Zane's fists closed around its broad throat, and Solar Flare blasted down his fingertips.
The next few seconds the Panther gave him hell—it knew it was fighting for its life. A storm of slashes carved into him—dozens ripping through him in seconds, carving to the bone even as it choked and howled. It kicked off his shattered chest with a rabid fury, managed to shake off one of his fists.
But he just roared and smashed it over its snarling head.
𝕊𝕜𝕚𝕝𝕝 𝕦𝕡!
ℍ𝕖𝕒𝕧𝕖𝕟𝕝𝕪 𝕊𝕠𝕝𝕒𝕣 𝔽𝕝𝕒𝕣𝕖 ℙ𝕦𝕟𝕔𝕙 𝕀𝕀𝕀 -> 𝕀𝕍
The two of them went tumbling down the Plains, shattering obsidian boulders, showering dirt, black blood splattering over red blood, locked in a crushing, slicing, horribly violent embrace.
This thing cut deep.
This close it was hard to get out of the way of those fangs. Each blow dug inches into Zane's flesh—it managed to score a dagger-cut into the neck, digging into his shoulder. It cut so clean, so deep, it took a moment for the blood to splatter—like it took a moment for his body to realize it'd been cut.
His upper body was getting pretty badly shredded. Narrow slices, but they left ragged ravines through his chest. A claw ripped so deep it nearly struck his heart.
𝕎𝕒𝕣𝕟𝕚𝕟𝕘!
ℍ𝕖𝕒𝕝𝕥𝕙 𝕦𝕟𝕕𝕖𝕣 𝟝𝟘%
Only with each blow, the Panther was weakening.
But Zane only grew stronger. Rising to match the intensity he felt—and more.
His heart beat faster and faster, pumping more essence, and blood, and life through his mangled body; the runes on his skin flared with searing force.
He bellowed, dropped fist over fist into the beast's snout, shattering jaw, its belly, driving explosions through its ribs, pulverizing, liquefying an organ with each blow; hearing the satisfying CRACK! of bones shattering—
It was the pure opposite of the Panther's powers. No surgical slices from Zane.
He gave it crushing, raw, brute force.
And by the way it was twitching, the way its eyes were bulging, its limbs were deadening, it was pretty clear which was winning out.
One other thing Zane was counting on. He knew he could take a lot and keep on fighting as strong as ever.
But the Panther couldn't bear damage like that.
He could feel it, see it melting beneath each fist. At last, it tried gathering shadows, tried some last-ditch effort, but by then it'd been snared by Radiation too long and its limbs were shattering underneath it even as its skin sloughed off its flesh.
It gave one last shudder and went still.
He wiped the blood out of his eyes, breathing heavily, and stood.
Soon it was going to essence. Nearly enough for a Level Up, but not quite.
His body did get a Level, though.
𝕊𝕜𝕚𝕝𝕝 𝕦𝕡!
𝔸𝕤𝕦𝕣𝕒 𝕋𝕚𝕥𝕒𝕟'𝕤 𝔹𝕠𝕕𝕪, 𝔽𝕚𝕣𝕤𝕥 𝔽𝕠𝕣𝕞 𝕍𝕀𝕀 -> 𝕍𝕀𝕀𝕀
That thing nearly got him to 30% Health. It was the most strenuous effort he could recall in a one-on-one duel in a while. But sure enough—sort of like the other big cats—once he got his hands on it, he knew he could get the job done.
He made a mental note. Under the general 'birds' folder in his mind, he put a new sub-folder: big cats, and filed his recent experiences in there. There were a few things unique to these kinds of birds but they weren't all that different, he felt.
Then he felt another mind lock onto him—a distant mind, more curious than anything. Hungry—greedy.
He looked out left, and saw one of the Blast Eagles perched above a Castle Baobab, eyeing him down.
That one had a 100,000-year-old Bone. Another near-peak Minor God.
He got the sense it was wondering if it could take a tired Zane down.
He'd just burned quite a lot of essence and Bloodline.
He looked it dead in the eyes.
There was a moment of silence—a moment where they seemed to understand each other. Then the Eagle snorted a plume of flame and flew off in search of easier prey.
Good idea, Zane thought.
It must've seen what he'd just done to its fellow bird.
When he ambled on back, the Sage tossed him a glass of goat milk—'Pan's Goat Milk,' surprisingly a Heaven C-Grade treasure. The Sage didn't have many of them, but they greatly boosted essence and strength recovery. A little sour and chunky, but quite nourishing.
"Manhandling a Netherworld Panther… those things are meant to be physical specimens, you know. Damned near impossible to keep hold of!" said the Sage. The old fellow made a happy noise, somewhere between a grunt and a 'hmph.' "Your training's paid off damned well, I'd say. These lower-tier beasts haven't got much for you."
They were back on their way soon enough.
He got into another bout not long after—against a Level 588 Void Mamba, a wall of tightly coiled muscle with Grand Circle Tier 6 Laws. It only had one Sacred Bone, and a 10,000-year Bone at that. He brought out his Axes to deal with it—carved it up without too much trouble. He had a much easier time with it than the Panther; it barely got him below 70% Health.
Radiation to soften it up, then the full brunt of his powers, was proving a pretty rough combination.
"Hmm." The Barbarian Sage scratched his beard as he looked around. "It's a lot less lively than usual around these parts. Wonder where everyone's gone."
"What does that mean?" said Zane.
"There's usually a good deal more battling going on."
Zane had gotten in six or seven fights since he'd stepped foot here, and it'd hardly been half an hour. He looked about—there were still battles raging pretty much everywhere he could see.
He wondered what it was usually like.
