Chi-You made the first move.

"[Asura's Wrath!]" Chi-You's voice blasted through the vast expanse of his infernal world. Bursts of fire and exhaust started to spurt from all the segments around his body, wreathing him in an aura of blazing white. The only organic part of him – his bull's head – started to flare up, the horns graced with dancing white fires and the fur becoming wavy and flickering like an inferno.

Li stepped backwards, his single step caving in a chunk of the earth and sending him soaring several dozens of meters backwards. Keeping his distance from a powerful melee fighter was a basic thing to do. Chi-You always started with [Asura's Wrath], that massively enhanced his fire damage and physical stats temporarily.

Raid bosses usually had cheat skills that had far stronger effects than any regular spell, and this was one of them.

It was crucial to stall the powerful buff out. In a party, a tank would soak up Chi-You's rampage until the buff wore out, but here, Li was alone.

Or was he?

Li tapped his staff to the ground. "[Summon: Gigantosaur]."

Chi-You exhaled, a puff of superheated steam curling from his lips. He drove his armored hooves into the ground and blasted forwards. A trail of white fire followed his movements, making him seem like a comet of fiery destruction.

Li was surprised.

The god's movements far exceeded anything Li had ever witnessed before. In his human form, his senses were automatically suppressed to an extent, letting him function normally as a human without sensory overload, but now, he absolutely needed to use the full extent of his perception to glimpse the speeding god.

This moment of indecision in unconsciously holding back on his senses would have given Chi-You the time to close the gap were it not for the Gigantosaur's arrival.

It erupted from the earth, its tawny, long neck crashing through layers and layers of solid rock. The rest of its body was still emerging from underground, but the neck and head itself, a spiny, fanged mass that looked like a cross between a brachiosaur and a dragon, were almost thirty meters tall, more than large enough to block Chi-You's charge.

Chi-You slammed into the base of the Gigantosaur's neck, and a seismic explosion rumbled through the air, sending squalls littered with debris scattering every which way from the point of impact. The Gigantosaur roared as its head flailed backwards from the blow.

"You think this lowly beast will stop me? You insult me, Old One!" Chi-You roared as he held out each of his six arms wide. The golden weapons shifted, the arsenal all forming into greatswords crackling with divine white fire. "Come, my swords, and [Thousand Strikes!]"

Chi-You slashed down with all six blades, gouging out deep precision cuts in the base of the Gigantosaur's neck. Then, countless after images of the blades whirled about, slicing and slashing until one thousand full cuts had eviscerated the Gigantosaur's neck within a second. The shockwaves didn't just cut the beast, but sent slicing blades of energy barreling throughout the landscape.

The ground shook as mountains and spires of earth in the distance, cut apart by the blades, fell.

Fiery shockwaves echoed all about the god, rendering the earth around him even more of a scorched, ember-filled wasteland than it already was.

This was a passive effect of Chi-You's first phase. All of his attacks generated shockwaves that made mass summons highly ineffective, and as a result, Li only summoned individual strong creatures, but against a raid boss boosted by a cheat buff, the Gigantosaur was nothing.

The Gigantosaur had not even the time to unearth its body before Chi-You had decapitated it. The god smiled as the Gigantosaur's severed neck fell sideways with a great crash, sending showers of blood spattering upon Chi-You's flaming form before instantly igniting and evaporating into a crimson steam.

But as the great breadth of the monster's neck fell aside to reveal Li behind it, Chi-You's smile faded.

Li had his staff poised towards Chi-You. "[Vulthoom's Scream]"

A rip in space-time, blacker than any night, tore apart in front of the staff.

"Be my bulkwark, my shields!" Chi-You's swords disintegrated into golden flakes that reconstituted into shields of all shapes and sizes. He placed them all in front of him, and a barrier of golden energy covered even this formidable bulwark.

From this spacial tear emerged at horrifying speeds a mass of bone-white roots lined with crimson diadem spikes that beat like live hearts. The roots twisted and gathered into a spear-point as they accelerated at speeds far surpassing sound, slamming into Chi-You's shields and driving him far, far back.

The sound of impact was not metallic. It was an unearthly scream composed of countless different pitches, so garbled and warped that it was the definition of alien. The scream was audible to all despite the fact that the roots moved at speeds exceeding sound.

Chi-You flew backwards almost a hundred meters, two long trails of molten rock steaming from an attempt to drive his legs in and push back against the roots.

