Chapter 67: A Losing Battle

Derivan was more hurt than he had ever been.

He was still alive, crucially. His chestplate, where the runes that kept him alive were etched — that was still entirely intact. But it was only intact because he'd made sacrifices elsewhere. Because when Irvis forced him to choose between damage to his chestplate and damage to something else, he'd always chosen something else. He was fairly certain he'd survive even if Irvis managed to take off his head.

Not that he wanted to test that. Being deprived of sight along with his limbs didn't sound like a good time.

Derivan had taken on almost half of Irvis' attacks, trading places with Misa whenever he could. She was still blocking him successfully, but it was taking something vital out of her. There were dark circles under her eyes, and almost a gauntness to her frame that hadn't been there before. She was spending more mana than she ever had.

Patch told him, too, that the reality anchor she held with her was straining. It wasn't about to be destroyed, exactly, but it was a reminder that there was more at stake here than their own lives. If Misa died... Well. That was one of the reasons he was taking as many hits as he could.

Sev was healing them. He'd tried to tank a couple of hits with his barriers when he could, but most of the time he was saving mana to keep Misa healed; he could do that for less mana than it took to block one of Misa's attacks.

All of that to say that the fact remained that they were losing.

Irvis surged towards him using one of the three bodies he'd created; Misa was dealing with the other two, and Irvis seemed to be studiously ignoring Sev, for whatever reason. There was something there, though Derivan didn't know what. There had to be a reason he wasn't attacking their healer—

Fangs crashed towards him, and Derivan tried to pull out of the way as best he could. He twisted, and he felt a part of his body turn into slime, affording him just a touch more flexibility than his metal usually offered. He was almost out of range—

But Irvis could freely change his form the same way Derivan could, and he adjusted easily, his entire body unfolding into a mouth so it could snap shut around him. Derivan wasn't used to fighting like this, and the Slime stat wasn't second nature to him the way Physical Empathy was. His sword was out of position, and the best he could do was bring his left arm up to stop Irvis' teeth from just biting through his chestplate, even as he shoved backwards as fast as he could with his feet.

It worked, mostly. Just like most of Irvis' attacks before, his armor was strong enough to withstand the direct hit — but it wasn't strong enough to withstand whatever it was Irvis had on his fangs, that drooling liquid that was so much more than a simple poison. It began eating into his metal almost immediately.

Derivan didn't hesitate. His left arm was mostly useless from the forearm onwards anyway; the metal was chipped and torn from the bits and pieces he'd been forced to hack off from Irvis' other attacks. One quick cut was all it took.

It was fortunate his sword was strong enough to slice through his own metal.

The remnants of his left forearm fell to the floor. The saving grace here was that it didn't hurt. There was, at most, a dull throbbing that Derivan interpreted as his version of pain. He heard Misa shout something that was muffled by the still-rising music and the sound of Irvis' own eldritch taunting. She sounded angry.

She would be. Derivan almost smiled at the thought.

"Derivan!" Sev was closer to him, and his voice clearer; Derivan saw the way he started forward, only barely stopping himself from running right to Derivan's side. He looked lost, desperate. "Shit, I'm — I need to heal you. I'm going to try. I know we were talking about avoiding it but—"

"Do it," Derivan said. He understood the need for it. The worry was that he would get the Health stat, and lose the advantage his lack thereof gave him in fights, but this was — his lack of a Health stat wasn't helping him against Irvis. He still didn't know if Irvis had Health.

Sev shut up and cast. Derivan felt that rush of divine magic flowing over him, something he hadn't experienced since he'd first lost the stat. Irvis was attacking him — he hadn't stopped to wait — but transforming the way he did seemed to take something out of him, and he'd turned back into his humanoid form, reshaping one arm into a blade instead.

That was... more manageable. Irvis was still faster than him by a long shot, but Derivan was better with a sword. This was familiar ground for him. He could survive.

Though it didn't give him much of an opportunity to check his stats and see if he had actually regained Health. His metaphorical heart sank, though, when he realized his arm wasn't healing.

This would qualify as a status ailment of some sort; a malus. Sev had the ability to heal those, but if he hadn't already—

He saw Sev shake his head slightly.

If he hadn't already, then he'd probably tried and failed.

It didn't matter. There were other ways to get his arm back. The problem in the here and now was mostly the fact that losing an entire arm threw his balance off, and it limited his options. His options were already limited, and using the dungeon against Irvis wasn't going as well as he hoped.

He'd managed to work out more about what they were supposed to do, partially through Patch, and partially through an observation of what Irvis did in different variations of their reality through Shift.

