Zeke waited.

He would’ve liked to have claimed that he did so patiently, but the reality was so far from that standard that he didn’t even try to fool himself. Instead, he clenched his fists and stared out into the abyss of an overcast night. Earlier, the clouds had dumped a deluge of rain on the area, but that brief torrent had quickly petered out. What it had left in its wake was damp humidity and muddy turf as well as one of the blackest nights Zeke had ever seen.

But out there somewhere were his people. Kobolds, beastkin, and a smattering of other races – all fighting for the cause he’d foisted upon them. Without his leadership, none of them would be in a battle for their lives, and because of that indisputable fact, he couldn’t help but feel the heavy weight of guilt weighing down on him.

“None of the kobolds would even be alive if it weren’t for you,” Eveline reminded him silently. “The beastkin and the others would still be slaves. Instead, they’re fighting for what they believe is a worthy cause. You put them in danger, but you also gave them the means to overcome it.”

Zeke didn’t respond because, whether it made sense or not, he still felt responsible for each and every one of the war’s casualties. Even the Knights of Adontis, as terrible and bigoted as they were, added to that burden.

It was a difficult thing, sending people to war. The cause was just. The ends were necessary. But none of that would matter to the inevitable dead. At the end of the day, courage and valor and justice meant very little to a corpse. Zeke knew that, and yet, he’d sent them into battle anyway. What’s more, he’d moved them all around like pawns on a chessboard. Now, he waited for his moves to bear fruit.

And it was excruciating.

The only way he could make it through was to remind himself that, because of his plan, less of his people would die. That was enough to make him accept it all as necessary, but he knew he still wouldn’t endure the execution of that plan without a significant degree of anxiety and discomfort.

So, he watched. And he waited. Meanwhile, nearly five thousand centaurs were stationed in the valley behind him. They were disciplined enough that they made no noise, but Zeke could feel every stomp of their hooves. To distract himself, he examined his skills. So often, he did so with a specific goal in mind, but at present, he used it as a calming agent. Still, there was at least some intention behind the exercise, and it was one he’d nurtured for the past few weeks.

Instead of working on a new skill that would come at some indeterminate time in the future, he had begun to plan out ways to improve his existing abilities. He’d done it before, and contrary to what might be expected, it was no less difficult than building a skill from scratch. Indeed, in a lot of ways, it was for more tedious because he had to work within the confines of the existing foundation, lest the entire thing collapse.

Or be corrupted, as had happened with [Armor of the Colossus]. He didn’t want to revisit that, so he’d resolved to spend as much time as necessary to familiarize himself with the entirety of the skill he wanted to upgrade, then make detailed plans for how he intended to implement that transformation.

That took time, and so, Zeke had taken to working on it whenever he had even a spare moment. Which, in war, seemed to be quite a frequent. Once, he’d heard his uncle – who was a veteran – complain that army life had been characterized by a hurry-up-and-wait mentality, and now that Zeke was living something similar, he couldn’t disagree with his uncle’s assessment.

Still, he’d vowed to use that time wisely and work towards evolving one of his skills. And despite the start-and-stop nature of his efforts, he’d made significant progress, though he still thought he was a few dedicated days away from finalizing his plans. Once he did that, it would take untold hours of continuous work to reform the ability.

Last time he’d built a skill, he’d been out of action for more than a week, and he expected that reforming one would be just as time-consuming. So, it would likely have to wait until after the war.

Which didn’t seem like it was going to end anytime soon. Despite Zeke’s forces winning every battle, the Knights of Adontis continued to prove to be a deadly and enduring foe. In all but a couple of instances, they’d managed to retreat to safety with their main force. So, while their losses were staggering, they were far from true defeat.

Zeke hoped to change that with his current plan.

It wasn’t complex, but that was nothing new. From his experience – which had grown extensive – the more complicated battle plans were the ones that ended up failing. Instead, he focused on misdirection and superior positioning. In that way, he could always keep the Knights of Adontis off balance.

In this instance, the plan called for the kobolds, led by Silik and Pudge, to attack the fortified city of Bessik. They had no chance of winning that fight, but that wasn’t the point. Instead, they were meant to initiate the attack, hold their position for long enough for the situation to seem plausible, then retreat. If everything went as planned, then the Knights of Adontis would follow, hoping to put an end to what they thought of as an inferior force.

But they weren’t stupid. They would be careful, and they wouldn’t overcommit, which would allow the kobold army to keep just ahead, leading the Knights of Adontis into a trap. Once they reached the appropriate position, Silik would send up the signal – a series of uses of [Spear of Memories] – which would alert Zeke and the centaurs that it was time to charge.

He knew it wouldn’t be long, so he tightened his grip on his hammer and embraced the unattuned version of [Triune Colossus]. Behind him, the centaurs shifted. It was a small noise, but it was loud in Zeke’s ears.

He understood their nerves because he felt them himself.

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Fighting a battle was so different from what he usually experienced. Normally, he just crashed into a fight with as much momentum as he could muster, then held fast, hoping to overpower his enemies. But in the battles against the Knights of Adontis, he’d had to learn how to think differently.

Because it wasn’t just his life at stake.

There was a budding nation of kobolds and centaurs who looked to him to lead them, not only to victory, but to prosperity as well. And Zeke couldn’t let them down.

Finally, a little more than an hour later, Zeke saw a series of flashing lights in the distance. They didn’t last long, but it was the signal he’d been waiting on. So, he turned to the Mistress of the Herd, who’d positioned herself just behind him, and said, “It’s time. Hit them hard and fast.”

“That is the only way to fight,” she said with grim determination.

