Zeke’s fingers tightened around the haft of his hammer as he glared at the man standing upon the platform. Micayne had clearly joined his minions as one of the undead, judging by his maggoty pale skin, hollow cheeks, and stringy hair. He barely resembled the well-groomed man Zeke had met back in the Mortal Realm, though there were enough commonalities to confirm his identity.
He had to rely on that, because [Inspect], like so many of his other skills, was unavailable to him.
It didn’t matter.
Skills or not, Zeke was going to kill Micayne once and for all. However, despite the rage flowing through him, he knew he couldn’t just charge in. The necromancer had become a lich, meaning that his soul wasn’t housed within his body. Rather, it was contained within a phylactery in some unknown location.
“It’s here,” Eveline said. “We can feel it.”
“Are you certain?” Zeke asked in his own mind. At least his communication with Eveline hadn’t been cut off. As skeptical of their partnership as he’d once been, he now struggled to imagine a life without her in his head.
“Yes. Additionally, Pudge came here for a reason. He felt it too.”
“That makes sense.”
With that in mind, Zeke stepped forward. The glowing green liquid in the patterned troughs sloshed with every passing second, and Zeke felt certain that there was something down there. Would it soon emerge? Or was it there just to prevent him from taking a dip? Not that he would have done so. He possessed an attunement to death, but that didn’t mean he would bathe in that foul stuff.
“Let him go,” Zeke growled, the sound of his voice echoing through the circular chamber.
“Why would I do that?” Micayne asked, cocking his head to the side in confusion. “He is almost finished. You should be excited. This beast was inferior. Vulnerable. Just like that troublesome girl you freed so long ago. At the time, I had no idea why everything worked. The alchemist claimed it was due to his efforts, and he was right. Without him, it never would have been possible in that low realm. But there was far more to it. A nascent attunement to death. She was fated to become a revenant.
“So is this one. It is weak, but I can feel the death within him. He will be like young Talia. A sapient undead. I have had some other successes on this realm, but none so powerful as she turned out. I wonder – did you bring her with you? If you did, I will gladly exchange one for the other.”
“She would never submit to you.”
“Submission is not a requirement,” Micayne explained. “In fact, I have seen some evidence that a bit of fight is healthy. It makes them stronger.”
“The answer is no.”
“Do not be hasty. You are powerful. You must be, to have gotten through the Kings of Queens, with that insidious ritual room. I nearly fell victim myself,” Micayne explained, gesturing like he was giving a sales pitch. Perhaps he was. “Did you know that they were here before I arrived? They weren’t necromancers, but they were naturally occurring undead. Of course, any undead trying to resist a necromancer – even a weak one – will be fighting from a distinct disadvantage. We discovered that in El’kireth, did we not?”
“What you did to those people was abhorrent,” Zeke said, taking another step.
“You know he’s stalling, right?” Eveline pointed out.
“I do.”
The problem was that Zeke didn’t know what to do. If he used his lone available attack skill, he stood a chance of killing Pudge as well. He was close enough to his brother to see that he’d been vastly weakened, and he was hovering only a little above death. If he was going to kill Micayne, he needed to be certain of two things. First, that he’d finish the job. Second, that Pudge wouldn’t become collateral damage.
The former dictated that he needed to find the phylactery first. Otherwise, his efforts would be for naught. But the latter was complicated by the time constraints. If he failed to act, Pudge would die.
It was a situation Zeke couldn’t overcome by swinging his hammer harder, and he didn’t like being thrown off his game.
“Are you even listening to me?” demanded Micayne.
“Of course. You were giving your maniacal villain monologue. Keep going.”
“I…I was not…”
Zeke was finally close enough to act. He leaped, using every point of strength, agility, and dexterity at his disposal to throw himself forward with unmatched velocity. And given his recent gains, he covered the ground in less than an instant.
Micayne was faster.
Not physically, of course. His stat allocation clearly didn’t favor the physical attributes. But from a mental standpoint, he could keep up with anything Zeke did. To that end, he used a skill.
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Suddenly, Zeke felt himself plummeting to the ground. His forward momentum ceased entirely, and he slammed into the floor with enough force to shatter the stone tiles. But he wasn’t concerned with that. Rather, he was far more worried about the feeling of something boring into his body. It felt like an infestation of maggots had decided to make a meal of him.
“What…is…happening?”
“A skill. Dependent on the density of death attuned mana,” Eveline said. “It’s…I don’t know how to break it! If you still had access to your Will…”
She didn’t need to finish the thought. In the past, Zeke rarely had had to worry about foreign mana invading his body. With a flick of his Will, he could eradicate anything of the sort. But now? With his power caged by Oberon’s divine energy, he had no access to that power.
But he wasn’t defenseless.
After all, he’d been building his endurance ever since ascension, and he’d just gotten a significant boost to that attribute. Sure, it wasn’t displayed on his status, but that was because he’d already been far above the standard of measurement it used. He was multiple tiers above what the Framework deemed S+, and as such, he likely possessed the highest endurance – and strength, come to that – of anyone who’d ever existed in the Eternal Realm.
