Their last resorts crashed all over him. Monsters firing up their Cores, firing off all the essence they could muster. A flood of demonic Skills streaming Tier 4 Laws.
The Monster Knights too. Raining strikes loaded with vicious Concepts—Melting, Corrosion, Decay. Blacking out the sky.
The insects spewed gobs of venom that merged to a waterfall hundreds of feet high—arching to the bloody clouds, then down over Zane's head…
The undead pumped their corpse-bodies full of demented Skills, transmogrifying, bone spurs jutting out of their skins, teeth elongating, sharpening, curving in their mouths, tipped Corruption-black. Bulging, blowing up. Some to nearly twice their size. And charging.
The Reaper wielded its scythe like a lance. And dashed in. The Giant lumbered after, boulder-fists clenched, rotting skin peeling off in the face of Zane's fire, as though badly sunburned…
But Zane could see them cringing even as they came for him. As though running up against a fierce wind.
They stood in the presence of a higher power.
It wasn't just the sheer amount of essence blowing out of him. It was his Law. Mid-Tier Fusion. It outshone every other Skill in the Astral Plane.
Taken together, fused to one raging Cyclone… nothing could match the intensity erupting out of Zane right now.
Darkness closed in from all sides.
For Zane it was now or never now too.
He was cresting eight revolutions.
And it was starting to break him.
Even all the upgrades he had made to his muscles, his tendons, his skin, becoming nigh-indestructible at his power level—it was all struggling to hold up against the forces ripping through him. The momentum in his Chains right now ran so huge it ripped the realm as it moved, leaving jagged screaming voids behind…
Zane felt like he was single-handedly trying to hold two continents together.
It was excruciating.
The muscle fibers in his chest bulging, straining mightily—straining to the point of breaking—the tension, the heat, the effort brought to bear upon him, ripping down the back of his arms, even as he fired every pulsing, squeezing muscle in his body to its very limit—even as he tried forcing it all to hold—
He roared. And felt pain start spiking all over him. Muscles tearing at the seams—
Then there was Reina, right when he needed her. In came a sudden infusion of healing, a little extra right at the point of the wounds, stabilizing him. Just enough to hold him together.
Just long enough for Zane to make one more circle. And complete the ninth revolution.
Seas of darkness ran up against a world of light…
Light won.
Wiped out that wall of gunk. Wiped out that mass of bone. Washed over them. Blanked them out. A flat plane of purple-white. Nothing else existed then. Not even sound. For a second the seething purple white, almost too blinding to properly perceive, was all there was… and as Zane and his friends stood there, staring, it was as though they were standing in the heart of a star. Staring at a fathomless, silent immensity. Of light, of heat, of sound… washing over all. Consuming utterly. Absolute power.
They hovered in that silence for a moment. The silence of senses shot so high they went out of bounds. Simply couldn't comprehend what they witnessed…
This was Zane. All that he could do. Taken from inside him, thrown into the world…
𝕎𝕒𝕣𝕟𝕚𝕟𝕘!
ℍ𝕖𝕒𝕝𝕥𝕙 𝕦𝕟𝕕𝕖𝕣 𝟟𝟝%
Zane looked down.
Hm.
His chest. His arms. His back. It had all blown. His skeleton itself—his tendons, his stubborn grip strength—was all that kept this immensity together.
His Health was crashing fast. It was all Bone now, and even that was groaning. If he held on any longer it really would rip him apart.
He let go. Wrapped his friends in his soul. And held on. Bit down.
An explosion flared out. Stormfire erupting with the force of an atom bomb…
Zane saw the notification.
𝕊𝕜𝕚𝕝𝕝 𝕦𝕡!
𝕊𝕥𝕠𝕣𝕞𝕗𝕚𝕣𝕖 ℂ𝕪𝕔𝕝𝕠𝕟𝕖 𝕀𝕀 -> 𝕀𝕀𝕀
𝕊𝕥𝕠𝕣𝕞𝕗𝕚𝕣𝕖 ℂ𝕪𝕔𝕝𝕠𝕟𝕖 𝕀𝕀𝕀 -> 𝕀𝕍
He was done.
