Asadel was having a hard time finding deer. The wasteland stretched on and on. The only differentiating feature he had run into that was interesting was a big metal room that wouldn’t let him in. He assumed it was a dungeon. Not that he needed to go in, but the denied entry was an insult to him.

He was a hero. And while he wasn’t exactly here to save this world, he was here to help, and it wasn’t cool for dungeons to not let him in.

Not only had he failed to find animals to cook and eat, he also realized that there wasn’t anything to cook them with. He was sweaty and running out of buffs. So far, there hadn’t been so much as a hair to indicate that anyone was on this planet but him. Increasingly pissed, he plodded on and on until a bright blue light lit up on the horizon, slightly off from where his system compass was pointing.

Screw this, that looks fun.

In Asadel’s experience, bright blue lights did not mess around. Where there were bright blue lights, there would be adventure. Especially bright blue lights that ended up bursting across the horizon and drawing stuff on the ground before disappearing in a weird way. That was demon lord shit if he ever saw it.

Abandoning the system compass entirely, he started to head in the direction of the light. It wasn’t exactly soon, but eventually, he got to the demon lord’s dread fortress of death. It was less impressive than he expected it to be, more in the line of “small failing subsidence farm” than “dungeon of certain death.”

“System, what the hell is this?” Asadel yelled, without results. Nobody was here. If there was some massive-blue-light generator hanging around, it was doing a very good job of pretending to be cabbage sprouts or a small shack that looked like it would fall down at a single blow. He was perplexed, but the system has assured him that the only plants on the planet belonged to the demon lord, so there had to be SOME connection.

It was then that he noticed that the system compass was moving. It was possible that it had always been that way, but he hadn’t noticed it when he was walking himself. The movement was minuscule. The demon lord probably didn’t have a system compass, so he’d get slightly off track from time to time. Looking at the variance, the demon would be either heading directly towards or away from Asadel. He resolved to wait.

An hour passed before he realized what must be going on. He had figured it out.

Illusions. This idiot must be messing with my mind.

He popped to his feet, prodding various plants with his sword, trying to figure out the trick to cut through the lies. Whatever illusion had been cast was pretty complete; the tree bark cut like tree bark did. The shack made hollow wooden sounds when poked. Whatever light-illuminating fortress was here, it wasn’t findable under the arcane deception the demon lord was throwing out.

It was then and only then that he heard him. The destroyer of world, singular, was behind him. He wheeled around to see … a dude. A wholly normal guy. Was he wearing armor? Yup. Was he carrying a spear? Yeah. But nobody could do that and still look more average than this man. He was a five out of ten, stock human, male. He looked like he had bought his weapons at the mall, or something like that.

“Hey, over there! I’m Matt! I know you are here on a quest, but before you do it, could we just … talk for a bit?”

Asadel paused. He looked at the ground and took a deep breath, intensely thankful he had figured out the whole illusion-magic stuff before this guy showed up. Even if it was something else, there was certainly something fishy going on here, and the system compass was pointing right at the so-called Matt.

This would be his most difficult battle yet, but the sheer size of his last meal meant a big enough calorie excess that he could meet it at, if not absolute best, at least a little better than normal.

Well-fed wasn’t very good fuel for the skill, and it was the most pathetic of the food-related buffs. He didn’t mind giving up the piddling stat increases it provided, especially since he wouldn’t need them after this anyway. He’d go to another world, hopefully one with both steak and grapes to eat, right after he put down this bastard. He was sweaty and almost hungry, and it was the demon’s fault.

Matt briefly considered fleeing, then didn’t. This wasn’t because he decided against it, but instead because the armored figure was moving so fast that there wasn’t time to do much of anything besides a quick thought about fleeing. It was a Super Saiyan form of his own Survivor’s Dash. In the second it took his new enemy to close the distance between them, all he managed to do was plant his spear in the ground with the business end pointed in the general direction of the approaching danger. Hopefully, whatever glowing movement skill the guy was using didn’t do well with turning.

Sure enough, the guy didn’t turn at all. There wasn’t enough time for Matt to reconsider his attack, so he could only watch as his foe rammed into the spear with his breastplate, directly above his heart. But rather than impaling the swordsman, the tip of the spear failed to penetrate his armor at all. Worse, the momentum pulled the tip downwards against the braced pole, breaking it at the attachment point and catapulting the spearhead away.

When Survivor’s Instinct screamed at Matt to duck, he had enough presence of mind to heed the warning. He got just low enough to avoid losing the left half of his head from a full, overhead swing of the bad guy’s massive sword. Without Matt’s head to slow the momentum, the sword came down at an angle that intersected with the spear pole next. It cut cleanly through the rest of the spear.

“Matt! Run!”

Lucy was frantic, but he couldn’t run yet. Matt cursed his failure to level Survivor’s Dash, not that it would have mattered. Armor dude was still glowing gold. For all Matt knew, his enemy was faster than him and would catch any escape attempt. If hand-to-hand combat was inevitable, he wanted to be in the best condition for it.

In his crouch, Matt gripped his Survivor’s knife and heaved it up in an underhand motion that vaguely tracked the direction of the mystery man’s claymore. He had a good sense of the chances of getting through steel armor with only an all-purpose knife. Not great odds. Instead of the chest or neck, Matt aimed the sweep at his foe’s hands, pleased when the blow actually landed.

