332. Fifth Tier Breakthrough (V)
Zane plunged into the heart of the tornado back-first, clawing at the air as he went.
His skin—toughened and tempered under planet-shaping pressures, bolstered by the powers of the Asura—came into contact with a substance heated to temperatures that matched the surface of a sun.
That skin scorched off in an instant. A flash of pain slapping him all over the back, making him hiss.
Then he was submerged in the chaos.
It felt like he'd been plunged into a waterfall of molten knives—stabbed a thousand times from all sides—shining wounds opening up down the muscles of his back, his chest—
Blood fountained out of him, staining the air crimson with his vitality.
His Health began to plummet.
He roared, bucking against the current, and his Chains lashed out. Whipping against the storm, crashing against the currents, smashing great bursts of Stormfire, wiping out swathes of rushing gold with his own Destruction white.
But there was too much Solar Flare. More took its place in an instant, and swamped him.
Zane was one man, and it felt like he wasn't just fighting a world. He was fighting a sun.
He couldn't keep it off him. It poured deep into his body, melting the tight cords of his muscles, weakening him even as he fought.
He was swept, smashed, and slashed about in a confusion of blistering heat, spinning without direction, just whirling, roaring—
𝕎𝕒𝕣𝕟𝕚𝕟𝕘!
ℍ𝕖𝕒𝕝𝕥𝕙 𝕦𝕟𝕕𝕖𝕣 𝟟𝟝%
He felt it searing into his skull, his very soul—everywhere he looked there was shining gold—
Solar Flare seared, melted, and vaporized more than burned. It was something even the toughest materials had trouble defending against. He felt that viscerally now.
It was unmaking his body at every touch.
Just being in its presence seemed to soften and weaken his flesh and bones—a vicious radiation. So when that flare struck, it scorched clean through him, leaving only riverbeds of blackened, smoking flesh in its wake. The most deadly acid known to nature, an acid that smoldered like the hottest of flames.
It was wrecking even Zane's body.
Zane clenched his jaw. Narrowed his eyes. Killed the little impulse to panic.
He had a feeling he had to act now.
He knew exactly what to do. He followed his gut.
His Chains stopped smashing against the current.
Instead, they curled around each other, making a dead weight.
He saw where they—where he—would drop. Straight down the middle of the tornado, through wall after wall of scything flame, going to rock-bottom—
𝕎𝕒𝕣𝕟𝕚𝕟𝕘!
ℍ𝕖𝕒𝕝𝕥𝕙 𝕦𝕟𝕕𝕖𝕣 𝟝𝟘%
He snarled and pulled the trigger. No hesitation.
He activated Anchor of the Gods.
His Chains gained a supernatural gravity and dropped straight into the unknown.
Zane held on. And plunged right after.
A wall of golden plasma loomed up before him—
He just braced. Tensed his muscles. And took it head-on.
He crashed straight through it with a grunt.
It felt like his entire front side had been flayed, all at once—
There was no time to even register the pain.
He burst through another wall of flare. And another, and the shock of it sent white spots streaking through his head. He clung on stubbornly.
He blasted through a fourth—took it with nothing more than a grunt, eyes narrowed, staring down the fourth—crashed through that too—a big meteor of melting, blackened flesh—
𝕎𝕒𝕣𝕟𝕚𝕟𝕘!
ℍ𝕖𝕒𝕝𝕥𝕙 𝕦𝕟𝕕𝕖𝕣 𝟚𝟝%!
Then he was out in open air, tumbling down and down—dimly, in the back of his mind, he felt that vastness of Law and essence rage off behind him, off to scour the rest of this pocket dimension.
He hit a shelf of stone. And broke clean through it. Smashed another—and another, plummeting what must've been a thousand feet, deep into a lightless gorge—
And at last, hit rock-bottom.
THUD.
For a moment, Zane just lay there, smoking, spread out against the ground.
Then he groaned. And propped himself up.
He inspected himself.
Nearly all the skin on his body had been flayed off. A good deal of the muscle was half-melted, the rest blackened. So ruined he couldn't even feel it anymore.
And that was with his Asura State running at full force, blunting the worst of the damage.
It felt like he'd just been blasted by an army of Minor Gods.
If he hadn't put his body through all that tempering…
But he had.
In the end, he'd been strong enough to withstand it. Not for the first time, he was quite glad there was so much of him. One could really never be too big.
Now a bloody light was pouring out of the ruins of his chest. Swirling up a haze of crimson, and his body began to feel hot all over—the healing powers of his Asura Body taking hold. The bleeding was slowing, stemming….
He coughed out a gob of blood. A faint golden haze still shimmered over it, the vestiges of Solar Flare radiation. Still doing its damage.
It'd burned him so deep it'd even gotten into his lungs…
He felt his new Asura Body resilience then. His muscles were knitting together now, and fast. Raw skin growing over old wounds, bloody light fighting off the worst of it.
It was a matter of essence until he was whole again.
He'd expended a great deal of it fighting that tornado, yanking himself out of there…
This place really was trying to kill him.
That impression of Solar Flare was still seared bright in his mind.
He just knelt there, catching his breath, chest heaving, for a while. The rumbling vanished into the far distance—growing weaker, and he felt its Laws coming apart in the Astral Plane.
