Hushar eventually finished up with his own opponent, slicing the fighter’s head off with a mighty swing of his blade. Hushar was battered, but not yet broken. With a titanic battle cry, he rushed in, and brought his blade down. As it descended, a sheath of obsidian the length of a building appeared around it, shining with volcanic heat.

The blade came down like a comet, wreathed in flame as the air itself ignited. Jonathan threw himself to the side, and so did Edgar, letting the attack slam into the ground where the Uthraki fighters stood. It descended so quickly that only some of the fighters got out of the way in time, leaving two of the slower ones to be hammered into the ground. A spectral blade of force erupted from the end of the attack, carving a channel into the sea of lava beyond.

Hushar almost fell, panting. His stamina had run out for the most part, and so had his elemental energy. However, he had achieved much in the battle.

By this point, Jonathan had fully recovered, and his body thrummed like a well oiled machine. He summoned stamina to his arm, and punched, drawing upon all three of his energy sources. This stimulated his Great Treasure’s enhancement effect, creating what was essentially a cannon of air pressure, limned in the purple light of the Void.

A tiny black hole was generated in the center of the attack by his will, and it shot forwards faster than a lightning bolt, accelerated to tens of thousands of miles per hour. It was faster than he could see, and certainly faster than anyone else could. Almost all of his reserves vanished, but it hardly mattered. The black hole seemed to vacuum up every fighter in the line of its trajectory in an instant, leaving nothingness where it had been. Then it streaked off into the distance, exploding above the lava sea. Where five Uthraki had stood, only one remained.

It was the officer who had been so cocky earlier, but now in light of Jonathan’s absurd strength, his resolve had faltered. With a quivering cry of horror, he turned and fled, trying to get to the barge. A quick blade of wind from Edgar cut off his escape, sending the barge to the bottom of the lava sea in two halves.

Jonathan strode forwards, hiding his momentary weakness, and summoned the Void to his body, coating himself in purple light.

“You have one chance to save yourself,” he declared. “We need a map of this realm.”

“A-a map?” The man stuttered, fear reducing the once proud Tier 3 to a mewling wreck. “I can give you that.”

The fighter pulled out a scroll from a storage device on his hip, and tossed it towards Jonathan and the others. Jonathan caught it, and tucked it away. Then he sent his aura outwards at full force. The Uthraki trembled, and then dove into the sea, swimming back towards the islands on the horizon.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Jonathan sighed, and let his legs collapse, sitting down by the roiling sea. He was tired, but he could sense a closeness to a new skill, one that would transcend any that he had created before, save for Maw of the Void. One of the problems with his black hole skill was its lack of speed relative to the speed of those at his level. If he could increase it however, then it would truly be deadly. It was a combination that could only work with his unique synergies between skills.

Now sure of pursuit, they left the shore of the lava sea, and headed towards the distant horizon, away from the cities that the task force of fighters had come from. On the way, Jonathan opened the map, and for the first time, was able to get a better idea of what the second realm of Tartarus looked like. The realm was about the same size as Mire, similar to how the first realm of Tartarus had matched the Ash Heaps in size. However, it was far more populated, with hundreds of cities, and presumably tens of millions of Uthraki. The edges of the map were simply covered with a line of text that said “Mimic Spawning Grounds” over and over again. In the very center of the realm was a mountain, that if Jonathan was reading the scale right, was dozens of miles tall. On it sat a city that would have put many of the cities of Earth to shame.

The map was not detailed enough to show more than the basic outlines of the city, but what Jonathan could see was more than enough. A wall of dark obsidian ringed the city, at least a hundred miles wide, circumnavigating the mountain in its center. At the very top of the mountain was a palace built out of the bones of a dragon. The map was very clear about this, drawing in the beast’s head at the front of the palace, and its tail at the back.

The bones formed an archway across the mountaintop that created a natural enclosure. The rest of the picture was too small, but it was quite clear that whatever the monster had been, it was something that Jonathan had no interest in fighting. It was nowhere near as large as Exal’drin had been, but it was still larger than anything he had been forced to fight.

He turned his gaze away from the capital, and towards where they were. He found the vantage point onto the lava sea quite quickly, and plotted a course from there to where they were, using landmarks. They were in the center of an area called the Breakbone Hills, which apparently were home to a particularly nasty tribe of goblinoids. They were not sapient, but they were sentient enough to hunt in tribes.

Jonathan let his vision roll over the hills properly, now that there was no reason to run anymore. They were a series of drab, mottled gray protrusions from the land. As hills went, they were average enough, but their bases were dotted with entrances into warres, shrouded in blackness.

“Do you guys want to stay here and farm some levels, or keep going?” Jonathan asked.

“Stay here. If we can get to level 250, we will have a much better chance of surviving anything back in Mire. All of us can fight up a few dozen levels. That would allow us to be a lot more certain of our chances against the premier servants of Slothari,” Edgar suggested.

“I crave strength above all else right now. I vote that we stay,” Hushar said quietly, massaging the hilt of his sword as he did so. Going by the creaking noises coming from his joints, his inner mood was a lot darker than that of the outside.

Jonathan simply nodded, and rolled up the map. It was time to get to work.