Jonathan Harlowe
Tier 9
Void Human(Ascended)
Divinity Aspect: Void Hegemon
Elemental Mastery: 29%
Void Berserker: Tier 9 Legendary
Active Blessings: The Third Eye of Exal’drin
Level 800
(1426 free points)
Health: 2589638/2589638
Stamina: 2877221/2877221
Mana: 2650793/2650793
- Titles
True Unbound Spirit: Unique
Fourth Circle Breaker: Unique
Lesser God: Godly
Supreme Giantslayer: Primal
Supreme Initiate: Ancient
Stand Against the Unknown: Ancient
Prodigy of Fusion: Mythical
Lesser Xenocide: Legendary
Iron Will: Epic
Leader of Men: Epic
Refined Form: Epic
Avenger: Epic
Lineage Hunter: Rare
Righteous Killer: Rare
- Skills
Spark from the Dark: Unique
Limit Breaker: Primal
Maw of the Void: Ancient
Aegis of the Void’s Dichotomy: Ancient
Void’s Hunger: Ancient
Wrath of the Void: Ancient
Minor Endfire: Ancient
Ephemeral Quartet: Ancient
Void’s Eye: Ancient
Fatal Strike: Mythical
Void Piercer: Mythical
Void Missile: Mythical
Runic Overcharge: Mythical
Anchored Mind: Legendary
Rune Savant: Legendary
Void Drill: Legendary
Sense the Weave: Legendary
Fists of the Maelstrom: Legendary
Minor Enlightenment: Legendary
Void Slipstream: Epic
Warrior’s Trance: Epic
Battle Focus: Rare
Impact: Rare
Focused Scry: Rare
Runes of Power: Rare
Redirect: Uncommon
- Pathway Skills
Blunt Weapon Mastery(Advanced): Master 4
Runecrafting Expertise(Advanced): Master 1
Energy Manipulation(Advanced): Master 2
- Martial Path
Flowing Maelstrom: Expert 9
- Weapon Domain: Master 4 (Advanced)
Metaphysical Domain: Master 1(Advanced)
Energy Domain: Master 2(Advanced)
- Quests
The Strongest: ???
Hellbreaker: Impossible
Pathway of the Titans: Heroic
Jonathan’s stats had gone up a lot, but due to the fact that his previous class hadn’t given very many free points, that area seemed a bit lacking. With his new class, hopefully that would not be an issue any longer.
Jonathan saw little point in allocating his stat points before seeing what the Abyssal Hydra could do. Normally that would have bene a foolish decision, but given how few he had relative to the rest of his stats, it wouldn’t end up making much of a difference.
He closed his stat sheet, noting that the others had stopped. “What is it?”
“Over there,” Edgar whispered. “That hillock. Look at it closely.”
Jonathan looked over at the hill Edgar pointed at, almost instantly realizing what it really was. With his highly advanced senses, he could pick out every detail. Bits of what looked like waterlogged wood were actually thick scales and two pools of dark water were actually eyes.
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“Oh, shit,” Jonathan cursed. “It’s one of the Hydra’s heads. Why is it up? I thought it had to stay resting because of the mana deficit.”
“If I had to guess,” Edgar replied, “whatever Zandrus was doing has something to do with this. He was gathering an obscene amount of elemental energy. Perhaps it pushed the boundaries of what this dungeon was capable of. Not enough for the Hydra to simply roam free, but enough for it to survey the surface.”
“Do you think it's already noticed us?” Eliza asked.
“Probably. We are a good deal stronger than most of the monsters in this dungeon. If it is truly awake, then it would have noticed that.”
“Well, we don’t have any excuses then. Let’s kill it,” Jonathan declared. “I’ll try to soften it up first.”
Wanting to see whether or not the monster actually was sleeping, Jonathan channeled Void energy into the world around him. It coalesced into a tiny orb of scintillating purple light, which sped off to hover over the Hydra’s head. A filament of light connected it to Jonathan’s hands, letting him continue to fuel it.
The Hydra didn’t move, seeming content to let Jonathan gear up for battle. Either that or it was actually unconscious. The orb continued to grow as minutes passed, enough Void energy to raze a small country to the ground passing through Jonathan and into the sphere. It grew from the size of a marble to the size of a truck, looming like an ominous star above the Hydra’s head.
Ten minutes passed without interruption, and Jonathan started to feel a strain upon his control over his element. He had channeled so much power into his technique that it was actively fighting him for dominance. With a sigh, he let his control drop, letting the orb fall towards the Abyssal Hydra.
The monster finally stirred at the last moment, tilting its head up. Tons of mud cascaded down its neck as it reared up, its jaws opening. The inside of its mouth was coated in a layer of absolute darkness, and it was perhaps this defence that made the monster so willing to wait for Jonathan to prepare his assault.
