Jonathan drew upon both halves of his fighting style in unison, layering them on top of each other. As he did so the false Jonathans faded, their bodies turning into streams of energy coalescing around his fists. Jonathan cocked back his right fist and kept it there as the power built, waiting until the right moment.

  A ghostly fist formed in front of his own, made out of purple light and surrounded by a sheath of conceptual energy aligned with pugilism. Jonathan punched, feeling as if reality itself were punching with him.

  The sky broke in a straight line before him, a rift opening to the realm of the Void. It zipped shut an instant later, but by that time the energy projection in the shape of Jonathan’s fist had traveled most of the distance to Zandrus. As it went it drew power from the rift, growing and growing until it was the size of a small hill. The fist radiated so much pressure that the ground beneath it bent, as if being pressed down by the finger of an invisible giant.

  Zandrus spun his lance around in a circle, gathering speed as he went. The spear lost its shape, turning into a circular shield of Order. Jonathan’s fist crashed into it a moment later, and the shield bent backwards, cracking under the force. Zandrus tried to anchor himself in the air with his element, but the power of Jonathan’s technique was too much for the Elemental Archon to withstand. His shield broke apart and the fist struck him in the chest, the armor covering his body shattering in a single blow.

  The Archon himself stepped out of the blue mist left behind by the crumbling armor, floating in the midst of where it had once been. His face was twisted in fear.

  Jonathan moved in for the kill, speeding through the air towards his foe. Zandrus flew in to meet him, fists covered in compressed Order energy. As he flew the space around him opened, revealing a portal straight to the elemental plane of Order. Out of it came a legion of elementals, though these ones were very different to the ones on the ground. They were winged creatures patterned after various geometric shapes, the wings arranged in ways to ensure perfect symmetry. They flocked around Zandrus like pet birds, awaiting his command.

  Zandrus sent them at Jonathan, the cavalcade of elementals hissing through the air. Each of them sprouted more limbs, covered in armor of elemental lightning. That lightning forked out into the air, spreading and spreading in a net of fulminating potency. Jonathan found himself at the very center, sparks playing across his armor.

  The electric shock came a moment later, seizing up his muscles and burning his skin. Jonathan gritted his teeth against the pain and fought back, using his element to resist. The Void spilled out around him, dousing the lightning bolts like a soaked towel dropped onto a fire.

  Jonathan continued on his trajectory, blasting a hole through the elemental lines. Just touching them sent waves of Void energy through their bodies, erasing them from existence in an instant.

  Zandrus remained in place, a tornado of swirling blue light forming around him. His spear reformed, dropping into his right hand. With a cry, the elemental thrust at Jonathan.

  Jonathan used the Third Eye of Exal’drin and dodged the blow, even as a far larger beam of energy erupted from the tip of the spear. It passed over him, and continued off to the horizon.

  Jonathan closed the gap, moving the last few hundred feet in an instant. His fist snapped up and hammered into Zandrus’ jaw, breaking it apart. The elemental reeled, only for another punch to slam into his chest. Cracks spread from the impact point, signaling the beginning of the end for the elemental.

  Zandrus roared, and the clouds of elemental energy above his citadel started to move. They spun faster and faster until a wave of energy exploded out from the center, washing over Zandrus. His body started to grow, stopping when he was about twice his previous size. Two extra arms emerged from beneath his normal ones.

  Zandrus punched, his fists directed not at Jonathan, but at the space directly in front of him. A building pressure signaled that something was at play beyond just the elemental’s brute strength, and as the air around Zandrus’ fists warped, Jonathan tried to move out of the way. Instead of propelling himself away, Jonathan found himself stuck in a gravity well of conceptual energy, dragging him towards Zandrus’ fists.

  Jonathan shielded himself, but it was too late. Zandrus’ fists connected, meeting at the very center of Jonathan’s chest. Crystal exploded outwards, growing within Jonathan’s own body. His chest unraveled, bits of blood and bone flying everywhere. Only his enhanced neck prevented him from losing his head, though even the much more durable body part suffered some damage.

  Zandrus drew his fists back, thinking that Jonathan had died. He wasn’t able to complete the motion. Jonathan’s fists snapped out, covered in the burning red light of his Rune of Revenge. At his level, his Runes were often overshadowed by his other abilities, but in this case there was ample fuel to turn the flames of conceptual energy into a raging bonfire.

  The crystal beneath Jonathan’s hands melted as he channeled his Divinity through his fists. He reached deep, finding a current of energy that underpinned Zandrus’ very being. It led to a core of densely packed power nestled in the center of the Archon’s body.

  Jonathan reached out, moving his hands towards the core. As he did so, Zandrus fought back, crushing blows hammering down onto Jonathan from his free arms. Bones cracked and newly regenerated flesh was turned back into a slurry as the fight progressed, Jonathan taking far more damage than he had intended to. Nevertheless, his hands drifted ever closer to the very center of Zandrus’ being. Once they connected, the battle would be over.

  Zandrus pulled out every trick in his repertoire, various elemental manipulations tearing at Jonathan's flesh. None of them were enough to finish the job, however, and by the time Jonathan’s fists had melted through the outer layer of crystal, his health was still high enough to not force him to withdraw.

