Zeke’s heavy feet thudded against the ground, digging deep divots into the muddy turf as he raced toward Oda. The demonic tree god had somehow possessed Ignatius, the leader of the Radiant Host, but he stood his ground as if he didn’t feel at all threatened. Perhaps he didn’t. After all, he was a god, and for all of Zeke’s strides forward, he was still just a man.

He hefted Voromir, activating the hammer’s ability, and sending a massive, crimson manifestation of the weapon arcing toward the stationary target. Just before it hit, Oda waved his slender sword, and a thousand black, crystalline trees erupted from the ground. Voromir’s copy hit the trees, shattering their delicate branches, but when it the trunks, it stopped cold.

However, Zeke was not deterred. He was already committed to battle, and he wouldn’t stop until he was either dead or victorious. The ground shook beneath the weight of his charge, and he covered the ground in only a couple of seconds. When he came into range of the barrier of trees, he cocked the hammer back and prepared to leverage the entirety of his divine strength to rip a hole through them.

Before he got the chance to swing, another wave of trees sprouted, their branches spearing him through the torso. His momentum was arrested, and he shuddered to a stop as dozens of branches shattered. There were always more, though, and each one was as sharp as any sword. Every inch he moved ripped him to shreds, and soon enough, the ground was coated in his silver blood.

But Zeke was not one to stop.

He didn’t have that in him. Instead, he embraced [Hand of Divinity], but to his distress, the healing that came was but a trickle of what he anticipated. He pushed it harder, feeding as much energy into the skill as he could manage. It wasn’t enough, though. He roared as he willed the skill to move faster, to work harder. Even as he did, he never stopped moving. Inch by inch, he tore himself to pieces, but he drew ever closer by the passing second.

Then, he reached the first trunk.

Leveraging his strength to the maximum of its capability, he reached back and slammed Voromir into the stout crystal. It cracked, sending a bell-like sound ringing through the courtyard. Vaguely, Zeke was aware that Oda was speaking, but he paid the insidious tree demon no heed. Whatever he wanted to say was irrelevant.

Zeke slammed his hammer into the trunk again, and the cracks spread. Meanwhile, more branches tore into his torso, but he only pulled harder on [Hand of Divinity]. It was insufficient to heal him entirely, and pain wracked his entire body. Yet, Zeke was not one to kneel at the feet of something as inconsequential as a little agony. He’d been through worse, after all.

So, he ignored it, forging ahead and smashing Voromir into the tree once again. Then again after that. Over and over, he channeled the same stubborn refusal to quit that had seen him through so many battles, and gradually, the crystalline trees began to shatter. The first one fell after the fourth attack, but now that Zeke had managed to harness his rhythm, he managed to take the second one down only a couple of seconds later. Each attack came harder than the last, and soon enough, he was ripping through the crystalline trunks like they were paper.

At the same time, the sharp branches fouled upon his increasingly durable skin. Zeke was not in full control of his attributes. That would take more time than he could imagine. But he did have some command over how they affected the world, and more importantly, he had the willpower to force them to obey his unspoken authority.

And with every passing moment, they responded further to his will.

After only a minute, Zeke caught sight of his adversary. Oda – in Ignatius’ body – stood before the keep’s gate, idle and unworried. His once-pristine golden armor had sprouted hundreds of crystal branches. The same was true of the man himself, and glassy, black limbs sprouted from his ears like antlers. Blood coated his cheeks from where similar branches had erupted from his eyes.

Zeke rammed through the final trees, and he didn’t hesitate to charge Oda.

However, only a second later, the adversary disappeared, and a fiery pain unlike any other he’d ever experienced erupted in his legs. A second later, glassy roots erupted from the wounds and slammed into the ground, anchoring him in place.

Overbalanced, he fell – right into Oda’s slender sword. It ripped through his chest and pierced his heart. For a moment, the world seemed to stop as the two came together. Oda cradled him, almost like a child, and smiled. “You are a powerful mortal,” he said. “Perhaps the strongest I have seen. But you are no god.”

He ripped his sword free, and Zeke fell. He hit the ground with a thud, shattering the glass roots beneath his heavy body. He couldn’t move, so he had no ability to escape when they began to encircle him. Hundreds of glassy tendrils wrapped around him, squeezing him even as their sharp thorns ripped into his metallic body. The sound of screeching glass against metal filled the air, accompanied by his screams of agony.

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But Zeke had been through worse. The fiery pain was unique, and it burned his soul as much as it did his body. It was still just pain, though, and that meant he had not only his high tolerance, but also long experience dealing with it on his side. So, he pushed the pain away and focused on his situation.

He couldn’t move, and without his skills, he was at an extreme disadvantage. But he could mitigate some of that by focusing on what he did have. In short, he needed to use his nearly limitless strength to his advantage. If he could potentially move a mountain – and he suspected that he could do just that – he could break free of a few glass roots. He only needed to push himself harder.

