"I never truly explored what it was, or rather, I couldn't," said Skullius when Fulgardt refused to answer his prior question. "When I became a Tier 1 Null Lifeform and acquired the Penetrator racial properties, Serenity damage was tied to my Levin – the lightning the Penetrators have access to."

The denizens of the hall were approaching. They collectively sensed that the heat of the battle was done. Besides, the emerging explosion just now might have been thwarted, but it did free them from the shackles of immortality, making them even bolder. None of them feared death.

Skullius looked at his hand and cracked the knuckles one after the other. "A lot of variables were mixed in back then. I was an anomaly even for a Null Lifeform, and I hardly ever used my Penetrator form when moving amongst humans. Serenity damage as a concept needed to be practiced, like a muscle. Its range of damage back then wasn't strong enough to beat Advancement Stagers, even though it potentially could, with the right mind and ingenuity. I didn't have that yet." 𝑓𝓇𝘦ℯ𝘸𝘦𝑏𝓃𝑜𝘷ℯ𝑙.𝑐𝑜𝓂

He looked into Fulgardt's wrathful eyes.

"Serenity damage can put aspects of both living and unliving things to sleep. You feel it with your conscious ability to manipulate darkness and light, right?" Skullius gave a small smile. "The Warmoth must have desired this power as well."

"Enough," hissed Fulgardt. "I'd rather you explain how exactly you've managed to force away my control of your Ju'wtte. I seized control of that Ju'wtte with Reach when I drew it from you, and Reach is still active. So how?"

Skullius gave a series of nods.

"I'm not an idiot. Did you think I'd be puzzled over why you kept erupting into showers whenever you used Ju`wtte inside your own body? I have experience with conflicting powers. Null Life and Voided Death are especially contrary," he said. "Even Reach can't help improve your grasp of Ju'wtte for reinforcement. All I did was fight you for control of the Ju'wtte for a single instance. I won that brief clash and sent the Ju'wtte inside your body, where your control over it falters. And now, I'm using it to immobilize you down to the finer points of your flesh."

The edge of Fulgardt's lip twitched. It was true. He was completely paralyzed, indeed. Was this really checkmate?

"Your skill with everything just miraculously skyrocketed, did it?" he said scathingly and eyed the thing floating above Skullius' head. "It's because of that, isn't it?"

"To an extent." Skullius spared a glance at the crowd gathering around them. "A large part of that is also because of you."

"Me?"

"If it weren't for you tearing through Void's body to reveal the Absolute Sun and introducing me to Litte, I probably wouldn't have forgotten this far." Skullius pointed at his forehead. "You've noticed already, I'm sure, but I have access to an Exotic Parlous Nature that specializes in imbibing the |Greater Cosmic Law|. I call it Maximum Jaqquezjaqqz. The instant it got a taste of Litte, it memorized it, for lack of a better word. I can now reproduce fragments of Litte that accelerate all my mental processes by some margin. Nothing too impressive yet."

Fulgardt scoffed. "Spare me. Your fixation on the idea that I bested myself in the end is forced."

"Is that so?"

"If anything, this only proves that instead of prompting yourself with an ideology and a plan that was wholly yours – something that contradicts who I am and the creed I follow – you had no choice but to rely on the proceeds of my actions to restrain me."

Skullius laughed. "I see."

"There's no other way to interpret it, brat. You even admitted it yourself. Direction was against you from the very beginning. Your only chance to resist a dark fate was to latch onto me! Aren't you some abominable mix of Insurgent Magnus and the Warmoth to begin with? You aren't even your own person! Ha! Even a future variant of you is still tied to me!" The Immoral thought back to that second Skullius who had shown up briefly on the battlefield. He (Fulgardt) had figured sometime after Future Skullius had left that that was no simple clone.

"You mask the creed you follow as a personal, self-made code when you're just a caricature of me, brat!" Ever so slightly, his arms twitched. He was struggling free. "You're a parody! You even forged a select crew of Chosen and convinced them to selflessly die for you – for a goal that shouldn't even concern them – like I did! But where my goal was conceivable, yours is a suicidal tirade! I told you before, and I'll tell you again: you are no successor of mine. You're a knock-off!"

Everyone in the hall had gathered. They were watching the exchange silently but intently. Aeggr was paying particularly rapt attention to Skullius.

Fulgardt regarded them all with livid, fiery eyes.

"You were celebrating earlier, were you? Hahaha! How precious! You wouldn't know, would you? You wouldn't have even dreamed of the idea that the little skeleton you let walk away from here alive would be the one to appear again, giving you hope, right?" He cackled. "Indeed, he is the one who obtained my powers all the way back then! Do you still feel yourself gushing with relief now, ingrates?"

A good number of the experts gasped, horrified.

It was almost impossible to tie that cowardly skeleton Undead with the bastion of strength standing before them. How could it be? It was impossible to believe!

…But it wasn't a new realization to everyone.

Aeggr, Remos, and Muezzi, at least, were not surprised. It hadn't taken long for them to release after Fulgardt and Skullius emerged.

"Whatever you believe!" Fulgardt struggled. "Whatever you hoped!" He struggled more. "Every! Single! One! Of! You!" Veins throbbed on his forehead. "Is dying a miserable death!"

The Immoral could feel it.

It wasn't over it.

There was a spark of hope when his flesh mustered an ounce of resistance against the restraining power of Ju`wtte.

"How unfortunate…"

…

Those words and the snap of Skullius' fingers stole the commanding presence Fulgardt had been garnering.

In a blink, multitudes of creatures – humanoid and otherwise – were surrounding them. They made a ring around the denizens of the Hall of Fulgardt, and the two Insurgent Magni.

Fulgardt was just as shocked as the experts in the Hall. The new arrivals were similarly perturbed and confused. Some of them, who had long gone mad, had their senses restored. They stared ahead, instantly recognizing Fulgardt.

Indeed, Skullius had warped everyone trapped within the Labyrinth to the Hall of Fulgardt, freeing them.

His voice quietened everything.

"There's a lot more irony to this than you realize, sockethole," said Skullius to an ashen Fulgardt.