It didn't even look up as Zane came closer.
Its belly was swollen—it yawned, gave a smoke-cloud belch, and wiped at its face. He got a sense of deep drowsiness from the beast. It turned, as though stomping off to rest before it had a crack at the Rhinos again.
𝔾𝕙𝕠𝕝….It groaned.
Zane took one last leap, and came down on the very same island—the island on the peak of all peaks. The Monster's weird energy tore all over it, an ominous wind.
Finally the Scourge Prince looked up.
Its eyes were watery and bleary and dim. Its irises were so pale its whole eye seemed one lifeless color. Zane got something like a sense of great boredom from it, but deeper—a terminal laziness. The beast had no expression, as though it couldn't even be bothered to keep its face from drooping.
Its gaze rolled over him dully.
𝔾𝕙𝕠𝕝, it grunted.
Zane got the message. It seemed to be giving him a chance to go away.
He got the feeling it didn't feel like bothering with him.
Up close with Great Sage Mind, he got quite a clear sense of it. He could feel in it a great inertia—like he was staring at some massive glacier moving very slowly. Something immensely heavy; it'd take a great deal of energy to get in motion. He got that sense in the astral plane too. A beast that could not be easily moved, in body or mind.
Strange.
He couldn't recall seeing anything like it. Then he shrugged.
Fine, then.
Zane unleashed his aura—gave the thing a prod. Gold roared into the world. Radiation poured out of him in lurid warbling waves, striking through that great bulk in an instant.
Usually when things got hit by Radiation they had quite a visceral reaction. Even Monsters—Radiation struck at something at the core of any living being.
It was a bit of a surprise when Ghol hardly blinked.
Zane sensed a great deal of resistance in the flesh—something blunting his Radiation, even if it couldn't stop it. As Radiation broke that weird flesh down, it was slowed the deeper it went. And weirder—he sensed a ghostly unearthly energy working against him, steeped deep in the Monster Prince's body. Building it back up almost as quickly as it broke down.
Some kind of Bloodline Power. Something that could only be wrought by a hundred-thousand-year Bone, with a ten-thousand Bone to bolster it.
Ghol stood there, unmoving.
Stranger and stranger.
He got the sense this thing didn't really feel pain.
𝔾𝕙𝕠𝕝….said Ghol.
A deep sigh of a sound. And when it looked at Zane again he felt the first flicker of intent slowly solidifying in that dim head.
The first sign of killing intent.
And out came its domain. A slow pour, a small circle, expanding in a creeping sludge. Grand Circle of Tier 6—it leached the color out of everything it passed, turned vibrant crystals and silver stone into dull black-and-white.
It washed over plantlife—little tufts sprouting between stones—which withered and died in an instant. But they rose again immediately after, reborn like zombies, and in them was that ghostly light.
Zane was having a hard time figuring out what to make of this fellow.
Their domains met straight between them. A gold sea and a black-and-white sea crashing against each other, making waves so violent they shivered the mountain they stood on.
This Monster's Law was strong. Not just a Grand Circle—a high-Caliber Law; the strongest thing under Pseudo-Reality Distortion Field, he guessed.
But Zane had full confidence in his Law—and it was rewarded.
His shard of Destruction won out. Solar Flare coursed brighter and brighter, and gained the upper hand.
But it was no dominant thing. Zane seized more land but the gold and the black-white wrestled on and on.
𝔾𝕙𝕠𝕝…. It rumbled.
Even now it seemed to have no intention of coming after him. It stood there eyeing him, knuckles dragging against the ground.
…This thing's laziness was really something else.
Usually they came at him hard. Which worked out pretty well for Zane, since he liked to start slow; it often took him a bit to really get going—get his blood pumping, his Asura running hot.
"Alright," said Zane.
If it wasn't coming to him…
He put up his fists, wound back, and planted his feet.
Gold erupted in his clenched fists.
He roared and blasted off—but it didn't even bother trying to dodge as he sank the fist a good foot into its belly.
There came a meaty eruption.
He heard ribs shattering, heard that satisfying squelch of flesh, and knew he made his mark; an explosion rippled through the beast.
It felt tougher than he'd thought. He was used to things simply exploding when he got them clean, like water balloons. But whacking Ghol's belly felt like punching thick leather—there was a weird density to that flesh.
His fist still put a good crater in Ghol's torso—a blackened crater swallowing up half its belly.
But it hardly moved the beast. Ghol just stared down at him. No blood.
Huh.
Then he felt that strange power blazing where his knuckles met its skin.
That unearthly force—that black-and-white Law—spiked under the flesh, and an uproar of CRACK-CRACK-CRACKS rattled through the flesh.
The sounds of bones mending. Flesh knitting back together. Organs ballooning back again, regenerating so fast it shoved his fist out of its body. In a blink the belly looked unscathed.
He blinked at it.
Then heard that low sound again—𝔾𝕙𝕠𝕝….
It whacked him.
He didn't see it coming—just felt the intent. But after a hard winter's training he had the reaction speeds to get his arm up, just in time. A sledgehammer of meat and bone screamed by, and rammed him right on the block.
BOOM!
