His fists surged back and forth like two supercharged pistons, and impacted the other fighter’s chest. The hammer continued on its path, blasting into Jonathan’s armor. He was sent flying, but not before he witnessed the damage he had dealt. It was a bit disappointing. Bits of flesh had been blasted away, but they were already wriggling back into place, the false skin far more conducive to regeneration, at least with a modest investment of elemental energy. This was a battle that needed every bit of his strength. Perhaps even more Strength than he currently had.

Jonathan allocated two sets of ninety nine points into Strength, watching as the stat increased dramatically. His muscles hummed with barely constrained power. He was starting to reach the boundary region of power that he would have to start diversifying his stats to keep up with his Strength. Otherwise, each attack would tear him apart.

As it was, it felt like he had crammed a nuclear reactor into his body. He was incredibly strong now, hundreds of times greater in potency than anyone from Earth. With all of his buffs and boons, perhaps even a thousand times stronger.

Jonathan hit the ground with a thud, embedding himself in the soft loam of the forest’s floor. He rebounded, pushing up before he could be pinned down. Then he gathered energy to his fists, condensing it until the conceptual power of the Void rippled through them. Then he punched forwards, just as the centipede came crashing down, its flaming jaws wide open.

A wave of pure consumption exploded outwards, tearing apart the fire as it burned through the sky, and then impacting the centipede itself. Flesh vanished into the endless nadir of nothingness that was the Void. The centipede reeled, and as it fell backwards, Hushar and Edgar struck. The former rocketed out from behind the shield, his sword expanding to monumental proportions as he extended his elemental energy into it. A blade of obsidian fifty feet in length sliced into the monster’s neck, cutting deep into its foul flesh.

Meanwhile, Edgar seized the creature with chains of wind, rooting it in place. The sudden cessation of momentum sent its rider hurtling off its back. Jonathan took his shot while the man was midair and sent a pair of Void Missiles streaking towards him, with a black hole added into the mix for good measure. Rather than simply strike the fighter, the attacks merged, giving Jonathan the opportunity to see what happened when he mixed his two projectile skills.

The black hole sucked the two missiles into itself, turning into an aggregation of gravitational consumption and Void enhanced momentum. Jonathan’s Domain spread around the entire construct, sending it shooting forwards at ever greater speeds. Its form was almost liquid in a way, wobbling back and forth as it traveled. There was no way to distinguish between the original three projectiles. Now, there was only an incredibly unstable mixture of Void energy and pure power.

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Jonathan watched as it seared through the air, almost beyond the limits of his perception. It zeroed in on its target, starting to spin wildly as the two Void Missiles within its form sought to tear free from the conceptual gravity of the black hole in their midst. As they traveled, Jonathan took the opportunity to scan his opponent.

Geb Araeon

Level 285

Health: 65370/74450

Status: Mildly Wounded

Just as Jonathan had expected, the man’s stats were heavily skewed towards durability. Even his name seemed to match his powerset, although it likely had little meaning here in Telvaria. On Earth, Geb had been the Egyptian god of the Earth, but here, it seemed that he was but a lowly Tier 3 with delusions of grandeur.

Jonathan pulsed his Divinity within himself, seeking to prolong the effect of his buff. Then he channeled it into his runes, enveloping his fists in the light of the Rune of Hatred, and the Rune of Beckoning. With his many bonuses to the manipulation of runes, the resulting potency was far beyond anything he had enjoyed when first embarking upon his journey into the secrets of the universe.

His fists turned into comets of pure energy, one of them drawing in the attention of his foes like a metaphysical black hole and the other radiating a sense of extreme danger to all who opposed him. Jonathan slammed his fists together, watching as Divinity sparked and cracked around them. Then he charged.

It was at this moment that the remainder of the enemy forces caught up to Geb, who had been so enthusiastic to fight that he had raced ahead on his centipede. Jonathan ignored them, after seeing that they were just more of the standard Tier 3 fighters that were so common among Slothari’s legions. His own forces could deal with them.

Jonathan met Geb with his fists, slamming them into the man’s massive hammer. He felt the pressure from the fighter’s unnatural strength, but he pushed through. They dueled on top of the writhing centipede, each movement sending shockwaves through the air. Jonathan was far faster than his opponent, and he soon had sent dozens of wounds of the man’s flesh. The only problem was that the strange elemental energy construct that Geb had coated himself in was not his actual body. The wounds closed up in record time, even faster than Jonathan’s own regeneration would have allowed for.

He started to lean upon the piercing aspects of the Void, channeling more energy into the passive effects of Void Piercer. Whereas before his natural mastery over the Void would subtly empower his strikes, now each attack was coated in a meter long spike of purple energy that sliced straight through any resistance.

Geb began to bleed for the first time, real wounds multiplying on his flesh. So far, the only damage he had taken were superficial burns from the Void, but now he was in actual trouble.

The man gritted his teeth and slammed his hammer down against the centipede, sacrificing a few wounds for this opportunity. Yellow energy swirled around the weapon, the Earth elemental energy possessing an almost gravitational pull. Had the man possessed a few more points in elemental mastery, perhaps he could have actually achieved that.