Infinity Is My Affinity?!?-Chapter 160: We Have The Whole Night All To Ourselves~

[Get up...]

That was the only coherent thought that assembled itself in my brain as I lay flat on my back, staring up at the overcast sky with one working eye and approximately half a body.

The second thought was that my shotgun was somewhere behind me, seven or eight meters away based on the skid, and using it would require either two functioning arms or a minor miracle, and I was currently short on both.

While the man walked toward me without urgency. No rush or tactical positioning. He moved across the rooftop the way a person crosses a room to pick something up they left on the table, patient and completely unbothered, his black cloak trailing behind him while that cursed blade hung loose at his side, dripping red shimmer onto the roof with every step.

The shrieks and the beating of tentacles on the ground echoed in my ears from below, as they swarmed and screamed against the living quarters’ walls. 𝑓𝘳𝘦𝑒𝑤𝑒𝘣𝘯ℴ𝘷𝘦𝓁.𝑐𝑜𝑚

[Don’t think about that right now...] I told myself. [Need to handle the immediate problem first.]

The said immediate problem stopped two meters away and looked down at me.

Up close, the man was tall. Helmet-faced, armored in something that caught no light whatsoever. The only feature I could actually read was the eyes, two points of deep, glowing red burning through the visor slit like coals left too long in the fire.

"How do you still have mana?" He tilted his head slightly.

His voice was soft, almost gentle, having no business being that normal, especially coming out of something that looked like that.

"Wouldn’t you like to know," I said with a sneer, and even I had to admit that sneer lost some of its edge, given I was bleeding through both stumps simultaneously.

He considered that for a moment, before-

"Yes," he said simply. "I very much would."

The next moment, the sword moved.

It was just a single, almost lazy flick of the wrist, and a phantom replica of it materialized in the air directly above my midsection, identical in every detail, that same cursed red shimmer bleeding off its edges.

It stayed suspended just for one second before it drove itself into the side of my stomach.

-AHHHA-!

The scream came out whether I wanted it to or not as the phantom sword tore straight through the layer of frost on my stomach like it was paper and buried itself to the hilt, and the curse took hold the same instant it entered, spreading outward from the wound in a cold wave as though something was reaching into my very being and twisting.

-CRUNCH-! went the wood under my fist as I instinctively slammed it into the roof.

And the very next second, the phantom blade simply vanished, dissolving into nothing, and the blood followed immediately, gushing fast across my side.

The man casually crouched beside me, completely unhurried, resting one armored forearm across his knee.

"So," he said, in that same soft voice. "How do you still have mana? Is it an artifact? A potion? A blessing?"

I stared at the sky, gritting my teeth through the agony rushing my body.

He waited three seconds, then stood up and drove a kick straight into my bleeding stomach, sending me skidding across the rooftop in a grinding scrape of wood and blood, before I came to rest in a crumpled heap at the base of the roof’s edge.

[Fuckin hurts!] I wheezed, which was probably the most useless observation I had made since the whole thing began.

But the distance bought me exactly what I needed.

The shimmer of my inventory lit the darkness, and the Grade-2 capsule materialized in my right palm before I shoved it into my mouth and bit down.

And the next moment, the warmth hit like a detonation.

Thirty seconds of immortality flooded my system in a rushing tide of gold and heat, and I felt the stomach wound seal itself with a sharp internal pressure that made me exhale hard through my nose.

But the stumps didn’t regenerate, and neither did my vision.

The stomach wound closed, but the curse still coiled inside.

[System... why am I not healing?!]

-Ding!

{Host is infected with a Tier 9 Eldritch Curse.

Limbs will not regenerate. Wounds will not fully heal.

Cure: Grade 1 Cleansing Potion, or Cleansing performed by a Crusader.}

[Great.] I groaned internally, pushing myself up onto my remaining elbow. [Amaterasu’s Crusader is dead... and I’m pretty sure that potion is going to cost more credits than I have ever seen in my life.]

-Ding!

{It will cost: 15,000,000,000.}

[THIS IS BULLSHIT!]

Across the roof, the man had watched me with his arms behind his back, head tilted at that angle, like a person watching something mildly interesting happen to someone else.

"You even have a spatial storage artefact..." he said, and I felt something close to greed in his voice. "Interesting."

I simply raised my right hand in response and fired.

The consolidated 60 MP stream of AP Ice Pebbles screamed across the rooftop at supersonic speed, each one a compressed, catastrophic boulder of reinforced ice aimed directly at the center of his chest.

