Where it struck the swaying ears of massively enlarged corn below, they instantly bulged outwards, popping in sprays of pus and rot. The devastation spread for miles in a few seconds, tearing through the maze.

  “Look at the waste,” the Farmer said sadly. “How many could have been fed by that corn? How many did you just consign to starvation?”

  Jonathan frowned as he evaded another strike from the pitchfork that came whistling around in a searing arc of speed and fire. “What? You keep that food from everyone. You hoard an entire mountain of it to supplement your own power.”

  “Lies!” The Great Farmer bellowed. Its voice at that volume was like nails screeching across a chalkboard. The Circle Lord’s eyes burned with the light of a sun, and with a demonic howl, it thrust its pitchfork up into the air above its head.

  A supernova of verdant energy rippled across the heavens. Everywhere it touched, death soon followed. It drew out all of the life from everything that it washed over like a leech. Fruit withered into dust, grain collapsed in on itself, and bodies turned into ash. The Great Farmer didn’t bother sparing its servants from the assault.

  Jonathan surrounded himself with Aegis of the Void’s Dichotomy, perching on the mountain top as the all consuming wave of Life energy washed over him. It parted around the shield like a river around a boulder, leaving him unharmed.

  He raised one fist to the sky and forced his mastery of destruction out through it. A tiny black sun was born between his fingers, quickly compressing into a marble of utter darkness. Jonathan drew upon his Void reserves as much as he could, supplementing it with Divinity. A tinge of gold entered the orb, mingling with the abyssal blackness.

  The Great Farmer charged, each footstep shaking the mountain. Despite its great size, the peak of its domain was easily a mile across, especially after the last attack that it leveled. The entire top was missing, turned to drifting rot and dust.

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  It leaped up into the air, and a pulse of energy rippled out in every direction. Energy that Jonathan recognized all too well. Only, he hadn’t ever expected to see it in the Infinite Hells, at least this early. The green of Life merged with the gold of Divinity as the Great Farmer revealed the ultimate ace up its sleeve. It was a god, just like Jonathan.

  A terrifying specter of conceptual energy formed behind the rampaging Circle Lord. The shadow of a reaper stretched across an endlessly waving field of wheat. Wherever it touched, death soon followed. As the Great Farmer moved, its pitchfork rumbled. Peals of thunder rang out as the weapon exploded with might. The green fire surrounding it quickly took on another hue. It was still green, but completely alien to what it had been before. It was the green of undeath.

  The prongs of the pitchfork bent and fused, stretching out to form a glossy black blade. The skeletal figure of the Great Farmer grew even more so, its flesh tightening in on itself. That effect was confined to the left half of the monster’s body. In comparison, the other half bulged with muscle. The skin on the left side melted away, revealing a grinning skull jutting out of the swollen right half of the Lord’s head. A bonfire replaced its missing eye, a burning pyre of swirling deathly energy.

  A sickening grin spread across the Great Farmer’s face. “Angranor helped me realize the truth that had eluded me for so long. Life unending is a curse just as much as is the finality of death. Why not combine both, and find true enlightenment?”

  Jonathan felt cold metal at the nape of his neck at the very same moment. The eyes of the Great Farmer consumed the world, filling his vision with the vision of his own death. Jonathan felt his soul slipping away in the face of such might.

  A mocking laugh exploded out of his mouth. “Pathetic!” Jonathan roared at the top of his lungs.

  An atom bomb of purple light washed out in a cone towards the Great Farmer. Jonathan brought the full weight of his aura to bear. Honed by his training in Tartarus, it had an almost physical effect. A crown of warped light, like the accretion disk of a black hole, formed above his head. His armor burst into bright violet flame. Wings shot out from his shoulder blades.

  He rose up into the air. Opposite to him, the Great Farmer did the same. Jonathan and his foe stared one another down, contesting their strength against that of their foe. Both were evenly matched, or if they weren’t, finding the stronger of the two in such a way would have taken time that they did not have.