He blinked, looking around, feeling things out—and sure enough…
There was a lull in the Law. The sky was dimmer everywhere he looked, those tongues of Solar Flare smaller, less vibrant.
It was as though this chunk of the world had exhausted itself, burned itself up in one big outburst. Now it was taking a breath.
He wasn't sure when it'd start up again. But it seemed he wasn't in imminent danger.
He stood, brushed himself off, and took stock of his body.
A good third of his essence was gone—and he hadn't even gotten started on his Comprehension. That essence was not coming back.
He wasn't sure how long he'd take to break through. Or how long he could last here. But he couldn't afford many more run-ins like that.
The impression of that tornado was still seared deep into his mind—into his flesh. When he closed his eyes, even now, he could feel its residue… He felt that raw intensity.
"…"
Hold on.
That feeling…
He sat down, crossed his legs. And fixed his mind on the power that'd wrecked him.
He put out a hand, and Heavenly Stormfire burst to life. A mass of chaotic purple-white.
But he could feel the difference more clearly than ever; he could feel it, see it, in his mind's eye. He'd wrestled with it.
His heart thumped faster.
He knew what he needed to do.
He added more power to his Stormfire. But he didn't let that flare get any bigger—just kept stacking in more essence, feeling, seeing the intensity increase… Soon its heat was so fierce it felt like a miniature sun.
It wouldn't condense—he could only hold that intensity by sheer force of will. It wasn't stable. It'd only combust. He could not make a raging river of this.
The shape wasn't right. The feeling.
Solar Flare was a flow, not a flicker. He closed his eyes—felt the nature of the flame in his hands. And nudged it where he wanted.
Wild and chaotic to dense, smoothing out. Coursing fierce.
The movement began changing too. The flickers slowing, going to a heavy swirling…
His heart thumped a little faster still. This was it. This felt right.
The thing was starting to rumble—ever-so-faintly.
But he needed more; it would only take at a certain density, he felt now—he needed to go all the way. Shaping it anew.
He poured in more flame, eagerly.
And felt the Laws in that flame start to tremble. Saw the purple flickering lighter, thicker, coursing now, showing signs of gold, gold streaked with the White of destruction, and Zane could feel a new power blossoming in his fist—
BOOM!
It exploded in his face.
He blinked. Wiped the soot off.
He didn't mind—he was actually quite pleased with that effort.
The game was well and truly on now.
He looked around.
He seemed to be sitting on a blackened pillar.
The explosion had just carved out the walls of the canyon for miles around—making a cave with blackened walls sloughing to slag. He glimpsed some of those Solar Flare crystals in pale pools, half-melted…
It was like he'd detonated a full-force Stormfire Smash. But that only from a fistful of his new power.
And he hadn't even synthesized it yet.
All his pain was suddenly forgotten.
He began again, panting. Coaxing up a new flame to…
And deep in that storm-torn ravine, explosions rocked the world, over and over… walls of purple light—tinged more and more with gold—would pierce from seams going deep underground, striking through to the skies…
Slowly, Zane got closer.
Day gave way to night gave way to day.
His body had healed by then. His soul too. The brilliant Solar Flare impression seared into his mind grew fainter and fainter. Now it was on the verge of fading out.
But he'd squeezed every last drop of knowledge out of it.
He smelled faintly of smoke. His hair was a wild mess and he sat several miles lower than he had before. Above him was a misshapen cavern, vast and foreboding, seething with wild energies, an accidental strip-mine.
Still Zane sat there, cross-legged, eyes closed. Putting the full heft of his soul, all his comprehension, to this one task. Letting his intuition—the ghost of a feeling—move him.
A fresh flame burst to life at his fingertips, its edges running Destruction-white. Its edges softened going fluid, growing dense, flaring painfully bright, and the whole thing began to tremble.
His eyes were bloodshot and narrowed. His breathing heavy.
He could feel just how close it was…
He bore down on it, felt, for the first time, the gold overtaking the purple—
BOOM!
That blast knocked him flat. He lay there, squinting up at the distant sliver of sky. Just a faint line of gold now, a seam in a sea of darkness.
He groaned.
It wasn't enough.
The closer he got, the more he felt how far he was from a Heavenly Solar Flare.
He yearned for a mighty river of gold—a light that seared at its core with the white of Destruction… he could picture it, feel it clear in his mind.
He had no river. He could not even muster a stream…
Zane stood and yawned.
He had never met a Law that resisted him like this before. He was quite used to things like this coming easy—but just condensing a single unit of Solar Flare was proving quite the challenge.
Noughtfire had warned him this might happen. Even for him.
It only spurred him on.
It was growing harder and harder, now that impression in his mind was a mere whisper.
He prowled around, hunting for more sources.
He followed his senses. Using feel to sniff one out. Soon he stumbled on a tunnel, found a cavern stuffed full of Solar Flare crystals.
He sat and meditated there for a half-hour, trying to grasp the feeling again.
Too faint. He would be here weeks, maybe months, before he broke through.
He leapt his way overground again, made his way to one of those wells of Solar Flare.
Better.
But it wasn't enough for Zane. If only…
He turned his gaze to the horizons. If he squinted—quite far off—he could just make out a wisp of wind. A funnel of light, starting to build.
…Hmm.