Part Ninety-Four — Assimilation

　I was in front of him before his arrogance finished leaving his mouth.

　I don't remember choosing the skill. I only remember the name of it surfacing somewhere in the back of my mind, already active, already working — Assimilation — and Cassmoor's body, his regenerating flesh, whatever remained of the archdemon wearing it, simply beginning to come apart into something my own aura was actively pulling inward.

Not just the body. The soul too. Whatever lets these things come back — I need to take that too, or this doesn't actually end.

　He tried to resist. I felt it, distantly, a desperate surge of demonic power thrown against the absorption — and felt it fail, entirely, swallowed alongside everything else he'd been.

　Cassmoor — whatever had actually been Cassmoor, whatever had been wearing him — simply ceased, in a way that left nothing behind capable of ever regenerating again.

　The cost hit me almost immediately after.

　My legs gave out first, the entire field tilting sideways, my own mana suddenly feeling like it had been poured out through a hole I hadn't known existed. I had just enough awareness left to register Anti-Subconsciousness's voice, distant and strangely gentle, before everything went dark entirely.

"I did warn you about this," it said. "Hence the limiter. You exceeded it regardless."

Yeah. Figured that might happen. Worth it, though.

　That was the last coherent thought I had before the darkness took the rest of me.

　I didn't see what happened next. What I know, I only know because Sophia told me later, once she was well enough to speak of it herself.

　The girl — No.5 — had watched the entire exchange with the same detached, unhurried curiosity she'd shown throughout, applauding softly once Cassmoor had finished ceasing to exist.

　"Wow," she said, to no one in particular, genuinely delighted. "That was amazing."

　She walked over to where I'd collapsed, considered me for a long moment, and then — for reasons Sophia couldn't properly explain, reasons that made no obvious sense given everything else about the encounter — knelt and healed me.

　Not partially.

　Completely, effortlessly, in a way that made whatever remained of Sophia's own wound close alongside mine a moment later, as though healing two wounded strangers cost her nothing at all.

　She gathered something from where the demon-knights had fallen earlier too — absorbing whatever remained of them the same unhurried way she did everything, tidying up a mess that wasn't originally hers to clean.

　"You'll be fun to play with," she said, to my unconscious body, warm and genuinely amused.

　Then she simply wasn't there anymore, the gate of fog closing behind her without any further ceremony, leaving Sophia alone on a battlefield littered with the dead, healed and alive and utterly confused about why either of those things had happened at all.

　I woke slowly, sometime later, the sky above me unfamiliar in the specific way that told me I hadn't chosen where I'd fallen. My whole body ached in a way that reminded me, distantly, of the first time I'd ever pushed past a limit I didn't fully understand.

　Sophia lay nearby, unconscious but breathing steadily, whatever wound had nearly killed her completely healed, no trace of it left at all.

She healed us. The primordial demon healed us, and then just... left.

What is my life.

　I gathered myself slowly, checked her pulse properly this time, found it strong and steady, and made a decision that didn't take much deliberation at all.

I'm not leaving her here. Whatever she decides once she wakes up — enemy, ally, something in between — she doesn't deserve to wake up alone on a battlefield that nearly killed her twice over.

　I lifted her carefully, my own legs still unsteady beneath me, and began the long, slow walk back toward Horizoncrest, carrying an unconscious Holy Knight commander I'd been fighting to the death only hours earlier, toward a home neither of us had expected either of us to reach together.