With all of the Ender Pearls we needed, plus plenty of extra, in hand, we headed down the spiraling tunnel that Ed had made that led to the Stronghold. I got a notification that Asuna had completed her mission as we started to descend, netting me the Eye of Sauron perk and another Unique Theme in the form of a Minecraft one.

When we arrived, we found Asuna and Ed standing there silently. I could immediately tell that Asuna was in a bad mood because she had her arms crossed and her brows were furrowed. Ed looked like she was doing her best to not provoke the other girl.

"Good job you two," I greeted them joyfully. "I assume there weren't any problems?"

Asuna's expression grew stormier. "I can think of two problems!" she snapped. "Ones you failed to warn me about!"

I tilted my head in genuine confusion. "I have no idea what you're talking about," I replied, semi-truthfully. Her being annoyed by the Silverfish I somewhat expected, but I wasn't sure what else I had set her up for. Was there something in the Stronghold I forgot?

"So you're saying you don't know about the bugs that live in the stone in the portal room?" she asked.

"Oh, you mean Silverfish? They're pretty harmless and not really worth warning you about." Harmless wasn't really an accurate way to describe them, but someone like Asuna shouldn't have been in any real danger from them.

"And I'm sure that was your only reason, hmm?" Asuna replied, clearly not amused. "Then what about the Creepers? Are you saying that they're not dangerous enough to be noted?"

It took me a second, but I realized what must have happened, and I grinned. "Oh? Did one explode on you? I did tell you guys this morning to take them out as soon as you saw them, didn't I?"

"A warning about why would have been appreciated!" she fumed.

I just shook my head. "I can't believe you were playing around enough for one to actually explode. Or did I ask you to do more than you were capable of?"

Her anger died down slightly, replaced by worry. "What? No, I mean, I wasn't playing around, it was just the bug things, and then-"

"Shh, it's okay Asuna. I overestimated you, that's all. That's my fault."

"No! I mean, yes, it's your fault, but that's not-"

"Don't worry, I understand. Do you feel up to leading us to the portal room? Or do you need to rest some more?"

Asuna gaped at me, her mouth opening and closing silently as an incredulous expression grew on her face. Her hands balled into fists, and I thought that maybe she was going to get angry enough to face some consequences.

But then she suddenly sighed and slumped over. "I'll take you to the damn portal room," she grumbled, the fight going out of her as she turned and silently headed into the Stronghold.

I shrugged and glanced at Ed, who was clearly struggling to hold back her laughter, and grinned. "Guess she's fine after all." A snort snuck past her lips and she slapped a hand over her mouth, but from the way Asuna's back stiffened, she had heard it.

Asuna responded by walking faster. I shrugged. "I don't think she's gonna wait for us. Come on everybody."

Asuna power walked her way through the Stronghold, leading us on a winding path. Our entire group followed after her, stepping around the monster corpses that filled the rooms and halls, painting a macabre picture of Asuna's efficient extermination.

"This place is going to reek in a few days," I commented to myself.

"Oh, please don't say that, this is bad enough as is," Maria replied, clinging to Kirche, who was looking at the succubus with bemusement.

I raised an eyebrow. "Seriously? They're dead. Why are you scared?"

"It's just so creepy!" she whined. "Are we sure they're actually dead? One of them isn't going to jump up at us?"

"The mission was marked as completed, so yes. Unless there was an entrance to a cave system somewhere that let some more in."

"There were several, actually," Asuna replied from the front. "I imagine it's how they got in in the first place. So it's entirely possible that more monsters could appear and be hiding among the dead."

"Hiiiiieeeh!" Maria cried out as she clung tighter to Kirche.

Rather than pointing out, again, that she could easily punch a hole in any monster that appeared, I just rolled my eyes and looked at Asuna. It was hard to tell from behind her, but as she turned a corner I swore I saw a hint of an amused smile on her face.

We reached the portal room a few minutes later, some dead Silverfish scattered across the floor, but my eyes were instantly locked in on the portal. Unlike the game, and unlike the rest of the world, it wasn't square, but a perfect circle.

"Oh?" I said out loud, intrigued. I walked past Asuna, who had stopped just inside the entrance, and went up the stairs so I could get a better look at the portal structure.

It was different in shape, but still close enough to be recognizable. The base of the ring was made of yellow endstone, and the top some kind of dark green glass. The ring was made of multiple arcs put together to make a circle, but rather than twelve sections, it had thirteen. Each section had a small recess, the perfect size for an Ender Eye. Three of them were already filled, leaving ten empty.

"This is it?" Ed said as she walked up behind me and looked down. "I see. Put in the Ender Eyes and it activates?"

"Pretty much." I handed her my phone. "Prepare the Ender Eyes we need."

Ed nodded, taking it and navigating to the Pocket Space as I turned to address everyone. "This is our final mission here in this world. With plenty of time to spare too. Three of us will enter the portal here and fight a dragon. The question is… which three?"

I cast my eyes over them, scanning their expressions. In truth, I had already chosen my three, but I wanted to make a bit of a show of it.

"I'll be going, of course," I said after a moment. "I'm hardly going to pass up the finale and let someone else steal all the fun, am I?"

