Legions of hellfire demons were replaced by swarms of alien parasites as they climbed the tower. As a result, Coop was forced onto his backfoot, unexpectedly confronting new enemies.

His momentum had already been relatively choppy, building up on one platform only to be interrupted each time they skipped to the next level, but it was truly impeded by a complete reset of the field. It was like a hairpin turn had been introduced to an uphill straightaway. He was spinning his wheels, desperately trying to adjust and regain traction before sliding back down.

Instead of flames licking at his exposed skin, needle-point spikes sliced and pierced his body while he wasted precious seconds adjusting. He prevented the worst impalements with dodges and deflections, mostly trading them for stinging wounds that were comparable to massive papercuts criss-crossing his skin.

The wounds didn’t even really bleed, but faint hints of mists leaked from his skin, indicating where he was injured. His own sweat burned as he struggled to navigate the parasite kill zones, refusing to back down from the trial and sacrifice any amount of their progress. He told himself that the pain was nothing compared to being repeatedly scorched by hellfire, though if he was being honest, they were about the same.

Elongated spider-like limbs audibly whipped through the air, rising above his Fog of War before piercing straight through the foggy domain he channeled into the battlefield. The aliens skirted his flanks, utilizing the malleability of their appendages to stab where he couldn’t effectively counter.

They weren’t deterred by his mists at all, seemingly at home in the vapor-filled environment. Groups of enemies established multi-pronged attacks that left him to decide what he let through, putting the onus on him to detect and negate deadly strikes coming from above, behind, and every direction except below.

It was impossible to avoid everything unless he sat in Vaporform forever, but that would get him nowhere. Besides, if he wasn’t sufficiently recuperating with his Reaper title, his mana was dangerously finite.

Stagnation was unacceptable, whether it was in the midst of battle or over the course of his broader progression. That was the fundamental truth of his build and class.

After eliminating retreat as an option from his mind, accepting the slicing attacks became a necessary trade. The alternatives were dramatic stabs that were easily capable of punching through his armor and puncturing his skin. The limbs were designed to impale his body and lift him into the air like a living trophy. To that end, the shallower cuts seemed much more appealing and he accepted them as a necessary price to pay.

He willingly exchanged a bit of pain for the potential gains, eventually finding an opportunity to return the favor by flickering through the mists or launching his spear across the platforms and choosing an unlucky target to whittle down in exactly the same fashion as they intended to do to him.

Defeating the forces of mana was the key to healing the chippy wounds, so he went all in on the aggression. Riddling him with minor injuries just goaded him further.

Contrary to the demons, instead of collapsing onto his position and forming a melee when they were challenged, the parasites spread out, sacrificing one of their own in order to maintain distance on the Champion. Even swapping to a mace so that he could apply Sunken Grasp only temporarily altered the distribution of enemies.

The whipping attacks kept coming while the individual monsters most impacted by the skill scrambled away with half their legs still spiking him. The steady, uncompromising pressure made it so that he wasn’t comfortable without his shield. The parasites prioritized their spacing, keeping him at exactly the right range to snag him on the end of their piercing legs. That meant there was virtually no relief anywhere on the battlefield.

The way they flowed with him made it feel like he was making no progress, the attacks never slowing down, but their rigidity would be their mistake. They allowed one of their own to be isolated in favor of their own attacks, but if he killed one, he would give himself a foothold. It was only a matter of time before he progressed through the rest.

There was no situation where he defeated one enemy and then slowed down afterwards. That just wasn’t how the Revenant worked. He grinned through the pain, waving his shield at their impaling attacks, confirming that the tiny cuts were not enough to stop him.

He had fully embraced the role of a demon hunter, but he had become hyper-focused on optimizing his actions across more than a thousand floors. The change in opponent effectively cleared the board, resetting his progress so that he was forced into a difficult position. As long as he jump started the stalled grind, he would get back on track.

The real problem was in the wave of monsters that chased behind them, placing a time limit on his rehearsals. Even as he uncovered a path to victory, he knew it needed to be faster or they would be caught. The last thing he wished to do was get bogged down by all the forces of mana that they had previously bypassed.

Coop mirrored the chaos of the many-limbed parasites, striving to accelerate the process of analyzing and strategizing against the new opponents even if it meant sacrificing his own blood. Testing and experimenting against opponents that were faster, stronger, and tougher was a challenge in itself, adding the stress of a time constraint was an unwelcome adversity. Making sure his sacrifices were worth it had him straining his eyes to detect every flailing limb, grinding his teeth through the pain, and wielding his spear and shield with his maximum intensity.

The parasites were a disorganized mass of clicking and chattering aliens. They presented a disruptive front that yielded little opportunity for trial and error.