With that, Zeke took a deep breath, then took off at a sprint that he knew from experience he could keep up for days if necessary. His feet slammed against the soggy turf as he dodged between the enormous trees of the Old Growth forest. They were spaced so far apart that he barely had to alter his course. The centaurs followed behind, the collective sound of their hooves like rolling thunder.

The time for hiding was over.

No more subterfuge.

No more camouflage.

Now was the time for swift action and bloody struggle. Zeke bent himself to the task, and soon enough, tore his way into a clearing where he saw that a massive battle had been joined. He already knew that there were more than twenty thousand kobolds on the field, but there were at least as many Knights and infantrymen as well. Skills flashed in the night sky, and the sound of metal against metal filled the air.

Zeke heard none of it.

Instead, he could only hear the steady drumbeat of his own savage heart.

Zeke was self-aware enough to recognize that he lived for battle. If that wasn’t who he was before he’d been reborn, that was what the Mortal Realm had made of him. And in the Eternal Realm, that ferocity had been sharpened to a lethal point. It thirsted for blood. It fed off of victory. And it craved dominion over all things.

He hit the backlines like an earthquake, and the thundering hooves of thousands of centaurs came with him. There were no skills used. Just the strength of their arms and the weight of their momentum. For his part, Zeke swung his hammer with brutal efficiency, the power of every attack enough to detach limbs and rupture organs. Most couldn’t stand before such furor, and the ones who could fell to the second swing.

Meanwhile, centaurs trampled whole swathes of the enemy army beneath their hooves, and the ones who withstood that most basic of attacks, met their demise at the ends of long spears.

Zeke paid them no mind. He’d fought beside them often enough to trust that they would hold up their end of the battle. Instead, he finally summoned his skills. With a stomp, he used [Hell Gesyer], sending an eruption of Hellfire and rock bursting into the air forty yards away. It engulfed an entire regiment, but Zeke wasn’t done. Instead, he used [Weight of Two Worlds] in its most efficient mode, increasing the gravity all around him. The centaurs could bear it, and so could the knights. But the more mundane soldiers? They collapsed beneath the weight of it and struggled to move.

Centaurs ended their lives soon after.

With every passing second, Zeke slew a handful of the enemy. He was not discriminate, and he certainly didn’t spare them any pity. They were human monsters, and they needed to be put down for the greater good.

He had come to terms with that justification.

After a few minutes, it became clear that the battle was won. On the other side of the lines, the kobolds had become an effective anvil for the hammer of Zeke’s force, and the army of Knights and infantrymen had already begun to collapse. Still, they fought on to the very last. That was the thing about the Knights of Adontis. While they were prone to retreat, they refused to surrender, and according to what Zeke had learned from the beastkin they’d kept as slaves, it had something to do with having faith in their goddess.

And he was familiar with her.

Forces dedicated to the Sun Goddess had dominated the Radiant Isles, and it seemed that she had her fingers in the pie of the Eternal Realm as well. Not only was she the patron goddess of the Knights of Adontis, but there were other organizations – and even governments – throughout the realm that were dedicated to her.

Zeke couldn’t help but wonder if they were all as crazy as Constance had been.

As the tedium of battle wore on, those thoughts – and many like them – flitted through Zeke’s mind. It was odd, that he could look at killing and only feel boredom, but the fact was that he’d worked himself up for a tough challenge, and he’d gotten ease instead. Not only was it disappointing, but it felt like a waste of his efforts. So, he bent his back to accomplishing his goals more quickly.

Every time it was available, he used [Hell Geyser], which practically disintegrated weaker opponents. There were many of those, so it was an extremely effective use of his mana. When the soldiers tried to run, he hunted them down via copious use of [Shifting Sands]. If it was unavailable, he relied only on his stats to see him through.

Slowly, his Will began to creep into his swings. It wasn’t much, and Zeke had spent months inoculating himself against its destructive characteristics. As such, he could bear it. His enemies could not.

At first, it was difficult to tell much of a difference. Even before, each hammer blow tore through the comparatively weak soldiers. With his high-tier strength, which was further enhanced by his colossal form, they were nothing before him. So, the addition of his destructive Will was difficult to notice.

But then people started exploding, and not from the sheer force of his attacks. Instead, his Will infected them, then unmade the very fabric of who and what they were. Some were able to resist, to certain degrees, but most simply erupted into splatters of misshapen gore.

It was almost enough to frighten him. In the past, when he’d used his Will, the expression of his Path of Arcane Destruction was predictably devastating. But it was more like a miniature nuclear bomb. This was something different. Something far more localized and infinitely more terrifying.

If he could scale something like that up, he would be unstoppable.

The only problem was that doing so would rip him to pieces just as surely as it would destroy his enemies. Even the smallest fraction of his power was enough to wear him thin. With every swing, he felt progressively more fatigued. He tried to counter it with [Cambion’s Awakening], but the skill could only do so much to counteract the results of using his Will. Still, if he could increase his endurance – or his resistance to the power – he would be able to topple any foe.

“Even the pretenders who call themselves gods,” Eveline said.

Zeke ignored her as he and his armies gradually overwhelmed the remaining Knights. By the time the remainder surrendered – a first, as far as Zeke knew – mingled blood, mud, and gore sloshed around his ankles. And yet, they had won.

However, doing so had brought with it another problem, as pointed out by Silik’s pointed question. “What do we do with them, Ak-toh?” the kobold general asked. His scales were coated in so much blood that his complexion had taken on a rusty cast.

But Zeke wasn’t concerned with the kobold’s blood-caked scales. Instead, the whole of his attention was on the two dozen Knights of Adontis who had surrendered.

“It’s a good thing we have a jail, now. Watch them closely. If any of them act out, feel free to rip them limb from limb,” he said, not bothering to lower his voice. He wanted them to hear. “Slowly.”

“Yes, Ak-toh,” said Silik.