But he didn’t move.

Four phantom blades erupted materialized in the air in rapid succession and began moving at a speed my Precognition barely registered, intercepting the stream with inhumane precision and shredding every single pebble before it reached him.

-CRACK-!-CRACK-!-CRACK-!-CRACK-!-CRACK-!-CRACK-!

The detonations lit the roof in strobing white flashes, and through the barrage, he kept walking toward me at a leisurely pace, while phantom blades weaved and sliced without him so much as glancing at them.

"Truly," he said, raising his voice only slightly over the explosions, "how are you doing this?"

[He is shrugging my hardest stream without so much as a twitch in his fingers!] I gritted my teeth while the pain from my phantom limbs burned along nerve endings that had nothing left to attach to.

Below the roof, the Outsiders hammered against the walls of the living quarters in a thundering, relentless rhythm.

My black root barricade was in there, yes.

But without constant repairs and cover fire, it would not hold the full horde forever. I could feel the clock on it even without my Domain covering it.

I erupted roots from within my ten-meter range, thickening them fast, reinforcing them jet-black with everything I could push into them, enriching the thorns in my unique neuro-toxin.

Tens of them, each one over ten meters, thrashing upward in a violent crown around my position, but the man didn’t even glance at them.

He stepped into my domain, and the phantom blades moved before the first root could connect.

-SLASH-!-SLASH-!-SLASH-!-SLASH-!

Every root that swung toward him was cut into pieces with clean, contemptuous efficiency, while the severed sections tumbled across the rooftop, and the poison dripped uselessly into the wood.

And through all that, he still hadn’t lifted the sword itself.

[This is bullshit!]

-Ding!

{Enemy’s cultivation technique identified.

The Way of The Sword Saint.

Host, that is one of the most powerful cultivation techniques in the world.

It was also Arlen Hale’s cultivation technique.}

[So it’s your damn ex AGAIN!] I gritted my teeth so hard I felt them creak. [How do we beat him?!]

-Ding!

{So far, he has displayed proficiency through the technique’s third sequence.

The first sequence creates swings of phantom blades from each sword swing, carrying all enchantments of the wielded blade.

The second sequence allows conjuring and controlling those phantoms mentally, without swinging. Limited to his domain.

The third sequence launches them as projectiles.}

[System! HOW DO I BEAT HIM?! If I fall, so does everyone in there! Call Nom-Nom!]

-Ding!

{The Outsider’s territory becomes a temporarily separate dimension on the night of the full moon. Contact is impossible.

And you cannot beat him. Not as you are.

It is the most efficient cultivation technique in existence. He will kill you ten times over before running out of mana.}

I lay there for a full second, absorbing that.

The phantom pain of my missing arm and leg burned in the empty air where they used to be in a hot, insistent ghost of sensation that my brain refused to stop sending signals about.

My left eye felt like a coal pressed into the socket from the inside.

And deep down, in the part of me that existed beyond pride and stubbornness and whatever insanity that had kept me functional since the doors blew inward, I knew the system was right.

That man hadn’t even tried yet.

-Ding!

{Quest Received!

Title: Heroic Babysteps.

Objective: Defeat the Entropy Cultist and hold back the Outsiders besieging the Hollow Cinder Mine.

Conditions of Failure: Host’s death. The death of anyone under Host’s protection.

Reward:

Skill: Trace (Unquantifiable)

Description: Analyzes a target object, substance, or construct down to its fundamental structural composition and imprints the complete blueprint into the user’s long-term memory. Includes material structure, internal layering, and functional relationships.

*Note: Does not work on subjects with a soul or ego.

MP Cost: 60 (Scales with complexity and resistance.)}

And my brain stopped... like fully stopped, the way a machine locks up when you drop a wrench into its gears.

Cause that skill...

That was the exact skill I had marked way back at the southern border as a Suggested Reward.

The ultra-rare skill that couldn’t be bought through any conventional means was sitting right there while I bled out on a rooftop.

And then something in my chest just cracked open, and I started laughing.

-Pfft-! Hahaha-!-Hahaha-!

It came out more unhinged than I had intended, and I did not stop it.

-Ding!

{Host, please note that I have no control over quest generation.}

"I know," I said out loud, still grinning, and switched ammo, and in came Snowballs.

The entire 60 MP stream switched into giant glittering snowballs, and the roof exploded into cold white.

