Jonathan simply stared at the aftermath of the slaughter, struck by a sudden, worrying thought. If Alonak wanted to, he could easily kill him in an instant. The man must have progressed past the initial stages of Tier 5, to new heights of power.
Immediately, his mind turned to his strategy from Mire, luring Slothari into Tartarus, where she had been weakened by Arkanon before Jonathan killed her. Perhaps the same thing would work here? Only, the circle lords were wiser than that. There was no way the Stillborn Hegemon would subject himself to such a threat.
“Do you wish to try your hand at the hordes that plague my kingdom?” Andrava said a moment later. “You said you needed levels.”
“Actually, yes. My team needs to get up to speed with the Stillborn Hegemon and his servants,” Jonathan answered. “Though, your knight seems to have made such a task impossible here…”
Andrava smiled smugly. “He does have a predilection for grandiosity, true. Though, it certainly works, does it not?”
Jonathan nodded. “It sure does.”
***
A few hours later, Jonathan and his team stood before an army of shambling, moaning undead. The vanguard of the nearest horde, unfortunately, was made up of weaklings, but there were an ample number of stronger monsters nearer to the center of the army, relying on their allies to survive.
“There should be enough here for all of us,” Jonathan said, casting his eyes over the undead arrayed before him. “I’m not going to make the same mistake I made in Mire, trying to fight the circle lord before I’m strong enough.”
Arkanon nodded. “Now that we also know those monsters can play all sorts of tricks when cornered, any plans to defeat them must be well thought out.”
“Has anyone actually documented their abilities?” Eliza asked. “I heard Jonathan talking about his run-ins with System laws before, and I feel like that is an aspect of the world that we know too little about.”
“I knew quite a bit about them in Telvaria,” Edgar answered, “but I know nothing about the rules of the Hells. Angranor, or the System, set them, rather than the gods.”
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Jonathan continued. “As far as I know, there’s at least two. One limiting the power gap between a circle lord and their prey, and one allowing them to set the rules of battle.”
Arkanon sighed. “Sometimes, I think this whole thing was-”
“Never meant to be completed?” Jonathan completed. “I know. Though, we have to try anyway.”
“Enough talking,” Hushar interrupted. “My blade, and I, crave the essence of my foes!” He hurled himself forward, ahead of the pack. Jonathan debated calling after him, but decided to follow the Uthraki. He knew that it would annoy Arkanon, but in this situation, Hushar was right. All they really had been doing was wasting time bantering.
Threads of stamina surged along Jonathan’s muscles, empowering them beyond their normal limits. A sonic boom rang out as he kicked off the ground, launching himself up into the air. A corona of purple surrounded him, and wings of the Void extended out, helping him glide down towards his destination. His fists clenched, kernels of pure destruction forming within them.
He landed a few moments later, thrusting his hands down towards the ground. Two half domes of purple light expanded from Jonathan’s hands, instantly evaporating hundreds of the lesser undead. He increased the power input, and used Maw of the Void, sending razor thin waves of his element out for hundreds of meters in every direction. Heads fell like scythed wheat, and the undead ranks parted, revealing the more powerful monsters behind. Hulking beasts of mouldering flesh and bone, every stride took them forwards at a pace that ate at the surface of the realm, now that their allies no longer stood in their way.
Twisted towers of Death corrupted corpses, they took a myriad of forms, ranging from beasts to Uthraki. As Jonathan fought, his gauntleted fists powdering bone, even as the attacks of his foes glanced off his armor, he watched the ground open up a mile away, a gaping maw erupting from it.
A giant zombie worm, with a maw the width of a subway, surged up into the air, and came crashing down before Jonathan. Its body was covered in segmented plates of bone, while its desiccated flesh remained within, dried out by the hot air of Tartarus. The aura of a mid Tier 4 wafted from it, and Jonathan immediately ditched his current foe in favor of the newcomer, leaving the reeling saurian undead to have its head cleaved in two by Hushar’s greatsword.
Torrents of the Void gathered around Jonathan’s body, and he propelled himself forwards like a meteor, Maw of the Void mingling with his new Ancient skill. The shield of combined Negation and Consumption girded him like a mantle, just in time to, as a mist of rotting purple leaked from the corners of the worm’s mouth, eating away at the ground below. The creature started to turn, rotating faster and faster as it went. Visible shockwaves rippled through the air from the sheer mass going at such high speeds. A spike of Death exploded from its mouth, ridged like a drill, but made from pure conceptual energy. It began to spin with the monster, and soon, it was rotating at supersonic speed. Only then did the monster strike, a whip of its tail propelling it forth.
