Not far off, Goloog the Living Bog kept up heavy fire.

  Waves of acid waste battered the Barbarian Sage.

  The Hydra froze it over. The Hydra was in poor shape, but it was still an Empyrean. It only had one head left—but it had essence to spare.

  Bleak ice stacked heavy over the wastes.

  It was a fortunate thing it was bleak ice. That was the best element to hold a man down. Goloog was a careful beast; he knew this old man had once been fearsome.

  Put together, this would be more than enough.

  They didn’t need to hold him long.

  Even now, that Zane Walker must be in his death throes.

  Then a beam of nothing-light broke the hold. A beam fuzzy at the edges, boiling with chaos static.

  It punched a hole straight through their blasts. Then—in the same instant—punched a hole through the Hydra’s final head.

  It happened so fast Goloog wasn’t sure what hit it.

  Then the Monster King felt a horrifying pull.

  Like all the gravity for a hundred miles was sucked to a single point—right where the Barbarian Sage stood hobbled; it felt a weightless sensation, saw Baobabs start rising, great boulders losing their hold on the earth—

  Something buried under the onslaught had stolen it all, the mass of untold worlds converging on a point as small as a speartip—

  BANG.

  The force coming the Monster’s way split the realm in two. There was a great ripping sound, then a greater howling, as the lands, the skies split in two, split like tearing fabric—making a jagged river of void running deep into space…

  That river of waste surged the other way. Slammed Goloog with its own powers, made it flip to a skidding halt.

  And there stood the Barbarian Sage. Blood trickled from a single head wound.

  “Oh, now you've done it,” he growled.

  And for the first time that fight he was not smiling anymore.

  First he looked around, got a gander at Zane. The man’s big body was lost under the heft of Goloog’s minions—it took some effort. But it seemed they’d forced him into submission.

  By now Zane Walker would be in his death throes.

  Goloog was still reeling from what the old man had done—that spike—that void—its split eyes shivered as it watched the Hydra topple…

  It did not matter. The Monster seized on that fact.

  All Goloog had to do was hold this strange old man off for a breath. Two, at most—

  But the Sage didn’t go for Zane.

  “Alright,” he said. “I’ll give the lad space to do his work. You thought those mud-puddles’d be enough to finish him?”

  He snorted. “You’ll need far stronger than that!”

  Then he leveled his gaze back on Goloog.

  It was not a cold gaze. But it had gained an intensity… something primal. Goloog’s organs began to shuffle, retreat behind its bulk. A nervous, protective instinct.

  “You’re an annoying little bastard, aren’t you?”

  The Sage’s tone was as casual as it was before. But something had changed in him.

  Goloog’s eyes swiveled as it searched; it gurgled.

  Its Shield of Muddy Seas, its Life Recycle powers—it drew on them all now, layering on defense after defense, bolstering its form to the maximum.

  Goloog’s specialty was defense, and survival, and cloaking. It was what made it a good assassin. It might not kill Empyreans, but equally—it’d fought a dozen Empyreans, and slunk away to live another day. As long as a quart of its body was still there, it could survive.

  If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  Survive, and report back to its Master.

  It’d only lived this long because it was a shrewd operator. It quickly fastened on a backup plan.

  This old man was stronger than it thought, but he could not know this; could not know what Goloog was capable of. It would see a mere half-step Empyrean. No threat.

  That would be his undoing.

  As expected—Barbarian Sage didn’t seem impressed. “They’ve sent you to stop me? That stinking worm Malzareth thinks I’ve gone to rust, eh?”

  He chuckled. The fierceness in his eyes told Goloog things his words did not.

  It’d thought this man an easygoing kind. Carefree in battle, to the point of carelessness.

  But buried deep, there was a pride.

  This, too, Goloog would exploit.

  It had already prepared its ultimate poison. Three Bones, each a hundred-thousand-year, making a single deadly needle.

  Lament of the Wastes.

  A legendary poison that’d paralyzed many an Empyrean—that’d crippled several for eternity.

  The Barbarian Sage crossed his arms, unaware, and unleashed his inner world.

  The strength of an Empyrean could be measured by the size of their inner worlds—the part they let out was only a fraction of what they held within.

  Goloog had known Empyreans whose worlds could be measured in light-years.

  But this Sage….

  The heavy nothing that spread from him—

  It felt like staring into the heart of infinity.