I paused again, wondering if anyone would volunteer. Maria looked pretty eager, but she also looked like she knew that I had already made my choices. Asuna looked resigned. Lili and Saeko looked nervous, but willing, where Louise and Kirche just looked nervous. Sylphid was only half paying attention and just glad to be there, and Tabitha's expression was blank.

"Ed, you're coming as well," I said after a moment.

Ed looked up from the stone pedestal she had transmuted from the floor and was using to make more Ender Eyes. "Me? Against a dragon?"

"Not against the dragon itself. But there are obsidian towers topped by crystals that heal it. You should be able to take those out, right?"

Ed scratched the back of her head. "Well… probably. I've been working on pushing the range of my Transmutation, but I'm not sure I could do it from the bottom of a tower. But I could climb it pretty easily."

"There you go. You're on tower duty. And as for the third person… Louise, you're up."

She looked at me blankly, like my words didn't register. She blinked a few times, and then shock bloomed on her face. "Wait, me?!"

"Yes, you. You'll also be on crystal duty. Some of them are in cages, so Ed will need to take care of those, but the others lack any protection, meaning you can snipe them from range. You've been practicing your aim, no?"

"You- you want me to fight a dragon?!" she spluttered.

"No. Weren't you listening? I want you to destroy the dragon's healing crystals."

"Are you planning on fighting the dragon by yourself, then?" Asuna asked. Her arms were crossed as she looked at me. She had clearly expected me to pick her.

"Yeah, I'm more than enough to take it on," I replied with a grin. "Plus, I've been studying a bunch of new spells that I haven't gotten a chance to use outside of a simulation. A dragon would be the perfect target to try them out on."

Asuna looked at me for a moment longer before sighting and shaking her head. When she didn't say anything, I turned back to Louise. "Your explosions have the highest chance of both reaching and breaking the crystals. Tabitha and Kirche's spells might work, but their chances are lower. The same for Lili's crossbow. And Asuna needs a break, she's tuckered out from her arduous experience in clearing the Stronghold out."

"I hate you so much," Asuna grumbled, but I ignored her.

"So yes, I'm picking you Louise, because you're the best one for the job."

She opened and closed her mouth a few times, starting to say something only to change her mind, expression flickering between a myriad of emotions. But then the tsundere kicked in and she crossed her arms and looked away. "Hmph. Fine, if it has to be me, then I'll do it."

I hid a grin. Hook, line, and sinker. Using her feelings of inadequacy and the flames of jealousy that I had been stoking to control her was so easy it was almost boring. It helped that the reasons I gave her weren't false, but they also weren't my true motivation for bringing her along.

I simply wanted her to witness what a true mage looked like.

"Then that's settled!" I said cheerfully. "The rest of you? You can stick around for the portal, it's pretty cool, but then I want you all heading back home. No point sticking around here, and when we leave it won't drop us here. Probably. Even if it does, it'll be easier to rush just the three of us back."

"What if you're hurt and need healing?" Maria asked.

"We've got a few potions still, and my healing magic isn't very good, but it's enough to stabilize someone. We'll be fine." I turned to Ed. "Are those Ender Eyes ready?"

"Finishing up the last one now," she said, poking an Ender Pearl into the basing of Blaze Powder sitting on top of the pedestal.

"Give me one and start putting the rest into place." Ed nodded, dutifully pulling the last completed Ender Eye from the basin and handing it to me. Then she cleaned up the basin and pedestal before making a tall wall around the portal and lava pit below it so she could reach the slots and insert the Ender Eyes.

I motioned for Louise to join me on the stairs. She swallowed, hesitating momentarily before stepping to me. We stood side by side at the top of the stairs and looked down through the currently empty portal, down into the lava that gave off no heat.

We waited in silence as Ed finished, each Ender Eye she inserted ringing in the air in a slightly different tone, like she was playing some kind of strange instrument. Perhaps if she did it faster, it would have almost been music, but too much time passed between notes for that.

She placed the second to last one and then stepped up next to Louise and I. Thankfully, we were all pretty small, or else fitting the three of us at the top of the stairs would have been crowded. The last open slot was right in front of us, and the Ender Pearl for it in my hand.

I kneeled down and placed it in the receptacle.

It was not a chime that echoed through the room, but a gong, deep and heavy as reality twisted in front of my eyes. One instant, the portal ring was empty, and in the next it was completely empty.

It was not a portal that appeared. A portal was a connection between two places, like the one that led us here from the Stoneblock, creating a bubble of space that was both places at once. It was not a gateway, which was a passage of space that led from one place to another.

It was a hole. It was an absence of space, of reality, that had been surgically removed by the power of the Ender Eyes. Describing it as black would be insufficient, as a color could not be ascribed to something that was so fundamentally absent.

I shook my head, catching myself staring. The vertigo that had been creeping up on me dissipated as I looked at my girls standing next to me.

Ed was frowning at it, like she was trying to puzzle it out, and the fact that she couldn't was a personal insult. Louise… her gaze was hard to read. At first, I thought she was in a similar state to me. But there was something else in her eyes. Some mix of longing and recognition.

