Chapter 267 - Colossal Force (Patreon)

Facing off against the kobold legionnaire, Zeke felt more at home than he’d felt since ascending from the Radiant Isles. And that feeling only grew more palpable as he raced toward the hulking creature. Zeke was rarely more comfortable than when he was in a life-or-death struggle, and while this fight against the legionnaire hadn’t forced him anywhere near his limits, it was close enough to provide the conflict he’d sorely missed since his ascension.

The legionnaire loomed over him, but Zeke didn’t mind the size difference. He’d been fighting creatures that towered over him since the very beginning, so facing off against one now felt incredibly appropriate.

The monster thrust its spear forward, intending to skewer Zeke through his unprotected chest. However, he only had to turn his upper body sideways and take a short sidestep to avoid the radiant spear. He felt the blistering heat, though, telling him that there was some sort of skill at play. But if Zeke was inured to any force, it was fire and heat, so he paid it little heed as he aimed a mammoth blow at the monster’s hip.

Clearly, the legionnaire wasn’t expecting Zeke’s nimble dodge, so it was caught unaware by his subsequent follow-up. Voromir crashed into its pelvis, and though Zeke didn’t hear the crunch of bone, he was rewarded by the monstrous kobold’s stumble. The thing’s hiss of pain was just extra.

It kicked out with taloned feet, catching Zeke with a glancing blow that sent him spinning around. The legionnaire tried to follow up with a shield bash, but Zeke beat it to the punch, increasing his weight by embracing his racial gift. So, when the hidebound shield made contact, it was stopped cold as if it had hit a sold wall.

Still, it wasn’t pleasant, and not for the first time, Zeke wished for his armor back. Even the incomplete protection provided by his unstable skill, [Armor of the Colossus], would have been welcome. But for now, all he had was bare skin and the endurance of his own flesh. It would have to be enough.

Zeke dismissed his hammer into his spatial storage and gripped the edge of the shield. Then, with every ounce of strength he could muster, he yanked. Leather bindings as well as the bones that made up the shield’s frame snapped as Zeke violently wrenched it away from the legionnaire’s arm. It didn’t come easily, and Zeke felt an explosion of mana as one rune after another ruptured under his colossal strength. They singed his skin, but he pushed through the minor discomfort before aiming a herculean front kick at the overbalanced monster.

The shield pulled away. The monster stumbled in the opposite direction, flailing for balance. Zeke stood tall, tossing the ruined shield to the ground and resummoning Voromir. That’s when he saw it. That fear, dancing in those alien, reptilian eyes. It had picked a fight it wasn’t sure it could win.

Zeke rolled his shoulders, then advanced.

The legionnaire regained its balance and clutched its spear in a two-handed grip. It might have realized it was overmatched, but that didn’t mean it was giving up. Prudence might have dictated that it flee, but Zeke saw plenty of resolve mingling with the obvious fear. Sentient, sapient, or somewhere in between, the monster clearly wasn’t one to surrender to its fears. Retreat just wasn’t in its nature.

Nor was it in Zeke’s.

So he stepped forward, reengaging in battle.

The legionnaire was no pushover, dodging each of Zeke’s attack with sinuous fluidity. It was a creature of strength and power, but it also possessed a reptilian agility that belied its bulk. So, Zeke had no small degree of trouble catching it with a solid blow. He redoubled his efforts, shifting from the long, powerful swings he preferred into the more compact jabbing attacks he’d used against agile enemies like Silas Martel.

For most fighters, the sheer ferocity of each exchange would have left them panting in exhaustion, but Zeke had the benefit of [Metallurgical Repair] constantly feeding him energy, which made him as inexhaustible as a machine. The legionnaire wasn’t so lucky, and over the course of the next few minutes, its energy slowly began to wane.

Throughout the fight, it tried to spear him with lances of molten energy, but Zeke dodged every time. If he’d had armor, he might have tried to take the hits, but without it, he realized his margin of error was incredibly slim. He couldn’t take the chance that the beams were more powerful than he expected. Still, those attacks were the only reason he found himself incapable of putting the monster down.

Then, suddenly, the legionnaire’s skin crackled and burst. Molten energy poured from between its scales, radiating a level of power Zeke had rarely experienced. But even as the monster’s movements twitched with speed and strength, he didn’t panic. Though he did soon find himself on his back foot, barely holding on as the legionnaire’s power continued to mount. With every passing second, the molten energy spread over its body, encasing it in pure fire, and its physical prowess increased exponentially.

