Laz wanted to make for the door, but the cloaked figure wouldn’t let him.

"DIE," Laz yelled as he attacked, swinging his blade at the figure. Instead of fighting back, the figured retreated, again and again, refusing to engage with Laz and his damned blade.

Over and over again, Laz chased it, but over and over again, it avoided him, frustrating Laz.

*It’s trying to delay you. You’re movements are far to slow to catch up to him, allowing his double time to hunt for the young divine beast,* Jormungandr said in Laz’s head.

"I already know that..." Laz yelled back at the blade as he began to lose his cool.

*Is this the best you can do?* It asked, making Laz even more angry.

*Fine. No idea what happened since I’ve been sealed, but there are a few arts that would be useful to you. Pick one,* the blade said, sounding slightly hopeful for no reason.

In Laz’s head, several techniques appeared at once, thing that were hard to understand at first, but seemed to make sense after a moment, as though the blurry words suddenly became English and made sense.

Ghost steps- learn to move like a ghost, flickering in and out of existence while covering great distances. Warning, will not allow you to walk through walls.

Planet Walking- like moon walking, but will work on all surfaces. Move as though gravity doesn’t affect you and cover large stretches with one step. Might sometimes hear voices sing in your head when you are utilizing them, but they absolutely do not exist. Honest.

Flaming path- Be the voice that pisses off people you will never meet on the inter... wait... no... uh... flames on your feet like your own personal rocket boosters. If you don’t know what a rocket booster is, you should probably use one of those lesser movement arts as your intellect won’t be able to handle the awesomeness of this skill.

"Are you serious right now?" Laz asked the sword as the cloaked figure just stood by, not making a move.

*Don’t blame me. I only knew what my owners knew about these movement arts and each one was a top class skill.* Jormungandr responded.

"So are they like.. heaven grade or divine grade or something?" Laz asked.

*You believe in heaven or the divine and yet call yourself a god?*

"Then where do we go when we die?"

*The ground? Maybe a puddle if you’re unlucky? Sometimes you’re eaten and shit out later and then end up in the ground. Maybe you’ll drift around space as a chunk of frozen meat for a few thousand years until some cosmic whale decides to eat you, then eventually shit you out in which case you’ll be a drifting frozen pile of shit in space?*

Laz started to think that this sword of his wasn’t right in the head before remembering it didn’t have a head.

"You know what? Let’s go with..."

*The third one. Got it. Good choice. Flaming path it is.*

"I wanted the ghost steps..."

*You’re not dead, are you?*

"Of course not."

*Then why practice a skill for the dead?*

"Then why did you offer it? Wait... the dead can use skills?"

*Flaming path it is...*

"Can’t we change the name?"

*Nope*

Suddenly a large amount of info entered Laz’s head as he felt the skill burn into his brain along with years of insights by the last person to use it as they blazed a bloody path along with Jormungandr. Part of using it required one to have a special flame and the one who both created this movement technique and reach the pinnacle with it had a purple colored flame that was strong enough to cover an entire planet and burn the world to ashes. With the flaming path’s last step, one could create pathways through the universe to travel from one galaxy to another. As for the first step, that was the only one Laz could do right now. Step forward and leave a trail of flames behind you, getting to your opponent before they could even see to stop you. While it seemed like the person who made up this skill wasn’t human, that didn’t matter to Laz as he had two legs and two feet and therefore moved in the same way. Normally, Laz would have taken time to learn, practice and execute such a maneuver, but since he was full of inside and had a body strong enough to use and a flame that was compatible, Laz was able to walk one step forward and end up right beside the awaiting figure.

As it moved back, Laz took another step and ended up right behind it, swinging at it and catching a large chunk of flesh before it could dodge. After this, the figure finally spoke.

"What the hell?" It asked in that horrible voice before Laz took another step forward and repeated the actions, slicing off another spot of flesh.

"I’ll kill you..." Despite it’s threat, it didn’t attack and only decided to dodge yet again, this time seeing through Laz’s move and evading the blade.