I put a hand on both of their shoulders, snapping them out of their stupor. "Time's a wastin'!" I said, putting on a cheerful and nonchalant tone. Then I leaped into the hole, dragging the two of them with me.

I heard the start of the others crying out in surprise before it was abruptly cut off and replaced with a silence so deep I couldn't even hear my own heart beating. That loss of sensation extended beyond just hearing as well. I couldn't see or feel anything either, myself included. For a moment, there was nothing at all.

And then reality reasserted itself and I landed harshly on my feet as they slammed into glassy black rock. The other two stumbled in behind me, bumping into me as they landed.

"Holy shit, that was…" Ed breathed, sounding faintly sick.

"I…" Louise started, but she let herself trail off and didn't finish her thought. She just looked around at the place where we had arrived.

We were standing on a platform made of obsidian that was perfectly smooth and shaped like a perfect circle, a mirror image of the portal that we had jumped through. Immediately beneath and around that was more of the familiar yellow pockmarked rock. A bit further out were tall black spires, and a scattering of Endermen.

Past that was a black sky empty of anything save for floating islands made of the same yellow stone. And unlike the overworld, everything here looked natural, to us at least. It wasn't blocky or strangely square. Some parts were straight, some were rounded, all in ways that looked normal, but contrasted rather deeply against the world we just came from. Even the towers were circular, with faint spiraling patterns etched onto them.

"Oh good, we're on the island," I commented. "Careful not to look at the Endermen, we don't want to piss them off."

"Wait, what do you mean by that?" Louise asked. "Could we have ended up not on the island?"

"Don't worry about it, it didn't happen."

"I'm very worried-!"

She was cut off by a roar that washed over us, shaking our bones with the force of it. Wind gusted as a shadow rushed through the air far above us, nearly impossible to pick out against the black sky. But it was just black, rather than empty, and so the form of the dragon could be made out.

"She knows we're here," I said, a grin growing on my face. "And she's not happy about it."

"We're fighting that?!" Louise screeched.

"I'm fighting that," I corrected her once again. "Both of you, see the crystals? Start taking them out. I'll distract her."

I mentally poked at the Infernal energies in my body and directed them to my back, causing leathering wings to sprout from my shoulder blades. They slipped through my Barrier Jacket, which I had had to program into it, and stretched out behind me. I beat them once, hard, and shot into the air.

Flying as an Infernal was very different from using magic to do it. With Sleipnir, the wings were mostly decorational, the actual physical wings providing only a minor benefit as they used magic to propel me.

My Infernal wings were more physical. Not entirely so, as I could easily hover in place and the speed didn't quite match up, but if I wanted to fly faster I needed to flap faster. There was a connection there, and it used my physical stamina instead of my magical stamina.

It was also much more efficient. My ability with Sleipnir was improving, but sustained high speed flight still took a toll on me. But the trade-off was that I couldn't fly quite as fast, and I was a little less agile. Though that wouldn't be the case for long, as the more I flew, the more I improved in both aspects.

So, on my devil's wings, I took off after the Ender Dragon, the Tome of the Night Sky raised in its staff form. "Shoot Bullet!"

The vocal command activated a saved spell as the Tome tapped into my Linker Core, pulling the magic required for the spell and twisting it into shape. I gauged the distance between me and the Ender Dragon, our speeds, took into account travel time, and telepathically fed those variables into the spell, the complicated math finishing in a second thanks to my hundreds of hours of both simulated and real experience.

Variables set, the spell completed, and the magic actualized, a circle briefly appearing denoting the shape of the spell before the mana transformed into a rocketing ball of kinetic energy. It shot through the air, charting a course for right where the Ender Dragon would be.

My calculations proved true, and the simple spell slammed into my foe's black scales with a force that would break a man's bones. But it didn't leave so much as a blemish on the dragon's defenses.

What it did do, however, was get her attention.

She roared again as she craned its neck to look at me. Her eyes met mine as we took stock of each other. Because she was definitely intelligent, at least to a degree. She was no dumb brute, but a cunning beast. She saw me, knew that I had attacked her, and was calculating how to kill me.

Unfortunately for her, it was too little too late for that.

Her fate was sealed the second I arrived.

She banked on leathery wings, turning toward me, and I flew forward to meet her. I repeated my steps earlier to send more bullets of magical energy at her, aiming for different parts of her body.

She roared in challenge, ignoring my attacks, knowing they could do no damage to her. That was, until I sent one straight at her head.

Her neck twisted as she moved out of the way of the spell, the magic harmlessly splashing onto her back, but I grinned anyway. That was all the confirmation that I needed.

And then we were too close for ranged attacks, the dragons bulking form filling up my vision as we played a deadly game of chicken, one where she held a distinct advantage given her sheer mass.

I prepared another spell, mentally triggering its activation, even as I took my chance to get a close up look at the reigning queen of this place.

It was something I had already observed, but the End didn't share the Overworld's and Nether's blocky composition. To my eyes, it looked quite normal, but no doubt the natives of this world found it alien and strange.

The Ender Dragon was no exception to this. She looked every part a normal dragon that I might find in any fantasy world, with muscled limbs covered in inky black scales, massive leather wings, gray horns and protrusions, and glowing purple eyes. She was large enough to easily swallow me whole, and her body was eclipsing my entire vision as we rushed into our collision course.