Before Zeke could blink, he missed a dodge, and the kobold’s spear got inside his guard, skewering him through the shoulder. Zeke wrenched himself free just in time to avoid the monster’s molten claw, and he rolled to relative safety.

As Zeke bounced to his feet, the legionnaire let out a hiss that sounded a lot like a laugh. Zeke gritted his teeth, pulling more energy from the earth. The muscles in his shoulder knitted themselves back together as the already-cauterized wound healed.

“So, it’s like that, huh?” he muttered, his grip tightening on his mace. He hadn’t intended to use his full suite of abilities, but he suspected that he needed to play at least one more card if he was going to survive the skill-enhanced kobold.

So be it, he thought, already embracing [Weight of Two Worlds].

Zeke hadn’t used the skill since his ascension, so he was a little surprised at how mana-hungry it had become. However, in his experience, with great cost came incredible power, and [Weight of Two Worlds] seemed to adhere closely to that maxim. The moment he released the building energy, letting the skill spread out around him, the ground shook. The few trees in the area that hadn’t been toppled during the battle finally succumbed to his might as the skill crushed them under its enormous weight. Cracks spread across the ground, pulverizing the smaller rocks and sending deep fissures through the larger formations.

And the overgrown lizard screamed in pain.

Over the next couple of seconds, the creature’s skill sputtered out and it shook with effort as it tried to remain upright. Zeke pushed on the skill, flooding it with more mana as he counteracted the effects on his own body with his racial gift. Still, the physical strain combined with the split in his focus to send a tremble through his mind. But as uncomfortable as it was for Zeke, it was even worse for the legionnaire.

It fought valiantly against the force of gravity steadily increased, driving it to its knees. It hissed with expended effort, but it could no more fight gravity than it could cease to breathe. Zeke strode forward, his face a mask of calm resolve that showed nothing of the inner turmoil that came with excluding himself from the skill’s effects. He could have pushed the skill further, but not without experiencing the increased gravity himself.

Not that he needed to. The legionnaire was helpless. It couldn’t even lift its arms, much less fight back. It looked up at him with pleading eyes. Zeke ignored it. The creature had attacked him. It had intended to end his life. And in that sort of situation, there was no room for mercy.

Zeke hefted Voromir with steady hands, reared back, and brought it down with thunderous force. The kobold’s head exploded beneath the blow, erupting with a spray of bone, brain, and blood. Zeke repeated the strike again. And again. Three more times until, finally, he felt the familiar influx of energy that came with a kill. It settled into his core, and for the first time in months, he felt himself creep closer to gaining another level. He had killed groups of the smaller kobolds, but they hadn’t resulted in enough energy to even notice. But the legionnaire was different. Not only was it a much higher level than the usual kobolds, but its energy was on a qualitatively different level. It reminded Zeke of the difference between a mundane monster and one that had become an elite, though without the handy label on the creature’s identifier. Perhaps those were a relic of the lower realm, a system put in place to train him to recognize the difference.

Or maybe he had misinterpreted things. Either way, he would be on his guard for more aberrations.

Then, he let [Weight of Two Worlds] lapse, and the world returned to normal. It was only then that Zeke realized that everything had briefly gone monochrome, as if the increased gravity had suddenly sucked all the color out of the surrounding forest. It came back with a vengeance, nearly overwhelming him with a rainbow of hues.

Zeke’s shoulders sagged slightly. He’d put nearly all his mana into that skill; it had been effective, but the cessation of [Weight of Two Worlds] had left him vulnerable. He sighed, looking around for other threats, and when he saw that none had presented themselves, he let himself relax.

The skill had far exceeded his expectations. Even though his stats were much lower, at least from a numerical perspective, the tiers had changed everything, resulting in a good deal more raw power. It was as if the various categories – from strength to wisdom – had been condensed, and the quality had been increased. So, he’d grown more powerful, but he still needed to adjust.