The room they were in was a sort of hexagonal column, and each of the six walls had a different pattern painted on them. Every wall corresponded to a different instrument, and specific parts of each pattern corresponded to a different note. In the normal case, the elevator would begin rising, and music would begin playing; the potion-golems, or whatever monsters had been triggered or created in the other sections of the dungeon, would spawn and fight until whatever song was playing was 'completed' by the delvers. Completion, in this case, was defined as participating and guiding the song to an end point. Different song-completions led to different outcomes, whether it was a buff for the delvers or a malus for the enemies.

And the dungeon didn't recognize Irvis as an enemy. It thought he was one of them. That was a problem for them if they wanted to try to use the dungeon against him; anything they did would affect him, too. There was something Derivan thought he could do there — Irvis wasn't connected to the system in the same way, and so buffs and maluses would probably affect him differently, in a way he could affect with Patch...

But it was all a lot of conjecture. The possibility of damaging the stat wasn't a concern for him at this point, at least. There was too much danger here for him to restrict his options.

"Performance issues?" Irvis smirked at him, mocking. He'd relaxed a lot once he took he'd stopped restricting himself, like he wasn't worried anymore. Derivan wondered why he'd felt the need to restrict himself in the first place. He kept doing this, though, pausing the fight just so he could mock them. Normally they would have ignored it and kept fighting, but...

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They needed the break. If Irvis was going to give it to them, even if it was to mock them, so be it. Derivan used the opportunity to surreptitiously check his status.

The good news was that he didn't have Health, still, though he didn't know if that news was good exactly. The... not good, but neutral news was that he had gained two new stats, which he'd sort of suspected was the other thing that might happen if Sev tried to heal him.

So, one stat from Sev, and the other was likely from Irvis.

Grace: 1

Intensity: 1

...He could tell nothing from the names. He couldn't feel any new sense like Shift and Patch, but then Shift had taken some time for him to really understand. It didn't mean much that he couldn't sense anything now.

But it also meant it didn't give him anything new to use against Irvis. Not yet, anyway.

"If you're not going to answer me," Irvis prompted. "You might as well die."

"I have nothing to say to you," Derivan said evenly. "You wish to see me angry. I am uninterested in giving you that satisfaction."

Also, he wasn't sure he was capable of feeling anger.

Irvis, on the other hand, certainly was.

"DERIVAN!" Misa called out, something in her voice worried and desperate, and Derivan glanced towards her only to see that both of the Irvises she was fighting had disengaged and were now heading directly for him; they moved too fast for him to dodge, and the third one joined in, his body morphing into another mess of endless teeth —

— Misa appeared in front of him, trying to block, though he saw her system connection pulsing through Patch, as though it was being strained; vast swathes of mana were being pulled through her to power her skill, and if it had completed successfully he wasn't sure what would have happened. But that didn't happen, because before the block could complete, Sev threw himself in front of them both, a divine barrier lighting up in front of him —

— And Irvis stopped.

He didn't hit Sev's barrier. He pulled his own attacks back, all three of them in all his forms, and re-coalesced into one being that stared with undeniable anger at Sev.

But he didn't attack.

"Move," Irvis said. Sev narrowed his eyes.

"You won't attack me," he said. "You've been ignoring me for most of this fight. I'm the healer. I'm the first target for almost any group." Sev stalked forward. "If you're not attacking me, there has to be a reason."

"Sev, get back," Misa said, her voice tense. "You can't just make that gamble."

"Even if you're right," Irvis said, his tone almost conversational. "Do you really think I can't get around you? I've been doing that this whole fight. You are nothing. An exceptionally good healer, at best."

"That's a lot of words you're spending talking, and not a lot of time you're spending on doing that," Sev retorted. He didn't move — but, to his credit, he didn't step closer, either. He took Misa's words into account and took a careful step back, but kept himself between Irvis and the others.

Irvis sighed, and clicked his tongue.

Then he launched himself forward, his body splitting apart and going around Sev, straight towards Derivan and Misa. Derivan stepped forward, intent on not letting Misa spend yet another block, but this time Irvis seemed determined to take them both out all at once; he somehow sped up even more, faster than Derivan could react, and though he tried to block with his arm again he'd forgotten that his arm just wasn't there anymore.

Irvis formed a spear of flesh, aimed at his chest; he saw a similar set directed at Misa, except it was a hundred disparate spears. He doubted she had the mana to block that, even with the trade. Not with all the blocks she'd managed so far.

Derivan told himself to do something.

But he didn't know what to do.

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