-FWOOM-!

It was an explosion of frost, a massive blast of frost that engulfed everything ahead of me in under two seconds.

[You can’t cut through a snowball!] I grinned, firing round after round into the growing whiteout with every ounce of bandwidth I had. [Do what you will, but you’re getting coated in... even I don’t know how many degrees!]

Through my Domain, I felt him slow.

The phantom blades were still moving, intercepting anything solid, slicing apart my roots on reflex.

But the frost was everywhere, and you can’t cut it.

It simply piled onto him, coating the black cloak in thick, creeping ice, building layer by layer while he stood in the center of the whiteout, while the temperature dropped around him like a closing fist.

While I pulled out my trump card.

[System! I still have that Epic-Grade Magic Token! You know everything about his technique. So, buy something that works with my MP Regen and beats it. Do it now!]

-Ding!

{Epic-Grade Magic Token consumed.}

The knowledge hit me like a freight train, like a complete and sudden instinctual comprehension of the magic as though I just remembered something I had forgotten.

Every detail of it was present and functional and ready the moment I reached for it.

And the very next second, Precognition screamed, and I threw myself sideways off the ground, while the phantom blade that had been aimed at the center of my skull instead carved a groove through the rooftop where my head had been, sending splinters across the rooftop.

It stopped the barrage because, frankly, it was no longer needed.

And from the thick wall of white fog and crystallized air, the man walked out, reaching up to brush the accumulated frost from one armored shoulder with a slow, almost casual pat as he looked at me.

And for the first time, those glowing red eyes held something that wasn’t mild clinical interest.

"Magnificent!" he said, and he meant it.

Leveling the sword directly at me, his voice carried something genuine in it, somewhere between reverence and hunger. "How truly magnificent! The amount of mana you expended in mere moments surpasses my own total capacity by manyfold!"

"Yep," I said, and pushed myself upright.

[System. Buy me a crutch.]

-Ding!

{Purchased.}

The wooden crutch materialized in my palm in a shimmer of blue light, and I tucked it under my right arm and leaned my weight onto it.

The man tilted his head again, watching me with those burning eyes, and then he did something I wasn’t expecting.

He spread his arms wide.

"I will make you this offer just once..." he said.

"Oh my, so generous..." I chuckled.

"Join us!" He said as his arms went wider. "Prostrate yourself before the one true God of the new world, and rule it like a king! For you are worthy! For the magnitude of your power, for the brilliance of your talent. For-"

"Oh, shut the fuck up," I laughed out loud. "You ever hear yourself?"

He stood there for a beat with his arms still spread wide, the frost settling around him, the sword still shimmering red, and the siege raging below us before he slowly lowered his arms.

"So be it," he sighed, and his voice was back to that soft, patient thing that, for some reason, was more threatening than shouting.

"But you will tell me why you haven’t run out of mana. Or I will rip the answer out of you." He said and took one step forward. "After all, we have the whole night, all to ourselves."

"The whole night?" I grinned. "Come now, you’re gonna make me blush."

And the next second, the air within my Domain shimmered.

Gold points of light, materializing all over my ten-meter radius as though a swarm of fireflies had descended on the rooftop all at once, dozens of them blooming into existence in the dark, hovering and pulsing with warmth.

And slowly each orb expanded, unfolding from a point of gold light into something towering, something armored in jet black plate with molten gold burning in the gaps between each piece, filling the joins and seams with a luminescence that pulsed like a slow heartbeat.

There they were... my knights in literal shining armor.

Each one 12-feet tall, each one carrying a great sword that dwarfed my entire body.

One by one, they filled my Domain, materializing from that orb until the entire domain held a ring of massive black knights, each one gleaming with that gold-lit inner fire, and each one dropping to a single knee in absolute unison with a heavy, resonant impact that shook the wood beneath my crutch.

-THOOM-!

The silence that followed was genuinely something.

I stood in the center of them, one arm, one leg, leaning on a crutch, left eye completely dark, and grinning so wide my face ached.

While the man stared, those glowing red eyes moved slowly across the kneeling knights, and for the first time since he’d stepped onto this roof, he was stumped.

While I stood there grinning ear to ear.

"Now, then..." I said in a voice as soft and patient and gentle as his had been, turning every syllable back on him with interest.

"You are going to answer me a bunch of questions... Or I will rip the answers out of you."

"After all..." I couldn’t help cackling, "We have the whole night... All to ourselves~"