Overlord Tamer: All My Pet Monsters Have God Potential

Chapter 212: Harrowing Quest (2)

"Nice!" Yuna shouted, though her own fight had taken a brutal turn, one of the remaining copies catching her across the ribs hard enough to send her skidding across the shattered glass floor.Emberlune snarled and threw itself between Yuna and the follow-up strike, taking the hit meant for her directly, illusion and real fire both flaring violently as the fox was sent tumbling.

"Emberlune!" Yuna’s voice cracked, fury and fear tangled together as she forced herself back up, flame gathering white-hot around both fists. "Ruinblaze, full output!"

She threw herself back into the fight with reckless abandon, Wraithbound Convergence splitting her presence again despite the strain it put on her already-taxed Soul Palace, striking the copy from three overlapping angles at once.

It wasn’t enough to kill it outright, but it staggered badly, giving John the opening to finish what she’d started, driving a Feralsteel-coated strike straight through its core.

One copy left, and it was the one still locked in combat with John and Azelis both, and it seemed to sense the shift in numbers, its form growing more frantic, more desperate, lashing out wildly in every direction at once.

One of those strikes caught Azelis directly, a glancing blow that should have been survivable, except the shadow behind it carried something corrosive, something that ate into her Soul Energy the moment it made contact, dropping her health in a single, sickening lurch toward zero.

"Azelis!" John’s voice tore out of him before he could stop it, horror flooding through his chest as he watched her stagger, blood welling from a wound that shouldn’t have been physically possible from a strike made of shadow.

"Mirrorborne Bloodspike," Azelis gasped through gritted teeth, and with a sickening wet sound, she severed her own left arm at the elbow with a blade of pure Shadow Ink, sacrificing it entirely.

The reflected deathblow lashed backward into Vaelkyrn’s final form with brutal, undeniable force, a wound tearing open across its shifting mass that didn’t close, didn’t reform, didn’t adapt.

Azelis’s wound sealed itself in the same instant, flesh and bone regenerating rapidly from where her arm had been severed, the sacrifice already paying itself back.

"Now!" she shouted, voice raw. "Its core is exposed, John, now!"

John didn’t hesitate.

He felt something shift inside him, the Eldritch attribute humming beneath his skin responding to the desperation of the moment, black starlight patterns flaring to life across his arms as Alfred, sensing the same surge, howled and closed the distance beside him, jaws already wide.

Together, tamer and pet struck as one, John’s Feralsteel claws and Alfred’s Eldritch-infused bite driving simultaneously into the exposed wound Azelis had torn open.

Vaelkyrn let out a sound that wasn’t quite a scream, layered and distorted, shaking the entire chamber as its form began to unravel from the point of impact outward, shadow peeling away like burning paper until nothing remained but a small, dense fragment of pale light hovering where its center had been.

The Cartographer’s Anchor.

Silence fell over the shattered chamber, broken only by ragged breathing and the faint, settling crackle of dissipating shadow.

"We’re alive," Jibril said, disbelief plain in her voice. "We’re actually alive."

John caught the small, glowing relic in one trembling hand, exhaustion crashing over him all at once now that the fight was over.

"Barely," he admitted, glancing around at the group, battered, bleeding, but standing. "Everyone still in one piece? Mostly?"

"Mostly," Azelis said, flexing her regrown arm with a wince. "I’ll take mostly."

Terravax limped back into view, shell cracked but stable, Selenroot’s healing already knitting the worst of the damage closed. Emberlune pressed weakly against Yuna’s side, singed but breathing.

"Let’s get out of here," John said, pocketing the relic carefully. "Before this place decides it wants a rematch."

*

Nyxareth’s reaction, when they returned and handed over the small, glowing fragment, was something none of them had expected from an entity built from starlight and careful detachment.

Their wings stilled completely, and for a long moment, they simply stared at the Anchor resting in John’s palm.

"You actually did it," they finally said, voice thick with something close to disbelief. "I did not expect... I did not truly believe you would return at all."

"We almost didn’t," John admitted, holding the relic out. "Here."

Nyxareth reached out with something that resembled a hand, and the moment their fingers closed around the Anchor, light bloomed outward from their form, brighter and more solid than before, the shifting starlight settling into something closer to a true shape.

"I feel..." they murmured, flexing fingers that hadn’t fully existed a moment ago. "Whole. It has been a very long time."

"You okay?" Yuna asked, still catching her breath.

"Better than I have been in longer than your kind can easily measure," Nyxareth said, and for the first time, something like genuine warmth entered their layered voice. "Brother John. You have my alliance, and more than that, you have my gratitude. What I promised before was a courtesy. What I offer now is considerably more."

The map above them flared and reorganized itself entirely, sections that had been vague or unmarked sharpening into full, precise detail.

"Permanent shortcuts to every chamber you’ve cleared, as promised," Nyxareth said. "But also this. I can now sense disturbances throughout the entire Labyrinth in real time. If danger approaches while you rest, you will know before it arrives. And should you ever need a swift path out entirely, I can carve one directly to the entrance, no matter where you stand."

"That’s..." Jibril exhaled slowly. "That’s incredible."

"That’s a partner," John said, grinning despite the exhaustion still weighing on his limbs. "Same deal as Xhalthuun. You’re not alone down here anymore."

Nyxareth’s wings unfurled fully for the first time since they’d arrived, starlight trailing from each feather-like edge.

"No," they agreed softly. "I suppose I am not."

*

They rested longer than usual after that, the toll of the fight sitting heavier on all of them than any prior encounter, but by the time they pushed onward, a quiet, hard-won confidence had settled over the group that hadn’t been there before.

If they could survive that, the rest of the Labyrinth suddenly felt considerably more manageable.

*

The path deeper introduced something new not long after, rivers of liquid shadow that moved against gravity, climbing the walls and dripping from the ceiling in slow, hungry tendrils that lashed out at anything warm-blooded that came too close.

"Don’t touch it," John warned, cutting through a tendril with a blade of Chronolight before it could wrap around Jibril’s ankle. "Chuthulos said it eats Soul Energy directly on contact."

"Noted," Jibril said, stepping back sharply.

Azelis took point here.

"Shadow Ink," she murmured, weaving her fingers through the air, and threads of true darkness bled out from her hands, merging with the ambient shadow of the river itself, blending seamlessly into it.

For a moment, nothing seemed to happen.

Then the shadow river recoiled violently, thrashing as if burned, and Azelis’s expression sharpened with focus.

"It doesn’t like being copied," she said. "Shadow Ink can mimic ambient darkness closely enough to disrupt whatever’s controlling this thing. Give me a minute."

While she worked, Volkia took to the air, wings folding out into segmented plates as thin distortions rippled around its joints, warping space just enough to phase through a lashing tendril that should have caught it directly.

Terravax, still favoring his cracked shell slightly, planted himself in the river’s path anyway, refusing to yield ground, roots anchoring deep as tendril after tendril broke uselessly against him.

"Good boy," John said, patting the turtle’s massive head as he passed. "You’ve earned a long rest after this."