More dancing phantoms formed, the assassin struggling to locate the real Percy amidst the chaos.

Unfortunately, even with the soul mana and his boosting art doing a lot of the work for him, there was a limit to the number of constructs Percy could maintain at once. His priority was to prevent his opponent from sneaking off to attack Micky, so he couldn’t exactly move the ghosts to try and surround the assassin either.

Drawing even closer, the space user could now split his domain into eight concurrent lines, each guiding an arrow with enough power to punch a hole through Percy – Cloak and everything – should he be unlucky enough to get hit.

‘I won’t win this merely by hiding and blocking. I need to kill him, and I need to do it fast,’ Percy reminded himself.

The problem was that his newest technique – the Fourth Parade – was purely defensive. Of course, he had plenty of other moves to rely on, but most of them had their own limitations. The Third Parade was better used as a counterattack, in case his opponent was dumb enough to approach, though Percy wasn’t confident he’d even be able to use it without undergoing the ritual. The Second Parade was one of his deadliest attacks, but it needed time to prepare and couldn’t easily be used against an agile opponent.

‘That only leaves the Soul-crushing Needle and my First Parade...’

It wasn’t much, but it would have to do. The clone had already filled up his spare channels with soul-freezing ice mana, so the Masterful Secret Art was definitely on the table. Still, landing the attack wouldn’t be easy, and Percy wouldn’t get more than a shot or two, so he wasn’t in a rush to try it. Instead, he decided to try his luck with the Winding Corridor technique, thinking it had the best chance of working.

Leaving the safety of the dancing phantoms behind him, Percy jumped on a pair of nearby scythes, betraying his position. Leaping to the next platform, he rapidly built up momentum as the assassin instantly shifted his sight toward him, eight guiding lines clawing at him in a dense, zigzagging network of certain death.

The normally-black lines manifested as white obstacles in Percy’s tunnel vision, each turning, folding and unfolding several times in response to his movements. With every pair of shafts he stepped on, he moved closer to his target, allowing the assassin to increase both the number of guiding lines and the frequency with which he fired the dangerous arrows along them.

The two sides fought a tug-of-war over space itself, one party trying to approach as the other attempted to punish him for it. Percy felt like a fly trying to navigate a cavern covered in ever-changing spiderwebs, knowing that his life would be forfeit as soon as he so much as touched one.

That said, the more Percy observed the assassin’s attacks, the more his eyes adjusted to his opponent’s style, allowing him to slowly close the gap, and to avoid the spells with more breathing room.

Every now and then, the space user tried an attack similar to Nesha’s butterfly spell, forsaking the thin lines entirely in an attempt to teleport a construct directly inside Percy’s body. The latter didn’t panic, however, having already learned a lot about the rare affinity from his girlfriend.

Teleporting things took a lot more time, effort and mana than merely compressing or expanding space. Consequently, Percy’s rapid movements made it a nightmare for his opponent to catch him off guard. If that wasn’t enough, teleporting objects still left faint traces of willpower that Percy’s mutated eyes could pick up on, and that was without even mentioning the fact that he could predict the assassin’s intentions better with every passing second.

Eventually, the space user gave up on that entirely, focusing solely on the guiding lines and the far-cheaper arrows. Despite his efforts, Percy advanced at a steady pace, his prey already a couple jumps away.

‘This is the most dangerous part, but I’ll have to brave through it.’

Gritting his teeth, Percy leapt twice more, narrowly twisting his body through numerous gaps between the deadly obstacles, crossing the last stretch in an instant. Yet, just as he was about to finally sink his scythes into the man’s torso, the silver flame bent like a rubber band, appearing dozens of metres away. Seeing his opponent slip through his fingers gave Percy the urge to swear, though part of him had expected it.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

Why wouldn’t a seasoned assassin know a simple Refined spell like Nesha’s Twisted Dance?

Regardless, the assassin didn’t give him a chance to think about it too hard, already trying to leave him behind to attack Micky. Percy used his phantoms to block the new guiding lines, stepping on another pair of scythes to chase after the space user.

The same situation replayed itself time after time – with very minor permutations. Percy repeatedly made it within an arm’s length of his slippery target, only for him to escape. At least, the pressure stopped the assassin from going after Micky, but Percy understood that he needed to hurry up.