Li withdrew his staff, and the roots faded into nothingness, the space time tear closing away as well. He took this moment of reprieve bought from generating distance to analyze the situation.

Chi-You hadn't unveiled anything new yet, despite claiming to have trained a thousand years. His power level was also to be expected. The Gigantosaur was an A-ranked summon with a minimum level requirement of 80 to conjure, specialized for defense with tough skin and a healing factor.

But Chi-You's sword form was the ultimate offense for a warrior, cutting through resistances, spectral forms, and applying severe burns that stunted regeneration.

Combined with the insane number of stats that [Asura's Wrath] granted him, it wasn't surprising that Chi-You could flat out one-shot a high-level summon. Even a level 100 tank might find themselves instantly killed if caught with their defenses down, making the start of combat against the god a tense dance where mistakes were not allowed.

But [Asura's Wrath] wouldn't be active long, and the war god couldn't use ranged abilities while it was active. Meaning that as long as Li kept his distance until the buff wore out, he would be fine.

Li waved his staff at the Gigantosaur's severed head. "[Spawn of Atlach-Nacha]."

The egg materialized within the Gigantosaur's brain. Unlike the last time he had used this spell, now that the spawn's egg had a far more powerful host, the infant would be far stronger, reaching level 90 at the least, and yet it would still just be another body bag to tank one or two hits, but even that amount of time was useful here.

Li glanced back to Chi-You and paused.

Chi-You was pointing three bows at Li, his six arms nocking arrows. Intense golden light and fire circled the arrows in three raging vortexes of power that sucked in debris before incinerating it into nothingness. The blazing white aura of flames and steam that gushed all around the god indicated he was still in [Asura's Wrath], so he wasn't supposed to be able to use his bow.

"Damn it." Li had wasted one second too much on planning a second summon, and the spawn wouldn't hatch in time. He had to cast an instant barrier instead of a more powerful, channeled one. "[Oak Fortress]."

Li waved his hand in front of him, and a series of gargantuan oaks rose up immediately, soaring high into the air as they formed a vanguard of durable trunks.

"I have trained a thousand years to exceed my limitations!" shouted Chi-You, his voice audible even from a hundred meters away. "Now, face the fruit of my labor! [Asura Style: War God's Nova!]"

When Chi-You loosed his arrows, an explosion of force burst around him, rumbling the earth. The arrows, as large as spears, surged forwards, and as they flew further and continued to spiral, the superheated light that circled at their tips grew and grew.

It didn't even take more than a bare instant for the arrows to pierce through the line of oaks, shattering their wide forms in a nova of light. Li braced for impact. The arrows pierced through his body, going straight through him and sailing further into the distance behind him.

An explosion of light burst from behind him as the arrows exploded, likely gouging out vast craters in the land. Any single one of those arrows could have rendered most of Riviera a smoking mess.

Gods truly were on an entirely different playing field.

Flames erupted within Li, gushing out his body, exploding out his skull-head's open cavities and eye sockets. His regeneration halted, and even his healing spells would lose much of their effectiveness for the time being.

Li felt real damage for the first time.

It wasn't a painful sensation, but more of an awareness that his life had been chipped away. The lack of pain let him focus. Chi-You was now capable of using ranged abilities in his [Asura's Wrath] form, and to top it off, they seemed to be boosted by the buff as well.

The arrows were also designed to deal with ranged opponents, the vortexes gaining more heat and power the more distance they covered.

It seemed the war god was tired of being blasted upon from afar. He had learned from his experiences, figuring out ways to dismantle the typical parties that fought him.

And the spell the war god had used, this Asura Style, wasn't something Li remembered. It was an invention.

An innovation created from training.

Thankfully, the attack wasn't nearly as severe as a melee one, and it didn't have the same resistance piercing capabilities as the god's sword form.

Li might have been a mage, but he had invested a surprising amount of his equipment and stats into durability. His resistances and health were fairly high, not to mention the fact that his spectral form heavily reduced the damage of physical blows. In fact, most of the damage he had taken right now was from the fire against which he had a weakness to.

But even against that, he had countermeasures. His celestial-tier [Gravekeeper's Soul Shroud] made him highly magic resistant, even against fire damage. Plus, though High Dryads, the life-bearing counterpart to his Elder Leshen race, had a particularly severe fire weakness, his own race had less of a disadvantage against the element.

Yet he could not deny that the damage was enough to seriously think about. It had knocked off a third of his health.

"Resting already!?" Chi-You nocked his bows again, and once more, deadly vortexes of fire and light started to swirl at their points.

