Granath frowned, and thrust out his will, grasping onto Jonathan’s soul with his power. To his surprise, there was a marked difference between the present, and when he had first attempted this. Soul strength tended to increase with level, sure, but it shouldn't have felt like he was trying to lift a mountain with a single finger. Jonathan had grown by leaps and bounds, beyond the point that Granath could truthfully call him a lesser being.

Jonathan felt the sting as the worm tried to rip his soul out of his body. He leaned upon all of his various powers, combining them into a lattice of energy that kept his soul firmly where it belonged. He savored the look of surprise on Granath’s face. As he raced along the ground, he jumped, powering through the air. He was lighter than a feather, but more dangerous than a missile. A cloak of the Void formed around him, letting him cut through the air with ease. Around his fists, purple light blossomed, and then pure nothingness flared into being as his Maw of the Void expressed its boundless hunger.

He crashed into Granath like a wrecking ball, shattering a hastily erected barrier with his sheer momentum. He drove both fists into the monster’s flesh, sending detonations of the abyss through his flesh. Granath roared in pain as chunks of his pallid flesh were blasted apart, raining down to the ground amid a shower of blue blood.

The worm twisted his body and snapped his tail towards Jonathan. Unlike last time, Jonathan was far faster. He flipped end over end, using his mana like a thruster, and latched onto Granath’s tail. A burning gaze of rage swept across him, and he realized a moment later that the heat was not simply figurative. Granath’s eyes burned with the power of Elemental Fire, and twin beams of condensed heat erupted outwards, scorching the air. If not for Granath’s command over his abilities, the air itself would have burst into flames.

Jonathan raised his fist, condensing a buckler of purple energy into being before it. The concentrated power of the Void tore at the air around it, and warped as the attack slammed home. There was a lot more mana in this strike, as Granath had learned that Jonathan was no pushover by this point. He was driven backwards, his bare arm scorching to a crisp. His shield was overloaded a moment later, just as the last bit of power streamed out of Granath’s eyes. With an explosion of orange and purple, he was blasted off the monster’s back and into the air.

“Your strength is beyond extraordinary. To think that a mere mortal could actually fight a being like me. However, I believe that it is time to end this farce.”

Granath started to pulse with a rhythmic light as strange spectral shapes swirled around him. Dozens, and quickly thousands of damned souls stepped out of the firmament and turned into a tornado of ethereal wraiths. Their keening cries echoed through the air as Granth bent to them to his will.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

“Legion of the Damned: Soul Spear!” The worm bellowed.

A moment later the specters condensed into a single amalgamation of pulsing energy. Jonathan could feel their connections to reality snapping one by one, turning into pure energy. To his mind, it felt like the most perverse thing that he had ever seen, even if he did not know why.

Out of the swirling light came a nova of energy that sent a beam of light rocketing towards him. He was still flying through the air at this point, and it would be extremely hard to dodge. He could feel the power contained within the beam of ghostly light, and if it hit him, it would spell his end.

Jonathan summoned a massive chunk of his energy reserves, condensing them into the strongest Void Cannon that he had ever made. As he worked, he seized upon every scrap of inspiration that he could, desperately trying to empower the skill to the point that it would be useful. He could feel ethereal death screaming through the air towards him, and nothing short of his very best could save him here.

A sudden surge of instinct directed him to fuse his Rune of Consumption with the skill, relying on their shared nature to make it work. There were already iterations of the same rune within the skill matrix, but Jonathan’s runes were different, as they were powered by his own Divinity. He could feel a massive rune, easily an eighth the size of the entire matrix, settle into his skill array, taking center spot. The power contained with the skill flared, and it was loosed. A thick wave of purple light that seemed to tear at the world around it erupted from his hands, meeting the oncoming attack. Notifications blared, but he ignored them.

The Void powered attack propelled him backwards like a rocket, away from encroaching death. A moment later, both attacks struck one another. The Soul Spear exploded into a miasma of wailing spirits, clawing at reality with their claws of pure misery. None of them were truly aware, instead simply conceptual resonances with the meaning of Granath’s skill.

However, Jonathan’s own attack also exploded, except it did not expand further than a few feet. As it did so, it revealed a spot of pure darkness in its center. With a whoosh, it reversed direction, and grew smaller and smaller until all that was left was a dark hued pinprick however in the air. Against all odds, it began to suck up the energy roiling around it. He had created a miniature black hole.

Even with all of the power contained within his new skill, it still was just barely on par with an attack fueled by thousands of souls. Eventually, both skills ruptured, blasting apart the sky in a display of exotic light. Silvery soul power gushed out through the cracks in reality, and the exploding black hole sent whips of consuming energy into the ground. Within a second, the land for a thousand feet in every direction had been turned into a scene from the apocalypse.

Buildings lay in piles of rubble as smoke rose from where the raging energies had melted the rock itself. Deep chasms were cut into the ground where the tendrils of Void power had landed. Both fighters were tossed backwards like ants upon the wind, and as a pillar of smoke and light rose into the air, the entire city watched in horror as the titans clashed.