Occasionally, he had a few cloaked phantoms separate from the group in an attempt to catch the space user off guard, but the man appeared to have excellent awareness of his surroundings, always dodging the clumsy sneak attacks with ease and blasting the constructs to shreds.

Every so often, he even came close to landing a blow on Percy, but the latter had more of his phantoms jump in to protect him, slowly filling the battlefield with tattered rags and dull shards.

“It’s over,” the man said at some point, once he managed to put some distance from Percy. “If we keep this back and forth for a few hours, I’ve no doubt you’ll catch me. Sadly, your pet won’t last that long.”

Percy halted too, not in a rush to continue the pointless game of tag. Only now that they’d stopped moving did he get a better look at his opponent, though it was difficult to make the assassin’s features out through the drifting pieces of torn silk. The space user was surprisingly short, standing on a pair of black discs barely wider than his soles. His dark hair glistened with sweat, a few stray strands glued to the sides of his face and neck. Evidently, he’d found their scuffle just as exhausting as Percy had.

Most notable were the assassin’s eyes, each sporting a different colour. That could have easily been caused by some purely cosmetic birth defect, though Percy was confident it was the result of a bloodline. It would explain many things – such as how the space user and his henchmen had located him and Micky in the first place, how the man could attack his opponents from such vast distances, and how he could dodge Percy’s sneak attacks without even scanning the phantoms with his domain.

Smirking, Percy responded to the man’s lazy taunt with one of his own, his voice soft but confident.

“I’ve already caught you.”

The assassin furrowed his brow in confusion, though it didn’t take him long to understand what Percy meant. Ambient mana rushed to his body, flowing to certain spots scattered all over his clothes. Tiny pieces of grey fabric that he clearly hadn’t even noticed greedily drank the substance, spreading like an infection to cover him from head to toe.

Panicking, the man tried to peel the expanding pieces of silk off. There were too many, however, the insidious constructs latching onto the assassin’s robes like a demon’s claws, wrapping themselves tightly around his limbs. In fact, they didn’t stop there, phasing through the mundane clothes and even his skin to anchor themselves to his very soul!

Out of options, the space user released costly bursts of mana and willpower, blowing his own clothes off along with some of Percy’s silk. Still, he failed to get rid of everything, the constructs continuing to encroach upon their unfortunate target.

Desperate, the assassin formed a wall of willpower around his body to block the flow of ambient mana altogether, probably thinking he could stop the Cloaks from growing. He was right about that, of course, but Percy had no intention of watching him do as he pleased.

Seizing the opportunity, he went after the assassin again, forcing him to withdraw the wall of willpower, allowing the enchantments to breathe again. Even as he stretched and twisted his body to escape through the aerial arena, the space mage found it impossible to shake the grey mana off, Percy’s silk following him wherever he went.

As a last resort, the man attempted to teleport away, despite the cost. Percy saw vast quantities of mana disappear from the assassin’s sternum as he emerged dozens of metres away.

This time, he did manage to rid himself of some of the magical cloth, leaving an empty husk behind and giving himself a chance to breathe again after freeing up his mouth and nose. Unfortunately for him, that didn’t last long. The lingering pieces hiding beneath his skin soon expanded again, turning corporeal as they resumed their unwelcome embrace.

Not giving up, he teleported away a second and a third time – he had to know it wouldn’t save him, but he was clearly scrambling to buy as much time as he could. By the fourth warp, his core was almost empty. Percy spotted a few dregs, but probably not enough for his opponent to risk teleporting a fifth time.

The assassin plummeted toward the ocean, powerless to stop the silk that had already covered every square centimetre of his skin. More of the drifting pieces joined the ambient mana, enveloping the assassin in an airtight cocoon several times wider than his body by the time he splashed into a towering wave.

Percy’s gaze followed his opponent’s sinking frame for a while, his mutated eyes allowing him to peer rather deep into the dark waters. Eventually, the man’s figure faded entirely from view, leaving only the faint feedback of his diminishing struggles against the soft – yet impregnable – prison.

Soon, even that came to a halt as the assassin met his end, Percy whispering the name of his second new technique today:

“Carnival of the Savage Gods, Fifth Parade, Dead Man’s Shroud.”