Eli's Perspective:
The Queen begins to reform. Its gelatinous body bends and shifts as if in pain. The purple ooze inside it churns and melts through its own form. It returns to its original shape for a moment before it shifts again.
It flickers through multiple forms, one after another.
One of them looks human.
A young girl.
The Queen coughs and tears chunks of itself apart.
"Help me!"
I hear the cry ring across the cavern.
I look at Teruki and even she seems unsure of what she is seeing.
This is our chance.
The Queen keeps vomiting pieces of itself onto the floor. It attempts to split, but the new half pulls itself back, as if something inside fights to stay whole.
The soul trapped inside the slime struggles against it.
The Queen slows. Its movements turn stiff and uneven. It cannot speak. It cannot focus.
Fear.
For the first time, it feels fear.
"It is finally done," Iso yells.
I look toward Adrian. Was this his plan? His face looks resolute.
Gerald moves first. He charges the Queen with surprising speed. The Queen tries to summon ice bullets, mimicking the same technique Sera used.
Rei reacts first. She moves with perfect pressure and resilience, using her phoenix feathers to counter the bullets and the spears. She cannot keep it up forever, but for a moment is all we need.
Gerald acts next, following behind Adrian and Shino.
Gerald reaches the Queen first. He slices through her body, forcing her to split into multiple unstable forms. The Queen continues firing bullets and spears, but Teruki shields every offensive burst before anything can reach us.
The Queen tries to dodge Shino's strikes, but she cannot. It is like her body is stuck in place.
TWANG.
A sudden sound echoes through the cavern.
Chains rattle in the wind.
Viri's attack from earlier was reformed . The once black chains now hold streaks of silver and white.
"Using the final scraps of the Slime Kings core," Yuto yells "I can craft chains strong enough to hold even you!"
Adrian attacks the Queen, grabbing the side of her form and slamming her back toward Shino. Shino catches the chain and wraps it around both of them in a single clean motion. Once the bind is secure, she wraps the chains around the Queen's arms and legs.
She glances at Viri. Viri nods once.
Viri pulls the chains down into the ground with her mana. The Queen drops to her knees. The chains force her to reform completely. Her body returns to its normal shape, but it looks diseased. It keeps vomiting the poison onto the floor.
The Queen tries to move against the binding, but she cannot. She is locked to the ground we once feared.
"Very clever," the Queen says at last. Her voice trembles as she recovers, but not enough.
The Queen raises her hand and forms her magic.
"WorldEdit:(Empress of the Infinite Realm)."
CRACK.
The cold core turns warm. A wall of energy expands across the entire floor. Every direction becomes upward at the same time. My body stretches into infinite versions of myself before snapping back into one.
My senses scatter across a thousand parallel spaces and then collapse into silence.
My mana feels like it belongs to someone else. I feel detached from my own body.
I see everyone's mana fluctuations at once.
The ring on my hand glows a faint brown.
Shino's mana glows a mist-green, thin and wispy like drifting fog.
Gerald's mana burns a flare-red, sharp and bright like a spark jumping from steel.
Han's mana roars a crimson-red, heavier and hotter, carrying weight behind it.
Adrian's mana shines a sun-gold, clean and steady, almost metallic.
Yuto's mana hums an amber-orange. Warm and pulsing like a lantern flame.
Iso's mana flickers a rose-pink. Soft but quick, like a heartbeat.
Maki's mana swirls a wine-violet, deep and smooth with a dark sheen.
Rei's mana erupts a scarlet-red, cutting and sharp, almost blade-like.
Teruki's mana pools a deep ocean-blue, heavy but calm, like dark water.
Sera's mana flickers a leaf-green, fresh and lively, bright around the edges.
Viri's mana stands as a forest-green, dense and weighty, almost ancient.
And even my own mana glows a cool azure-blue, trembling at the edges.
Though the colors swirl around us, none of it matters.
"What the hell… is a World Edit…?" I try to speak. Nothing leaves my mouth.
Tiny dots blink in the warped sky. Red and blue, flickering like distant warnings.
