth.

“Not going to stop him?” asked Nate, nodding towards Wulfgar.

Kiri shook her head, “She had her chance. She knew the rules. It’s no more than she deserves. You don’t have to watch.”

The last was said gently and Nate nodded, turning away and pulling in his senses. He didn’t have to wait long as he heard Wulfgar jogging back to them before another minute had passed.

“It’s done, and about time too,” said Wulfgar.

Nate just nodded and waited for the System to eject them from the Challenge. A moment later the feeling of Space lovingly carrying him back to the World Reaping enveloped his body. All too soon, he was spat out back in the cave where they had found the portal. As they all landed lightly the portal vanished.

“Guess no one else is getting to do that Challenge,” crowed Kiri before she started laughing.

“What?” asked Nate curiously.

“You should check the leaderboard.”

Nate brought up the two World Reaping leaderboards and smiled.

*************

Perenthia Illari’Svell stormed out of the portal maintained by the Starbreaking Guild. A large Dwarf waited on the other side, who bowed formally.

“Welcome to the Starbreaking Guild Bazaar, Lady Illari’Svell. How may…” began Dorin.

“Quiet. Where is he?” demanded Perenthia, rudely interrupting the Starbreaking Guild merchant.

“You mean Nathaniel Weber?” inquired Dorin.

“Obviously.”

“Well he is…”

Dorin paused for a second.

“I can confidently say, looking at the sudden change in the Leaderboards, that he has just completed one of the two System Challenges the Starbreaking Guild identified within a few days of here. Given the sheer…volume…of points he has received, along with not just one, but two, of his teammates, I can with confidence say that this is current location.”

Dorin handed over a map to Perenthia who was too busy staring at the leaderboard.

Individual Leaderboard (Top 12)

1. Nathaniel Weber - Risen Sun Sect (702)

2. Kiri Beaufoy - Risen Sun Sect (600)

3. Wulfgar Bjornson - Risen Sun Sect (600)

4. Perenthia Illari’svell - Severing Blade Sect (172)

5. Kalin Silverscale - Dynasty of the Heavenly Serpent (161)

6. Kole Darkscale - Dynasty of the Heavenly Serpent (157)

7. Sel’kin Might - Flux Industries (151)

8. Lunar Sylvin - Dynasty of the Heavenly Serpent (143)

9. Captain Borin Vaughn - The Golden Tide (142)

10. Drim Hall - The Eternium (135)

11. Gee’k Dumma - Dynasty of the Heavenly Serpent (133)

12. Wu Tos’ama - The Starbreaking Guild (129)

Perenthia frowned in consternation. System Challenges were supposed to cap out at around two-hundred points. One System Challenge shouldn’t have awarded the equivalent of three full challenges completed perfectly. Did he change it? Was that part of his Reality manipulating Skills? Could he convince the servants of the almighty System to change the rules for him? Or was it something else?

Perenthia didn’t even realise she was pulling at her pink hair as she stared at the new Leaderboard rankings. She had known that her Nate was a perfect match for her. How could he not be? They were made for each other. But…until now she hadn’t considered that he might be as strong as her. Or stronger.

She shook her head at that thought, a little hair ripping out as she failed to unclench her hand tangled in it. She was the heir to the Severing Blade Sect, daughter of the Patriarch and carrier of his secret legacy that even now sealed her body. But…he had warned her that there were others in the Heartlands that were aware of the secret legacy he had gifted her. Could Nate be one of them?

Her heart felt like it was going to burst. She was so giddy at the idea that he might possess a Divine Vessel as well. They were perfect for each other! In every possible way! She could just feel it.

“Take me to him,” she demanded of her assistants.

*************

Dorin watched as the heir to the Severing Blade Sect flew into the distance on a flying sword and wiped away the sweat that had beaded on his forehead. The rumours didn’t do her justice. That woman was as crazy as they came, he decided. A small smile appeared on his lips. He’d intentionally failed to mention that Nate was likely headed to the second System Challenge. Dorin thought that maybe that would buy Nate an extra day's head start. That was the best Dorin could do for him.