He started to strain, veins popping out as the purple circle crossed the fifty feet mark. Then it stopped, running up against what felt like a brick wall. Jonathan opened his eyes, and grinned. Then he leaped down, and stood before the portal.
“Soldiers! We march on the Stillborn Hegemon! We march on Cessation! WE MARCH UPON THE INFINITE HELLS!”
“WE MARCH!” a full bodied roar rose up. Jonathan turned on his heel, and raced into the portal. Behind him, a hundred thousand fighters and mages did the same.
The portal blazed brighter as the ranks piled through, Jonathan waiting on the other side. Cessation suddenly became a far lively place as a small city’s worth of people poured out into the plains. With the speed of peak Tier 3s, the army could move at thousands of miles per hour. Within a minute, they were all through.
Jonathan waited a mile from the portal, quickly joined by Arkanon, Edgar, and the others. By that time, everyone was ready, a mass of steel and flesh arrayed before them. Jonathan banished the portal a moment later. He had already made his short speech, and instead, he simply pointed at the horizon, where a small army of the undead could be seen shambling across the land.
“There they are. Let’s get to it.” Then he started running, quickly followed by the others. The grey lands of Cessation flashed by underfoot, even with him limiting his speed to around that of his soldiers. The sounds of a hundred thousand pairs of feet hitting the ground in unison sent a rolling thunder across the plains, alerting the undead to their presence.
Jonathan let out a cry, one that was taken up by the other soldiers a few seconds later. He gathered the Void to his hands, and leaped, closing the gap in a matter of moments. While his followers were decently powerful, these undead were still Tier 4, and as such, would be too strong on their own. Instead, Jonathan brought his fist down, and sent a crescent of Voidlight out at knee level. It swept across the plain, and bisected the legs of the monsters. As one, they fell to the ground.
Jonathan stopped, letting the others file in around him. He didn’t need the essence. Within a few seconds, his allies had reached the undead, slicing into them, slinging spells, or doing whatever they could to kill the monsters.
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“They’re pretty into this, huh?” Eliza said from beside him. “Pretty good at it too.”
“I wouldn’t expect anything less,” Arkanon said. “I’ve been training them, my recruits at least, to a very high standard.”
Jonathan snorted. “I saw that. You just beat them into the ground over and over again.”
Arkanon shrugged. “What can I say? It works.” Indeed, the pugilist division that the Uthraki warlord was responsible for was among the strongest in the entire army. Jonathan could see them, battering away at the undead like they were simply training dummies. While they limited themselves to gauntlets, like he did, they were no less powerful for it.
The undead were hobbled, but that didn’t mean that they were helpless. They still possessed Tier 4 strength, even without their legs. A few times, they landed blows, punching and biting with the fervor of a creature long beyond death’s embrace. Chestplates caved in and bones broke, but so far, nobody had died. Jonathan didn’t want to handicap the monsters anymore, which would reduce the essence share going to his men, directing it to him instead.
The undead rapidly died, falling to the ground as the corpses that nature should have already made them. Tides of essence flowed across the battlefield, with almost half of the soldiers instantly gaining enough to ascend to Tier 4. They started immediately, sitting cross legged as they Tiered up. With Jonathan and the other elites watching over them, this was possibly the safest place they could do this, at least within Cessation.
“What’s that?” Hushar asked, pointing to his right. “There’s something on the horizon.”
Jonathan quickly turned, as his senses were by far the sharpest. As soon as he did so, he wished that he hadn’t. What looked like millions of undead were coming their way, led by a hulking skeletal titan, easily fifteen feet tall. Tattered wings extended from its back, and the aura that it exuded told Jonathan who it was. The Stillborn Hegemon.
Next to it was a stranger monster, a massive centaur-like creature, holding a bulky obsidian club in its hands. Its skin was made of stone, thick plates of rock overlapping to form an implacable defence. Jonathan scanned both of them without wasting a moment gawking.
The Stillborn Hegemon, Duke of Cessation
Level 417
Health: 2000000/2000000
Status: Healthy
Ashokan, Stone King of the Labyrinth
Level 505
Health: 3500000/3500000
Status: Healthy
