“I am the God of the Void,” Jonathan declared. “Your Divinity comes from another. Mine belongs to me alone!”

  “You are but a rank novice to the true world of progression,” the Great Farmer replied derisively. “You might have raw power, but you do not know how to wield it.” Its eyes flashed menacingly. “Let me teach you.”

  The mountain beneath the two combatants vanished as the Great Farmer used a skill. Everything around Jonathan changed, warping and distorting. When the world stabilized, both he and the Great Farmer stood on an endless field. Golden rows of wheat stretched off into eternity, with the light of the sun beating down from a cloudless blue sky. Something about the vista was far more sinister than it should have been. There was no violence, no death, but neither was there true life. Just an infinity of sameness. The ears of wheat were not just similar in their appearance, but they were the exact same plant. The ground was perfectly even for as far as the eye could see.

  “I hovered on the edge of a Sage Ranked skill for most of my life,” the Great Farmer explained. “I could never perfect it, you see, limited by my rank as I was. Channeling that sort of power would have atomized me. Now with Divinity running through my veins, it’s a different story. The Domain of a Sage Ranked skill becomes akin to a world of its own.”

  “What is this place?” Jonathan asked, looking around. “It looks endless, but I doubt that’s the case. Is it some sort of twisted reflection of your mind? Your desires made flesh?”

  The Great Farmer laughed, but only the flesh and blood half of its face made any sound. The skull simply gaped open and shut. “This is my masterwork. Here, Death and Life blend into one gestalt. Not that crude mockery that is Undeath, but something else. I call it Preservation.”

  The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  Jonathan frowned. “But nothing can ever happen here. The wheat isn’t even real wheat. It’s like some platonic ideal of wheat. How can you think that this is anything like the real world?”

  “This place has uses beyond as a scale model of my ambitions,” the Farmer explained. “It is no simple illusion. We are both here in the fullest sense of the word. If you die in this place, that’s it. No coming back.”

  A smile rose onto Jonathan’s face. “Now we get to the real fight. Well? You said you were going to teach me a lesson. Go ahead!”

  He clenched his fists until his knuckles cracked. Then he drew upon his Divinity. Two Runic Arrays came into being. His Force-Battery array and his Vengefire Array. The latter of the two had become less of a problem to use, especially after reaching Master Rank. He could now channel its might without any permanent harm being done. Stamina blasted down through his muscles, and his legs turned into rockets. With a spray of churned earth and wheat, Jonathan shot towards the Great Farmer. His fists caught fire as he channeled Vengefire into them.

  Chuckling darkly to itself, the Great Farmer moved to meet Jonathan. Its scythe carved a trail through the air, leaving only darkness before. Then the Circle Lord struck. Its weapon sliced horizontally through the air. Suddenly, Jonathan came to a dead halt. He now stood at the forefront of a cone of living wheat, surrounded by ash and ruin. The entire horizon behind him had been consumed by the scythe’s assault. All of the wheat was gone, turned into nothingness. The ground was blackened beyond belief.

  Jonathan still clutched onto his arrays. As the world settled, he continued on his path. The Great Farmer was too close to level another slash, and instead swiped towards Jonathan. The tip of the scythe hissed through the air, headed towards Jonathan’s eye.

  Jonathan ducked, using the Third Eye of Exal’drin to foresee a sudden shift in the attack, meant to catch him out. The scythe changed direction, heading towards his torso instead. Jonathan slapped it away with a gauntleted hand. His fingers burned at the contact, even through his armor. Necrosis began to spread through his arm. Gritting his teeth in annoyance, Jonathan banished it with the Void.