Chapter 406 - The Champion (Patreon)

The hill giant slammed his foot into Zeke’s chest, sending him skidding backwards until he collided with another giant. The impact made the large creature stumble, but he recovered quickly enough to connect with a backhanded slap that rattled Zeke’s teeth in his mouth. However, he didn’t let it throw him off course, and he quickly whipped around, leading the way with his hammer.

It hit the hill giant’s hip with a sickening crunch, eliciting a roar of mingled anger and agony, but Zeke didn’t stop there. The giants were enduring foes, and a broken hip was nowhere near enough to knock one out of the fight; he’d learned that much – and more – in previous battles with the hardy people.

So, he turned his spin into a shoulder charge, knocking the already unbalanced giant over. When it hit the ground, Zeke hefted his weapon, and with massive, overhand swing, sent the head of Voromir on a collision course with the giants’ screaming face. It with all the force Zeke could bring to bear, and the monster’s overly durable skull cracked, then shattered completely. It exploded in a shower of brain, bone, and blood, adding a layer of viscera to the already thick coat of gore he’d earned through out the battle.

Zeke didn’t have time to bask in his victory, though, because the hill giant champion hadn’t remained idle. The massive specimen of gianthood shouldered past a pair of smaller giants, knocking one aside as he bore down on Zeke. For his part, Zeke didn’t back down – as if that was ever an option – and he ripped his hammer free of what was left of his latest victim’s destroyed head. It came loose with a wet squelch, sending a splatter of gore spraying the nearby combatants.

The champion roared.

Zeke echoed his call with one of his own as he charged forward to meet the monster. The two clashed with predictable fury, the impact sending a shockwave of pure force tearing across the battleground in a twenty yard radius. Giants were knocked off-balance, but the kobolds, who had grown accustomed to such things, dug their claws firmly into the ground. Even such a small advantage was impactful, and when the giants recovered their balance, they did so having lost a good many of their number to the kobolds’ opportunistic attacks.

But Zeke barely noticed that. Instead, the entirety of his attention was on the hill giant champion. The creature took his shoulder charge, giving only the slightest amount of ground. Meanwhile, Zeke felt as if he’d cracked his shoulder. He pulsed [Cambion’s Awakening], taking care of the injury as he brought his hammer around in a massive swing.

The giant met the hammer with his massive shield, then lashed out with an overhand chop from a one-handed battleaxe that would’ve required two hands for a human to wield. Zeke let go of his hammer with one hand, which he used to knock the blow aside, but he couldn’t do anything to counter the sudden shield bash that sent him staggering backward.

Despite its brutish appearance, the giant was clearly a skilled combatant. Zeke would have to display similar ability if he intended to win the battle without resorting to his Worldbreaker technique. If he had to go down that route, there was every possibility that he’d scour the entire battlefield of life, including his allies – not to mention that it would put him out of commission for some indeterminate time, especially after already taxing his body via the use of Runebreaker.

No - he wouldn’t do that unless he had no other choice, which simply was not the case.

Zeke stepped forward, ducking under the giants’ probing attack. Instead of using the wide, brutal swings he normally employed, he chose a more compact and controlled style as he knocked the giants’ shield aside, then stomped down on the creature’s foot. It barely reacted to the painful attack, and Zeke was forced to dodge to the side with an ungainly leap just so he could avoid giant’s follow-up axe strike.

But that was as he’d expected, and he managed to connect with a backhanded blow aimed at his opponent’s knee. It hit with significant force, and the impact caved the joint inward. However, the giant was largely unaffected, and it counterattacked with a backhanded shield slam that clipped Zeke’s shoulder and sent him spinning away.

Zeke used that momentum to flow into another attack, this one aimed at the giant’s hip, but the creature shifted to the side at the last second, blunting the blow to nothing more than an annoyance.

Back and forth Zeke and the champion went, attacking, countering, and then attacking again. Zeke landed a few solid blows, but so did the giant, and soon enough, it became clear that they had reached a standstill. Neither could gain an advantage, but both refused to give any ground.

At the same time, the battle continued to rage, with the kobolds and centaurs having pushed the giants into a fighting retreat. If Zeke hadn’t been so occupied, he would have lent his might to the effort; after all, if the giants were allowed to fall back into the keep, rooting them out would prove incredibly difficult. However, he had all he could handle just keeping the hill giant champion occupied, so he had no choice but to trust in his allies to do their part. Still, it was painful, knowing that more of his people would die, and for no other reason than because he couldn’t finish the champion off.

As time wore on, Zeke caught glimpses of his friends. Pudge was a terror, ripping through giants like a hellfire-infused dervish, and aside from Zeke and the champion, he was clearly the most devastating combatant on the field. But there were a few others who managed to challenge for that title, and Pudge found himself pushed to his limits on more than one occasion. Thankfully, he wasn’t alone, and the former dire bear was more than capable of working with his own allies to great effect.

That was the only reason Zeke was able to focus his full attention on his own battle. If Pudge hadn’t been so skilled, he might’ve gotten distracted.

As it was, though, Zeke continued to fight, using all of his well-earned technical skill to fight the hill giant champion to a standstill. And after another hour of constant back and forth, the courtyard cleared, giving Zeke the opportunity to bring his skills to bear without worrying about harming his allies.

So, even as the kobolds and centaurs flooded the massive keep, Zeke enacted the plan he’d envisioned from the very beginning.

For a while, Zeke had allowed himself to fall into a pattern. A series of attacks that the giant had begun to anticipate. Suddenly, Zeke moved left when he normally would’ve moved right, and then, he embraced the miniscule amounts of corruption in the ambient mana, fueling the demonic versions of [Cambion’s Awakening] as well as [Triune Colossus]. Even as his body transformed, growing sleeker and more aggressive, he was flooded with excess strength that he translated into an explosive shoulder charge that took the surprised giant directly in the chest.

