The portal, whatever it was, took Zeke to a grassy field seemingly outside of the Sunken Metropolis. There, the only source of light was the luminous moon hanging in the darkened canopy.
He distanced himself from the twisting portal and, within seconds, saw Jonathan appear, followed right after by Amelia.
“Zeke… s-stop this. Just give him what he wants.”
“...”
Instead of responding, the young man kept staring at the portal, and when it started twisting, he immediately sprung into action; His body vanished as ‘Life Motus’ was activated, teleporting right in front of Jonathan.
His fist, wrapped in dense azure lightning, emitted a faint orange glow as it struck the man’s chest, blowing him to the back.
Right at that second, Sulong and Jack came out of the portal and rushed at the distracted Amelia. They left her no choice, both of them holding her arms and forcefully dragging her back into the portal.
“Meddling pests.”-Jonathan
A swirling black mist tried to stop the thugs but Zeke intervened. A rain of thunderbolts clashed with the mist, extinguishing it and buying enough time for Sulong, Jack, and Amelia to disappear back into the portal.
Breathing a sigh of relief, Zeke spun his body and, with the use of ‘Sreyzhanian Arts’, evaded the incoming scythe, which grazed his left shoulder.
The ghost-like entity and Jonathan’s black mist attacked simultaneously, but Zeke stood his ground. He fired a ‘Voltage Arrow’ at the entity, piercing a hole through its illusory body, but that wasn’t enough to stop it, so he followed up with consecutive shorts of ‘Voltage Zap’.
The thunderbolts riddled the entity’s body with holes and stopped its second attack. However, Zeke was hit by Jonathan, got pushed back, and rolled on the ground.
“You are simply unfit to use such transcendent abilities.”
“And you are?!” Zeke coughed blood and hastily got to his feet, more lightning emerging from his hands and spreading across his body.
Several projectiles shot from the cloud of black mist, but this time, Zeke reacted accordingly and quickly switched paths and used ‘Rune of Death’ to absorb the influx of negative energy.
The scythe was swept from up above as the ‘ghost’ descended upon him, so Zeke raised his arms and somehow managed to block it, but his skin was cut and shredded, causing an immense wave of excruciating pain.
When the Rune of Life shone, indicating the negative energy was successfully converted and stored, Zeke used it on ‘Sreyzhanian Arts’, his bleeding hands grabbing the scythe and pulling it downwards.
His body moved swiftly as it stomped on the slim entity then kicked it a distance away.
Jonathan’s mist attacked again, unleashing a unidirectional blast that pushed Zeke away before he could defend.
“I don’t know how you acquired the Paths of Extinction, but you are inadequate and ignorant.”
Even though he had the chance, Jonathan did not chase after Sulong and Jack. He seemed to be enjoying this fight and drew pleasure from seeing Zeke pushed to the brink.
Zeke was about to use what remained of his Aether in one last devastating attack, but his heartbeat accelerated and his body stopped moving.
“Without the Crown, you are nothing. No one.”
Jonathan appeared in front of the frozen Zeke and kicked his head before pressing his foot on his chest.
“Look at you… a pitiful and malformed creature.”
In response, Zeke, who finally regained control, held Jonathan’s leg and tried pushing them to the side but the mist interfered. However, he didn’t give up, going as far as consuming his own Life Aether to conjure the voltage.
“Even I am more of a human than you.”
The Rune of Life let out a resplendent light as the blue lines from before instantly spread across its user’s body, reinforcing it and empowering it.
A thick bolt of lightning struck Jonathan’s face, disfiguring it and blasting him dozens of meters in the air.
Before his body decided to randomly stop functioning again, Zeke made use of all the stored Aether within the Rune of Life as well as his own in a final attack.
Instead of ‘Voltage Arrow,’ he used ‘Voltage Zap’, which was more flexible; Zeke raised his right hand, which unleashed a veritable torrent of shiny lightning bolts that hit the airborne target.
For the first time ever, Jonathan let out a painful cry as his body was charred by the voltage, and when his bloodied body thudded against the ground, there was a bit of steam rising up.
His regenerative ability kicked in, but, surprisingly, it wasn’t able to heal everything. He touched the long and fresh bloody scar on his cheek, his eyebrow raised.
He was kneeling and seemingly absent-minded, so, with what left of his Life Aether, Zeke used ‘Life Motus’ to appear in front of him then swept horizontally with his leg, planning to finish this once and for all.
Now that it came to this, he couldn’t run away, after all, he finally managed to land permanent wounds on the man.
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“Don’t do it!”
Just as his leg was about to hit Jonathan’s neck, Zeke’s body was zapped by thin and black thunder.
Fortunately, the attack wasn’t strong enough, so it merely stopped Zeke and pushed him to the back.
Amelia ran to Jonathan’s side and helped him stand. The ghost-like entity returned to its side, but it was blurry and in a worse state than he was.
“What are you doing, Amelia?”
“He’s not a bad person!”
She retorted without a loud shout. She wanted to offer a better explanation but the crimson line appeared, linking the Crown and the Holder together.
As she started experiencing the agony, Amelia clutched the crystal in her chest and, while painfully yelling, began pulling it out.
“Stop!”
Upon seeing this, Jonathan snapped out of it and attempted to interfere but couldn’t as a literal birdcage of black lightning appeared out of thin air, protecting and trapping Amelia within.
“Y-you want the C…Crown, r…ight?”
She was talking to the stupefied Zeke, tears filling her eyes as she struggled with all her might. Slowly but surely, the black crystal embedded into her chest was revealing itself, willingly separating itself from its current host.
“...”
Zeke couldn’t deny her words, after all, securing the Crown was the only way he could survive this ordeal. He had planned to separate Amelia from Jonathan and then find a safe way to remove the Crown from her body.
