Jonathan did not falter, blasting through the mist unscathed. While the beast looked intimidating, it did not warrant the use of Smite, or, for that matter, the Blessing of Exal’drin. Instead, Jonathan augmented his already prodigious strength with his stamina, gathering his muscular power to punch. The Void surrounding condensed down into a single gauntlet, a bit larger than his own.
Drill and fist met in the middle of the battlefield, neither faltering at first. However, there was one clear difference. The drill only persisted because of inertia, while Jonathan’s strike was already superior. Already, a crack had formed, and the spinning spear of Death broke apart, with Jonathan flying through its shattered remains, and into the belly of the beast.
Eliza was conflicted. She had been for weeks. Ever since Jonathan had confronted her about her treachery, her mind was in turmoil, more than ever before. Not only had she remained alive, but Jonathan had actually cleansed her soul of Malaraxia’s taint, leaving her free to pursue her true destiny. All thoughts of betrayal were gone from her mind, but that was not what concerned her.
Eliza’s sword slashed through a dozen necks, blazing with the golden flames of her divinity. As the zombies collapsed, she cast her eyes over to Jonathan, currently fighting the leader of the horde, a titanic undead worm the length of a city block. Somehow, he was inside its body, and every now and again, shockwaves rippled through portions of its body, dust flying eveywhere. It was quite clear where the battle was going, with the delay more out of a lack of urgency than anything else. Jonathan could have erased it from existence with ease, but instead, he remained fighting, leaving his allies to reap the rewards.
Ever since joining the man who would be Hellbreaker, Eliza’s strength had grown by leaps and bounds. From the unshackling over her Divinity to her meteoric rise in level, there were many reasons that her choice was the right one. Still, there was something about her new leader that made her feel strange, muddled in her thoughts. He was another child of Earth, a man whose life had been much the same as hers before Telvaria. He was a man who had taken the gifts the universe gave him, and ran with it, achieving the impossible. He was a man who had earned her respect, but she found herself feeling more than that.
The hell is wrong with me? Get your head back in the game! She snapped at herself mentally, continuing her butchering spree. Sprays of unclean dust and ancient funereal wrappings surrounded her like a cloud, one that was nothing compared to the one in her mind.
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***
Meanwhile, Jonathan was having the time of his life. The interior of the worm was dark and constricting, but it was nothing before his strength. Relying simply on his physical prowess, after his initial clash with the elemental drill, he was ravaging his way through the beast’s internals by the virtue of his stats alone. Each punch was like a missile being discharged within the monster, and had it not been a Tier 4, the shockwaves would have destroyed far more than its own body.
Jonathan’s strength was easily over a thousand times that of a normal man’s, one his various bonuses were factored in. Such power was enough to bring down buildings with ease and blast craters into the ground. When he condensed the sum total of that power, in the form of stamina, he could bring down small mountains.
The monster’s flesh warped and tore before him, with it being unable to do much in response. Veils of acidic mist swirled within its gullet, but to Jonathan, it was like mere fog. Aegis of the Void’s Dichotomy was more than enough to counteract the miasma, destroying it before it could even touch his skin. Dried out corpses lined the walls of the monster’s innards, Uthraki and beasts alike. Jonathan was different to them, however. Instead of being the prey, he was the hunter.
One final blow severed the monster into two pieces, both wriggling as they tried to reconnect. As an undead, the beast was still more than capable of movement, so Jonathan raced down its length, searching for its elemental core. His feet dug into its parchment thin skin, crackling and crunching along it. A few moments later, a green light beckoned from within its corpse, and he surged forwards, slamming his gauntleted fist into the center. There was a shockwave of emerald fire, and the beast came apart at the seams, seeming to melt into the ground around it, reduced to mere dust.
Jonathan leaped off its remains, and turned his attention to the rest of the battle, still ongoing. Living Uthraki warred with dead ones, leaving trails of corpses, dead for the second time, lying prone on the ground. Other than the worm Jonathan had slain, there were few monsters of note, both to him, and the others. Fighting here would result in little save for stealing the essence from others, so instead, Jonathan sat in the middle of the battlefield, surrounded himself in a veil of the Void, and began to cultivate his element.
As he did so, he also ran through the thoughts that had intruded into his mind at the sight of the glyphs defending the Merchant Queen’s palace. There was some key insight into Runecrafting waiting for him there, one that he would need to conceptualize to ascend to further ranks.