The jaws closed around the orb, cutting it off from sight. Jonathan felt, to his amazement, that he had also lost all connection to the orb as well. He could no longer feel it with his elemental senses, nor through his connection to the Void.
The Hydra’s whole body emerged from the swamps over the next few moments, dozens of heads surging up from the murky depths. A body so large that it would have dwarfed entire cities soon followed, reaching up towards the heavens above.
Jonathan tilted his head to take in the entire monster at once. He had rarely seen something of that size before, even in a world as monstrous and twisted as the Infinite Hells. The only things that surpassed it were Exal’drin, the chained outer god who had given Jonathan his Blessing, and perhaps the mountainous creatures that lived at the edge of the Ash Heaps. Jonathan hadn’t actually fought any of them in person so he wasn’t sure how large they were.
Before the Hydra could fully unearth itself, a titanic explosion tore a hole through one of its heads. Jonathan’s Void bomb had finally gone off. A wave of destruction traveled down the monster’s neck, excising it from the flesh like a conceptual razor. The damage ended at the base of the neck, leaving a glowing purple stump.
The Hydra roared in pain, the dozens of heads creating a trumpeting cacophony that shook the ground and air. The stump showed no signs of regeneration, meaning that Jonathan had found a way to actually hurt the monsters.
“Right,” he said. “Let’s move it. Time to finish this.”
Jonathan streaked across the sky, leaving a trail of vivid purple behind him. Within his hands, a sword of Void energy formed. The weapon grew and grew until it was hundred of times longer than his own body, more than long enough to carve through a few of the Hydra’s heads in a single go.
The mud beneath started to rumble, massive bubbles floating to the top from deep underground. Whirlpools of swampy water started to spiral across the land. Vast geysers of mud shot up for dozens of miles into the sky. The Hydra’s heads extended up as its body began to pulse with darkness. The mud that had been sent high into the air took on a darker hue and resisted the call of gravity, instead moving independently through the air. It formed into a suit of brutish, spiked armor that quickly locked into place over the Hydra’s torso and necks.
“You were not welcomed here,” the Hydra said, its voice like an entire choir competing to see who could hit the lowest note. “There was balance in this dungeon before you killed Zandrus. Now I shall have to hunt in earnest to sustain myself. I suppose you can be the first on the menu.”
As Jonathan swung his sword, aiming for the nearest of the Hydra’s necks, a wave of power exploded outwards from the monster, tearing Jonathan out of the sky. He plummeted to the swamp below, the mud reaching up to pull him down.
A shockwave of Void energy blasted away the mud and Jonathan regained his bearings, flying back up to face the Hydra. The monster was even more intimidating then at the start of the fight, made even larger by its armor. It looked more like a monument than a creature, some vision of an insane architect made flesh. A temple to the monsters that had ruled the world before humans had ever arrived.
Jonathan layered his buffs as he rose into the skies, golden fire covering his body. As the raw power of his godhood surged through his muscles, Jonathan felt his strength grow to new heights. He pushed off a solid block of elemental energy, using every ounce of his speed to blitz the Hydra. Before the monster could react, Jonathan was already in front of its chest.
Jonathan cocked back his fist and clenched his muscles, feeling every part of his body come together behind the punch. His Domain snapped tight around his fist, bringing it closer to the platonic ideal of fistfighting itself.
The Void followed soon after, Maw of the Void creating a gauntlet of utter destruction around Jonathan’s fist. When his punch landed, it not only broke through the Hydra’s armor, but sent a ripple through its flesh as well.
Jonathan himself flew backwards, the immense power of his punch catapulting him away.
The Hydra stumbled, sending tremors through the swamp. Its heads thrashed around, the eyes eventually settling on Jonathan. They blazed with such anger that Jonathan almost felt it as a physical force.
Before the monster could attack, the others loosed a combination attack straight at the center of the Hydra’s chest, where Jonathan had just left a wound. An entire flaming mountain wreathed in a thunderstorm shot down from where the other party members flew, moving at hypersonic speeds.
No matter how fast the Hydra was, it was too large to dodge such an attack. Instead, it thickened the armor around the midpoint of its body, just in time to take the strike. The fiery mountain shattered on impact, melting into a tidal wave of lava that started weakening the Hydra’s armor. The swirling winds condensed into a spear that rammed through the monster’s faltering defences, piercing deep into its body.
Jonathan headed back into the fray, a fist of Void energy growing around his own. Then, for the first time, he used Limit Breaker. Not sure what to expect, he tensed his muscles, only to nearly lose consciousness when a tether of shining white light connected him to the Hydra. It hit like a sledgehammer, slamming into the very core of his being. Every aspect of his strength surged in potency, turning him into a god of battle.
At that moment, Jonathan realized just how much the Hydra had been holding back so far. The monster had been asleep when he and the others arrived, meaning that it was just now waking it. It hadn’t had a reason to take any of them seriously yet.