He couldn't even think properly. His head felt very light, throbbing hot. In body and soul he had given it his all.
But just as he was about to keel over… he felt that big Monster soul in the sky peering over him again…
And Zane's head jerked up.
He glared right back at it. Teeth bared in a snarl. And spread his arms wide as he stood over mounds and mounds of burning corpses. The corpses it had sent to end him. The destruction he had wrought.
He thumped his bloody chest. Bellowed a challenge, defiant.
The eye stared just a moment longer before it vanished.
Then Zane swayed.
It was over.
He heard shouts, cries. He face-planted straight into Reina.
***
When he woke he found Reina looking over him as usual.
She smiled. And kept nursing him back. She got a little scared every time he went out, but she wasn't so worried anymore. By now he had something of a track record of pushing too hard and collapsing. This was just the standard protocol.
Besides—she only had to work on his soul. His body had healed pretty much instantly. Courtesy of—
𝕃𝕖𝕧𝕖𝕝 𝕦𝕡!
𝕃𝕖𝕧𝕖𝕝 𝕦𝕡!
𝕃𝕖𝕧𝕖𝕝 𝕦𝕡!
𝕃𝕖𝕧𝕖𝕝 𝕦𝕡!
𝕃𝕖𝕧𝕖𝕝 𝕦𝕡!
𝕃𝕖𝕧𝕖𝕝 𝕦𝕡!
𝕃𝕖𝕧𝕖𝕝 𝕦𝕡!
𝕃𝕖𝕧𝕖𝕝 𝕦𝕡!
𝔼𝕤𝕤𝕖𝕟𝕔𝕖 𝕃𝕖𝕧𝕖𝕝 𝟚𝟝𝟡 -> 𝟚𝟞𝟟
At first he was stunned at just how many notifications there were. He knew there were a bunch of armies. Hundreds of demons, and four Monster Knights. And yet… every Level was hard-won at this stage. You didn't just get eight at once.
Then he remembered Reina had thought to have him take that talent elixir too, right before the fight. In most of them multiplied his already massive essence gains.
He supposed it made sense.
He scratched his head.
He was just running through these upper Levels lately, wasn't he?
His friends were too.
It turned out Reina was now just a few Levels off of her Fourth Class Evolution. Avery too. They'd both jumped over 10 Levels in one go. They were both eager to see what new unlocks they'd get—especially when it came to soul weapon upgrades.
Evan, meanwhile, had jumped all the way to Level 260.
They'd all had some time to process what Zane had just done. The crater around them was proof enough of it—a crater that stretched so wide you couldn't see its end, horizon-to-horizon. It had melted a good foot of ash—fused it so that the ground was now a hardened coal, streaked through with Stormfire purples…
The difference in power between Mid-Fusion and low-Fusion still astonished them. Not even those Nascent Soul Monsters had achieved it. Which meant Zane was already beyond the Law bottleneck to Nascent Soul, Reina thought. Whatever that was.
In any case, Zane wasn't sure he could do another Stormfire upgrade anytime soon. It wasn't so much the exhaustion. More that he had burned his soul pretty bad… he winced. It wasn't the kind of thing you recovered from just like that. It didn't hurt so much anymore—the way burn scars don't hurt after some rest. But it would be a bit until he could take more scorching.
Even he needed to rest sometimes, he found.
***
They celebrated around a campfire. A normal one, since Stormfire was a little too intense. Zane lit it with a finger.
It was pizza for dinner tonight.
Afterwards they settled down for yet another little break to make a few upgrades—Reina and Avery to see if they could breakthrough to the fourth Evolution. Zane, to take in those four new Weapon Souls.
After that last showing they weren't in so much of a hurry anymore.
Reina doubted they would be threatened much—in this section, at least. She felt it had been made pretty clear who was the 800-pound-gorilla here.
She gave him an affectionate nuzzle.
Zane blinked. Thought about it. Looked down at himself—just his body. Thought back to his thumping his chest earlier.
Hmm.
