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"Your magic is incredible," Alex said as Princess reached for Derek, forcing the man to hop out of the way. Glint leapt forward and raked his claws across the Anomaly\'s chest mid-air, but it wasn\'t enough to be a killing blow. "Dying dozens of times every fight seems like it would really start messing with you, though."

Derek pivoted as he landed. He drove his foot into Glint\'s chest, sending the monster skidding back across the clay, then threw himself toward Alex. Princess exploded forward and slammed her body into his, driving him into the ground. Her centipede-leg arms slammed down on his skull and crushed it like a grape.

The Anomaly\'s body pulled itself back together. He rolled to the side to avoid another blow that slammed into the clay behind him. His swords flashed, carving huge chunks of Princess\' body away.

"You figured me out," Derek covered another yawn, thrusting his weapons for Princess once more. She wasn\'t fast enough to dodge, and one of them scraped along her mask. He hopped back before he could press the advantage. "This whole apocalypse has been so tiring. I accidentally slept through the Initialization thing, so I\'m trying to catch up on lost time. It\'s hard when I keep running into strong people, though."

"What happens if you fall asleep mid-fight?" Alex asked. Derek opened his mouth and his hand shot up. "Actually, wait. Don\'t tell me. You really shouldn\'t tell people everything your power does. I don\'t want to win just because you gave me the answers."

"Then let\'s find out which one of us gives out first." Derek turned straight toward Alex. His stance shifted and he lowered his body. The clay beneath his feet cracked as he exploded into motion.

Alex released the power he\'d been preparing into the air before him. Cracks carved through reality as he cast Funhouse, and Derek charged straight into its domain. The man\'s eyes widened as he stumbled out in the wrong direction.

Glint shot forward, raking his claws through Derek\'s body and killing him while he was still distracted.

By the time Derek reformed, there were three copies of Alex standing before him. His mouth dropped open.

"No way! You can summon versions of yourself? That\'s unfair."

"Illusions," Alex said, his voice coming from all three of his bodies. "Two of them aren\'t real."

"Oh," Derek said. "Which is the real one?"

"Illusions wouldn\'t do me much good if I told you which ones were fake, would they?"

"That\'s a good point," Derek said with a knowing nod. He stabbed one of his swords into the dirt and scooped a handful of rocks up from the ground before him. "In that case, I\'m going to start throwing things at you to see which one gets hit."

On the sidelines, Claire pinched the bridge of her nose. "Why are you both telling each other everything you\'re going to do?"

"A gentleman always displays his weapon before he utilizes it in a duel." Derek flung his handful of stones in Alex\'s direction. Princess moved in front of him. The rocks pelted into her harmlessly, and Derek frowned. "Aw."

Why do I almost feel bad about blocking an attack?

Derek\'s sword flashed. It split straight through Princess\' center. The top half of her body sloughed off and splattered to the ground. Black sludge bubbled as she started to pull herself back together. It didn\'t seem like Derek had figured out that she needed her mask to reform yet — nor did it seem that he had to.

Alex\'s eyes widened as Derek blurred. He dove to the side and a sword carved through one of his clones, shattering the power into fragments. Alex hit the ground in a roll and shot back to his feet, leaving a shadow in the place where he\'d been standing.

Glint and Princess both charged Derek, forcing him to change his attention to them to avoid dying again. He was getting close to his limit. The Anomaly alternated between blurring from the speed of his strikes to swaying in place, his eyes fluttering. It wouldn\'t be many more deaths before he passed out — but Alex was far from fresh either.

His energy was running thin… and he was having the time of his life.

"I\'m going to throw my dagger at you now!" Derek declared, ripping the blade free from the back of his palm.

Alex dove to the side as the weapon streaked through the air in a blur of gray above him.

He swapped places with a shadow a moment before Derek\'s sword drove into the ground where he\'d been, but his final clone hadn\'t been as lucky.

"You can teleport too?" Derek\'s mouth fell open in awe. "I\'m so jealous."

"You\'re literally immortal," Alex protested. "How did you not manage to place on any of the Leaderboards?"

Glint lunged at Derek. Mirror scraped against metal. Princess leapt to join the fray, and Derek ripped a third sword from his back. He drove it forward in a blur of motion — and a large crack echoed out. The mask in the center of the Drudge\'s chest shattered.

She collapsed to the ground in a puddle of black sludge that quickly faded from view. Energy entered Alex. At the same time, Glint found Derek\'s neck with his claws.

The other Anomaly collapsed to the ground, only to rise a moment later, his head hanging low and shoulders slumped like a slackened marionette.

"I told you," Derek said, his words little more than a mumble through his yawn. "I fell asleep. I kept trying to fight this really strong monster. It didn\'t work. By the time I woke up, it was all over."

He and Glint lunged at each other.

There was a flash of gray.

The Shardwalker collapsed to the ground, transforming into a stream of energy and flowing into Alex.

Derek turned toward him. He rocked back and forth. For a moment, it looked like he would collapse on the spot, he managed to right himself.

"This… was a good fight," Derek said. He shook his head off like a wet dog. The man was definitely on his last legs. It looked like the mere sight of a bed would cause him to pass out on the spot. Derek let out a massive yawn, then squinted at Alex in an attempt to focus. "I really enjoyed this."

"So did I," Alex replied. He brought his hands together and drew on the final scraps of power he had.

Derek exploded into motion. Chunks of dirt flew up behind him from the force of his movement.

Mirrored shards rolled out from Alex\'s palms like a silver wave. At the same time, he twisted his body to the side to minimize the area that Derek could hit.