  Goloog’s eyes bulged.

  This feeling… it’d only felt this once before.

  That Law—the secrets within—

  What... are you?!

  The Sage raised a fist. He made a grasping gesture.

  “Fist of the Supergiant.”

  And gravity welled at the center of Goloog’s being.

  The spells that bolstered Goloog shattered so fast it couldn’t didn’t even begin to register it.

  In a blink a Monster King the size of a swamp was compacted to the size of a stone.

  It spoke to Goloog’s powers of survivability that somehow the Monster King still lived, at Critical health—just one stunned, bulging eyeball in a hyper-dense cube. Held in the Sage’s closed fist.

  It’d barely had time to get its killer attack off, piercing that needle into the Sage’s palm before it succumbed.

  It was under such pressure it could hardly think. But the moment its strike land it felt a great pleasure.

  A heartbeat passed.

  Why… why did the fist not open?

  Then Sage laughed, and the sound struck Goloog to its core.

  “You thought you could hurt me? With this little thing? You?”

  He plucked out the needle and crushed it to dust.

  “Look!” he said, and pointed to the grisly scars on his chest. Scars that struck in body and soul, seared so deep no Level-up, no antidote could heal. “The poisons of your master couldn’t kill me! What did you think you would do?”

  Then he closed his fist. There was a squishing sound—and Goloog perished.

  He opened his fist. There was nothing.

  Goloog would’ve survived if there was a quart of it left. It had not known it was possible to crush a being with such force, you crushed it out of existence.

  The Barbarian Sage dabbed his head, saw blood on his fingers. “Hells!” he said, and chuckled. “S’pose I really am getting old, aren’t I?”

  He turned his gaze to the distance, where his disciple just emerged in a blaze of glory, and his eyes brightened.

  “LET’S GOOOO!” he roared.

  ***

  The power in Zane’s fists were like nothing he’d felt—like each smash had the force of the peak Solar Storm.

  Three steps into an Annihilation charge and he unloaded a hammer on the cowering bog-fiend. Caught it going up.

  The squelch was drowned out by the thunder of the smash.

  Then it rocketed into deep space, going to glorious gold as it did. He heard a faint spiraling shrieking in the distance, a pop as it broke the sound barrier…

  Then a half-step True God was destroyed in body and gnarled soul.

  He wheeled on the other Bog Fiend, and crushed the other way. Slammed a hammer through the beast right through that leer on its mouth, even as it curved to a screech—slammed it through the ground.

  The moment of impact he saw himself reflected in that wide eye.

  A hulking brute of muscle and blood and fire, painted of brighter colors than the mortal world, brighter than all the Monster corpses at his feet.

  The impact broke the Monster in every way that mattered, damn near every way that was possible. A demonstration of absolute force.

  Then the crust fell out—and the remnants rocketed away. Hurtling down, down, falling out of the Wilds themselves, burning up as they reached the unknown…

  It was done.

  Zane whirled to the Sage, ready to go help. He would take on an Empyrean if he had to.

  He found the Sage leaning on a spear, waving at him.

  He blinked.

  The old fellow seemed fine. Behind him a gaping pillar of void tore deep into space. The Sage looked back.

  “Eh? It’ll fix itself in a few years—forget about that!”

  He bounded over and buried Zane in a crushing hug.

  “You damned beast, you!”

  He sighed. “And hells, if that isn’t a lovely sight!”

  There was nought but burning destruction all around.

  Zane quite agreed.

  Nog, meanwhile, was just finishing up beating the Hyena King to a pulp. The rest of the Rhinos were trotting in—it really was all over.

  His chest heaved as he looked around, taking it in; the Rhinos coming together. He felt like he was waking from a good dream. It was dawning on him just what he’d done.

  This was his home now. These Rhinos, his people.

  Those Monsters had to go through him if they wanted to take them. They threw three half-step True Gods at him, and they couldn’t do it.

  The sky was lightening, the glacier brightening in the distance.

  He didn’t expect the satisfaction in his chest—he couldn’t help but smile.

  Or for the flood of Levels that came after—

  Level up!

  Level up!

  Level up!

  Level up!

  Level up!

  Level up!

  Level up!

  Essence Level 488 -> 495

  Skill up!

  Heavenly Solar Flare Smash IV -> V

  Mook was so excited he almost knocked Zane over with a horn-bump. The Rhino buried him in licks.