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    The fight with the gold armor started off the same as the others, but  quickly devolved. First off, though all of the armors came at me at  once, when they got in close, the dark ones split off to surround me  while the gold one attacked me head on. The armor had a massive spiked  golden mace, and despite being bigger than the others, it seemed to be  much faster.


    State of Grace, Ripple Running. I bounded out  of the way, letting my danger sense tip me off and using my staff as a  pole vault to leap over the crowd of armor trying to literally axe  murder me. As I came up, my staff shot out behind me, slightly shifting  the course of multiple halberds as they attacked, redirecting and  infecting.


    As each weapon slammed into the gold armor,  they left behind a slight groove in the metal and the usual corrosive  damage. Despite that though, the damage was barely spreading. The golden  material of the armor was just exponentially more durable than the rest  of them. It might only be F-rank, but it was clearly an impressive  metal. F-rank copper and F-rank titanium were not the same level of  hardness, and this stuff was definitely high end.


    I could  feel the Impact from the gold armor, and it felt like a normal thirty  two points rather than some obscene value like forty. My extra three  points of Impact gave me a serious advantage against mediocre F-rankers,  but this armor didn''t seem particularly inconvenienced when I struck  out with a few probing shots. Which meant I had to focus on using the  other suits of armor. Their Might seemed much higher than mine.


    Still,  this was going to call for something a bit more...delicate. I triggered  Moonlit Night, flooding the room with concealing fog. Moonlit Night  actually wasn''t perfectly suited to the Belial form. Belial was all  about misdirection and feints, and Moonlit Night was pure stealth. You  can''t misdirect someone who can''t see or hear you.


    Luckily,  I could tweak my skills, especially give my beefy new soul, so allowing  sound to filter through the fog was easy enough. I stalked forward,  keeping low, and as I drew close to goldie I let the but of my staff  drag the ground slightly, creating a low scraping noise.


    The  armors pounced on me like wolves, all their halberds headed for me.  Sadly for them, I''d picked this spot on purpose. I was already low, and  slipping under the attacks was easy. I ended up on my back on the  ground, and my staff flicked out, hitting balance points and centers of  gravity on the axes as I imbued them with corrosion yet again. They all  slammed into the gold suit.


    This time, however, the armors  couldn''t see what they were hitting. They felt the impact and went  crazy, wailing on the gold suit full force, desperately trying to kill  it with repeated blows. The gold armor didn''t seem thrilled with this  little development, and it swung its massive mace in a wide arc, trying  to destroy its attackers.


    Which it did. Or one of them at  least. Sadly as I was at my limit the orange flame joining with me from  its death didn''t improve me. It DID, however, have a similar refreshing  effect to the islands in the first trial. Doing so much was a slight  strain, but now even that was gone. I felt energized and alert, it was  like the soul version of Jessie''s life force infusion.


    The  killing blow on the armor had apparently tipped goldie off though,  because it stopped attacking, slamming its mace down on the ground in  some sort of signal that had the rest of them breaking off to circle  again.


    I didn''t think the same trick would work again, but  luckily, I had other tricks. It''s easy to ignore fake danger, and much  harder to ignore real danger. I rushed one of the closest armors and  attacks, my staff flashing out in a blur to tag a series of spots on the  dark metal. Feeling that I was actually attacking it repeatedly and  presumably noticing the weapon was not a halberd or mace, the armor  reacted on instinct, coming after me.


    My overlay did its  job. I saw the incoming the arrows, and combined with my danger sense I  was able to nimbly avoid every blow as it frantically came toward me. I  made sure to make noise as I moved, though only loud enough to be picked  up close by. As it committed more and more, I slowly led it to the next  suit, and, with a particularly well timed dodge, let the armor hit one  of the other suits.


    The dark armor stumbled, slamming into  another who was pretty close, and all three came after me. Ripple  Running let me step off the air, leaping over them and landing silently  off to one side before making a noise and letting them all realize where  I was. A stampede of metal rushed me, just as I''d expected, and the  three of them slammed right into another two armors I''d positioned  behind me, even as I jumped over their heads again.


    Meanwhile,  goldie was carefully monitoring its surroundings, trying to find me  without hitting its teammates. Not that it was having much success, but  the complete stillness was almost jarring.If you come across this story on Amazon, it''s taken without permission from the author. Report it.


    I continued my  game of cats and mouse, drawing the last three into the melee, and  between the stealth and the damage from the corrosive weapons, I started  to worry I might accidentally kill some more of them before I could  finish the boss. I started leading them toward goldie, preparing to  engage it in combat.