  “This is it,” Jonathan said as he sunk his fingers into the Archon’s core. Before the Archon could respond, Jonathan ripped the core out of the elemental’s body and crushed it in his fist. A detonation not unlike that of a nuclear bomb forced his fingers apart, snapping a few of them. Jonathan winced. Perhaps that had been a foolish idea.

  The wave of essence that poured in a moment later distracted him from the pain. It brought him all the way up to the peak of Tier 8, ready to ascend to Tier 9.

  ***

  Cleaning up after the battle was a minor affair. With Zandrus gone, none of the remaining elementals were enough of a threat to merit any sort of alarm. The millions of basic undead had stopped moving with the death of their creator, slowly regaining their motive power, but not quickly enough to do anything with it.

  The Elemental Elder had taken a bit longer to kill, but it had still fallen far faster than Zandrus. With the combined might of Jonathan and everyone else facing it, the Elder died quickly enough.

  The clouds of elemental power that had gathered above Zandrus’ city dissipated into the ether with the death of their owner, slipping back through cracks in reality to wherever they had come from.

  The crystal covering everything for miles in every direction cracked apart, dissolving into thin air. Beneath it was a far more normal landscape, covered in trees and rolling grey hills. There were even a few rivers that resumed flowing, transforming back into water. Bit by bit, Zandrus’ influence left the world, flowing back to where it had come from. After barely five minutes had passed, no trace was left of Zandrus, even his castle crumbling away into the wind.

  “Well, that didn’t take that long,” Jonathan deadpanned. “I guess after we consolidate a bit, we should go after the Abyssal Hydra. How are everyone’s levels right now?”

  “Creeping up through Tier 8,” Edgar said. “At least, mine are. I assume everyone else is relatively close?”

  It turned out that everyone was a bit into Tier 8, though Eva needed to carry out her class selection ceremony before the stored essence could be used. With two people needing to upgrade their classes, Jonathan and Eva headed off towards a secluded hollow in the side of a hill to break through. Jonathan looked over the Tier up notification as he did so.

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  You have reached Tier 9!

  You have gained 3200 points in each stat (accounting for multipliers).

  Your body is naturally more durable, and able to use a greater fraction of your total strength.

  You have gained 1920 points in Divinity.

  You now need a higher concentration of mana, proportional to your level. Current inhibition is 0%, as you are using Tier 10 mana to operate. Maximum inhibition is 75%.

  You now have access to Tier 9 classes.

  Neither spoke as they sat down, closing their eyes to the world. The absolute darkness of the strange mental space in which classes were chosen enveloped them, before softening slightly around the five statues hovering before Jonathan.

  “Right. What’s waiting for me now?”

  Two of the classes he recognized from the last time around, but they were now in their upgraded forms.

  Sage Void Berserker

  Tier 9 Legendary Class

  You have reached heights of power unheard of for your Tier. As that power grows, so does the damage you can do with it. Channel your rage into strength and take revenge upon your enemies.

  +250 to Strength and Dexterity, +275 free stat points

  Primal rarity [Limit Breaker] Skill

  Sage Soul Magus

  Tier 9 Legendary Class

  Since you learned how to channel the power of your element through your soul, your mastery has grown greatly. With that increased mastery comes increased power, and perhaps, a way to reach beyond the limits of mortality at such a low Tier…

  +250 to Intelligence and Wisdom, +275 free stat points

  Soul Mastery Pathway Skill

  ???

  The stat bonuses weren’t as high as Jonathan had expected, but they were still good enough. The main changes came in the rewards offered. The skill for Void Berserker had gone up a rarity tier, and Soul Magus had gained a new bonus as well. While the System didn’t spell it out, Jonathan could tell that it was linked in some way to the cryptic sentence at the end of the description.

  What exactly did it mean? Was stepping beyond the limits of mortality simply to do with immunity to aging, or was it to do with Jonathan’s godhood? Would he be able to empower himself with it, or would it simply fix a problem that he didn’t envisage happening? He had grown so much faster than most others, and as such didn’t need to worry about his lifespan. It was easily in the thousands of years now, if not more, and he had only spent a bit under two of those years to reach this level. While progression would continue to slow, unless some unforeseen challenges came up, Jonathan envisioned finishing his mission within time. Besides, chronological immortality was bound to come later down the line, as the gods didn’t age.

  Jonathan moved on to the other three statues, recognizing one of them. The next level of Elemental Juggernaut. It was the class that had kept him safe throughout most of his journey through the Hells, and while it wasn’t especially flashy, more of an all rounder than anything else, it still suited him well.

  Sage Elemental Juggernaut

  Tier 9 Legendary Class

  You have reached the pinnacle of power for this class, taking it all the way up through the Tiers to become what it is now. A peerless engine of balanced might that provides greater power than the sum of its parts.

  +200 to all stats, +50 additional points.

  Mythical rarity [Corporeal Fire] skill

  Now that he had seen a few of the previous class options, Jonathan realized what was going on. The System was changing around the stat bonuses based on what else the class offered.

