The throne of roots wasn’t exactly comfy, but at least I wasn’t balancing myself on one leg.

I had my cheek resting on my fist with my stump of a leg crossed over the good one while the twin 30 MP/s streams of Fragmentation Pebbles roared outward from above me in two continuous, overlapping cascades that lit the basin in strobing white with every detonation.

I had even produced enough knights to comfortably hold the line now.

With the fragmentation barrages shredding through the leading Outsiders and softening the ones behind them, the 16 per second production rate had finally built enough sustained pressure that the horde was no longer advancing, just pressing, throwing itself at the wall of greatswords and detonating ice in an endless, shrieking cycle that was loud, relentless and, for the first time since the doors blew inward, no longer gaining any ground.

I watched it all with one eye while the cultist’s words looped in my head.

"What he said..." I started, my voice coming out quieter than I intended, "Each Night of the Red Moon permanently consumes mana from the world’s pool..."

-Ding!

{The Nights of the Red Moon began after Arlen Hale’s death, and as such, I have limited context on their true nature.

But what I can tell you is that your very existence counters it. Or may counter it.}

I tilted my head off my fist and looked at the notification hanging in my vision.

"What’s that supposed to mean?" I said, tilting my head.

-Ding!

{Host, what does the law of conservation of energy state?}

"Out of pocket..." I said, before deciding to humor my guy, "But okay."

I straightened up slightly in the throne, watching a fresh wave of knights pour out of my Domain and crash into the leading Outsiders, and began. "Energy cannot be created or destroyed and can only be transformed from one form to another, or transferred between objects."

-Ding!

{And you break that law with every Ice Pebble you shoot.

The concept of Infinity bound to your MP Regeneration births mana from literally nothing.

You do not draw MP from the world’s pool. You draw from the very concept of Infinity itself.}

I sat with that for a full second before eventually all I could say was-

"Damn,"

-Ding!

{Host, the overarching consequences of just this are unpredictable, to say the least.}

I leaned back in the throne and looked out at the basin, at the Outsider horde that kept pressing and dying and pressing again, and I started laying it out in my head.

[If Pantheon finds out about this... shit, it’s just one thing after the other...]

-Ding!

{You will most likely be turned into a living power plant, ensuring the world’s mana pool never runs dry.}

[My regen is infinite, dude... which means they won’t just stop at maintaining the pool, they would use me to increase global mana levels... they’d artificially increase my MP Capacity and run me at full capacity indefinitely... and if during any of that the Infinity starts taking over...Well...]

I exhaled slowly through my nose and looked at the streams still roaring above me in a new light.

I wasn’t just shooting off magic; I was actively increasing the world’s mana levels even now.

[And that’s not even the worst part.] The thought kept building. [... If Nom-Nom gets captured alongside me, begin a Wendigo Greater Dragon... she’d basically become Pantheon’s ultimate weapon against the Red Moon, a perfect fire-and-forget apocalypse... And Peko, a functionally immortal Phoenix carrying a massive inheritance across every classical affinity, would become the perfect deterrence against every other global power...]

-Ding!

{It is very likely.}

I watched my magic hold back an army of Tier 3 Eldritch horrors, thinking about the specific shape of the trap that had built itself around the three of us.

And the only conclusion that came out the other end of all that thinking was the same conclusion it always was.

I need to get stronger.

Considerably stronger than I currently am.

Strong enough that I am at minimum a deterrence, large enough that moving against me costs more than it is worth.

And the best way to go about it was-

"I need some more conjuration magic," I said the obvious out loud. "... I was able to conjure a knight with 9000 MP in just a few minutes, and the best part is they don’t have a timer... they run until their pool is empty, so give me an hour, and at 60 MP/s, I’d have a single unit with 2,16,000 MP behind it... If I can get Mage-type conjurations, or find a way to make the stored pool detonate like a bomb on command, then-"

-Ding!

{Host, allow me to stop you right there.

This magic. Please give it up.

Give me permission to dissolve it and-}

"Don’t be stupid," I cut it off, watching a fresh cluster of Outsiders get shredded by an overlapping pair of detonations at the line’s center. "This single magic can basically ensure mine, Nom-Nom’s, and Peko’s safety on its own. Think about which is more devastating... me having this magic, or Pantheon turning me into a glorified power plant and Nom-Nom into a literal apocalypse and Peko into their personal winter soldier."

-Ding!

{Both are in equal measure.

But there are other ways.

The Destined Journey, Host. Complete it, and once you are recognized as the Destined Hero, Pantheon will think twice before moving against you.

You do not need this.

Ferrum Knight was-}

"Look, we’ll talk about this later, alright?" I said, and I meant it as a genuine deferral rather than a dismissal, because the system was not wrong that there were other paths; it was just wrong about the timeline.

"I’m not giving up something that has probably enough to keep us safe right now, in exchange for something that would ensure the same thing sometime in the future."

-Ding!