Back and forth they went, but Laz didn’t score a single shot again. Even though this was the case, the figure kept spewing hateful words at Laz, threatening him with all kinds of horrible deaths and such.

And as long as it kept talking, it’s movements didn’t falter in the least, leading Laz to a very strange thought.

’It can’t control both bodies using it’s full conciseness. So now that I’ve threatened this one, it had to stop focusing on chasing Nagi, otherwise this one could die. Hopefully this gives her enough time.’

Just as Laz had this thought, a figure was seen on the wall of the black castle jump up and them come dropping down like a stone. Just behind it, Laz caught a glimpse of another cloaked figure being followed by dozens of gods throwing everything they had at it.

Laz didn’t even stop to think, throwing himself forward and diving to catch the falling body in his arms as Nagi opened up her eyes while blood ran down her cheeks from a bad wound on her head.

"I knew you’d catch me," Nagi said with a smile, her voice weak with strain.

Up top, the other figure was blasted apart via the combined efforts of everyone chasing it. Even then, a mist flowed from the top of the black castle and down to the cloaked figure before merging with it.

"Well, now that you both are here, this will make things simpler for us. Or at least, it would have, but it seems like we have run out of time... pity..." the thing that was the nameless god said as it shook it’s head. Just as it said that though, the gate began to rumble and vibrate, like a massive shockwave was hitting it and only it. Then the ground all around them began to shake as lightning lit up the skies.

All over the the massive pocket dimension, the sky was lighting up as the earth shook, causing everything alive to look on in horror and shake in fear.

Something horrible was coming from the now open gate, something that defied logic and reason, something that made the very core of Laz feel afraid.

Laz knew it without being told, especially after seeing the disappointed face of the nameless gods soul spec, that the nameless god was coming though the passage right now, tearing it open as he pushed past the restrictions to pull itself through. At this rate, if it got in here, the gate would probable be destroyed and they would all be dead.

*Tamesis, can you hear me?* Laz said, using his senses to find Tamesis in the base of the fortress and forcefully talk into her mind without an invitation.*

*YES! AND IT HURTS.*

*There’s no time for that. You need to shift the fortress and the black castle through that gate. NOW!*

*But we haven’t had time to prepare, or calibrate the shield or...* 𝙛𝓻𝒆𝓮𝒘𝙚𝙗𝒏𝙤𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝒐𝙢

*It doesn’t matter. If what’s coming gets through that gate, then out only hope it to shift out of this pocket dimension without even a clear place to go. The number of us who could survive that... Might not even need a full hand. And that’s if we even get a chance to. You have to go right now and just remember... I trust you.*

*What about you?*

*Me? I’m doing this the old fashioned way,* Laz said to her with a smirk on his face before activating the second step of the flame path, Far as near. If the first step, Flame step, gave a person the ability to speed up quickly, the second step allowed the distance a person needed to go to vanish into almost nothing. The problem was the strain on his body was too immense for words as he felt his legs almost break with the effort.

Even then, he took the step, holding the bloody Nagi in his hands as he stopped and sliced, cutting off the heads of both bodies of the nameless gods soul spec and allowing Jormungandr to absorb their essence.

*You’ll kill yourself if you do that again,* Jormungandr advised while enjoying it’s meal.

"No choice. Now it’s time for us to leave," Laz said as the fortress and black castle vanished in the blink of an eye.

*To where? That rock might be fine as it just qualifies as a ship. But you... You’ll be exposed to the harshness of spatial distortions as that Chaos God is ripping apart the channel connecting the two spaces. Even if it doesn’t noticed you, you’ll most like die or be spat out somewhere you didn’t expect. It’s madness to even consider.*

"I know... right?" Laz said with a grin as he rushed forward once again and without hesitation, plunged himself into the gate right before a figure big enough to blot out the sky emerged from it, expanding in size until it’s head was touching the clouds, solid as stone and looking pissed off.