  For example, the first two class options offered a lot more in terms of extra skills and abilities than Elemental Juggernaut, but the latter class gave far more stat points.

  Jonathan browsed the other two classes, but they were just offshoots of mage and brawler type archetypes respectively. Neither of them were of much interest to him.

  In the end, it was down to the first three options. Jonathan browsed through them again, but it didn’t make his choice any easier. He wanted all of the abilities and stat points that the classes gave, but he would need to pick one in the end.

  At his current stage of power, Jonathan didn’t rely on his raw stats as much as one might think. He used a lot more of his elemental energy in fights than his physical strength, even though that was also far beyond the norm for his level.

  In fact, now that he thought about it, his physical abilities had never been the deciding factor over his last few fights. It had all come down to his mastery of his element. Jonathan never would have beaten Zandrus without the help of the Void, and even doubling his stats wouldn’t have helped in that case.

  What he needed was a way to even the gap, and while Soul Magus was tempting, he discarded it after some thought. It would be made useless eventually and using his soul wasn’t exactly Jonathan’s preferred fighting style. The last time he had relied upon it, he had been left crippled for weeks.

  In the end, it was a tossup between Elemental Juggernaut and Void Berserker. With his earlier considerations in mind, Jonathan finally made his choice.

  As the darkness faded, returning Jonathan to the dungeon, his mind burned with the weight of new knowledge. A skill, and a powerful one at that, had been created within his body, formed from the very Runes that he strove to master. A Primal rarity skill, something Jonathan had never seen before. Other than the special skill he had gained from the dungeon in Cessation, Jonathan had no skills above Ancient. They were already extremely powerful, and he was excited to see what a higher rarity skill could do.

  You have gained a new skill!

  Limit Breaker: Primal

  Most warriors come up against obstacles so daunting that they can never be overcome. You are not that sort of warrior. Every time the weight of destiny comes crashing down upon you, you remain standing, pushing back with all your might. All this skill does is let you do that more efficiently. Limit Breaker may be used once per day. For a period of ten seconds, your strength will constantly increase to match that of your opponent. That strength will then remain for five minutes. Some foes are beyond your ability to surpass, but for a few Tiers around your own, most fights will be rendered trivial. This skill will not work if your opponent is weaker than yourself.

  The skill was better than Jonathan could have hoped for. Had he possessed it during the battle with Zandrus, the long, drawn out slog could have been reduced to a few moments. Jonathan had already been close enough to the Elemental Archon in raw power, and with skill he could have matched Zandrus in everything else.

  Eva came to a few moments later, a wide smile on her face. “Finally. A Legendary class within my grasp.”

  “I take it your class selection ceremony went well?” Jonathan asked.

  Eliza nodded. “Oh, it did. My power is going to skyrocket at this rate. I might even be able to leapfrog straight to Mythical when I get to Tier 10.”

  “I’m impressed,”Jonathan said. “You’ll be a big help going forward. You’ll catch up to the others in no time.”

  “I hope so,” Eva said. “I certainly hope so.”

  ***

  Now equipped with the tools that he needed to take down the Abyssal Hydra, Jonathan finally embarked upon the quest he had entered this dungeon for in the first place.

  The swamps that the Hydra made home were just as drab and monotonous as before, if not more so on account of the lack of monsters. The entire sector facing the remnants of Zandrus’ kingdom had been laid waste to by Jonathan and his allies as they traveled through. The few monsters that remained had either come there after the fact or had hidden the first time around.

  The oppressive aura of the Abyssal Hydra once more pressed down upon the party as they traveled towards the center of the muddy expanse. With more levels under their belt, however, the pressure was far more bearable. Jonathan even managed to repel it somewhat with his own aura, though that was hardly an impressive feat given how far the Hydra’s presence was spread out.

  Jonathan made sure that he had acclimated to his new strength by this time. His levels had increased significantly since entering the dungeon, and if he was to defeat the Hydra, he would need to know how to use his power properly.

  The first order of business was analyzing the runic matrix of the skill. As it wasn’t an ability that Jonathan could test outside of battle, he could get a better sense of it through analysis of the runes that made it up. While he didn’t have the mastery to identify each of the Runes within the skill, he could get the gist of it.

  The matrix floated in front of him, conjured into being by his Runecrafting Expertise. It was incredibly complex, larger even than those of his other skills. Millions of Runes made up the skill, most of them far beyond Jonathan’s ability to understand.

  After a bit of perusal, Jonathan got a better idea of what the skill actually did. It drew power through the gate in his soul, bringing the Void into reality. The reason he could only use it for a limited amount of time was due to possible soul damage.

  Jonathan sighed. He had been hoping to avoid more soul damage, but it looked like it would never stop catching up with him. Besides, as far as he could tell, it was safe. He could technically override the skill, but the built in safety parameters were there for a reason.

  He returned his gaze to the real world, feeling the aura of the Abyssal Hydra increase in power. Jonathan was nearing the point where he had entered the dungeon, when he had been closest to the resting place of the Hydra.