{Host, as you are right-} 𝐟𝚛𝕖𝚎𝕨𝗲𝐛𝚗𝐨𝐯𝐞𝕝.𝐜𝗼𝗺

"What I am right now, without the knights, is weak," I said, watching the line hold. "... I can’t handle the two international organizations at once. Look, just let me focus right now..."

And so I focused.

The hours passed the way they do when you’re watching paint dry, except each one was filled with the same shrieking, detonations, and the same golden outlines pressing against the same wall of greatswords under the moonlight.

And then came the first onset of Mage’s Folly, which arrived somewhere a few hours later.

The itch started at my fingertips the way it always started, and by the time it had climbed my arm and hit my chest, I had already reached into my inventory and measured out roughly 0.5mL from the Grade 2 Healing Potion into my mouth, letting the warmth push back the crawling burn before it could build into something that took my streams with it.

The second onset came faster than the first, and I dealt with it the same way, with another 0.5mL, followed by another wave of warmth pushing back the million tiny teeth biting through me from the inside, all the while the streams kept roaring and the knights kept cycling and the horde kept pressing and dying and pressing again.

I had been running at full capacity since the doors blew inward, burning three times per second the total MP capacity a dude my Tier was supposed to carry, and that figure assumed someone who had specifically dedicated their path to maximizing their mana pool.

The third onset came in even earlier for some reason, and I burned the last of the Grade 2 Healing Potion, drinking what remained in a single gulp before I sent it back to the inventory empty.

[And... that’s all of it...]

The basin stretched out around me in every direction under the full moon’s pale light, thousands of golden outlines cycling through the same endless press and shred and reform that had been going on since the beginning, and I sat in the throne and kept the streams running and kept the knights cycling while the minutes accumulated.

And by the time the last stretch of night arrived, I was no longer sitting upright in the throne.

I had slumped sideways against the armrest by degrees, each hour taking a little more of the posture with it until I was more or less lying in it, my body arranged across my little throne with the kind of complete structural disengagement that had nothing to do with boredom.

Mage’s Folly was working through me in its fourth onset.

The crawling burn was everywhere simultaneously, millions of needles pressing through every layer of skin and muscle before going even deeper than muscle.

My working eye was running blood at the inner corner in a thin, continuous drip that I could feel tracking down the side of my nose, while my head felt like it was in a vice.

Hell, even my nose was bleeding onto my upper lip, and the taste of blood had been in the back of my throat for long enough that I had stopped registering it.

My body was sending very consistent loud signals about what it wanted me to do, and what it wanted me to do was stop using mana, even briefly, even for a moment, just stop and give it a damn rest.

Yet I kept my teeth gritted and kept the streams running.

Because a moment was all it would take for knights that were about as strong as a Tier 1 Mid-Stage to lose ground against a Tier 3 Eldritch entity.

And the horde was not going to pause, and there were still a hundred and thirty-seven people behind the barricade at my back, and the math on what would happen to them if the line broke was not math I was willing to run.

So I pushed through it.

Each minute arriving and passing with the same combination of shrieking and detonations and the crawling agony pressing through me from every direction at once, while I kept my one working eye on the golden outlines through the blood dripping into it, kept the streams flowing, and kept the orbs blooming at sixteen per second.

I just kept my teeth gritted and glared through it all.

And then, in the last minute before dawn, every single Outsider in the basin went still. It was a complete and absolute cessation of movement, every golden outline across the entire basin frozen mid-motion as though something had reached into all of them simultaneously and simply switched them off.

The silence that followed somehow turned out to be the loudest thing I had heard all night.

And then they screamed.

Every one of them, thousands of voices combining into a single deafening screech that hit me straight in the chest and the back of the skull, even rattling through the roots of the throne beneath me.

That unified shriek lasted three full seconds and then cut off as cleanly as it had started.

And the very next second, every single golden outline in the basin turned toward the treeline and moved, not even snapping at the knights still in their path, just going, pouring back across the ground and into the darkness of the forest in a continuous, rushing tide until the last of the gold shimmer disappeared between the trees, and the basin fell empty and silent and still under the first pale grey hint of dawn on the horizon.

I stared at the empty basin for a moment before-

"Finally... Fuck."

I instantly dropped all active streams in the same moment, the fragmentation barrages, the knight production, the Ice Reinforcement, and the background spells all cutting to zero simultaneously, while I sent the command to dissolve the root barricade behind me, crumbling it to scattering fine ash.

But the pain did not go away.

And I lay in the throne with my eye half-closed and the blood still dripping from my nose until I heard my saviour call my name.

"Nico!"

Mitsuki’s voice hit the air at the same moment as the barricade dissolved, and I heard running footsteps crossing the ground toward the throne.

The color left her face the moment she ran up to the throne, her fingers coming up and stopping just short of touching me, trembling slightly in the air.

She stood there, frozen at what the night had reduced me to.

And I looked at her, at the tremble in her fingers, and the working corner of my mouth pulled upward while I raised the stump that had been my left arm in her direction.

"I got a boo-boo..." I said, my voice coming out even worse than a rasp. "Can you kiss it away?"

And the very next second, darkness came up from somewhere below my thoughts and took everything with it.