"Blitz Rush," I intoned, activating the spell I had already started to prepare. My magic power twisted into a shape that layered an effect on me, accelerating me as it pushed me at high speed a short distance up at the last possible second. Black scales filled my vision as I looked down at the dragon's back.

"Stahlmesser!" I didn't waste any time in the lightning fast spell that shaped my magic into a blade atop my staff, transforming into a spear, and I swung it with all my might, as fast as I could.

I barely caught her in time, my magical blade skimming across the scales of her haunch. I knew instantly from how it felt that I hadn't done much damage, superficial at best, but I had to duck out of the way of her lashing tail before I could visually confirm it.

I came to a stop, twisting in the air to face the foe that had passed me by as I let Stahlmesser dissipate. Rather than being disappointed that it had done so little damage, I felt a grin split my face.

Finally, a foe worthy of breaking out my good spells.

But it wouldn't do to jump straight to the finale, so I simply prepared the next spell in order. "Balmung," I said, my Device once more activating as it laid out another formula for my magic. Swords made of magical energy formed around my shoulders, hovering in the air, as I watched the Ender Dragon bank and slowly turn to face me. They weren't all that unlike my Shoot Bullet projectiles, but they were much denser and shaped into a deadly point.

A beam of light connected the turning dragon to one of the obsidian spires, drawing my attention to the crystal resting there. If the End was alien to the natives of this world, then the crystal would have been mind melting. Despite being made of crystal and glass, it was constantly morphing, edges shifting like waves on an ocean as they slid past each other.

The effect reminded me vaguely of depictions that I had seen of a tesseract, an object that existed in four spatial dimensions, but that wasn't quite accurate either. It wasn't orderly enough to be explained so simply.

My musings were interrupted by a sudden explosion. The beam of light cut out as the crystal was shattered. I looked down to see Louise, standing in the middle of a group of Endermen and looking terrified, with her wand pointed at where the crystal had been.

The Ender Dragon roared too, noticing the pest that had blown up her lifeline, and it turned its body slightly to make for her.

"No you don't!" I called out, beating my wings and rushing to intercept her. As I closed the distance I mentally reached out to my sword shaped projectiles, twisting the magic that composed them in a certain way to fire them at the Ender Dragon, every single one aimed for the beast's head.

Louise spotted the dragon coming and turned to run, the faint sound of her scream making its way to my ears across the distance that separated us and the wind rushing past me, but before the dragon could get close to her, she was forced to twist and veer away as my spells threatened to turn her head into a pin cushion.

Several of the summoned swords slammed into the dragon's body, actually penetrating just a little bit before they dissipated, their magical energy unraveling.

The Ender Dragon roared and once again turned its attention to me. She reared up in the air, wings flapping as she hovered in place, and opened her mouth wide.

"Panzershchild!" I cried out, conjuring a triangular magic circle, the shape denoting its Belkan origin, that hardened the air in the immediate area around it.

I wasn't a moment too soon, as the Ender Dragon fired a purple mass from her throat at me. It moved with blinding speed and slammed into my erected defenses, where it burst like an overripe watermelon. Purple liquid sprayed in an arc around me, none of it touching me as it fell to the ground.

The Endermen below me weren't so lucky though. More than one screamed out in pain as the apparently rather potent acid splashed down on them. Strangely, none of them teleported away, they simply burned as the acid ate away at them.

Another explosion echoed over the floating island as another crystal was destroyed. The Ender Dragon's head turned to see just who had done it, but I was already moving, ready to take advantage of its distraction.

My shield spell dropped as I prepared another favorite of mine. "Wire Lock!"

Multiple Belkan circles appeared around the Ender Dragon as conjured wires shot out from multiple directions to entwine her, aiming to pin her wings to her body and bring her crashing to the ground.

However, as I had half expected, the spell proved unfit for the task. The Ender Dragon roared and flexed its mighty limbs, shattering the magical wires that tried to restrain it, and the magic circles flickered and faded away. There was a reason I didn't use that spell mid-combat, as it was better suited for restraining already subdued enemies, or non-living objects, than mighty foes actively fighting back.

But it was enough to keep her focused on me, which was important.

I rushed toward the dragon, more Balmung appearing as I channeled my magic, the most effective weapon I had found so far. They shot out towards my enemy, who beat her powerful wings and took off, dodging all of them but one that deflected harmlessly off of her tail.

She shot another acid ball at me, which I dodged, and then I was passing her again. Rather than sit there and wait though, I turned as sharply as my infernal wings would let me and took off in pursuit of her.

My fingers itched to escalate, to unleash the real spells in my arsenal, but it was too early. Even as I gave chase to her a beam of light shot out from a nearby tower from a crystal covered in an iron mesh, the superficial wounds I inflicted healing before my very eyes. Until those were taken care of, it was a waste of energy to go for my more powerful spells.

So I settled for sending scores of Balmung at her, as they were relatively cheap for me at this point, not even bothering to send more than one in ten towards the dragon's head as I chased her around the floating island, weaving through the pillars. Our speed was, surprisingly, equal, but I was the far more nimble one, so she was unable to properly turn and face me. She tried, craning her neck and roaring in frustration, but it was a simple manner to simply fly on the other side of her, beyond her reach.