“Aghh!” the man yelled, in a surprisingly high-pitched voice. In his apparent surprise, the sword flew out of his hands, clattering to the ground a few feet away. Matt brought the knife up towards the now disarmed man’s body, hoping to get lucky with a blow aimed at the neck, but instead was immediately blown back by a full stomp on his chest.

Did this asshole just Sparta-kick me?

Matt flew back three or four feet, immediately rolling to avoid whatever attacks were following him to the ground. None came. He looked up in surprise to see his attacker bending over to get his sword before moving towards him again. Is he … playing with me? Matt thought, confused. If the guy could kick him over like that, there was no question that his strength score was higher than Matt’s. On the ground, he’d destroy Matt. Why hadn’t he?

My sword!

Asadel looked on in horror as his sword flew away. As expected, the evil one was tricky. He had sacrificed a trash weapon to block the first strike, then basically disappeared before popping up to disarm him. Who attacked hands?

The demon lord then went for Asadel’s neck. In a moment of pure instinct, he threw a kick, and the demon lord flowed with the kick to get distance on Asadel. He let him. How was he supposed to fight without his sword? None of his skills worked without it, and the demon lord still had a knife.

He picked up his sword, still pristine and sparkling. He was on a time limit and needed to get the most out of his buff. So he roared and charged in again.

Matt was still on the ground, and watched as the new reincarnator turned back to face him. Thankfully, Survivor’s Instincts was kicking in, assuring him that not all was lost and feeding him plans of attack that were effective against armed opponents.

As he pushed off the ground with his offhand, he used as much strength as he could to gouge a handful of dirt out of the ground. He got to his feet just in time to leap backwards out of the range of another huge strike. The sword was awash in a colorful glow. Matt knew to avoid the hits, even without Survivor’s Instincts screaming at him.

I don’t want to get hit with any of these, but especially not those glow sword strikes. Got it.

The new guy let the momentum of the blade keep going, swinging it 360 degrees for another full-power strike. Before the new strike got going, Matt moved in, checking the rotation of the man’s shoulder with his own and throwing the dirt directly into the reincarnator’s face. The reaction was immediate, and more than Matt had hoped for. The man stumbled back, huffing and sneezing, trying desperately to rub his eyes through his visor.

This seemed like a good time for stabbing.

Before the new guy could recover, Matt did his best to do as much damage as possible. He weaved around the ensuring frantic sword strikes to stab at the man’s legs, arms, and neck. After the first cut, Matt’s opponent started jerking around, smart enough to not stand still while someone was stabbing him.

Unfortunate for Matt, the weird armor that extended to shin and forearm guards made lethal attacks nearly impossible. Matt only managed to land glancing blows. He hoped they would add up, but they didn’t seem to. Whatever stats this guy had brought to the party were enough that Matt could barely hurt him. Even his initial stab was only a moderate wound, the kind that would close up in just a few minutes’ worth of VIT work if it were inflicted on Matt.

After several seconds, the man appeared to have cleared most of the dirt from his eyes. Duck, Survivor’s Instincts said. Matt ducked as a purple swipe sailed over his head, readying himself for the next blow.

Duck, said Survivor’s Instincts. He did. Another blow missed.

Is this the only move the reincarnator has?

The blows were dangerous, and the enemy was fast enough that he could unleash a storm of blows in a couple of seconds. A single misstep would result in Matt split into far more chunks of himself than he preferred. But they were the same blows, the only variation was the color of the glow, not different trajectories. Matt could more or less handle that.

Still, he couldn’t take chances when a single kick or stab could break his defenses wide open for one of those sword-based haymakers. Maybe, just maybe, the suit of armor was lulling him into a false sense of security. He kept his distance as well as he could, counterstriking with his knife to at least keep the man on his toes. It felt like an eternity, but the golden aura finally blinked out.

He can’t be hurt.

Asadel was using his best moves, over and over. Power strike? No good. Expulsion Blade? He dodged it. It finally made sense how this normal-looking guy had destroyed a whole planet. Nobody could hit him!

The worst part was that he was soon going to have to fight him without his buffs. Aura of the Hungry Blade was not a long-term solution to problems. It was a nitrous oxide injection into a battle, a burst skill meant to turn the tide at an opportune time. But Asadel always used it at the start of the fight. He reasoned that it was always an opportune time to cut demons in half. There would be fewer of them to deal with later.

He desperately cut at the phantom in front of him, but he couldn’t get close. For one, his vision was still blurry from the poison dust. As much as he tried, he couldn’t hit the demon lord. Then, his aura winked out, leaving him with nothing but his natural stats and an empty STAM bar because of the power strikes that had failed to land.

Suddenly, the demon lord’s offhand shot out again, presumably loaded with poison dust. Asadel winced away, which he realized was a mistake after the fact. The demon lord might be planning a cunning attack.

Asadel forced his eyes to snap back open, ready for the worst. Far in the distance, he saw the demon lord moving rapidly away, almost as fast as he himself could run with Aura of the Hungry Blade active.

Wait … Was I winning?