"Bow," she commands, still crushed beneath the chains.
I finally grasp how this skill works.
Mana thickens in the air. It is hard to breathe. It hangs like fog, shimmering.
And then I notice, for the first time in a while, that I can use my entire mana. I feel everything. The effects of the ring fade as if they never existed.
Shino bows before the queen first, her face pressed into the floor. It looks forced, completely against her will. She does not speak, but I can read her expression.
I try to speak, but nothing comes out. The queen has not decreed it, so I cannot. I cannot use skills. I cannot move. I cannot do anything. She truly is the manifestation of magic.
Gerald bows next. His expression burns with anger, but even he cannot resist. The queen seems to enjoy watching it.
A pressure on the mind.
Maki follows. She struggles against the rising weight. I barely notice the heaviness anymore, but I can feel the difference between Gerald's pressure and hers. A clear jump in intensity.
A weight on the spine.
Iso falls next. He does not look surprised. He drops calmly, almost like he has lived through this before. I cannot tell what he is planning, but I can sense that he is thinking.
Yuto and Viri fall together, almost in perfect sync. I look at Adrian. His golden mana is finally allowed to bloom.
He does not seem phased. He does not even seem to notice it. The mana that crushes others feels like nothing to him. As the queen increases the pressure, my head grows numb.
His mana leaks out around him. A person who does not use magic or has weak mana cannot control it correctly. Yet when I look at Adrian's mana, it burns like golden fire with purpose.
An instinctive knowledge settles into my mind. There is an Empress now, and this realm answers to her.
I bow next. I fight against the pain as the Empress increases the pressure. For those still standing, the force rises again, but for me it does not increase at all. It feels almost deliberate.
She is forcing just enough mana through us so we cannot disobey, but not enough to kill us.
Sera bows, followed by Rei. Then Han bows, which surprises me considering how much mana Rei holds.
Teruki bows next, though she manages to stay on her knees. I cannot tell why.
All of us look at Adrian.
He grits his teeth. It looks like he is fighting with everything he has. He tries to force words out against the orders of the Empress.
"I SAID NOOOOO!" he yells.
His voice cracks the air. "I refuse to bow to this monster!!"
His mana explodes outward with impossible speed, spreading across the entire floor like a golden wave.
"How much mana does this child have?!" the Empress yells.
And then I finally understood what Sho meant by his mana. It feels warm. It feels lonely. It feels like someone who wants to see the tower through to the end.
I wonder what kind of error could give someone this much mana.
"DON'T ... YOU DARE ... CALL ME THAT!"
Adrian's mana reacts with his anger. There is no control. Nothing about this is magic. It is him. His passion. His rage. His refusal to yield. He fights back as the Empress continues to press her will against his.
Adrian draws a small dagger. His body trembles as he forces himself to move.
"I'll defeat you… even if it costs me my life. For my friends. For my family. For G2," he says, eerily calm.
He walks toward the Empress, every step fighting against the crushing weight on his body.
"HOW! HOW! HOW?!" the Empress screams. "HOW CAN A SINGLE HUMAN BEING HOLD BILLIONS OF MANA WITH ONLY ONE CORE?!"
Adrian keeps going. One step. Then another. He reaches the Empress and raises the dagger above her.
CRACK.
His body gives out. He collapses to his knees and vomits blood into his hands. Blood splattering the ground.
With the Empress fully focused on Adrian, Teruki manages to force herself back to her feet.
"Thank you, Kundra," Teruki says. "Now it is our turn!"
"WorldEdit:(Celestial Anchor)!"
Teruki's mana pushes against the queen's influence. The crushing weight lifts. My knees unlock. One by one, we rise to our feet again.
The barrier of the seal fights against itself. The mana of the Slime Queen and the mana of Teruki crash together, two opposing forces tearing into one another. The skills cancel out. The world snaps back to normal. Still. Calm.
Teruki collapses to the ground.
Han picks her up. Her eyes look dull, dimmed as if the light inside her flickers.