The spells did no lasting damage, but they kept her attention, and that bought time for Ed and Louise to whittle away at the crystals until there was just one left.

The Ender Dragon wasn't dumb. For all that I had been able to taunt and annoy her into focusing on me, she knew how much danger she would be in if the last crystal was taken out. So, as Ed climbed the final obsidian tower by transmuting its surface into stairs that she ran up, the dragon ignored my attacks completely and rushed for her.

I clicked my tongue in annoyance and took off after her. "Sleipnir," I commanded, and two pairs of feathery black wings appeared above and below my leathery devil ones.

With the combined flight power of both, I shot off after the Ender Dragon, catching up to it in a blink. I landed on its head, deactivating Sleipnir as soon as I did so to prevent it from draining more of my magic, and grabbed the horns there. "None of that now!" I chided it. "Klargeheul!"

I closed my eyes as I fed my magic into the latest spell. Even then, I saw the world light up through my eyelids and my Barrier Jacket's automatic protection as I set off the mother of all flashbangs directly in front of the dragon's eyes.

She let loose another roar, this one ear shattering from so close to her, though my Barrier Jacket automatically adjusted to muffle the sound to safe levels. I tightened my grip, feet no longer on the dragon's head as she took off, veering away from the tower that Ed was climbing as she blindly flew through the air.

The last crystal broke with a faint cracking sound just as we left the boundaries of the main floating island. I looked down to see more of that void of light and space, the edge of reality so close that falling into it was a real threat.

And then we were above a neighboring island, one not full of spires and Endermen, but strange purple trees with branches that reached upward in eerie patterns, topped by bulbous sacks.

Still blinded, the Ender Dragon crashed through several of them. I let go and flapped my wings, having no desire to get a faceful of Chorus fruit.

As it blindly charged through more trees, I floated in the air and raised my hand. Magic power flowed through me from my Linker Core, funneled into the Belkan circle that appeared above my hand. "Javelin."

If Balmung was a denser, more powerful, Shooting Bullet, then Javelin was the next evolution in that direction. A single Javelin had enough magical energy compressed into its shape that it made a Balmung look like it was made of paper mache. It radiated force, pulsing with danger.

And then, in an effort that was more mental than physical, I brought down my arm and hurled the spell at the Ender Dragon.

It didn't see it coming, blinded as it was, and the powerful spell streaked through the air to bury itself deep into the dragon's back.

She roared in pain again, coming to a halt in the air and turning to face my direction. She shook her head, vision clearing enough for her to turn her hateful gaze at me, clearly enraged by the deep wound that I had inflicted. One that she couldn't just heal off, now that her precious crystals were destroyed.

I grinned and twirled my staff. "Oh? Did that hurt?"

The Ender Dragon roared again, this time in anger, and beat her mighty wings as she rushed toward me.

Our roles were reversed as I sped away from her, keeping a set distance between us. As powerful as Javelin was compared to Balmung, it was just as much slower. I couldn't spam it in the same way, as each shot took focus and time to create. It was also difficult to use while moving at high speeds, as it was an additional variable in an already complicated spell formula.

I still went for it, flying face up as I formed another Javelin. It was slower, and I could see the Ender Dragon tense as she recognized what I was doing. She roared and increased her speed, slowly decreasing the gap between us.

I threw it as soon as it was ready, aiming for the beast's head. The Javelin's speed wasn't to be underestimated, but the dragon was ready for it, and its wings paused for just a moment, causing it to drop in the air a couple of meters as it dodged below the attack.

What it wasn't ready for was my follow up spell, which I casted near instantly after letting loose my Javelin. "Blutiger Dolch."

A ring of red daggers appeared around me, just as sharp and powerful as my Balmung but at a fraction of the size. And that wasn't their only improvement. I designated the Ender Dragon as my target, and I released the spell.

The bloody daggers took off at a lightning fast speed, spreading out in arcs that traced separate paths to a singular location, all autonomously.

The Ender Dragon saw me cast the spell, saw it release, but she was too slow and too unprepared for all of them coming at her from different angles. She dodged a few, but the majority of them slashed into her, leaving gashes that oozed purple blood.

I could see the rage in her eyes, but she didn't bother with a roar. This time, when she opened her mouth, another purple ball of acid shot out.

I hastily erected another shield, quickly modifying it so it would move in the air at a set distance from me, mind calculating the vectors required for it. It was a larger drain, but as the caustic attack slammed into it and burst once more, I knew it was a necessary one. Below me, Chorus trees withered and died as the acid rained down on them.

I sent more Blood Daggers, as the spell was also known, at the Ender Dragon, continuing to keep a distance between us, flying in a loop around the floating End island. I had the advantage in a long range battle, and the disadvantage at close range.

The Ender Dragon knew this as well, and she roared in displeasure as she was unable to keep up with me. I smirked, sending wave after wave of attack at her.

