Every fiber of muscle in his massive frame lit up with essence. Tensing. Power coursed through him, raw untamed power, so much of it running down his arms, going into his hands he couldn't sit still. His big hands began to tremble. Stormfire erupted down his knuckles.
But that was just the beginning.
His body kept going. Shifting gears, revving faster and faster, seemingly endless, each muscle rippling down his body. Squeezing out every drop of power it could muster…
At the same time the Monsters crashed over him.
He roared—it was almost involuntary. The sound tore out of him. There was too much power buried in him; it echoed deep, resounding. His Bloodline was burning to its peak.
His body became a beautiful, terrible machine of pure violence. He fed it as much essence as it could take—and it took as much as he could give. Which was a lot.
Every ounce of potential energy activated inside of him. All at once. Linked in one vigorous chain, ending at his trembling fists.
The Reapers saw him loading up—and their eyes gleamed wickedly; their mouths unhinged, lightning tickling their throats. And in a blink, three or four streams of pure Electricity, Electricity loaded with that Shockwave Concept, bore into him.
A few hours before just one of these things had left him spasming on the ground.
Four struck him now. At once. Seized at his muscles, yellows and whites crackling and licking all over his body…
But they couldn't grab hold of him. They tried to force all his muscles to seize up. But it would take something far, far stronger to force his new muscles to do anything.
He flexed with all his might, letting the power of his body assert itself. And all that lightning broke off, veered away, sparked out.
There was a moment when the Reapers goggled at him. Mouths still wide open.
Then he kicked off—and he was in the midst of them.
Zane unleashed everything.
His fist shot out like a piston, struck the nearest Reaper. Sank into its face so hard it was like the Stormfire forgot to react. Like physics itself forgot to react. For a split-second the beast just sat there, his fist sank elbow-deep in its face.
Then the world unfroze. And it splattered.
There were not even shattering bones, tearing muscles, exploding organs. It went too fast for that. So much force drove into that Level 194 Reaper it came undone at every level of being. It simply exploded; everything inside of it went everywhere. It lost all form, transformed into a blotch of deep red. Whites shot out of it—shards of bone streaking like they were shot out of a sniper rifle, burning bullets. Stormfire caught hold. All that mincemeat went up in crackling brilliant blue…
It had hardly half a second, staring down at his arm sunk deep into its mouth, to register what Zane had just done to it.
Then—instantaneous death.
Zane blinked at his fist.
He smiled.
Then grunted. He felt two more streams of lightning stabbing into his back—but even caught unawares they couldn't pry away control from his muscles. It was the easiest thing in the world to flex them, brush off those attacks. They could not touch him.
He turned to face them. He saw their eyes pop. Saw their mouths open to scream—
He sank a fist into a gaping mouth. And a Reaper splattered. BOOM!
Whirled around. And gave the other the same treatment. There was nothing but a burning glut to mark its existence.
He examined them with some interest. It seemed like he'd grown too strong for these things. They were no longer worthy enemies—they couldn't even let him gauge the power of his body. Or work him up to a good rhythm. His punches didn't just break them. One fist erased them from being.
His head was throbbing with a hot, heady rush. The thumping of his heart, powering the machinery of his body, thundered in his ears. He was panting. He needed something stronger.
He took a look at himself. He felt good. Really good. He was raring to go, still overcome with energy. He'd burned a good chunk of essence there. It was the cost of powering himself. But there was a lot more where that came from.
More than enough to finish this fight.
Three more minion Reapers left. They saw what had happened to their allies.
He eyed them one by one and smashed his fists together.
They ran screaming.
They were not very fast. And Zane was still fired up—he noticed when his power went up it didn't go down; that burn rate stayed the same, or kept going, until he ran out of fuel. There was a momentum to his muscles—you would have to put him down to halt him. And he could not imagine anything putting him down right now.
It was hard not to feel that way with how much power coursed through him right now.
When he kicked off it was like he'd taken a Stormfire Step. He hadn't used a Skill at all. Raw leg strength shot him like a cannonball—right into the path of a Reaper. He bashed it. It exploded in a flash of blue-white. He turned, crushed the other two in quick succession. This time he didn't even use Stormfire, just for fun. The raw force of it was enough. He liked the sounds it made, the CRUNCH-SQUISH-CRACKs of a whole body condensed into one beautifully ugly note.
There was something pure about that destruction. It gave him warm fuzzy feelings.
In the end, he was just standing there, caked in blood. None of it his own.
He smiled.
A good test run.
Reina came over, saw he didn't need healing at all, and looked faintly stunned. Evan was even more stunned. He was staring wide-eyed at everything. "Woah!"
Avery whistled, hands on her hips, and inspected his work. "Nice."
Zane turned back to the lair. Back in the direction of the Boss.
He was still burning up. His heart, powering his body, was still going hard and fast.
More. He wanted more.
Lucky for him, more was coming.
The Boss of the third floor approached with slow menace. Its mass was so huge it brushed aside whirlpools, cutting through miles-long currents without stopping…
It looked like its minions in the same way a tiger looks like a house cat. It had thick, slimy skin with a spray of eerie lights spread across it, running along long, ragged fins tipped with venom-green spikes. Its tail was made of enormous bone spurs jutting out like spears. Faint webbing ran between them.
