Savage Awakening 516. Founder Fight (III)

Zane sank his gravity core deep into the formation and wrenched.

The stumble showed it worked. But it was the cracking in that shield that gave him heart, that made him take to it like a hound on a bone.

He knew he had the bite. He just had to work it through.

He gritted his teeth and threw the full heft of his soul into it, stacking his gravity as heavy as he could manage.

He managed to stumble the Founders again. That forced a second crack right at the top of the shield.

But he ended up paying for it.

He’d split his attention. The margins on a fight this high-stakes were tiny.

He was a fraction of a second slow to react, and he ate a meteor to the face for it.

CRACK!

It stumbled him, but it didn’t down him. It couldn’t break his hold on his gravity either.

He cleared the ringing in his head, worked his jaw, feeling Prime Blood burning there, welding the bone back together.

The Founders were righting themselves too, setting themselves against the weight of his gravity. They’d been shocked by his pull at first, but now he’d lost the element of surprise.

The dust had settled, and they were still standing.

…That just told him he had to put more pressure.

That shield still felt slippery to him, like grabbing at a sheet of honey. He could disrupt it right now. But keeping hold of it, putting more force in, enough to really shatter it… it felt like it couldn’t be done.

His brow furrowed.

Zane, as a rule, trusted his feelings. His fight intuition was right, more often than not. It’d saved his life countless times.

But there were exceptions to the rule.

He remembered what the Barbarian Sage said. If he wanted to pull what couldn’t be pulled, he had to believe it wholeheartedly first. Had to convince himself what felt wrong was right. Start from the mind and make his feelings follow. That was the theory of the case to him, anyway.

He had to start from the deep-down knowledge that if he put his mind to it, he could pull anything. That was the heart of gravity.

It was a Concept of absolute domination.

That was something he knew how to do. That was something that resonated with him.

He filled his heart with that feeling and held out the fist of his mind.

Sometimes he knew he could be a little bull-headed. It was both a strength and a weakness, and he acknowledged that.

But there was one thing you could never accuse Zane of.

That was a lack of conviction.

He set himself against that shield once again and raged.

Another crack split the face of the shield. He felt the iron in his gut burning white-hot.

He grasped hold of it and fought to bend it to his will, even as the Founders tried everything they could to take his head off.

***

Now the Lich meant business.

The Sage scratched his chin as he inspected that moon, still leering down at him.

“Creepy as hell,” he concluded.

It had to be some kind of power cell.

The Sage was quite curious what the little rat would do with it. He was rather eager to see, actually.

The Lich drew a monstrous amount of undead energy out of it, resting it on the tip of its finger.

Then it shunted it into the ground.

Undead energy rippled through the continent.

And all the earth became a living graveyard.

Half-step Empyrean hands broke ground by the dozen. A half-dozen were even greater—Empyrean auras, towering halfway to space. Creatures just as big filled them as they broke the barren grounds… mammoths, dragons, sabertooths, and men. A prehistoric age’s worth of the dead, all pumped with undead might, brought down on the Barbarian Sage’s head.

In a heartbeat, the Sage was swamped, avalanched on all sides by grasping bones.

“Fair play,” muttered the Sage. It was one hell of an army. Enough to threaten most Great Factions if it were real.

But he knew even that rat couldn’t keep this up long. It was just too much of a big spell, even for a creature like that.

It was a gamble.

The little bastard knew it didn’t need to keep it up. If just a few dozen of those things got their hands on the Sage, with that many of them, it wouldn’t take long to do some gruesome damage.

And with how many there were, there was just no way his spear could take them all out.

But he didn’t need to.

He took a quick gander around, brightening, trying to find the lad. This could be an instructive moment. But Zane was far out of sight. Their fight had taken them a few miles away at this point.

“Shame.” He’d have to show the lad some other time.

For now… he took his spear and rammed it into the ground.

A ripple of Steel and Earth Law went through it. One of the highest level Concepts there was, yet another neat little weapon he was dusting off.

Universe Expansion: Absolute Gravity.

A dark circle carved around the Sage.

And everything in that 10-mile radius flattened.

The trees. The stones. The castle walls, crushed to little more than the height of a brick. It was like some great invisible piston had punched down from the sky.

The only man left standing was the Sage.

The weaker skeletons were crushed outright. The bigger ones went down like they’d been run over. The Sage had to leap out of the way as a few big ol’ ogres came down.

Then he put his hands on his hips and surveyed his handiwork.

“Really is like riding a damned stallion,” he said, pleased.

Draegmir blinked.