The physical gains were easy enough. Just moving around helped with that. But the more esoteric stats were a lot trickier. He knew that intelligence and wisdom, despite their names, didn’t really help with his mental capacity. Sure, his memory was a little better, and he found it easier to focus compared to when he’d first been reborn, but those changes could have been chalked up to training. The real effects, though, were a little easier to quantify. Intelligence, for instance, not only increased the size of the pool of mana from which he could draw power, but it also increased its potency as well. Wisdom, by contrast, was somehow tied to how quickly he could regenerate that mana.

Or that’s how he saw it, simplified though it probably was.

Either way, the result was that power contained within his skills had increased quite a bit – enough that, by his reckoning, if he met the wyrm queen as his current self, he could probably kill it without much issue. Though that thought might’ve been based on wishful thinking than reality, he amended as he remembered the daunting power of that creature.

“That…that was…impressive,” came Jasper’s voice from behind him. Zeke turned to see that the elf’s eyes were wide. “Even with access to my skills, I would have struggled to defeat that creature.”

“I’m still working out the kinks,” Zeke said. In addition, he still needed to complete his quest before he could use his full skillset. If the power of [Armor of the Colossus] was any indication, then [Colossus] would be a gamechanger for him. Even if it was just a completion of the old skill, it would be an incredible boon.

However, he suspected that it would be so much more. It was the first skill for his aberrant class, and as such, it was likely intended as the basis upon which his power would be built. Given that {Arcane Colossus} was almost on par with a legendary class, at least in terms of stat tiers, it probably came with a very potent skill. He just needed to unlock it. After that, he could worry about everything else.

Zeke stowed his hammer in his spatial storage and asked, “Do you think we’ll see anymore of those? I could handle the one, but if there were a few at a time…”

“I have never been this way before,” Jasper admitted. “But I think it fair to guess that the way will become increasingly more difficult the further we descend into the mines.”

“But you think this is the way to find the materials I need?” Zeke asked.

Jasper gave him a shrug. “Certainly, the blood mithril may lie below. The rest…I cannot say for sure.”

Zeke sighed, then rubbed the back of his neck. “Yeah, I figured,” he stated. Indeed, he hadn’t forgotten that feeling he’d gotten when he’d first descended into the mines. There was a portal to the demon realm somewhere below the mountain, and judging by everything he’d learned, it was probably located in a completely different part of the system of mines. Those expeditions Jasper had mentioned were almost assuredly journeys into the demon realm. But beyond that, Zeke had no idea where to go.

But that was fine. He was an old hand at traipsing through underground cave systems. He’d made it out the troll caves, and that was when he was quite a bit weaker. Now, he had the benefit of experience, skills, and the inflated stats he’d earned throughout his time in the first plane. Zeke felt certain that his combined advantages would see him through.

So, he said, “Give me a few minutes to rest and recover my mana, then we’ll head further into the mines.”

With that, the two of them sat on a pair of nearby rocks. Zeke retrieved a bit of dried meat from his storage, handing some of it to Jasper, who ate greedily. By comparison, Zeke ate absently as he considered his path forward. Likely, it would be fraught with danger, but that was nothing new. He had almost assuredly survived worse than whatever the mines could throw at him, and he felt confident in finding the blood mithril ore, at the very least. The real question came from what he would do afterwards.

Would he head back up and continue his life as a slave as he slowly worked his way up the ladder until he could find what he needed? Or would he overturn the cart completely and barrel through the dwarves like the obstacles they were? The first had the advantage of letting him remain incognito – just another slave amongst hundreds, if not thousands, of other slaves. There was safety in anonymity.

But the other option was more Zeke’s style. The question wasn’t what he would prefer, though. It was what gave him the best chance of getting what he needed and getting out alive. The dwarves were no simple opponents – no civilization as advanced as what he’d seen so far could be that – and he suspected that if he drew too much attention, it would be to his detriment. Certainly, Zeke had managed to defeat the kobold legionnaire, but that didn’t mean he could do the same to the dwarven champions, wherever they might be.

He sighed, feeling his core refilling with mana. Those were questions for another day. For now, he needed to focus on his first step, which was finding the blood mithril ore. Once that was accomplished, he would worry about the rest.

With that in mind, he stood and said, “Alright. Let’s go. Stick with me, keep your eyes peeled for threats, and shout if you see anything.”

Without waiting for Jasper to respond, he strode forward into the Rainbow Forest, wishing everything was as simple as fighting against an opponent like the legionnaire.