His arms jerked. Something slammed into him, and Alex staggered a step back as pain bloomed in his chest, inches away from his heart. Derek\'s sword.

The other man\'s fingers slackened on the sword as his arm fell to his side. He\'d been impaled upon the growing forest of glass shards.

Alex took a step back, pulling the sword free of himself. Sludge dripped from the wound as it sealed itself. It wasn\'t in nearly as bad of a spot as the last one had been, but he still shuddered as energy ripped out of his body, leaving him with nothing. He wasn\'t so drained that his brain had turned to that of a slug, but his magic had dried up completely.

"I… should have realized," Derek muttered, swaying in place. "You get your monsters\' powers. That\'s so cool. It was a good… fight."

He pitched back, crashing to the ground amidst a shower of shattering glass. The huge wound in his chest stitched itself back up — and Derek started to snore.

Loudly.

"That was… certainly something," Claire said from the sidelines.

Alex nodded mutely. Adrenaline still pumped in his veins. Derek had been moving so fast toward the end of the fight that Alex may as well have been fighting an afterimage. The other man\'s powers were incredible.

Blood pooled around Derek\'s body as Alex looked on. The other Anomaly wasn\'t dead yet, but all the locations where he still had weapons jutting out of him had started to bleed — and the wounds showed no signs of closing back up.

The immortality ends when he\'s asleep, huh?

"You\'re right. It was a great fight," Alex told Derek\'s snoring form.

"Are you going to…" Claire trailed off.

For several seconds, Alex didn\'t respond. Derek was an Anomaly. The two of them had been doing their absolute best to kill each other just a few moments ago, but the fight had been fun.

The System wants anomalies to kill each other. I\'ve got absolutely no problem obliging it when the other person deserves to get killed, but I\'m not some mindless slave to its desires that just kills everything that I get pointed at.

"No," Alex replied, turning away from Derek and starting back toward Valley Ford. "I\'m not."

Claire blew out a breath and fell in alongside him. "Why? Not that I\'m arguing with the choice, of course. He was kind of fun. You do realize he\'s definitely going to come after you again though, right? Derek didn\'t strike me as the type of person to just give up."

"Oh, I\'m counting on it," Alex said with a grin. "That fight was incredible. Killing Derek now would just deprive me of the chance to improve more in the future. That\'s worth way more than an Auxiliary Skill upgrade. The best way to improve is to push yourself, and Derek was a really close match for me."

"That\'s an Alex answer if I\'ve ever heard one."

"It is, isn\'t it?" They walked in silence for several minutes before Alex abruptly came to a halt. Ford was still a good walk away, and the roar of the vortex of water above the city hadn\'t quite grown loud enough to drown out their thoughts.

They were alone.

Claire glanced back at him, confusion playing across her features. "Is something wrong?"

The moment we get back to Valley Ford, who knows when we\'ll get another quiet moment. I can\'t count on it anytime soon — but I\'m done letting things keep delaying me.

"Wrong? I don\'t know about that," Alex replied with a small frown. "Maybe you can tell me. I\'ve been confused about something."

"Yeah?" Claire asked. "What is it?"

"Do you remember when we met a while ago?"

Claire nodded. "What about it?"

"You said you\'d been in your apocalypse for around a week," Alex said, watching Claire\'s expression carefully — not that he expected to find much in it. Court was her battleground, not his. "But it\'s been less than a week on Earth, and we\'ve already had all 3 of our Initializations. You should have known they exist. So why didn\'t you say anything about any of them?"

"I\'m not sure what—"

Alex held up a hand.

"A real answer, Claire. What are you hiding?"

He locked eyes with her. Neither of them spoke for a long few seconds. They remained as still as statues, frozen in time and thought.

Then Claire blew out a long sigh.

"Well, shit." Her features went flat. Claire\'s slight accent changed, losing what had almost been an Irish lilt and drawing closer to something far more serpent-like. "Getting caught by something so stupid is painfully embarrassing. That\'s what a going without blood for so long does to a Dhampir — but well played for paying attention. I honestly didn\'t even remember that slip up myself."

Damn. So she really was lying. That… kind of hurts, actually.

I trusted her.

How much does she know? And why didn\'t she tell me? What\'s the point of that? I don\'t see what benefit she would get from hiding that information. Even if this was some sort of trick, she should have capitalized on prior knowledge she had on the Initializations to perform even better than she did. I\'m missing something.

"So are you going to answer my question? Saying I caught you isn\'t quite going to cut it."

"No," Claire said, reaching to her arm and pulling the bracelet off her wrist. "I\'m not going to answer your question — not outright. I could. Don\'t get me wrong. It\'s not that I can\'t. I won\'t lie about that. But I would lose too much if I did. Even revealing this much is going to sting… but I like you, Alex. And because of that, I\'ll I tell you why I won\'t answer."

Her name and class shimmered to life above her head in golden letters.

Claire - Dhampir Warrior (Novice 9)

She lifted her other hand to her right ear, to the tiny silver earring within it, and removed it.

The identification above Claire\'s head rippled.

Then the words started to change.

"This is my real class," Claire said. "I stole it from one of the Nightmarch family\'s Heirs when she came to my planet together with the System — and I stole a Trial she had along with it. If I ever reveal anything about the Nightmarch family that someone doesn\'t already know, I\'ll fail the Trial and lose everything that I worked for. No matter how much I like you, I can\'t let that happen. I paid too dearly for this opportunity. I had to lie… but for what little it\'s worth, I\'m sorry."

And then the words above her head finished changing.

Claire - Nightwhisper (Novice 9)