“Few have taxed me to this point before. You shall die knowing that you are strong, for a worm, that is.”
“Funny. The same applies to you.”
The Shard simply smiled, and snapped its fingers. Green light spilled from between its digits, and the air before it shifted and warped. A torrent of green flame erupted from its hands, bathing the area in its light. Unlike normal flame, it had no heat, instead warping the ground into a twisted hellscape of semi organic stone and grasping tendrils of bedrock. They raked through the air, trying to get to Jonathan. He narrowly avoided them, breaking the constructs apart with well placed blows.
Shards of rock scattered across the ground, melting back into the substrate below, and merging with the tentacles already present. They continued to grow and grow, until they were dozens of feet in length and Jonathan found himself hard pressed to not be entangled.
He sent out a pulse of the Void, sending the tendrils into oblivion. When there was nothing more to control, there was little the Shard could do in terms of manipulating the tentacles. Jonathan blasted through the sudden spray of gravely detritus, emerging from the other side with a coating of elemental power surrounding him.
The Shard sneered and thrust its hands forwards, the air itself twisting and warping to suit its desires. The world seemed to shift into a greenish nightmare of twisting shapes and colors, creating an elemental domain around the monster. Jonathan found his movements slowing down as he felt growths forming in his joints, stiffening his limbs and rendering him unable to move. He let out a growl and blasted the blockages free with waves of Voidlight, washing the mutation out of his body. Then he exploded forwards, the sound barrier shattering over and over as his supremely potent body cut through the air like a knife.
Jonathan’s body hummed like a well oiled machine as he followed through with a mighty punch, creating a cannon of various energies around it. The battle with the Shard was beginning to drag on beyond his ability to maintain his buffs, and if this went on much longer, he would be bereft of his most essential bonuses. Once that happened, there was only one way that the battle could go. As his punch sent a condensed shell of potency rippling through the Shard of Slothari’s grotesquely enlarged body, he felt the first of his bonuses giving way to the march of time. Spikes of pain erupted across his body and soul as the Third Eye of Exal’drin signaled an end to its font of power. Cursing profusely, he canceled the ability, finding himself much diminished.
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The Shard laughed in maniacal glee, a tendril of flesh shooting forwards from its torso. Its body began to wither as energy was drawn from it, but it hardly mattered. Jonathan’s bones snapped as the strike impacted his chest, his reflexes no longer bolstered enough by his Blessing to escape.
He was shot backwards, skipping across the ground for hundreds of feet. As he moved, he tried something new, reaching into his Domain to empower his body. He locked down his sense of self contained within his Domain, and to his pleasant surprise, he found himself slamming to a halt. So far, no enemy had taxed him far enough to try this. As his Domain was basically a mentally controlled aggregation of physical force, he could use it for things like this.
The air hardened around him, and he landed with a soft thud, his bones starting to knit together once more. At Tier 3, his regenerative powers were sufficiently high to recover from most attacks that did not kill him instantly. Then again, the same was true for almost anyone. Even a normal human could recover from broken bones, albeit over a long period of time. The only constant was an inability to recover from severed limbs. That, so far, was impossible. Jonathan luckily had never had to deal with such things, but he feared them.
As the Shard watched him, it bounded forwards, each step cracking the stone beneath. Jonathan spared a glance to the battle behind, watching as his Uthraki allies fought the titan of flesh to a standstill, finally overcoming its regeneration. Then he turned in time to face the Shard. It was time to end this before he could fight no longer.
Rivers of elemental energy were diverted from his elemental core into his hands, and a dozen spinning constructs of potency formed around him. Missiles of the Void were forged within them, creating an array of power around him. Then, with a flick of his hands that sent three quarters of his elemental stockpile hissing into the ether, he let them loose. Tiny purple stars seared through the firmament as they traveled at many times the speed of sound.
The Shard sent its many arms blurring around itself, conjuring shields of concentrated mutation. Jonathan watched as his projectiles impacted the shields, apprehensive in the extreme. For a few moments, the shields held, and the Shard let out a barking laugh, twisted by its enlarged form. Then a crack spread across the planes of greenish light, and a series of detonations tore them apart, the latter half of the barrage striking the monster.
Flesh tore and bones buckled beneath the strikes, and Jonathan charged, knowing that this was his one chance to strike. As the Shard reeled, its form coming apart before the torrent of power, Jonathan launched himself through the air, stamina burning like a candle lit from both ends. The air shuddered as he forced his way through it, and before the Shard could recover, he thrust his fist into the wound formed by his attack. With a roar, he clenched it, and a wave of colorless energy erupted outwards, erasing its flesh from existence.