Jonathan met the incoming attack with his fists. Aegis of the Void’s Dichotomy surrounded him as he worked, protecting his body from the bulk of the assault. Meanwhile, he used Maw of the Void in conjunction with Minor Endfire to forcibly unbind the tornado.

  The Great Farmer did not sit idle as this all happened. At this point, it was less than a quarter of a mile from Jonathan. The strike that had torn a hole in the Circle Lord had tossed it over a dozen miles away, but at the speeds that the creature could reach, that distance was nothing.

  Jonathan gathered his might, and blasted his way through the ominous funnel cloud before him. The entire pillar of swirling wind and undeath came apart as a wave of the Void forced its way through. Maw of the Void erased the fragments of the scarecrows that were still caught up in the tornado, and the normal Void energy dealt with the rest.

  The Great Farmer came hurtling through the dissipating cloud of blackness, its scythe twinkling darkly in the light of the sun above. A nearly invisible sheath of energy coated the weapon from blade to hilt. When it touched the air, the air vanished, ceasing to be. With that sort of power, the scythe could slice through almost anything of the same rank. it was how the Circle Lord had torn through Jonathan’s neck, despite all of the protections there.

  The Great Farmer activated an ability, and sped up dramatically. Its scythe crept around Jonathan’s guard, trying to hook around his back. Jonathan didn’t stand idle, knowing the danger that he was in. Instead he forced himself into motion, using stamina to pilot his body like a puppet. He bent over backwards, touching the ground with the back of his head. The scythe whistled overhead, but Jonathan was already in motion. He surged up, his fists surrounded with a dense mantle of the Void. He then used his armor ability. The suit of armor he had won for defeating Ashokan was heavy and bulky, the plate looking like it was made of obsidian. It lacked any flashy abilities, but what it did have was something even better. Nearly peerless protection for its Tier.

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  A wave of calcification spread across the surface of the suit of armor, the obsidian mottling as it was coated in growths of diamond and other crystals. Jonathan grabbed the scythe, relying on his layered protections to keep him from erasing his own body in the process.

  His gauntlets started to smoke, the crystal eaten away by the hungry maw of Death energy that surrounded the Great Farmer’s weapon. Still, it was a far cry from what would have happened had Jonathan set his hands on the weapon. With a grunt, he pulled at the weapon. It was far larger than he was, and his hands didn’t really fit around its hilt.

  He was forced to form facsimile fingers out of the Void, clutching the scythe with them instead. He channeled his stamina into his calves and biceps, before extending spikes of the Void into the ground below. He sucked the annihilating aspect out of them, leaving simple force constructs hammered deep into the ground. Then he started to pull. Red light sparked around his muscles as he drew upon strength far beyond his Tier.

  The Great Farmer pulled back, but froze as it realized that Jonathan was actually winning in the contest of strength. The tiny man, looking like an ant compared to the titan that was the Circle Lord, strained against a being that had held an entire realm in sway for billions of years. Like Hercules overcoming the odds over and over again, Jonathan was doing something that most would have considered impossible.

  His body turned into a locus of rampaging power, Divinity mixing with mana, elemental energy and stamina. With the aid of Ephemeral Quartet, Jonathan was able to reach beyond his limits by drawing upon his nearly endless elemental energy to supplement his mana and stamina. It wasn’t as impressive as it seemed. At fights of this level, all that really mattered was one’s health pool. It was nearly impossible to run down a stamina pool at Jonathan’s level unless one was facing against a foe that was practically their equal. He had thousands of times as much of the stuff as any human from Earth.