Jonathan’s armor glowed from the inside out, his body shining like a star. The rush of power continued to build, the ten seconds of the skill’s duration an eternity in such a high level battle.
“You impudent ant,” the Hydra rumbled. “You dare to steal my power to amplify your own? You will soon learn the errors of your ways.”
The skies blackened as storm clouds gathered, scudding across the sky to gather directly above the monster.
“Edgar, are you doing this?” Jonathan called out. The wind mage only shook his head.
A trumpeting roar erupted from the Hydra’s dozens of mouths, shaking Jonathan to the very bone. At that moment, the clouds let loose. A carpet of abyssal lightning blackened out everything in sight for a few moments, falling like rain.
Jonathan wove through the bolts, feeling his hairs standing on end. The lightning hit with the force of a nuclear bomb, tearing apart the swamp for hundreds of miles in every direction. The clouds faded away over the next few seconds, but the damage had already been done. A cry of pain rang out as the lightning struck Edgar head on, passing through his elemental shielding like it wasn’t there. He went limp, falling from the sky like a bird with broken wings.
Arkanon swooped down to catch him, only for another lightning bolt to strike the Uthraki warlord. He managed to tank the hit, simply pushing through the pain, but it took everything he had. He grabbed Edgar and summoned a shield of obsidian around himself and the wind mage. The others used their own defensive abilities, but the worst of the damage had already been done.
“You’ll pay for that,” Jonathan promised as he closed in on his foe. His body felt like an engine, every part of it optimized towards carnage. He was far faster and stronger than ever before.
When he struck the Hydra, it was like a bullet hitting a watermelon. In an explosion of gore, Jonathan flew through the entire monster, the Void tearing apart its insides. His bones shattered on contact, but his body held together well enough to function as an impromptu missile.
Upon reaching the center of the Hydra’s body, where his momentum began to fail him, Jonathan fully let loose. Multiple black holes flew outwards from his hands, carving into flesh with ease. Pulses of Maw of the Void followed closely behind, excavating caverns from the Abyssal Hydra’s flesh.
It was at that point that Jonathan realized his health was dropping. His flesh was sloughing off underneath his armor, but somehow, there was no pain. He was covered in a layer of black ichor, which he now realized for the first time was a deadly poison. Jonathan’s health was already down a third just from the toxins alone.
With a muttered curse, he purged the poison from his body with his element, though the damage was already done. His muscles felt like soup and his skin was simply gone, revealing the bones beneath. With the removal of the Hydra’s blood, all of the pain returned, nearly causing him to collapse in shock. Jonathan grabbed the pain in the hands of his will and crushed it into a tiny ball, forcing it away. He had dealt with far worse.
Now that he was actually inside the Hydra, that opened up entirely new possibilities for killing it. His Void attacks were far more potent than usual, no doubt also enhanced by Limit Breaker. With this in mind, Jonathan continued his bloody work, flying through the Hydra. He made his own path as he went, hallways of flesh and blood etched into the beast’s body.
The regeneration was already picking up, holes closing in behind him. If Jonathan wanted to finish this battle, he needed to find the Hydra’s vital organs. Its regeneration was too high for anything other than an instantly fatal blow to actually kill it.
Jonathan reached out with his elemental senses, feeling a resonance coming from deep within the monster’s body. A vast reservoir of the abyssal power that it used in battle. He smiled. That’s more like it.
Outside, the Hydra was going berserk. It thrashed around in agony, vast manifestations of elemental energy escaping its control. Arkanon had been forced to retreat with Edgar to a safer location, flying towards the horizon. The rest of the party quickly followed suit, realizing that there was little they could do with two of their strongest members out of commission. It was all up to Jonathan.
It took Jonathan far longer than he was willing to admit to find the Abyssal Hydra’s organs. The closer he got, the more confusing the elemental signals he felt became. Whereas before the signal had been from a single direction, now it came from all around him. This all came without any noticeable change to the structure of the monster’s body. It was as if the Hydra’s flesh was one with its own organs, serving as the ultimate defence.
Instead of despairing, Jonathan realized what he had to do. If he couldn’t find an organ to destroy, he would simply erase everything around him from reality. If the case was that he couldn’t find the organ simply because it was too large for him to perceive, that would solve his problem. In any other case, it wouldn’t hurt to do as much damage to the Hydra as possible.
Before Jonathan could keep going, his lungs started itching. He bent over, coughing violently. A dark vapor the color and consistency of smoke was drifting from the Hydra’s flesh, enveloping Jonathan in yet more poison. Luckily this attack had an easy solution. Simply holding his breath.
The gas, while quite corrosive, wasn’t of any threat to Jonathan if he didn’t let it into his body. His skin was more than durable enough to resist.
“Time to end this,” he muttered, and reached for the Void.