Zeke nearly sighed in disappointment as he saw Abby disappear in a ray of light. Had she planned the ambush? Or was she ignorant of the trap? Zeke had no idea, but either way, he wasn’t truly surprised. Either she was woefully naïve when it came to the people to which she’d pledged her allegiance, or she’d once again proven that she didn’t care how her decisions affected everyone.
“You should have killed her,” Eveline remarked.
“Probably,” Zeke admitted. It wasn’t that he particularly wanted to kill his former lover. He definitely didn’t. But a man could only endure so many betrayals before he cut off the source. In this case, that meant putting Abby down. Of course, she was gone now, making that impossible.
Certainly, he could hunt her down, and a few seconds wasn’t enough time to decide whether or not he wanted to go down that route. Moreover, with a thousand Knights – each one far more powerful than he’d initially expected – bearing down on him, he didn’t have time to ponder it further.
Not until he dealt with them, at least.
However, even as he adopted his titanic form and prepared to meet them, Zeke had to admit that he was tired of political machinations.
“This is child’s play, Ezekiel. You need to get used to dealing with this sort of thing, or Hell is going to eat you alive,” Eveline remarked.
“That’s why I have you.”
With [Titan] having taken hold of his body, transforming him into a fifteen-foot-tall monster of metal, Zeke stepped forward. He hefted his hammer and waited. A host of skills fell upon him a second later, digging deep grooves into his body. That was an eye-opener, considering how durable he’d become. If they could harm him – even as shallowly has they had – they were a force with which to be reckoned.
Still, Zeke barely even staggered beneath the heavy attacks, and when the line of Knights finally arrived, he met them with the head of his hammer. The first enemy unlucky enough to lead the way found his entire chest caved in as he flew backward. His horse, meanwhile, staggered forward, hitting Zeke and breaking its bones beneath the force of its own charge.
Zeke took a single step backward, cocked his hammer back, and hit the next Knight in line. This one managed to intercept the herculean blow with his shield, but that crumpled beneath Zeke’s heavy blow. Somehow, the Knight maintained his seat and jabbed his lance into Zeke’s chest.
It managed to penetrate nearly a foot, but that was far too little damage to truly alarm Zeke. In response, he grabbed the lance and yanked. The off-balance Knight refused to give up his grip on the weapon, and as a result, he flew forward. Zeke met him with a sharp jab that crushed his skull.
Even as Zeke healed himself via [Hand of Divinity], he whirled, leading the way with his sweeping hammer. Each Knight he hit slowed the weapon’s passage by a little, but he still managed to unseat all four enemies before him. They sprang to their feet, one by one, ready to take advantage of the opening he’d created with the wild swing.
That’s when Zeke used the only other skill available to him.
He’d been saving [Unleash Momentum] for quite some time, and with thousands of Knights bearing down on him, Zeke expected it was the perfect time to let it loose. His backhanded swing was short and compact, but that was all he needed to activate the skill.
Momentous force arced out, rending the earth before tearing into the Knights. Zeke didn’t bother to guide the attack. Instead, he gave it the freedom to spread out as wide as possible. The bulk of the line of Knights collapsed beneath the blow. The first few ranks were killed outright, their bodies crushed inside their expensive armor. They flew backward into the next rank, toppling them like bowling pins.
The next few ranks of soldiers were decidedly less affected, though not because Zeke’s attack lacked power. It was far and away the most powerful instance of [Unleash Momentum] he’d ever used. He needed only to look at the ground, which had been unearthed all the way to the bedrock, which in turn had been riddled with fissures.
Yet, the most than a few of the Knights had survived, largely because they weren’t without power of their own. Most were at or near the peak, which meant that they had plenty of Endurance – as well as their powerful armor – to shield them from any attacks.
“Wish I had [Wrath of Annihilation] available,” Zeke muttered to himself.
“It probably wouldn’t kill them all,” Eveline pointed out. “Well, not as it was before your little upgrade with divine energy. That skill you just used was almost as powerful as the first time you used [Wrath of Annihilation], just omnidirectional and without the destructive force of your Will attached to it.”
Zeke didn’t care about that. Instead, he was only really concerned with results, and the fact was that the skill he’d hoped would end the fight then and there had fallen far short of his expectations. So, he had no choice but to wade into the fray and get his hands dirty.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.
In a way, that thought came with a wave of satisfaction. There was something off-putting about being able to solve all his problems with a single skill. Sure, that hadn’t always been the case – [Wrath of Annihilation] wasn’t a cure-all – but it was so powerful that, at times, it made him feel like his hammer-work had become superfluous.
“Silver linings,” Eveline said as Zeke brought Voromir down in a massive, sledgehammer strike that absolutely obliterated a Knight. And the ground beneath him, too.
A wave of earth rippled out from the point of impact, but Zeke moved so quickly that he had no issues outpacing it. The Knights hadn’t had a chance to recover from [Unleash Momentum], so when Zeke fell upon them, he did so with unopposed fury. Most never even realized what had happened before Zeke crushed their bodies beneath his hammer.