“It comes back fast, even when you’ve not done it in a while,” the Sage explained.

Draegmir made a sound of frustration, slashed out a hand lightning-quick, and an ominous sheet of wind ripped through. The Sage was pretty certain it’d scour the life-force out of anything it touched.

Only when it passed into the Sage’s gravity territory, even the wind was crushed to the ground.

“You’ll need more than that!” laughed the Sage.

The winds faded. The skeletons vanished. The Sage’s gravity winked out too.

Draegmir stared. The Sage got the sense this fellow was quite stingy. Every time it struck, it brought out the next tier of power, one higher than what the Sage had shown before. Just enough to crush him, in theory.

It was just that nothing so far had managed it.

…More… Draegmir cocked its head. …Very well.

Then it clenched its fist.

Six skeleton hands, each as big as a skyscraper, reared out of the ground, faster than it was possible to react, hemming in the Sage, making a cage.

The Sage frowned up at them.

Then they smashed him.

***

That shield was Zane’s.

Cracks were branching down its face now, splitting from the old ones he’d made, arching across the face of it.

He took a vine lash to the dome, splattering a bright line of blood. But he just threw himself into another hard pull and was rewarded with his biggest crack yet. A lightning bolt striking from top to base.

CRACK-CRACK-CRACK!

At the same time, two more vines rammed him into the ground. He just managed to roll out before he got stuck in it.

This wouldn’t work.

He still kept up an awareness of the strikes coming at him, just enough to get out of the way of the worst ones. That took up a good chunk of his mind, though.

His focus was split. That meant he was still taking ice shards and shadow blades by the dozens. He couldn’t put his all into the pull either.

He was just not a man for half-assing.

He made an assessment of the risk.

He decided to just trust in his new physique and go for it.

He’d have to make this fast.

He wrapped his chains around himself, making as much of an armor as he could. It’d slow him down, but that didn’t matter anymore. He hunkered down and planted his feet.

Zane fully committed.

The moment he stopped dodging, he took a deep-earth slab straight to the back. The chains blunted the bulk of the damage, but it still wiped a solid 20% of his health. It shattered some key chunks of his spine, but he’d walked through worse.

This time when he wrenched, he nearly broke the Founders’ formation outright. Nearly wrestled them off their perch. Another heavy crack split that shield, bleeding fluorescent light. Then another as he slammed again and again.

The Founders seemed to feel the danger.

They cranked up the force. They put Thalgrim at the fore, channeled all their power into him.

And cannonballs started blasting him.

They were trying to force him off his feet. Break his concentration, or him—whichever came first.

CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!

His chains might’ve blocked them, but Thalgrim alone was a threat. Powered by five other Founders…

Even a hunkered-down Zane was shuddering with the force of it. His face was swollen badly from the first few blows, one eye swelled shut. His head was spinning, even with bone marrow support. It felt like taking slugs from a heavyweight, straight to the face, and trying with all his heart not to go out—

CLANG!

His head snapped back.

His eyes almost rolled back, even with his teeth clenched tight.

CLANG!

Snapped his head back again, forced him to stumble, then again. Chains shattered over his body. Even that wasn’t enough to stop the onslaught.

Warning!

Health under 50%

CLANG-CLANG!

Warning! Health under 25%

Then there was no arguing Zane was getting destroyed.

The first of that one-two of cannonballs forced him to a knee. The second almost knocked him senseless.

But his fist stayed clenched. His shattered jaw too.

Woozy—hardly on his feet, head ringing, so bloodied he could hardly see—he threw himself against that force field one final time.

His gut burned. One last chunk of Dreamer’s Core welded into his being.

And something crucial in his mind unlocked.

Concept comprehended!

The Concept of Stellar Gravity

Skill evolved!

H. Red Giant [Common (D) -> Uncommon (D)]

That force field shattered like a dome of glass.

Thud…thud…thud.

The sound of the Founders kneeling, one by one.

They had no choice.

A Stellar Gravity like none of them had ever felt, backed by more destruction than any minor god had ever had, asserted its might.

Zane stood, heaving in deep breaths. Though blood streaked down his face, soaking his locks, his eyes could be seen, hard and cold as ever.

Thalgrim managed to stumble back up, as did the giant Founder of the Deep Earth Hall. They managed to get their weapons out, at least. They were the physically strongest of them, and even they were made to tremble under his pressure.

He took a few heartbeats to let his shattered body knit back. And there was nothing they could do, nothing they dared do, but watch.

Finally…“That’s that, then.”

He leveled his gaze at them.

Then the wrecking began.