She soon gave up on dodging most of my attacks, simply tanking the damage, save for the ones I aimed at her head. She did everything in her power to avoid and block those, even going so far as to awkwardly interpose her wing between my attack and her head, my Blood Daggers scoring cuts along the relatively thin membranes there. Though even those had a supernatural toughness, and weren't the weak point there were for most dragons.

I knew that I could whittle her down like that, making her bleed for every second that we fought while I avoided and blocked her attacks. My reserves were not infinite, I would run out of stamina, magic, or both eventually, but I had enough potions on me to extend that time for quite some time.

But I mentally recoiled from the idea. It was a strategy I was familiar with, having beaten many a boss in games like that. And that was fine there, in situations where I was using strategy to face a foe before I was intended to do so, or defeating a boss that was intentionally extremely difficult.

But that was the rub. Such strategies were used on opponents stronger than yourself, to make up for that gap.

And I wasn't going to so easily admit that the Ender Dragon was stronger than me, not by enough that I needed to resort to such things. Not when I still had some tricks up my sleeve.

But to make full use of them, I needed a bit of help.

A quick telepathy spell connected me to Ed. "How are you two doing?" I asked, even as I continued to evade the dragon.

"Just peachy, we've bunkered up out of sight of any Endermen. Is your fight going okay? Do you need backup?"

The Ender Dragon roared, a purple glow collecting in its throat once more. I quickly threw up a shield, but rather than a ball, what emerged was a cone of already loose acid, one that quickly filled the air between us. By the time it reached me, the diameter of it was far greater than my shield, and the acid that passed over my defenses started to fall down as gravity took hold of it.

I immediately activated Blitz Rush to push me back, outside of the range of the deadly cloud. I then beat my leathery wings harder, increasing the distance between us a bit more.

"I'm managing," I calmly replied to Ed. "I do need a bit of assistance in setting up the finale though. Could you do me a favor?"

We quickly hashed out a plan before I shifted my focus back to the fight. Another Javelin formed in my hands, but I kept it there, not throwing it immediately.

The Ender Dragon eyed it warily, well aware of just how much more of a threat that it was in particular. Which meant it was not paying attention to the Balmung I summoned below me.

Casting two spells at once was difficult to do. In fact, in most cases, it wasn't feasible, at least purely when using an unintelligent Device, such as my Tome. Aside from a few special spells, there were only three real ways of doing it. Using multiple Devices or a Device designed for multiple simultaneous casting, casting one or more of the spells without the aid of a Device, or, as I was doing, 'completing' the first spell and manually keeping a grip on it while you used a Device to prepare another.

Displacing the summoned projectiles a good distance away from me took a more magical power, but not that much more, and creating them outside of her immediate line of sight bought me enough time that the dragon nearly didn't spot the magical blades as they rushed toward her head.

Nearly, being the operative word there. She spotted them at the last minute, jerking her head to the side, resulting in only one of the blades hitting her in the jaw.

But that was enough.

In that moment of distraction, I let loose my Javelin, throwing it faster than I had my previous ones, with a speed unknown to the Ender Dragon. Even I could make out the shock in her eyes as it closed the distance in the blink of an eye. Once again though, she proved no incompetent foe, and her agile neck twisted her head out of the way.

Unfortunately for her, I hadn't been aiming for her head.

My supercharged Javelin slammed into the dragon's back, right in the joint where her wing connected to the rest of her body.

She roared in pain, the intensity far greater than anything else she had unleashed so far, and barreled under me, crashing into the ground.

I hovered in place as I turned and looked down at her. She had crashed near the edge of the floating island, crushing several Chorus trees along the way, yellow stone cracked underneath her. The Javelin faded away, leaving a gaping and bleeding hole in her back, and she struggled to push herself to her feet.

A frown pulled at my lips. Surely that wasn't all it took to defeat her, right? I had only meant to impair her a bit. I still had more spells I wanted to use.

"Get up, you overgrown lizard," I called out, sneering. "I'm not done with you yet."

She snapped at me, teeth gnashing shut on nothing due to the hundred or so meters separating us, but the action conveyed her anger well, as did the hateful glare she sent my way.

Her wings beat, the left one's movements slower and weaker, but still it was enough to lift her body into the air. I was sure that she was like me, her wings only partially physically responsible for her flight, and the rest of it was fuelled by magic or some supernatural mechanism, or else she would have never been able to hover in place like she did.

Still shooting me a look filled with utmost anger, she opened her mouth wide, the tell tale purple glow gathering in her throat as she prepared an attack. I readied myself to react based on what kind of attack it was… but it didn't come. It just kept building in her throat, the glow becoming more and more intense.

I felt a grin grow on my face, and I laughed. "Oh? Are you getting serious now?" I twirled my staff once more before pointing it at the Ender Dragon. "Come on then, show me what you're capable of!"

I spotted a flash of satisfaction in her purple eyes before the glow reached a crescendo. Her head tilted up, and a tidal wave of acid filled the air.

She didn't aim it for me, not directly, but it was easy to see her intention. The potent acid arced over me, spreading wide and blanketing a space the size of the entire floating island, creating a deadly fog that was quickly descending toward me, leaving no path of escape.

I laughed again, spreading my arms. "Is this it? Is this all you have? It's not nearly enough!" I raised my staff into the air. "Surging Storm!"