Zeke closed his eyes, centering his mind as he focused on the essence of his strength. It wasn’t just the ability to lift things. That was part of it, but it was also about willpower. About enforcing his determination on the outside world. If he wanted a mountain to move, then it would move. By that same note, if he wanted to break the crystalline roots confining him, then they would break.

Or he would die trying.

He flexed, and not just his muscles. He moved his mind as well, and suddenly, the sound of cracking glass filled the air. Oda let out a gasp of surprise as Zeke broke free of the roots, roaring in triumph as he sprang to his feet.

“You!” shouted the possessed knight.

Zeke didn’t bother responding. Instead, he aimed an almost casual backhand at the tree demon, and when he connected, the sound of an exploding bomb echoed through the courtyard. Oda was launched to the side, moving so quickly that he was practically invisible to the naked eye. And when he hit the wall on the other side of the courtyard, it broke.

And so did he.

Thousands of shards of glass exploded in every direction, ripping Ignatius’ body apart. However, Zeke knew that Oda wasn’t dead. He could feel the mana in the air swirling all around as every sliver of glass lifted from the ground. Soon enough, they swirled like a tornado, clanging off Zeke’s metallic body as he flexed his endurance.

Then, the whirlwind shrank, collapsing in on itself until it all coalesced into a vaguely humanoid form. When the dust settled, Zeke saw that Oda had been remade into something closer to the tree’s true form. Branches stretched in every direction, emanating from a willowy trunk, from which grew legs, arms, and, of course, a face.

The last feature was twisted in anger and disgust as Oda locked his eyes on Zeke.

“You impertinent insect,” he growled in a voice that sounded like grinding glass. “You dare to stand up to me? You dare?!”

“Yeah.”

Zeke didn’t let the word’s echo dissipate before he threw himself forward, ready for round two. By the second step, the ground had begun to rumble. With the third, it cracked. And by the time Zeke had taken his third stride, a giant tree had erupted beneath him. It hit him like a speeding locomotive, though it didn’t launch him horizontally. Instead, it threw him straight up, though his momentum took him in an arc that should have sent him flying well over the citadel’s wall.

Before he got there, another tree exploded from the opposite direction, hitting him even harder than the first. Then, a third. And a fourth. Zeke had no defense against the battering he received at the end of the trees. And what’s more, separated from the ground, he didn’t have quite as much power with which to heal. [Hand of Divinity] harnessed a spark of divine energy to fuel it, but the bulk of its power came from attuned mana – one flavor of which originated with the earth.

Still, he pushed his vitality to keep up, though it was far from capable of doing so. However, with the addition of the weakened version of [Hand of Divinity], he managed to survive the battering barrage of arboreal manifestations.

It went on for what felt like hours, and his body was ripped to shreds in the process. But even Oda – at least the version that could step foot in the Eternal Realm – had limits. Zeke found them when the pace of the summoned trees began to wane before finally petering out. Zeke fell to the ground, hitting hard enough to dig a sizable crater in the courtyard.

Blood was everywhere, shimmering silver in the fading light as Oda approached.

“You are a cockroach,” the demonic tree said, moving forward. He didn’t walk. Rather, he hovered in mid-air, suspended on roots that snaked beneath the ground. A slender sword grew from his crystalline arm. It glistened with black corruption that distorted the air around the blade. “The world will thank me for putting you down.”

Zeke let [Hand of Divinity] infuse him, healing his body with every heartbeat. He didn’t move, though. Instead, he just lay there, hoping to convince Oda that he couldn’t move. It worked, eliciting a gloating laugh.

“Broken and battered. You are not so mighty now, are you? To think what Shar Maelaine gave up, just to let me kill you,” Oda went on, hovering over Zeke. “I wonder if she knows that I would have done it for free? Some consider rejection a right of passage. A character builder. I am not one of those people. Snubbing my quest was the moment you sealed your fate, young cambion.”

He raised his sword, ready to strike.

That was when Zeke acted. His hammer had been lost somewhere during his battering, so he simply used his body. Launching himself upright, he put every ounce of strength he could muster behind a massive uppercut. His entire concept of power – of that indomitable spirit that let him dominate his enemies – drove his fist upward with undeniable fury.

And just before it hit, he used [Unleash Momentum].

The skill had not had a chance to truly replenish its power, but it had always been a force multiplier. And given everything behind that punch, there was a lot to multiply.

Oda tried to dodge. He drifted backward just a hair, which was why Zeke’s attack didn’t let solidly on his chin. Instead, the punch – its path altered at the very last moment – clipped the demon tree in the jaw.

That was enough.

For the second time that day, Oda shattered into a million tiny shards. Those pieces of crystal flew in every direction, embedding themselves in the nearby walls, the ground, and in Zeke himself. [Hand of Divinity], already pumping at full blast, discharged those shards, and the clinked to the ground even as the shockwave of Zeke’s attack swept through the courtyard.

But once again, Zeke knew that the demonic tree was not dead. Never was that clearer than when the shards started to move, writhing across the ground as they began to congregate.

It appeared that the fight wasn’t over, but Zeke knew he would shatter the demonic tree a thousand times if that was what it took.