A visible circle of force rippled out where it struck—that unearthly power rippled out too, like a stone thrown in the pond of reality, washing over the world for miles.
It sent Zane staggering back a good three steps; he groaned.
His whole forearm was steaming, smarting—his bones were vibrating, and for a moment it felt like they might crack.
…He could see how it wrecked that dragon in just a few blows.
He regarded it again, frowning.
This thing hit hard. Very, very hard.
Still—the Forbidden One blinked down at its fist too. A fist now blazing with ghostly white mist. Those angry-looking runes running down its wrist had all lit up, its whole hand had bulged to nearly double the size, the way body parts swell when deeply diseased. It was swollen with ghostly white.
Then it looked at Zane, faintly puzzled. Like it was wondering why he was not squashed flat.
𝔾𝕙𝕠𝕝, said Ghol.
He'd thinking just the same thing about this fellow just moments before.
It snorted a plume of mist, then rounded on him again—and its eyes narrowed, locking onto him; the bleariness was going now, and Zane got the sense it was seeing him for the first time. Something had changed in the beast. Its lips curved down, gaining an animal curve.
Its muscles writhed under its skin. And the looseness was going from its posture, tightening up.
𝔾𝕙𝕠𝕝….growled the beast; the sound reverberated through the mountains.
Zane had a feeling things were about to get serious.
Then he saw the runes down its other wrist start to light up too; the flesh there started to swell, to bloat with unearthly power. More and more mist rose from the beast.
It'd already been a giant before. But it was swelling to a mountain of flesh, boulders of muscle bulging up its body.
He got the odd sense this thing's runes worked something like his own.
It hadn't even gotten going.
At the same time, though, on the other side, Zane was breathing heavy. His arm was still smarting.
But it was just the wake-up he'd been looking for. His body got the message.
His bloody runes had started reacting too.
Blazing down his own flesh, heating up fast; a bloody aura seared the air around him.
They stood there for a moment, squared up against each other, sizing each other up.
A strange thought came to Zane. Maybe it was their stances, their bared hands. No armor—both wielding simple raw power.
It reminded him of years ago—back when he used to wrestle.
Then frost blue pipes for veins bulged down Ghol's arms. Its undead powers coursed faster and faster. It bellowed—and stomped.
Hurled itself bodily at Zane, fists rising like hammers, streaming ghost-white.
But if it thought Zane would back down, it was mistaken.
Instead he dropped into a crouch, eyes narrowing, Asura runes running red-hot. And met it with his bare golden fists.
BOOM!
Two titanic forces met on the apex of the Dragon's Teeth mountains.
The peak they stood on undid itself. Changed shape entirely, crushed into a crater in an instant; chunks dropped out down its sides, shattering…
When the smoke faded it found them at the bottom of the crater.
Two hulking forms locked hand-to-hand, temple-to-temple, thick legs digging deep into the earth, straining mightily. Wrestling for the slightest advantage.
The Forbidden One's apathy was gone. It snarled, spraying fat globs of spittle, and its shoulders bulged. It gained a sudden surge of strength.
But Zane roared right back—his bloody aura was erupting in full now; he stomped—and slammed striaght back.
For a few seconds, they held each other to a deadlock—neither side giving an inch, staggering drunkenly. Both sides a little surprised at what they found.
These were not creatures used to being challenged when it came to raw strength.
One runed with proud runes like war-paint, radiating an immense bloody vitality. The other with gnarled ghostly runes, bulging with undead powers—a strange mirror image. The Chosen of mankind and the Scourge Prince.
It brought new levels of strength out of them both.
In the space of just a few seconds, the amount of power blasting out of them exploded—like both the enormous engines of their bodies were going into overdrive.
The Scourge Prince was expanding massively. Runes all over and the body were coming to life; at the same time, rivers of Asura runes raged down Zane's body. There was a stretching sound, painfully tight, as Ghol's muscles were pushed to the brink; it slobbered, tombstone teeth bared in a snarl. On the other side the man's teeth were bared too.
But Zane's were bared in a grin.
One more thing surprising thing—he was surprised how much he was enjoying himself.
The deadlock had to end. But when it did, it came from a direction neither saw coming.
CRACK!
Zane blinked.
Looked down—a fissure seemed to be opening under his feet.
Then the mountain gave out beneath him—and with a defiant bellow, he fell.
His enemy seized on the advantage.
Its runes surged to a peak, and it rammed him straight-on.
Zane frowned, shoved, but he couldn't find his feet in time. It was too late.
Ghol fed him a baseball bat of an elbow—right to the face.
BOOM!
The force unleashed in that moment would have disintegrated an E-ranked planet.
As it was Zane looked faintly dazed as the elbow came away. There was blood in his mouth; his nose was clearly broken.
Then Ghol picked him up, let out an almighty roar, and slammed him down the peaks.
Zane crashed straight into a mountain miles below, back-first. He let out one last defiant roar—then he hit the crystals.
The explosion was spectacular. The smoke, absolute. Blanketing the destruction for dozens of miles…
There came a silence.
Ghol peered into the smoke, breathing heavy. It looked satisfied. Began to turn.
Then it froze.
Far below—in the depths of the smoke—there came a rumbling.