As Coop became the ultimate foe for the demons over the previous thousand levels, Lyriel also became a reliable accomplice. His investment in her had paid off relatively quickly. She dramatically increased her contributions against the demons on the lower floors, then fell into the background as Coop got everything under control himself.

He recognized that she was under the same resource limitations as everyone else, despite her unbelievable well of power. When it came to a fight that extended indefinitely, Coop was the pinnacle skirmisher. He essentially auto attacked his way to the end with all sorts of sustain built into his actions, while she would run out of mana and rely on passive generation to get her back into the fight, so he took the lead for hundreds and hundreds of levels.

Acting as her escort worked out. When they unexpectedly had to fight the parasites, she was prepared to fully wield her significant power and she did so with devastating results. The parasites flipped onto their backs and curled up, their elongated legs turning rigid as Lyriel swept the first platforms with raw mana that could hardly be compared to her initial demonstrations of power.

She had the leeway to go all out with Coop arriving first and tanking the platforms. Where Coop established an entire domain-like environment to cater to his own advantages, Lyriel showed that such ancillary efforts were unnecessary for a being with her command over mana.

Contrary to her pained expressions on the earliest floors, she was practically gentle as she accessed long disused abilities. Vast quantities of mana shifted with nearly imperceptible gestures as she reclaimed the elegance that made her seem arrogant at first. Her fingers delicately flicked at the air, beckoning invisible forces to exert their power.

She didn’t cast spells or launch attacks in a conventional sense, instead she weaved tracks of incredible energy into the fabric of existence with her finger tips, letting the power flow in shapes the way a rhythmic gymnast manipulates a silken ribbon in an eye-catching routine. When those ribbons grazed an enemy, they were basically unmade. Their physically forms reacted as direct attacks to their mana led them to defeat.

The most colossal of the many-legged, arachnid-like monsters had armored exoskeletons that easily rivaled the stone-based bodies of the demons. When Coop sought to slice them with his bladed weapons he rarely did more than leave dulled streaks on their shiny carapaces. Sparks and smoke flew through the air, but he still needed to find their weaknesses before he wasn’t just flailing against superior enemies with disadvantageous tools. They had more Strength, more Agility, and more armor than him. He had to go through the whole process of trial and error from the start if he hoped to contend.

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Lyriel had no such limitations. She was their equal, but with a conscious mind that could be both strength and weakness. The former Avatar stepped up when it looked bad for Coop, defeating the first parasites with equal efficiency to when she defeated handfuls of demons, as if the change in target was meaningless for someone of her level.

The moist chitin that initially seemed invincible to Coop unraveled as tight circles of energy destroyed the alien armor, shimmering with silvery mana flecked with gold before dissolving into dust. Her fully engaged skills actually made Coop step back, realizing he had no idea how to block such unnerving attacks.

His solidified spectral mana would just fall apart if he relied on his armor or shield, and he had no idea if his Mind stat based magic defenses would be enough against someone with such a disparity in levels. Given his experience with the forces of mana, he had serious doubts.

The former Avatar of the System was quite scary, but thanks to her, they didn’t have to quickly alter their plans and Coop was allowed to quickly develop once again. He may have become a level 1000 Demon Hunter over the course of so many battles, but he was a level 0 Parasite Exterminator to begin with. With his spear in hand, he restarted another round of progression, perfectly willing to add another self proclaimed title.

The parasites were more vulnerable to piercing weapons than the demons, but contending with their limbs was another story. As he took on greater and greater portions of the parasites, quickly reclaiming his position as the pointman of their little party, he ended up approaching with his sword and shield before going for the kill with his spear.

The aliens parted ways for him, spreading out in a way that made mistjumping or Vaporforming almost unnecessary, so long as he stayed in motion. His blade flashed, severing their spiked limbs and reducing the entire swarm’s level of danger. If he didn’t need to recuperate health from the constant scrapes and scratches, he could win the battles just by disabling the parasites, but periodically destroying them was necessary to remain at his peak physical condition.

As he better understood their anatomy, the time spent fighting against the whipping limbs was less and less and the whole process was accelerated as he identified weaknesses with his experience scavenging countless previous opponents. Eventually, he was easily able to sustain himself and his mindset returned to one that sought efficiency.

The monsters demonstrated a surprising variety that somehow maintained consistent features. Unlike the demons, who Coop would have guessed presented a dozen different species, the parasites were clearly all one type that went through a series of increasingly horrific evolutions.

At the most basic, they were toothy worms that Coop cleared out with his rather undeveloped Drowning Darkness skill, burning his mana to wipe them out in an instant while also giving him some clues regarding how to better wield his manifestations of aura. As the monsters grew in size, they developed more and more limbs with longer reaches and more joints. At the very least, that meant a one-size fits all strategy was a possibility when it came to the parasites.

Treating the swarms as a single dynamic opponent rather than a series of individual fights was the change he needed to really take his bug hunting to the same level as the demons. He just needed to whittle away at the larger group and it would be killed.