***
ꜱᴛᴇᴇʟʜᴇᴀʀᴛ ᴄᴏɴᴄʟᴀᴠᴇ
It had become a rather widespread rumor in the Steelheart Conclave that the legendary Barbarian Sage had staked out a spot in the Observatory. To watch just one candidate.
Soon the Sage got visitors. Old friends dropping by, fascinated. Sage Stonefish, an Inner Elder, was first—a plainly dressed martial artist, thickly built, with a sharp stubble and brutal features. He was a legend in his own right—slayer of the Monster King Xeraxes, the sole practitioner of the legendary Buddha Palm Technique up to the Eight Layer.
He was also a friend from the Barbarian Sage's youth. He never smiled, and seldom spoke—but when he visited he and the Barbarian Sage were like old drinking buddies catching up. They chuckled and clinked glasses.
The Scouts were astounded. They had never seen the stodgy elder so ruddy. They had only seen him at all in statues, or once every thousand years at the Faction-wide Millennium Ceremony… the Barbarian Sage had a similarly reclusive reputation, come to think of it. Seeing him and the Sage together was like seeing two mythical creatures at once.
"At first I thought you were blowing hot air," rumbled Stonefish, shaking his head. "Heavens. This 'Zane Walker' may even reach Nascent here."
"Can you imagine?!" the Barbarian Sage laughed. Then a thought seemed to occur to him—and instantly he was furious. "Those Azure Flame bastards… the nerve of them!"
"What did they do?"
He shook his fist at the ceiling. "They had the gall to plan ahead—and not send in their aid package last-minute, as I did! The System gave theirs out first!"
He snorted. "No matter."
He settled back into his iron throne, took another swig. "Once mine arrives tonight, theirs shall be a mere afterthought."
Stonefish wasn't the only one interested in Zane. The great talents of this generation were always looking out for the up-and-comers. A certain bald Steelheart Conclave Chosen wielding an iron staff big as a pillar sought news on this new recruit. So did another ten-foot-tall Chosen, a juggernaut with skin the color of silver.
Soon the news had gotten out to the regular Outer Faction disciples as well. News of a prodigy among prodigies, smashing his way through one of the most difficult Superdungeon paths ever undertaken…
Unbeknownst to Zane, his fame was quickly spreading.
***
It turns out Zane had been knocked out for most of the day.
Soon it came time for their next batch of action gifts to arrive.
It felt like ever since they came into this place it was an endless deluge of treasures. This Superdungeon really was as much a blessing as it was a curse.
… So far, more of a blessing than anything. Zane was making it that way.
Evan got a vial filled with Raijuu Bloodline, along with a very sweet note from a Constellation Order Elder. "Aww!" cried Evan.
Avery got an A+-grade dose of 'Mt. Tai Spring Water' that would get her over the hump to the Fourth Evolution. They both dug into their gifts right away.
Reina, meanwhile, got an A+-ranked Skill tome called 'Naiad's Touch.'
Which was quite nice on the face of it—but Reina didn't look pleased. She already had a healing Skill., her signature Skill. And it was far better than what this one offered.
This time her eyes were narrowed. One dud treasure, she might be able to overlook. But two?
She pursed her lips. Zane got the feeling she would get to the bottom of this. She felt someone was playing with her.
Zane wasn't sure what was going on. But he did know whoever was doing it was playing with fire. He knew that look on her face—she was starting to scheme right back.
***
Then came Zane's treasure. A great silver comet arching halfway down the sky before it dropped right at his feet.
He wasn't even sure what it was at first. Some great slab of muscle, dense as tempered steel. Suspended mid-air. But the aura coming off it was undeniable.
It was that of the Titan Rhinoceros. The single strongest source of Titan Rhino aura he had ever felt. Stronger than every Bloodline offering he'd ever seen…
ℍ𝕖𝕒𝕣𝕥𝕤𝕥𝕣𝕚𝕟𝕘 𝕠𝕗 𝕥𝕙𝕖 𝕋𝕚𝕥𝕒𝕟 ℝ𝕙𝕚𝕟𝕠𝕔𝕖𝕣𝕠𝕤 [𝔼𝕒𝕣𝕥𝕙 (𝕊+)]