    As I got close, the armor seemed to  sense me, a massive swing of the mace aimed right at my skull. Luckily  my danger sense warned me well before the attack would have landed, and I  could see fine anyway, I slipped under it and the blow slapped one of  the halberds, knocking its wielder into the crowd of other armors and  eliciting an enraged reaction (as much as armor can be enraged) from the  one who had been hit.


    They swarmed at me, and at goldie  behind me, but I slid under the golden armor, out between its legs, and  came up behind it. As they all attacked, I lashed out with a series of  light taps on the weapons, reinforcing the corrosion, but also using  some of my stored triple strength density shifted attacks. I had ten of  them from various wishes over the three month break, and there were  eight of the armors left, and another ten in reserve.


    Every  single one of the halberds smashed into goldie like a freight train,  not just the density of the weapons, but the multiple stacks of  corrosion from Belial were augmented. Rents and tears in the metal were  torn open from eight directions as the attacks landed, ripping holes all  over the gleaming golden armor.


    I  was pumped. This was all going according to plan...until it wasn''t. With  the sound of tearing metal, the faceplate of the golden armor tore  open, a jagged rent like metal teeth revealing itself as it threw back  its head and roared in outrage. It hefted its club and the object began  to glow with golden light as it brought it swinging around in a flurry  of terrifying smashes.


    Being  close by to arrange the hits, I was in the strike zone, I used Pit of  Despair, creating a ten foot circle of fine dust that I dropped into,  avoiding the strikes. Partway down I stepped off one of my Ripple  Running platforms and catapulted myself up and out, another attack was  coming at me unintentionally, but I slammed my staff down on another  platform and vaulted over it midair.


    Landing  about twenty feet away, I made sure to make noise. The golden armor  roared again, ignoring the eight suits of crushed armor he''d left  behind, and turned to come after me. It dropped right into the pit,  roaring and thrashing as the eight orange flames merged with me,  repairing some of the damage done by maintaining so many different  skills on top of Belial.


    The  monster was covered in tears and rents and its whole body was being  invaded by corrosion energy, but it kept thrashing, trying to stay above  the dust as the substance pouring into the empty armor, dragging it  down. I groaned in annoyance. No more patsies, which meant Belial was  going to be way less effective. My next form was going to be based on  single combat.


    I  hauled back, slamming the staff down on his head, unleashing the  simulated death energy (much less effective without the rank advantage)  along with a triple stacked density boost and a gravity attack from  Alden. I was running low on those, and couldn''t get more, but despite  being a rank below me, the combination with the empowering boost gave it  enough kick to push the armor further down.


    Once  its arms were partly submerged, I cancelled Pit of Despair, and left  the thing literally fused into the ground. Its elbows were stuck,  meaning no arm movement, and it snarled at me impotently as it struggled  to get free. Didn''t work. I wasn''t sure what these floors were made of,  but it was sturdy as fuck without some sort of skill to soften it up  like I had.


    I  considered using Flurry of Blows, but since it couldn''t move, in the  end I just settled on beating it viciously about the head and shoulder  with my staff. Took me about eighty whacks to get the job done, but  eventually the corrosion built up enough to let me cave in the helmet,  and it FINALLY died.


    The  rush of orange fire this time came with a third golden key piece, and I  let my Belial form fade away in relief as my soul was healed and  soothed. I was doing quite a few things at once just then, and it was  really taking a toll. Reaching out, I grabbed the key piece, completely  unsurprised when it merged into my body. I let out a sigh of relief, but  I was surprised out of my state of relaxation by an odd noise.


    As  all the armors vanished and the floors repaired themselves, the doors  on both sides of the room opened up. More than that, two NEW doors  appeared on either side of me. I could see other rooms through them.  Empty rooms in some cases, and in some rooms with people in them.  Turning on my heel, I thanked the gods State of Grace didn''t run out  until the timer ended.


    I  sprinted through the door I''d come through, remembering which way I''d  taken through each room. I actually didn''t know why I was running.  Everyone else was running, I could see them, but I had the key  fragments, so getting there earlier wasn''t a huge advantage. Even if  someone else got the next one I could just take it off their corpse at  the end. Still, it was fun, so I kept sprinting, at least until I came  to the first junction room where I''d met Simon and Vinnie.


    When  I arrived there, I froze. A familiar head of black and white hair was  in front of me. As she heard me enter, my sister turned to look and  spotted me. She stared back, neither of sure what to do, until some  asshole on a green hoodie bolted through the door next to her, shoved  her aside and screamed "Victory to the mountebanks!" At the top of his  lungs as he dove through the door we''d both been headed to.


    Neither  of us knew what to do for a second, but finally we broke down laughing  as I walked up to her and put out a hand. "So...this seems like an  ALMOST decent place to talk without being overheard. Might be a good  idea to give it a few minutes though." I said with a grin. "After  that...I have some questions." And they were a long time coming.