Just as the caustic cloud was about to reach me, my magic filled the air around me and stirred it up, transforming it into a powerful whirlwind. The tornado-like winds cycled around me, creating a shield that pushed everything, the airborne poison especially, away from me.

And so, it passed over me, my shield of air preventing it from so much as touching me, as the rest of it fell onto the ground below me.

The island was transformed into a hellscape as the acid landed on it, the plantlife and scattered Endermen all melting under the intensity of the attack, far stronger than her previous acid attacks had been. Even the stone itself started to smoke and bubble as it was eaten away. The only two safe spots were a small circle right below me and the edge where the Ender Dragon stood.

"That was a good try… but not good enough," I called out to my foe. I had no idea if she understood my language, but nor did I really care. She understood the intention, and I was sure she caught my mocking tone, because the anger in her eyes intensified, even tempered as it was by her readily apparent exhaustion after such a large attack.

"Morgan, it's ready," Ed communicated along our still open telepathic line.

"Got it. Get clear."

"No need to tell me twice. Happy hunting!"

I closed the telepathy and re-examined my opponent. She was tired, but quickly regaining her stamina as we both hovered there, unmoving. It was time to change that, and to finish this fight.

"If that's the best you can manage, then I have nothing to worry about," I taunted her, raising my staff and firing more Balmung at her. It was more to end the pause than anything, and it worked. She ignored the ones that weren't aimed for her head, and she barreled toward me.

I took off as well, running from her as I continued to fire spells at her. Below us, smoke rose and Endermen screamed in pain as the acid ate away at the entire island, but I ignored it. It was time for a change in location anyway.

I led her back to the first island, the one where we had appeared that was filled with the obsidian towers. I kept my eyes peeled, looking for Ed's sign, even as I weaved between the spires. The Ender Dragon roared, still enraged as it chased me, but she didn't fire more breath attacks. I was confident that she simply couldn't, not after such a big attack. She'd need time to recover, but I had no intention of giving that to her.

I was starting to feel a bit tired myself, both the physical drain from constantly flying at such speeds and the strain on my Linker Core from casting so many consecutive high cost spells making themselves known. But I had spent enough time pushing my limits in the simulator to know where they were, and I wasn't there yet.

I finally spotted the sign that Ed left, a giant black fist with a thumb extended upward jutting out of one of the tires. I smirked a bit in amusement, appreciating Ed's style, before I focused back on my task.

I reached a spot just a bit beyond the marked pillar and came to a sudden stop in the air, turning to face the Ender Dragon. Despite her best efforts, she was still quite a bit behind me, her wounded wing slowing her down. It was enough to give me time to cast my next spell.

"It's time to bring you down a notch. Majesty of the Lord."

Faster than the approaching dragon could react to, especially with her wounded wing, a purple shockwave shot from my staff as I sent the spell flying at her. It washed over her, and for an instant it seemed to not have any effect. But a moment later thick purple circlets formed around the base of her wings, locking them into place.

The Ender Dragon's flight might have been partially supernatural, but it wasn't entirely supernatural, and as her wings froze in an upright position she started to fall to the ground once again.

She slammed into the stone with enough force to crack and break it, digging a short furrow as her body bounced and rolled over. The bind disappeared as I let it go, its purpose served as I followed the dragon to the ground.

"Steel Yoke!" I intoned as I landed in a three-point stance on the ground, my magic forming the named spell as it traveled from my Core, down my arm, and into the ground below me.

It traveled to the stone below the Ender Dragon in a flash, where it activated. It transformed into a series of steely spikes of compressed magical energy, hardened to the extreme. The few I sent directly at the dragon's body broke, failing to penetrate her tough scales, but my main goal wasn't to skewer her. Instead, they jutted out of the ground around her, caging and pinning her to the ground.

She struggled, roaring in displeasure as she brought her strength to bear against the conjured spikes. They held, but I knew they wouldn't for long. They were designed exactly for this sort of situation, but the Ender Dragon was a formidable foe, even tired and injured.

My plan didn't end there though. Majesty of the Lord was a powerful bind spell, and Steel Yoke was a good cage, but neither were sufficient, despite their high cost. I needed one more thing to set up the finale.

I quickly flew the dozen or so meters away to the obsidian tower that Ed had marked. She had prepared it just like I had asked her to, with a section near the bottom having been removed, leaving a dent in it like a tree being chopped down by a lumberman's ax. Which was a rather fitting comparison considering my plan.

I turned toward the still struggling Ender Dragon, spotting the slowly growing cracks in my cage, confirming that I had lined her up in the right spot. I had, thankfully, so I used the last of my magic power for one final spell.

"Earth Penetration."

The spell was the second one that I had obtained from Fouquet after draining her magic those weeks ago, and it was just as useful as creating a giant golem. The transmutation of any material, magical or otherwise, into nothing but sand and dirt. It wasn't all powerful, as the sturdier or more magical the material the more power it needed from me in order to transmute it, but the fact that it could scale up on nothing more than raw power made it invaluable.

That wasn't a necessary feature here though, as all I wanted to transmute was some very normal obsidian.