But all good things were destined to end, and so it was with Zeke’s unchecked slaughter of the Knights. He got through a couple dozen before the others began to recover, and when they finally found their feet, they didn’t hold back in their retaliation. And unlike Zeke, they weren’t afflicted with a lack of skills. Most had identical abilities – as it was with many armies – which usually manifested in the form of bolts of radiant energy. Some glowed with similar power, and a few formed shimmering shields of mana.
When the attacks hit Zeke, they carved through his metallic flesh without issue. His endurance was high, but he wasn’t invulnerable – especially to peak warriors like he was currently fighting. Once, he’d struggled with a single fighter on that level, but now, he was fighting hundreds.
So, he inevitably found himself on the back foot.
At least until his precautions – taken before he’d gone out to meet the supposedly peaceful delegation from the Radiant Host – bore fruit. An enormous clash announced the arrival of his army as they pincered the Knights of the Imperium from two sides. The kobolds weren’t nearly as high of a level as the enemy, but they made up for it with sheer numbers and coordination.
The Radiant Host had brought a thousand peak warriors. Zeke had brought ten times that many kobolds, each one having reached the first threshold at level seventy-five. After all, his people had been fighting one war or another for years now, and when they weren’t engaging in battle, they were hunting. In addition, the dungeons Zeke controlled had been put to good use, giving the kobolds plenty of fuel for their levels.
But most of all, their rapid rise was due to the single-minded dedication to Zeke himself. Their every instinct told them to follow his orders, so when he’d told them to get stronger, they’d taken that to heart.
The results were evident.
They trampled the unprepared Knights from behind, shoving their shields forward with unstoppable momentum. The enemy fought back, and more than a few kobolds went down. However, they worked like a well-oiled machine, cycling the fallen to the back lines and keeping the casualties to a minimum.
They weren’t strong enough to stand toe-to-toe with the Knights – especially not one on one. But they were more than strong enough to endure their frantic counterattacks for long enough for their superior numbers to overwhelm the Knights. Because of that, Zeke suddenly found his own efforts unhindered, and he wasted no time scattering Knights as he dismantled their defenses.
Because if the kobolds couldn’t match the Knights one-for-one, then the same was true for the Radiant Host when fighting Zeke. The difference was that his kobold allies kept the Knights from using their numbers to pile onto him.
Still, they were powerful fighters, and they didn’t go down easily.
That was fine for Zeke, who’d been craving a good battle for quite some time. After he got over the lack of skills, he began to revel in the fight itself. In a lot of ways, he felt like he’d gotten back to his roots, and he started to remember the lessons he’d learned early on. As the hours wore on, Zeke tightened his technique and started to use his increased dexterity and agility to good effect. Not only was he stronger and far more durable than the Knights, but he was also faster than most.
It was only when that thought sprang to mind that he realized that he hadn’t even begun to tap into the full weight of his stats.
“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you,” Eveline pointed out as Zeke latched onto a Knight’s throat, spun, and threw the unfortunate man high into the air. The arc of his flight wouldn’t end for half a mile, Zeke expected, and there was little chance he would survive much longer with a crushed windpipe.
“You haven’t told me anything,” Zeke countered, swinging his hammer.
“Well, I would have if I thought you would have paid attention,” she said. “Stats are representations of potential. At low levels, it’s easy to push to your limits, but with something like your stats, you’re going to have to work long and hard to get the most out of it. Your strength and endurance aren’t just increased physical ability. They represent conceptual shifts in what power really means.”
“Not sure I follow.”
“Do you think you shatter a planet with a single blow?” she asked.
“Uh…I don’t think so?”
“Then you haven’t reached your potential. You think not having your skills available is a detriment? I think it’s a training tool. Push your body to its limits, and you might just discover that, at your level, it doesn’t truly have any. You want to destroy a mountain? Do it. Endure the depths of a star? Do that, too.”
“I just have to believe? What kind of fairy tale crap –”
“It’s not crap, Ezekiel. That’s how it works. You have the power. You just have to throw off the shackles of your mind and let it loose.”
Zeke wanted to counter that with a sarcastic comment, but he couldn’t think up anything appropriate. That brought a giggle from Eveline, which just irritated him even more. He took his frustration out on the Knights, and to his surprise, each swing – powered by his anger – hit harder than ever before.
“Maybe there is something to all your fairy tale bullshit,” Zeke muttered.
After that, he focused on his technique as well as pushing his body to its absolute limit. To his surprise, each attack was incrementally stronger, and by the time he finally killed the last Knight, he found himself wondering where the limit truly lay. Perhaps it was as Eveline had said, and there wasn’t a true limit.
Either way, the threat was finished, and now, he needed to focus on the next step. The Imperium had had their chance at a peaceful resolution, and they’d used that to ambush him. It was time he made them pay for that mistake.