It was a ruse, the archer had only acted as if he was slowing down because of the wounds, just before Cades had caught up, already sure of his easily attainable victory, the archer ran forward with great vigour and left some wonderful surprises for Cades.
These surprises consisted of a few light grey balls of clay, nothing more, or so Cades thought before they exploded before he could react, with him barely having passed them as they caused another wave to once again rush through the endless chain, and yet, barely scratching the surface of the uneven onyx metal.
Luckily the explosion wasn't fast or powerful enough to catch up to Cades and impede him, but the wave of the chains, resembling a spike send out into both directions did take his balance for the fraction of a second, enough for the archer to somehow run away much further than he had previously been running at, barely leaving behind any blood.
Cades didn't know how he was able to do, he had some ideas though.
Maybe he was using light magic, transforming his own particles and temporarily achieving near-instant velocity to achieve another position in a limited space, such as this, also known as its more popular term, "teleportation" or in this case, "blink".
Maybe the archer was using an artifact, after all the archer did have those magical bombs that resembled a ball of clay, on the other hand that was a disgustingly crude work, barely worthy of being called artificing, Cades wouldn't call it so either.
Just as a person who painted one painting isn't a painter or a player who played one game isn't a gamer this person was in all likelihood not an artificer, just because they knew how to make magical bombs.
His last idea was that this person was, without a doubt, from another world, maybe they knew something he didn't, actually, it was almost impossible for them not to know something that he didn't know regarding magic.
After all the archer had been able to consciously imbue his arrows with different elements, and he had somehow put away that huge bow into thin air as fast as Cades could see back when the bow had just vanished, and the archer was able to move so fast, which in on itself was something that Cades only theoretically knew how to do and would need a teacher to really find out how to do.
But there was something weird about how the archer was fighting, every single attack that the archer was throwing at him was almost instantaneously, as if the archer had no need to prepare or cast, as if he had no need to get the magical energy out of the depths of his mana organ.
Added to that it seemed as if the Archer was strangely limited, if Cades had the ability to instantly transport himself away he would've used it constantly as he was running, maybe, Cades thought, it had a condition that had to be met, but that wouldn't make sense, there weren't really any obvious differences between now and during the first collision..
Now that Cades thought about it there wasn't really any guarantee that other worlds used the same kind of magic as he was using, maybe they were blesses by a god or something of the likes, that would theoretically also be a possibility, he had heard of worlds that had garnered extreme attention from the gods because their residents were in constant peril, those worlds were supported by various godly powers, maybe the archer came from one of those worlds and he just happened to have that one specific power.
But that didn't really matter right now as Cades had almost caught up to the elusive figure of the archer whose hair was now swaying behind him, forming a golden rainbow, a stark contrast to the endless nothing that Cades had been staring at for such a long time.
The figure was heavily panting and slowing down more and more, but Cades didn't slow down, Cades was wary of another attack of the same kind as the archer had used before, he was careful, but the archer stopped for a moment, trying to take a breath; seemingly praying that it had gotten rid of Cades at some point in time, it hadn't.
Cades leaped through the air and wrestled the now barely moving archer to the ground, causing both of them to jump atop the endless chain a few times, praying that they wouldn't fall into the merciless abyss in which many had probably fallen before them, swallowed by the bright abyss illuminated by the merciless, never-moving sun.
In the end they didn't fall and simply came to a still on the still heavily swinging onyx chain, which, now that Cades thought about it had another meaning, the islands were seemingly a constant.
At first he had thought that the islands were moving and that the chains were used to keep them together, but now he realized, for the chain to swing like this it hat to not be moving at either end, only possible if the islands were stationary, especially in the case of the small one from which Cades had come from.
But although that was interesting and Cades would undoubtably have to look at that fact a bit more later on he had something more important at hand right now, the archer, what about the archer..
He laid on the ground in a position resembling a fetus, and as he finally stood up and looked around he panicked for a bit, he couldn't see the archer on any of the surrounding links, Until he finally looked down and saw the elusive, white archer laying just a few feet away from him, somehow having been missed by the first sweep of his eyes, one hand across the endless depths in which only the light resided and the rest safely on the titanic chain, somehow without any danger of falling down, perhaps a kind of magical insurance or artifact.
To his dismay the archer was unconscious, or at least they seemed to be.
He took a step forward, touched the torso of the unconscious body, heaved it up with ease, the mantle seemingly sticking to the uneven surface of the onyx chain that was still about three times as big as them with unnatural complexity, signifying that it was indeed enchanted so the archer wouldn't meaninglessly fall to their death, and finally looked at the face of his attacker.