As the platforms bled together, Coop grew more comfortable with the second general type of monster within the Ark. He gradually took back control, and together he and Lyriel chipped away at the tower, steadily accelerating through the levels once again.

Instead of saving the Lucid Dream and Inheritance of the Mists for true emergencies he was able to reincorporate them into the grind. As he went he further refined his aura control, highlighting his blades in colorful energies that had no trouble destroying the robust carapaces of the parasites.

There were three times as many levels dedicated to the parasites when compared to the demons on the track they took, but they didn’t realize it until they were suddenly fighting the dragons.

Coop cursed as he dove into a platform full of a new type of enemy, already wincing as he anticipated the painful start of another process.

Physically, the scaled reptilian forces of mana were a whole new competition, with more animalistic lizards working in conjunction with centaur-like captains, serpentine wyrms, and even dragon-esque bosses. He went through the same series of trials as he had with the demons all over again, testing and experimenting with each variant, determining when and where each of his weapons and skills would best be applied.

The variety had Coop questioning why they hadn’t fought an Icon of Mana yet, given the more structured tiers present in the dragons compared to the parasites. It seemed like being bestowed with the power of an Icon was something that only occurred under circumstances that were unfulfilled within the Ark.

While that was good for him and Lyriel, the fact that any one of the enemies had the potential for being the most dangerous example of the forces of mana was frustrating. There was no chopping the head off the snake when it came to the Eradication Protocol.

At best, he could eliminate as many of the potential projections before they appeared on the surface of Earth, but he couldn’t guarantee that it would make a difference. A single fully formed Icon of Mana represented a devastating level of power. Even one would be a real threat.

They could only fight on, with Coop resettling into grind after grind. Hopefully, the top of the Ark would provide good news.

Three thousand levels of the dragons finally gave way to the angels. Compared to the other transitions, Lyriel had a much harder time with them.

It wasn’t because they resembled something more familiar to her, though that was apparently true. It was that they were of a similar enough element that they seemed to have a natural resistance to her skills.

Rather than being unmade by her ribbons of mana, they deflected the attacks, and when she blasted them with her more traditional aura-based spells, they bobbed out of the way like a floatation device caught in a waterfall. They were a natural counter to her skills.

Unlike Coop, Lyriel had a firm ceiling on her abilities. It was at least as high as the forces of mana, but it meant that only Coop was able to introduce new variables to their climb. The angels didn’t have the same resilience against the blunt weapons in Coop’s arsenal, so he was able to establish himself quickly enough that their progress was soon back on track.

While the glowing balls of solidified light hummed with energy, zapping him with tiny arcs of rainbow mana, Coop shattered them with his mace, adding the crashing sounds of shattering glass to the platforms.

Differing from the other variations of the forces of mana, the angels appeared to have a preference toward their more basic forms, resisting evolutions in favor of a sort of collective accumulation. Instead of fighting monsters, sometimes it felt like he was fighting patterns.

The platforms vaguely resembled bullet hell routines that challenged his routing abilities more than his firepower. The individual luminous balls of energy abandoned their independence in favor of complicating his assaults with simple teamwork.

The more advanced forms of the angels fought him like zombified valkyries at the same time, striking with energized fists while leaping across the platforms with deteriorating wings, like they were partially unbound by gravity. They were more harpy than angel, grotesque, but still tapping into what seemed like divine power.

An individual winged angel hummed like it was a member of a chorus, making each platform seem like a bizarre cathedral for repulsive creatures. When they flocked together, striking while he crashed his way through the lesser variants, the songs were practically a psychic attack, making him fight like he would go rabid.

Then, there was sometimes an angel that kept to themselves, supervising the rest. No more than one of the most advanced angels ever appeared on each floor. They wielded elaborate golden weapons of different variations that glowed with rainbow fire.

Coop imagined them to be the generals, only actively wielding their swords, scepters, spears, and staves when he defeated all the rest. At first, Coop didn’t even notice the difference, only recognizing that there was one of the fully formed angels that was more powerful than the others and had somehow been granted equipment, but as he and Lyriel progressed he started to notice the distinguishing characteristics that were present in their wings.

There were at least six different types of boss angels. The orientation of the feathers in their wings was all he needed to start to recognize them. Sometimes they flared out, angling with the thinning of the lower edge of the wing, others had them all facing parallel with the ground, were all upturned, or swooped down. Then, the actual wing was different, shaped like a vulture or other times like a glider, their tips pointing up or down with dramatic turns or smooth curvatures.

They had different specialties, strengths, and weaknesses. Regardless of what they could do, they all died the same when Coop bashed them hard enough.

After around eleven thousand floors in total, the enemies were demons again, but neither he nor Lyriel could see the end of the tower. It seemed like they still had a long way to go.