Half its body, though, was that jaw. Crackling with so much electricity it was like staring into a thunderstorm. The muscles around it, working slowly, looked like they could chew up anything.
ℝ𝕖𝕒𝕡𝕖𝕣 ℚ𝕦𝕖𝕖𝕟 (𝕄𝕠𝕟𝕤𝕥𝕖𝕣)
𝕃𝕖𝕧𝕖𝕝 𝟚𝟘𝟘
Zane did a double-take at that. That meant… sure enough, deeper down, past its Laws—the Law of Electrification (Tier IV)—was one line.
ℂ𝕠𝕣𝕖 𝔾𝕣𝕒𝕕𝕖: 𝕀𝕟𝕗𝕖𝕣𝕚𝕠𝕣
Core Formation.
There was something different about this Boss. Its aura felt like staring into a deep dark well. He couldn't tell where it ended. It wasn't the amount of essence streaming out of it, but the quality of it. It had a certain density to it… it was hard to call it essence, even.
No one on Earth had ever faced a Core Formation Monster, and lived.
No one had even reached Core. Or had any clue what it involved.
"Zane?" said Reina. She bit her lip.
"I'll handle it," he said. He didn't look back. He only had eyes for the beast.
He meant it. If he had been confident in his body before…
He clenched his fists.
He was just wondering what to attack with when he felt the Reaper Queen's killing intent flare up.
He had a half-second to brace before the jaws unhinged, and a pillar of light slashed through the water, slashing into him. Laden with that Electrification Fusion Law.
He thought he would be ready for whatever it threw at him. He thought he could simply tank it.
Then it hit him.
The Fusion Laws knifed straight through him. Its powers of conduction were nothing like Electricity's. Every droplet of water in him was a jumping-off point. It ignored his defenses. It struck him straight to his core.
But more than just that there was a weight to the essence that was totally new to him. A weight in the Astral Realm, a density the likes of which he'd never felt before—his brace was not enough. He collapsed so fast he didn't even realize he had until the blast sank past his defenses and lay into the tissue beneath.
Hot spikes of pain stabbed down his body. White-hot needles stabbing deep into every single muscle.
He groaned. And it overwhelmed him.
For a second he just stood there jerking. For a second all he could see was white. The essence—the quality, the sheer incredible density of it… it was totally different from the essence he knew from Foundation and Condensation.
That surprise was what undid him—that was all. He'd braced for the wrong thing. And it needed just one second to sneak past his defenses.
It was like all his muscles shut off at once. He was shocked still. So much power at his literal fingertips—but he was locked out of it. And his health began to plummet…
Behind him he felt Reina's stab of fear, heard her cry out. And warmth poured into him—a huge outpouring. He was stunned for the second time in seconds. His Health had been dropping at maybe 5-6% a second. Now that rate had dropped to half, and more—Reina's powers were so much stronger.
Evan, meanwhile, started shouting, slashing, raising bloody wounds on the beast, but the thing had him firmly in its grasp—
Even before Reina intervened, the thing had done less damage than he thought.
It was much heavier than he'd expected, and he'd dropped. But even as he lay there jerking he knew it was not beyond him.
It wasn't hurting him much considering how much it was pouring into him. It had to be the quality of his body. The Reaper Queen had to burn an absurd amount of essence just keeping his muscles locked out—and there was a lot of muscle to keep down. All over him. His new godly musculature shoving away the brunt of the force, soaking in heaps of essence. Shielding his vital organs from the worst of the damage.
Zane frowned, still grunting, spasming.
He'd had enough of this.
He slammed his will down on his body with Emperor's Soul. Felt the seal on that electric cage break just a little—and tore through.
His muscles responded at once.
Each one came to life again and his Bloodline started burning back up; the great machinery of his body began to churn, burning up again, blood coursing wild and free, pumped by a revitalized heart…
He clenched his fist.
He wrestled back a leg, then an arm, forcibly thrust out his chest, raised his head high; every muscle strained and strained, and his body knew no limits. That lightning fought him hard. It was of a whole other grade—it was not something he should have been able to resist, he knew.
He fed his body more. And more. And more. It simply would not stop.
The Reaper Queen couldn't believe what it was seeing. The amount of power it was feeling coming its way. It felt obscene.
𝕎𝕒𝕣𝕟𝕚𝕟𝕘!
ℍ𝕖𝕒𝕝𝕥𝕙 𝕦𝕟𝕕𝕖𝕣 𝟟𝟝%
Zane flexed one last time, veins straining against his thick neck—and he bucked the thing off of him.
He came out in a glorious blaze.
A blinding star in the astral plane, every muscle firing at its peak—a peak that simply wouldn't stop rising. So much essence was packed into every dense cord of muscle it leaked out of him in a fine glowing aura. A power that trembled the waters, that warped the very fabric of the astral plane. A power that should not exist among mortals.
He loosed a defiant roar.
And went straight for its head.