“Maybe don’t go quite that far,” Eveline said. Despite the situation, she wasn’t concerned. Zeke took his cue from her, delving deep into his concept of his own body. It wasn’t difficult; he’d spent so much time meditating and working on runes that he’d long since developed the ability to perceive his body on a level far beyond the physical.
In his mind’s eye, he could see individual cells. He went deeper. Past the atoms. Electrons. Neutrons. And then, finally, he arrived at the true building blocks of the world. In the past, he didn’t know what to call what he observed. They weren’t blocks, per se. They didn’t resemble cells. Rather, they were like strings of energy governed by the Framework.
But now he recognized it as divine energy.
It was slightly different than what he felt in his core. More constrained, but no less powerful for it. Whatever the case, even if he’d observed it before, he’d never been able to manipulate it.
He still couldn’t. Not really. But he could nudge it. And it was a powerful enough energy that a simple nudge could move mountains. Or, in this case, purge him of the foreign mana burrowing into him.
Zeke opened his eyes, and an explosion of death-attuned mana followed. It burst free of his pores, then dissipated into the air.
Micayne staggered backward as Zeke rose to his feet.
“What –”
Zeke took a step forward as the death-attuned mana came alive and attempted to burrow into him. He flexed his mind, closing the gaps and took another step. While keeping himself safe from the assault of mana, he couldn’t move quickly. It was like trying to walk while keeping his entire body clenched. However, he managed it all the same, taking one step after another as Micayne attempted to stop him.
In the end, those attempts were all useless.
Micayne staggered backward as Zeke climbed onto the platform, but he couldn’t move quickly enough to escape a thrusting hand that latched around his slim shoulders. Zeke squeezed, and he was rewarded by the sound of cracking bones. He cut himself off before he killed the lich, though. He needed him alive for what would come next.
“I need your help,” Zeke said inwardly.
“Already on it,” Eveline responded, and Zeke could feel her scanning the entire chamber. As she did, he focused on what had just happened. It wasn’t like it was a surprise. For all his power, Micayne wasn’t a fighter. He relied on swarms of minions to do his battles, and once those were gone – and his mastery over death-attuned mana neutralized – he was incapable of keeping up with someone like Zeke.
It was why Zeke had always felt so secure in his place in the world. Sure, people like Sasha or Micayne could potentially wield world-ending power. But if someone managed to survive that onslaught, those powerful mages would have no defense against reprisal. Only slightly better were people like Pudge and Talia, both of whom relied on avoiding damage. Pudge did so via stealth, while Talia focused on pure speed. Both were effective enough, but if someone countered those characteristics, they were vulnerable.
But Zeke?
His focus on strength and endurance meant that he could take almost any hit an enemy could throw his way.
“You’re being reductive. It’s not a fair comparison. You’ve had plenty of situations where your endurance and strength would have failed if it wasn’t for your other abilities,” Eveline pointed out.
“Focus on the task at hand. Pudge isn’t going to last much longer.”
Indeed, when Zeke looked up at the bearkin, he saw that Pudge was fading fast. And Micayne wouldn’t stop the process unless he truly died. Zeke knew the man well enough to recognize his commitment.
He wouldn’t stop until he was dead or had achieved his goal.
Thankfully, Eveline soon found a line of mana that connected the lich to a hidden cavity behind the right-most wall. So, Zeke pushed forward, moving slowly but surely as Micayne continued to assail him with foreign mana. There were other spells wrapped in there, but Zeke had no issues resisting them.
Finally, he reached the wall and battered it down, revealing a floating crystal in the shape of a teardrop. Green energy swirled inside.
“What’s the plan here?” he asked. “Destroy the phylactery, then the man?”
“That’s the accepted order.”
Zeke reached out with his other hand, wrapped his fingers around the crystal, and squeezed. It resisted for a few long seconds, hinting at how durable the thing was. But it couldn’t stand up to Zeke’s strength, and soon enough, it shattered. An explosion of energy battered Zeke, but he bore it well enough.
Micayne screamed as his dead skin was ripped from his body. But miraculously, he lived through it.
“W-what…what have you done…”
Zeke would have preferred if he’d had some witty response on hand. Like a bad eighties action move. But he just wasn’t that kind of guy. So, his answer was more physical in nature. He squeezed, and Micayne’s already cracked bones shattered further. His ribcage came next. Then, his organs burst.
That’s when Zeke threw him on the ground and stomped him into a mass of necrotic flesh. He didn’t stop until he felt a wave of kill energy wash over him.
He sighed, letting himself relax.
“Uh…Zeke…”
It was at that moment that he realized that Pudge was falling. He leaped forward, catching his brother before he hit the ground. However, he couldn’t verify more than that Pudge was alive before he felt the earth tremble. The green liquid sloshed violently before a tentacle burst free.
The thing wasn’t alive. Zeke could tell that much from the rotting flesh scraping free of its exposed bones. But that didn’t seem to matter, because he could also feel the thing’s power, which rivaled that of the dragon he’d encountered.
And it was coming right for him.