194. Monster Knight (I)

Every Faction there—from the Shaolin monks, to Vanessa's North Star, to Eze's Earth Mages—stood frozen.

Then, all at once, there was a great swelling of feeling.

Their moods had been nearing hopeless after those long awful hours; now it was moving faster and faster, swinging toward a bursting, an almost hysterical joy.

Everyone knew exactly who Zane Walker was.

He was that man. It was a surreal scene—when all of humanity had failed, they looked to one man to carry the weight of them all. To be their strength when they had none left. The Monsters watching on did not understand how it could be.

This was just one man.

They felt Zane's power. It was a different kind than anything they knew. Not even Monster Knight felt like this—they stared and stared, and could not make sense of it.

The humans looked to him like he was hope itself.

A few started cheering outright. Especially behind the front lines—a certain Evan and Avery, who were very bedraggled and had been doing their best running around all night playing support, were the loudest, the most delighted. Most everyone else was still too stunned. But they knew exactly what was about to happen.

Zane stood there. Still for a moment, taking it all in. He was a big man—but in that moment he seemed bigger than even his stature. He seemed the biggest being there. It was his aura, the impression it gave off. It swallowed everything else… the moment he touched down in the midst of the battlefield, all the gravity went to him.

Behind him, Reina stepped through the portal—and she was looking at him with as much admiration as anyone. That was her man. She was bursting with pride as the portal closed up behind her.

Some of the other top World Rankers had felt his presence before. But now something had changed—it had to be his Core. There was no other explanation. But it was nothing like the Cores of those Monsters. It was like trying to compare fireflies to the sun; it was a joke.

That was no ordinary Core. The difference between Zane's Core and the Monster army ranged before him was greater than the difference between Core and Foundation.

And not a creature there knew how it was possible.

Just what had he managed to do?

The Monsters were more stunned than the humans, though. They could not make sense of him. The humans at least knew what kind of man he was. You were not meant to make sense of him.

Zane looked calmly around.

Emeka Eze knew Zane. He knew that despite how he appeared, most of the time he was not a fiery man. He bumbled about—he was rather calm. Reina liked to call him 'sweet.' Right now, though, he was exactly the cold-blooded destroyer everyone made him out to be. Right now his jaw was set. There was a bright intensity to his narrowed eyes.

He wanted one thing. And he would not be denied. Eze could guess what it was. Sitting just a few dozen miles away, atop Heaven's Peak.

He would carve his bloody way there if he had to. Eze pitied any Monster that dared get in his way.

Silence.

The Monsters looked to one another, uncertain. Then back to Zane.

And their natures, the Monstrous hatred burning at the centers of their souls, took hold again. They started to snort. Snarl. Slobber. One by one they snapped back to what they were.

These were Core Monsters. They would not be frightened off by an aura. An appearance. After the shock passed, a good chunk of the horde still did not believe.

One scary-feeling man was all that stood between them and total victory.

How hard could it be to slay him?

An Orc Chieftain gave a slobbering bellow. Another answered on the other side of the mound—then another, and another, until they were all roaring their battle-cries. The Blood-Imps began to shriek. The Dire Trolls slammed their six fists on the ground. And Tier 4 Laws began surging in force once more…

The Monster tide charged back up the hill.

Dozens of Core grade Monsters converging at once, on all sides, spewing their awful powers, merging to a rising wave of seething essence…

***

"Brace yourselves." That was the only warning Zane grunted.

He raised his hands. Clenched them to fists.

His massive chains dropped mid-air. Even bigger hammers hung on the ends—hammers lit up with Stormfire.

A Stormfire powered by Zane's juggernaut Core.

The power that emerged did not belong in this world.

This realm did not know what to do with it. It was simply too much for it to handle.

All around those blazing hammers came a shattering, an enormous tearing—seams ripped open in the very fabric of reality. Exposing gaping jagged pitch-black voids. Gale winds shrieked, sucked into the nothing.

And all around Zane—everywhere—Skills of all kinds grew unstable. Began to wobble in the face of it. An enormous weight had been dropped on the fabric of reality. And all those lesser things sitting atop it had no choice but to fall toward it, unstable…

Emeka Eze never swore. He considered it beneath him. And yet—staring at that eruption of sheer power—"Shit," he breathed.