"Would've expected a True God or two by now, is all," said the Sage shrugging. "Or bigger turf wars. Come to think of it, we've hardly seen a tribe yet, have we? Mostly stragglers. Something feels up… Well, we'll see soon enough. Onwards!"
***
It wasn't long before Zane felt a very familiar aura. Solid as any stone, and bearing a tremendous heft. Most of all it conveyed an unyielding, unbending, unbreakable quality. It was a stubbornness he knew well.
He knew the Titan Rhinoceros when he felt it.
"We're getting damned close!" chuckled the Sage. He rubbed his hands.
At first, it was a faint haze on the horizon—but then more and more started cropping up. "Won't be long now… I came to the Titan Rhino Tribe when I was little more than a wee Minor God. Never knew tougher, braver, bigger-hearted folk—they taught me all I know—there's too damned much to say about 'em. Don't know where to start."
The Sage was getting a little misty-eyed. "You'll see, lad. You'll see."
As they got closer and closer he sensed another signature in the Astral Plane too—faint but thick, and lingering.
A glut of Monstrous auras.
Most of them had faded, it seemed—extinguished. But there was one still very much alive. In the Astral Plane it shone half-step True God.
There was one last stumpy hill before them.
He and the Sage leaped it in a bound and caught sight of a battle in the valley on the other side.
Or—what had been a battle. It was almost over now.
There were five lizard Monsters strewn out over the ground. They looked like Komodo dragons that'd been exposed to some ungodly radiation, and mutated, growing gnarled and gigantic. Tracts of sickly bright-purple shimmered down their scaly bodies.
All peak Minor Gods, once—but they'd all been crushed in one way or another. One's belly was a crater; another's back was crushed nearly flat, and a third sported a crater for a head.
There was one lizard still standing, though—and it was the biggest, baddest of the bunch. You could've dammed a river with that hulking, sprawling form; rugged black scales had something post-apocalyptic to them. It looked like it'd crawled right out of the core of some doomed planet.
Its presence was even more ferocious in the Astral Plane.
There the fabric of reality seemed to flatten under its powers; it asserted its own will over reality, making a sphere around it streaming with pale-yellow and red and ashy black flakes, like it projected a world in the aftermath of some disastrous eruption.
A half-step True God's Reality Distortion Field.
Its mouth was toothless, hung wide open—and looking down its gullet was like staring down the mouth of an active volcano.
𝔾𝕣𝕖𝕒𝕥𝕖𝕣 ℂ𝕣𝕒𝕥𝕖𝕣 𝕃𝕚𝕫𝕒𝕣𝕕 (𝕄𝕠𝕟𝕤𝕥𝕖𝕣 ℙ𝕣𝕚𝕟𝕔𝕖)
𝔼𝕤𝕤𝕖𝕟𝕔𝕖 𝕃𝕖𝕧𝕖𝕝 𝟝𝟡𝟡
It would've made quite an impressive sight if its tail hadn't been, by the looks of it, run over by a steamroller.
On the other side stood just one beast. The creature that'd done all this work, by the looks of it. It'd been one against six, and it was hardly breathing heavy. It sported a few minor burns; that was all.
𝕋𝕚𝕥𝕒𝕟 ℝ𝕙𝕚𝕟𝕠𝕔𝕖𝕣𝕠𝕤
𝔼𝕤𝕤𝕖𝕟𝕔𝕖 𝕃𝕖𝕧𝕖𝕝 𝟞𝟜𝟜
It was a chunker of a beast, one of the biggest Titan Rhinos he'd ever seen. Its skin was so thick, so dense, it looked like it was wearing armored plate. A massive horn rose out of its head, gleaming faintly in the light of the Everfrost, somehow beautiful and brutal-looking at once. A golden streak ran up its base. The Rhino's eyes were calm; two gold streaks ran under them too.
It bore two Spirit Bones. One in its hindquarters. The other in its horn.
The way it shone the Bone in its hindquarters had to be at least a 100,000-year-old bone.
But its horn dwarfed even that.
A Reality Distortion Field rolled out of the Rhino. A wall of dense deep churning silver crushing over all it passed—far more solid-looking than the Crater Lizard's.
It took a stomping step toward the lizard, then another, nostrils flaring, and gave a low rumble. And as the two fields met, the Lizard's flattened and vanished, rolled over.
The Eruption Lizard let out a glass-shredding shriek, and its throat began to brighten and shake, like a volcano nearing eruption. All the essence in its body was rushing to its throat; an enormous chunk coalesced there in that instant; it seemed to be going for broke.
It fixed two slitted, hateful eyes on the Rhinoceros.
The Rhinoceros held its gaze, unperturbed.
Then the lizard let loose a blast for the ages. The death throes of a supervolcano, super-charged.
The Titan Rhino took another stomp closer. Then another, and another, picking up speed, each step sending new fissures down the plains.
It bellowed. Its horn began to shine.
And it began its charge.
Each step landed more forcefully than the last until it was going at a thundering gait, an earthquake unto itself; the ground turned over for miles around, the shakes so violent they nearly pitched the lizard over.
A fearsome momentum had taken hold of the Titan Rhinoceros. Each step just kept building; it was burning so much—from Bloodline, to Bone, to essence—Zane could only imagine what it'd take to stop it now.
Most of that power concentrated right on the tip of its horn. A horn that grew piercing in the Astral Plane, but only darkened to the naked eye, like a metal growing denser and denser… as it charged reality distended, bending toward that point, like it was ripping the gravity out of the air.
It made contact with the blast stream with such force it split clean in two—and surged fully the other way.
The Crater Lizard choked. It tried to get out of the way; Zane could see its muscles straining massively, but it was caught in the throes of that deep silver field. Some incredible pressure had descended on it, locking it down—it couldn't bring itself to budge.
The Rhino finished its charge.