For a couple of seconds, he hesitated and wondered whether stopping her reckless actions was the right way, but upon seeing her shout from the pain and agony, he couldn't find it in himself to force her into doing this.
The words he quietly uttered, however, were drowned by Jonathan’s sudden change of behavior. He sprung into a total frenzy and kept banging on the birdcage, telling her to stop.
Alas, the girl was determined and, by the end of it, her chest was nothing but a gaping and bloody hole; She fell to her knees, her face pale and eyes lifeless.
As for the Crown, it hovered in the air for a second then shot at the unsuspecting Zeke. Unlike Amelia, it didn’t engrave itself on his chest and, instead, merged with his body.
Its arrival brought with it a wave of blistering coldness that momentarily froze Zeke’s body and muddled his mind. After the initial strange occurrence, he felt nothing but clarity and serenity, his body felt lighter and his Life Aether was fully regenerated.
Zeke was so lost in the moment that he only noticed the incoming scythe at the last second.
He ducked to avoid it then used his open and lightning-imbued hand to strike Jonathan, leaving a fresh imprint on his left side of the chest.
The man seemed to have merged with his other insidious and sinister side, empowering it. He purposely refrained from using the black mist as Zeke would just absorb it, but that didn’t mean he became weakened.
Quite the contrary, his speed was faster than Zeke’s, and the only thing that slowed him down was the voltage.
Zeke used ‘Sreyzhanian Arts’ to defend himself for a bit, but it wasn’t working as he kept getting pushed back and slashed by the scythe.
“Kill! Kill! Kill! I want your eyes! YOUR EYES!”
‘His power is getting exponentially bigger! Ugh!’
He blocked another attack but an invisible shock wave sent him flying like a kite, and when he crashed to the ground, Zeke felt his shoulder get dislocated.
He wasn’t even given the time to stand up as the scythe came flying down, nailing his leg to the ground while another shock wave hammered down on his body.
Jonathan’s distorted and ghastly face stared down at him, a wide and creepy smile plastered on his face as he manically laughed.
“I won’t go down like th-”
Zeke words were cut off by a punch right in the face, which almost knocked him unconscious. As extreme dizziness overwhelmed him, he stubbornly stared back at the man only to see a lightning-fast silhouette rush from the side and strike his flank.
The force of the unexpected hit was enough to blow Jonathan all the way to the back, and when he recovered, he was assaulted by a sea of vermillion flames that momentarily rooted him to the ground.
“Right on cue!”
“...”
Julia inspected the beaten-down Zeke, a cheeky smile on her beaming face. A short distance away stood Azmer, who glanced at the unconscious Amelia then focus on Jonathan.
Although surprised to see them here, Zeke offered no remarks. He spat the dirt and blood stuck in his mouth and got, with great difficulty, got back to his feet.
His left shoulder was dislocated, his nose bleeding, and his right leg was severely injured. Still, he bore through the pain by gritting his teeth and concentrating on invoking his Life Aether.
He looked at Julia, but the girl shrugged her shoulders and remarked, “It’s a big fish this time… and a scary one, at that.”
When Zeke’s eyes shifted to Azmer, the blond-haired youth snorted and said,
“Just to be clear, I was sent here by the Dean. Then again, it’s not surprising to see a loser like you in such a state.”
“Hah! We’ll see how you fare!” Retorted Zeke as he raised his right arm, conjuring a strong version of ‘Voltage Arrow’.
As the spear was materializing, Julia crouched her body ever-so-slightly then performed an impressive and fast leap at the incapacitated Jonathan.
She was unimaginably fast, so much so that the enemy could only use his scythe to block her incoming punch. For the second time, he was blasted to the back, but he used the momentum to stabilize his body and fly in the air, though that made him an easy target for Azmer’s pyromancy.
‘Hm? It’s healing?’
Zeke noticed that his body was regenerating at an abnormal pace. By the time ‘Voltage Arrow’ was completed, all his wounds were healed.
‘Is the Crown doing this?’
Jonathan was scorched by the flames, however, he kept laughing disturbingly.
When Zeke saw an opportunity, he threw the spear of lightning but, unexpectedly, it went through the target and kept flying toward the night sky, disappearing from view thereafter.
With the enemy distracted, Zeke rushed toward Amelia, planning to take her away, but that turned out to be the wrong move.
“You will not take her.” The continuous laughter seized and was replaced by the calm and cold voice of the real Jonathan.
He used an ability similar to ‘Life Motus’, teleporting himself next to Amelia and ‘building’ a dome-like barrier made of dense black mist.
Julia and Azmer charged at him simultaneously, the girl making use of her fast acceleration to gain momentum while the latter was holding the flaming golden sword he had used against Fylard.
Unfortunately, their attacks no longer worked as a slithering black snake came out of Jonathan’s mouth, instantly becoming big and swirling around its master.
It easily blocked the golden sword and the girl’s monstrous strength, it even retaliated by hissing and spitting poisonous liquid all around.
With Amelia in his arms, Jonathan stood atop the snake and looked at Zeke.
[Special Mission initiated: The Mist Reaper]
[Eliminate Jonathan Stellar Link]
[Rewards: +100EXP | +40 PE | 40 points into one of the following stats: Strength | Agility | Aether]
“It seems I’ve lost this one to you… so be it.”
He softly smiled as his body was wrapped by a swirling black mist, which vanished thereafter, leaving only the echoing hisses of the snake in its wake.
[Special Mission ‘Retrieval of the Crown’ completed!]
[Rewards: 50 EXP | 25PE | 20 points into one of the following stats: Strength | Agility | Aether]