Zane let out a deep roar—a primal sound, a sound that seemed to come from the depths of his soul. A Skill in and of itself. And somehow that thing flared even brighter.

He stared down the hordes of rising Monsters. Smashed down.

And sent them all screaming back to hell.

***

No one saw it happen. It was too overwhelming for that. Their visions couldn't handle it. A few—the most powerful of the World Rankers—felt it in the astral plane. And even then they barely understood what they were feeling.

It was like standing in the presence of an atom bomb. The sound—the power—it was so blinding they couldn't even make it out. A few of them started to scream. They couldn't hear the sounds of their own voices.

An immense power swamped them in a fraction of a fraction of a second, and they thought that was it. There was no resisting this power. Like an act of some wrathful god.

Then they felt something in the way. Wrapping around them.

A soul. A shield spread in the Astral Plane cradling all the humans atop the hill. Protecting them.

It was Zane—flexing his own soul in a shield, gritting his teeth in tight concentration. Using some Skill. Shielding them from his own fire.

It made a forcefield. And the World Rankers stared about, mouths dry, eyes blinded. They felt it in the Astral Plane—a world of pure Stormfire. Flickering, raging, exploding, over and over, a hundred blasts going off all at once, rocking the world, leveling the world to ash, Monsters to ash, ash to ash, and again, and again—

They had only seen this kind of power in Law visions. Visions of higher powers. This was power beyond their comprehensions. Just the heat that managed to seep past Zane's soul control sent several of them stumbling to the ground. It felt painful just to be in the presence of it.

Zane let out another bellow. Exerted his will in an iron grip.

The Stormfire cut off. Vanished.

And in its wake there was a vast yawning void. Stretching all around them. A sea of midnight black cut out against the day, howling—but most of them were still too blinded to see it. By the time they regained their senses, the void had mostly closed up. Left the ruined world behind...

For a second most thought they'd been teleported. This was not the Himalayas.

This was a desert. A blackened desert with sands of ash, dunes of it piled all over. Even the atmosphere was wrong. It was humid, hot, a steaming place; geysers of lava spewed out of the ground here and there…

But no. Follow the ground, and you'd find a sea. A place miles on where the extreme heat had reduced glaciers to steaming seas…

And miles later, you'd find Heaven's peak. Still standing. Though the ice at its base was now plain black rock. That ice had steamed to nothing.

Zane Walker had just unleashed such power he had changed the face of the Earth. He had broken the world itself.

For years, decades, ages, no ice dared not intrude upon this place again. Long after they all left, this would be a desert of ash carved out against a snowy plateau.

***

But that was years later. This was now. And the other top World Rankers, the leaders of the Factions—the rulers of continents, the peak of humanity itself—were still taking it in.

Yuki. Eze. Cristina. Ming. On and on—they all acknowledged Zane Walker was the best. They did not like it, but they were forced to.

But secretly they all had a pride. Every one of them—to get where they were, the absolute peak—had a certain almost irrational self-belief. It was hard not to. Out of hundreds of millions, perhaps billions on their continents, they were the very best. Kings among kings, queens among queens.

Even after seeing Zane perform feat after feat they could convince themselves they were, at least, in the same league as him. Their pride as the best in the world wouldn't allow them to think otherwise.

Right now they were still all in shock.

But hours later—reflecting on this moment—it was impossible to deny.

They would be embarrassed to call themselves top World Rankers anymore. There was a term—the T7—that had come to refer to the World Elite. But when an advisor brought up the term later to Yuki Urabe, the Sky Painter—already an elite at sixteen years old, who had believed he was the most talented human in existence, who had perhaps the biggest ego there—the teen got a queasy look on his face. He corrected them.

There was one top World Ranker. Zane Walker.

And there was everyone else.

***

Zane looked across the devastation he had wrought, and found it good. He gave a pleased nod.

Then he turned his gaze to the highest peak. Still untouched.

Heaven's Peak. Where the First Gate of the Superdungeon lay.

"Is that the one?" he asked Eze.

Eze took a moment to respond—he was rather frozen. Then—eyes wide—he nodded slowly.

Zane grunted. Then he took Reina—easily scooped her up with one arm, molded her body to his. She held tight to him, eyes wide, rather breathless—he murmured a question to her—if she felt comfortable. She nodded.

He crouched. Stormfire erupted at his feet.

And he blasted off. Making a long arc for the mountain peak.

Time for retribution.