Against a God

Chi-You drew nearer, and with each of his steps, the earth shook. Infernal heat leaked from his hoofed feet, burning a pattern of molten hoofprints into the ground as he approached Li with a wild smile. Mechanical sounds clicked and clacked with each of his motions as he was, quite literally, a machine of war.

All of his limbs, his six arms and two legs, as well as his body were of seemingly mechanical construction. The musculature was defined, but there were segmentations in the joints similar to how armor separated at crucial points such as the elbows or knees to allow for mobility. And through these segments flowed an igneous white energy that radiated both heat and light.

"Did you call me here?" said Li, quite a bit cautious. Chi-You and the other three gods, in the game at least, were endgame raid bosses.

It took a full party of four or five regular and competent level 100 players to beat him. But level 100+ characters that had seven additional full cycles of the campaign, fighting and defeating bosses far more formidable than the regular gods, would have amassed enough stats, spells, and celestial equipment to make a solo clear fairly possible against any of the four great gods who stayed at a basic level 100.

"Me? I've no such ability." Chi-You snorted, wisps of smoke curling from his nose. "That's Zahaka's domain, with all her fiddling and magic and whatnot, yet I doubt even her knowledge allows her to summon a god here."

"Then why am I here?" Li kept his eyes trained on Chi-You's six arms, each of which still held a golden weapon.

"Because you-" Chi-You raised three of his arms towards Li. An axe, spear, and sword flashed towards him. The war god's beady eyes narrowed as they analyzed Li. He gave a vigorous nod to Li. "Are a god, and Valhul is where all gods are destined to be. You are strong, too. Perfect to break this streak of boredom. I challenge you to a duel, my fellow divinity!"

Li shook his head. It looked like Chi-You's personality was much the same as it had been in the lore. Hot-headed and driven by battle. But Li didn't want to waste time amusing this god. He had already beaten this boss before. He could reliably do it again, even if it would be a relatively challenging fight.

"You'll lose, so what's the point? Plus, you don't drop anything that'll help my farm, and I have more important things to do than lounge around fighting. If you value your life, then you'll lead me out of here."

"Oho?" Chi-You stomped his feet and flexed his metal muscles. His body creaked as power surged through him, incinerating the area around him. "Then defeat me, and then I will gladly grant your wish."

Li could feel the raw power emanating from the war god. It was magnitudes upon magnitudes beyond anything he had ever encountered in Eldenia. But he expected this as well. Chi-You was level 100 after all, with boss-tier stats that made him a fight meant for multiple players.

But not as strong as Li.

"Don't say I didn't warn you," said Li, his skull-head shaking.

For the first time since he had attained this new body, he withdrew the full extent of his arsenal.

In a swirl of black sparks, his staff - the Black Beauty - emerged, nestling snug into his skeletal wooden right hand. The Orphan of Shub-Niggurath impaled upon the staff gurgled out its infant cries, its willowy limbs flailing about, the ashen tendrils that made up its fingers flitting around.

A ghostly robe draped around his thin torso, covering his leafy, branched body from the shoulders down to the waist in flowing material that was almost see-through. Yet upon closer inspection, there were faces visible. Countless ghostly faces were sown together to create the robe, and they all had mouths open in agony, and yet their screams could never escape the confines of the mystical fabric.

This was the Gravekeeper's Soul Shroud, a celestial-class armor that provided peerless magic resistance, massive bonuses to all curses and eldritch magic, and heavily boosted Li's spectral trait, rendering most physical attacks nigh-useless against him.

Then covering the soul shroud came the Edenian Grove Mantle, a godgiven-tier hooded piece of outerwear composed entirely of branches and leaves from the Tree of Life. The leaves emitted faint green glimmers that constantly nourished Li, heavily enhancing his health, health regeneration, and boosting his Druidry.

Two bands wrapped around his wrists. They were made of a silken black cloth inscribed with countless golden runes of sealing. Red eyes opened up in a line all around the bands, bloodshot with eldritch power. Bands embedded with the eyes of Sho-Gath, an imprisoned eldritch entity whose might the bands could channel. A celestial-tier item that converted a portion of all damage he took to use for any series of spells related to the eldritch creature.

Covering his legs was the Old Godskin Shendyt, a long, ragged patch of cloth similar to a kilt and made of the dried skin of a lesser Old One. It was, out of all of Li's items, the most plain, boosting his defenses and enhancing the strength of all his barriers and imparting curse effects upon them.

Li could feel pure power flowing through him, and it was a sensation unlike any he had never felt before. It felt like a drug had entered his body, flowing through all of his veins, shooting up a buzz in his mind that did not dull his senses, but made them hyper-aware, aware that the world around him was nothing compared to him, insignificant little patches of reality bowing before an existence that was infinitely grander.

But at the same time, even though he knew he grasped overwhelming power, he couldn't feel that sense of belonging that crept into him when he had used his eldritch powers. He couldn't feel the dark tendrils of the spells etching away at his mind, clawing away the feeble humanity. He was still himself, despite using the full extent of his power.

"Equipment that far surpasses divine making. You must be a player." Chi-You grunted in acknowledgement as he readied all six of his weapons. "How do you like my world? It is the perfect arena where warriors may clash might without a care in the world. It will even suppress the destructive insanity that plagues the minds of Old Ones such as yourself, else I would not have been able to duel Noctus freely. You may fight here with clear head and clear intention, as all warriors should."

"It's perfect for beating you down, I agree," said Li.

He gripped his staff, and a surge of energy flattened the grasses around him while shattering the earth, shooting out cobwebs of cracks into the dirt. He was thinking about trying to end the fight as soon as possible to use as little eldritch energy as he could, but like this, he could let loose and force this god to submit before him without a problem.

"I am pleased you find it agreeable." Chi-You smiled before roaring into the air. "[Arena Shift: Molten Core!]"

The world melted away, the meadows fading into black nothingness and the blue-sky chipping away like paint cracking off a canvas. For an instant, there was just darkness, the only forms visible being Chi-You and Li, but in the next moment, the world reformed again.

This time, the world had become the very opposite of the grassy meadows and gentle skies of before. It was a fuming hellscape of barren, rocky land. There was not a single shred of green anywhere. Huge rock formations, some as tall as buildings, other as large as mountains, rose in the air, all fuming with intensely hot steam.

The sky was a shade of deep, dark red, covered with fumes from ever-burning flames that roared everywhere. In the distance, the rumble of volcanic activity echoed, making the earth tremble.

Li knew this place. Molten Core was the volcanic lair where players fought Chi-You in the game, though it seemed that here, the arena wasn't limited in space; it stretched endlessly into the horizon.

"Forgive me. I usually roll the dice on which map I duel the other gods on for the sake of fairness, but you are a player." Chi-You tightened his grip on his weapons, and flames emerged on them, flickering in the air as the superheated winds of the world fanned their blazing tongues.

"You are far stronger than me, and I have already suffered countless defeats at the hands of your kind before coming to this world. And since then, I have trained over a millennium, always hoping to defeat one of you. And now, the chance has finally landed upon my many hands."