He rocked backward, stumbling a few steps as he cowered behind his shield.

But Zeke didn’t follow up with another attack. Instead, he allowed his body to revert back to the unattuned colossal form, then embraced [Shifting Sands]. Suddenly, the world slowed down, and he sank into the ground. As soon as his body was subsumed by the earth, he rocketed forward, passing beneath the champion and keeping going until he was almost fifty yards away.

When he’d gone far enough, Zeke erupted from the ground in a shower of fire and earth, but he paid it no mind. Instead, he whipped around and used [Center of Gravity]. The moment the skill took effect, the giants’ stumble became a fall as he tumbled across the battlefield directly at Zeke.

To the champion’s credit, he eventually gathered his wits and righted himself, but he didn’t do so before Zeke hit him with a massive, baseball-style swing that harnessed the power of [Unleash Momentum]. The hammer hit the giant directly in the face, shattering teeth and bone before sending him rocketing backward at a speed reminiscent of a runaway train.

Of course, Zeke was incapable of fully containing the power of the skill, and the force of the impact tore the battlefield to shreds, kicking up a shockwave that cracked the walls even dozens of yards away.

Even as the giant’s course was reversed, Zeke once again embraced [Shifting Sands]. Doing so wasn’t ideal, but he could handle the drain. Just as it had before, time seemed to halt as Zeke sank into the ground, then rocketed forward, bypassing the airborne giant along the way. When he was almost a hundred yards past the champion, he exploded from the ground and faced off against the monstrous humanoid.

The giant was moving almost too fast to see, but Zeke still managed to hit it with another swing of his hammer. This time, though, he couldn’t reverse the giant’s course. Instead, the impact only sent it cartwheeling past Zeke until, at last, it hit the wall.

That’s when Zeke used [Hell Geyser].

Stomping on the ground, he sent a line of destruction ripping across the already-destroyed courtyard , and when it reached the fallen giant, it erupted into a forty-foot-wide pillar of fire and destruction that enveloped the champion.

Still, though – even after all of that, the thing wasn’t dead.

Zeke strode forward, his shoulders set with purpose. The giant clawed itself out of the crater Zeke’s skill had dug into the ground, and when he finally pushed himself upright, the damage was more than clear. The giants were sturdy, durable creatures. No one could ever dispute that claim. But Zeke’s skills had torn into the champion in a way nothing else could have. His skin was blackened, and thick blood oozed out of a hundred wounds. His left arm hung limp, with bones jutting out at all the wrong angles. And his right arm was little better, with the shoulder having been dislocated.

As for its face? It was a ruin of misshapen blackened flesh and broken bones. And yet, the creature still advanced.

Zeke could respect that much, at least.

Even if he was going to kill the bastard. And he had no notions of neutrality on the giant’s part, either. He’d already established that they were ruthless raiders who thought nothing of killing those they deemed lesser races. Even discounting the inherently adversarial nature of battle – and the natural hatred that tended to come with fighting someone in a life-or-death struggle – the giants’ history was enough to establish that this champion had plenty of innocent blood on his hands.

Or perhaps that was just an excuse.

Whatever the case, the giant needed to die. So, Zeke strode forward, rolling his shoulders on approach. The giant tried to ready himself, but one of his legs didn’t seem to work.

Suddenly, Zeke felt the earth rumble beneath him as the giant tried to activate some sort of skill. Without thinking, Zeke stomped down on the ground, harnessing his own earth attunement to somehow prevent the skill’s activation. For a moment, a brief struggle ensued, with Zeke fighting to take hold of the ambient earth mana. He met mild success, but the skill still activated, spearing him with stalactites of pure rock that erupted from the ground.

They didn’t do much damage, though. He’d robbed them of at least some of their fuel.

“Impressive. I didn’t think you had that in you yet,” Eveline remarked, her first real contribution to the battle.

Zeke didn’t respond. Instead, he ripped himself free of the spears of rock, and continued his slow march toward the stunned giant. When he came within range, the champion lunged forward, aiming a slow-moving punch at Zeke’s head. He ducked beneath it, then brought his hammer to bear in a vicious uppercut that connected with the giant’s already ruined jaw. The force knocked the champion into the air and sent him soaring back into the crater, where he landed in an unceremonious heap.

But he didn’t die.

In fact, even as Zeke looked down on him from the edge of the crater, the giant struggled to rise. He was unsteady. Probably unaware of his surroundings, too. But still, he sought to fight on.

Zeke suspected that, left to his own devices, the giant would probably succumb to his wounds. Even if he was equipped with a self-healing skill – which Zeke had discovered was fairly rare, at least according to Eveline and Eta – the damage was so severe that it would take months to recover.

And yet, even with victory assured, Zeke found it difficult to feel the exultation of triumph. He’d never learned the champion’s name. He hadn’t even inspected him. But he respected the giant.

So, without further hesitation, Zeke leaped into the air, increased his weight, then fell upon the unsteady champion with a massive hammer blow that shook the very earth. Even that didn’t finish the deed, so Zeke continued to pound his hammer into the giant’s face until, at last, he felt the surge of kill energy that signaled the champion’s demise.

He let the hammer fall to the sundered earth and let out an exhausted sigh. It hadn’t been his most trying battle, and he’d only sustained minor injuries – most of which came from his use of Runebreaker at the beginning of the fight – but it had been tiring in a way he couldn’t really articulate.

Zeke glanced down at the slain giant, then nudged the corpse with his toe, activating his looting ability. Then, once he’d taken everything the champion had, he climbed out of the crater and jogged across the courtyard toward the keep.

After all, his fight might have reached its inevitable conclusion, but another awaited. And another after that. Because the battle was far from won.

Yet.