Most of the remaining black stone at the base of the tower was reduced to black sand in the blink of an eye, leaving the thinnest of slivers of untouched obsidian to keep the entire mass of the tower up. A sliver that immediately proved itself incapable of the task as it cracked with a sharp sound. The majority of the tower tilted as it broke off at the base, and its mighty weight came swinging down directly on top of the trapped Ender Dragon.

It felt like the entire floating island shook as the titanic structure slammed down. Shrapnel and dust was thrown into the air, obscuring my vision even as I flapped my wings to keep on my feet from the sheer force of the shockwave.

Then it was over, leaving me standing but unable to see my foe. I wasn't worried though. Instead I pulled out my phone, mentally grumbling about the inconvenience of juggling it and my Tome, and pulled out one of Asuna's mana potions that I had taken from her.

I placed the tip of it finely crafted decanter in my mouth, drinking the potion as I walked toward the Ender Dragon, still obscured by dust. But it was quickly settling, and by the time I reached her, the potion empty and my Linker Core once again operating at full capacity, I could see her clearly.

The remains of the obsidian tower lay in pieces around her, having fallen on her perpendicular to her body. The scales that were directly impacted were torn, revealing strange purple flesh that bled profusely. Part of its ribs looked caved in, and the already injured wing was bending in a way that it definitely shouldn't have been.

But, for all that, the Ender Dragon was still alive and conscious. To be certain, she was weak, weak enough that all she could do was glare at me hatefully as I came to a stop in front of her head and shift ever so slightly underneath the bits of rubble that were still on top of her and leaning against her.

"I'll admit, you put up a good fight," I said. I pointed my staff at her face, the tip of it just a meter away. "And I thank you for that, really. But this is the end of the line for you. Today, I'm the victor."

A light blue magic circle appeared at the tip of my staff, two meters in diameter, and I began to pour my magic into the most powerful spell I had managed to pull off so far.

She growled, once more struggling to free herself from shattered remnants of both the tower and my Steel Yoke, but she was too weak and injured to move much. All she could do was watch with growing fear as my circle grew brighter and brighter as I poured every last drop of magical energy that I could muster into it.

"Blaze Cannon."

A pillar of blue-white fire that burned brighter than the sun erupted in front of me, twice as thick around as the magic circle that conjured it and crackling with red energy. It filled the area in front of me with a powerful and searing heat, focused entirely on the dragon's head.

It was only a flash, really. Less than a second. That was my limit with the beginner level bombardment spell, and that much was enough to cause my Linker Core to start aching once again.

But by the time my vision cleared from the blazing attack that I had conjured, all that remained of the Ender Dragon's head was the charred stump of her neck.

I let my arm fall and let out a heavy breath, exhausted. I felt my phone vibrate, no doubt notifying me of the completed mission, but I ignored it as I took a moment to catch my breath. I was pretty sore, despite not taking any hits. But even so, I couldn't stop smiling.

"We good?" I heard behind me. I looked over my shoulder to see Ed approaching, Louise just a few steps behind, her eyes wide and shoulders hunched as she stared at the corpse of the Ender Dragon.

"Of course, the deed has been done," I replied. "Not even a beast as fearsome as this could stand up to me."

Ed glanced at the corpse. "Yeah. It really couldn't." Then she frowned. "Wait… what's happening to it?"

I turned back to face the corpse to see it melting, for lack of a better word. I had already dismissed the remains of my Steel Yoke, but the chunks of obsidian remained, and they rolled and fell as the dragon's body seemed to lose all cohesion, melting into a puddle of black sludge.

But I quickly realized it wasn't black sludge, as the puddle formed a perfect circle, unnaturally flowing around the pockmarked Endstone to do so, and in just moments we were standing in front of not a corpse, but a hole in reality just like the one we entered to get there.

"The exit," I said, recognizing it for what it was.

"Look!" Louise said, pointing above the hole.

A black egg floated in the air above the center of the hole, gently bobbing in the non-existent wind.

"I was hoping we might see that," I said with a grin. "Float." I used a minor spell to pull it to me, and it didn't resist. I cradled the egg, half a meter tall, in my arms.

"Are… we taking it?" Louise asked.

"Damn straight we are. This is the real reward for beating her." In the game, it was little more than a trophy. But for me… well, I had plans already forming in my mind.

Turning to the others, I grinned. "Well, good job on the crystals you two. And good job setting up that tower, Ed. We're officially done, so it's time to go home and rest up. One of the missions earlier increased how big our home could be, so you'll be pretty busy expanding the dungeon, Ed."

She sighed. "No rest for the wicked, huh?"

"Nope, we're full steam ahead!"

Grinning and laughing, the Ender Dragon egg still in my arms, I jumped into the hole, ready to head home.

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AN: Pretty much all of the spells used in this chapter are actual canonical spells from the Nanoha series. The only exception is the Earth Penetration spell he got from Fouquet. Back when I first gave Morgan the TS, I came up with a list of spells that I expected a TS of Hayate to reasonably come with, focusing primarily on the Belkan spells as well as the ones of the main cast members. This was really just me getting a chance to show off more of them, and finally show off Morgan's growth and true fighting style. He's a mage, through and through, with a spell for every occasion.