Fifteen seconds.

That was how long [Asura's Wrath] lasted, and now, ten seconds had passed. Of course, he wouldn't know whether Chi-You could keep the buff up for longer now, but he had health to spare if that was the case.

Li ran forwards, or more accurately, floated at high speeds, his spectral form looming nearer to Chi-You. The [Spawn of Atlach-Nacha] hatched, bursting from the severed Gigantosaur's skull.

It was monstrously big, almost fifteen meters tall, and it flew alongside Li with draconic wings that carried a serpentine body covered with black scales. Eight segmented and oversized spider legs flailed wildly in the air, eager to slice at something. Its face was just a mouth, round and circular like that of a lamprey's and lined with revolving teeth.

"Oh? You're approaching me?" Chi-You. "Very well, but be ready to face my Asura Style."

Chi-You fired the arrows.

Li did not have the spawn block them for him. He tanked the blows, letting the arrows of divine light and fire pierce through him, setting his wooden body ablaze again. The faces in the grey soul shroud warped their mouths in agony, attempting to mitigate the damage and causing the fires to dim by the moment.

"Hmph. Your spirit is admirable." Chi-You dematerialized his bows and tensed up, his back hoof shifting in preparation to leap backwards.

Li saw this as a sign that Chi-You needed to retreat. He knew then that the god's [Asura's Wrath] was the same, and that it was ending. If this landscape acted the same as the god's boss arena, then he would retreat and the environment would generate volcanic eruptions and walls of fire that protected the god while he recharged his buff.

"No, you don't," said Li as he pointed his staff at Chi-You. He was now in range to cast some of his deadlier curses and status effects. "[Root of Vulthoom]."

Chi-You froze as a tendril-like root, ashen white and wriggling like a worm, pierced his hoof, spreading up and through his body, growing out thorns of red that bulged even under his bronze skin. The roots that were powerful enough to even halt space and time drove the god into a complete stillness.

Li stopped in front of the frozen god. He saw as the fiery white aura around Chi-You began to dissipate. The jet bursts of fire emanating from every segment of his metal muscles faded, and they went from a bright white color to a dull black, like the lights of a machine shutting down.

[Asura's Wrath] also made Chi-You highly resistant to damage, poisons, and curses, but now that it had faded, anything Li did would be at maximum efficacy.

The spawn hovered right above Chi-You, corrosive saliva dripping from its buzzsaw-like mouth. Li did not make it attack yet. Any damage of sufficient caliber would negate the root.

So he had to make this one attack count.

"Ready yourself," said Li. "I hope you do not die from this, as I will need you to lead me away from this world of yours."

Li slammed his staff to the ground, and the Orphan of Shub-Niggurath impaled upon it screamed, echoing out a shrill, static-infused sound that no infant should ever make. This was [Orphan's Cry: Act 1], a close-range area of effect debuff that reduced resistances and induced fear, but a boss like Chi-You was immune to such a weak fear.

Normal items usually had a single active effect or just passive stat boosts, but Celestial-tier items had a whole range of abilities infused within them. At their maximum power, they usually had a trump card active ability that could match or exceed Ultima-class spells, though it would disable the item for a while after such an usage.

For the [Black Beauty], this was the ability to channel the Orphan's cries.

The cry had a particularly high cost and long cooldown for a rather weak effect, but every repeated cast evolved the ability as the infant grew more in distress, until at Act 4, its status as a Celestial-tier item became very apparent, its helpless cries calling reaching the dark mother Shub Niggurath's maternal instincts and calling a shard of her down.

As a result, it was useful to cycle through the various acts as quick as possible to try and reach act 4.

The [Root of Vulthoom] kept Chi-You frozen for quite a while or until first instance of damage against him. An extremely powerful spell with an extremely long cooldown, and so Li could afford the luxury of casting Act 1.

Li also began casting more serious debuffs. In the real world, he was limited by how fast he could tap out his keys, but here, he was limited solely by thought.

"[Resistance-Piercing Spores]"

"[Corroding Mushroom Field]"

"[Greater Curse of Damage]"

"[Greater Curse of Corrosion]"

"[Mark of the Hunt]"

"[Mark of Death]"

"[Mark of the Sacrificial Lamb]"

Chi-You's leg twitched. The root did have a time limit, though it was quite long. Li took this as a sign to move on to buffing himself. He was specialized in debuffing others rather than buffing himself, and most of his gear had bonuses for casting curses and status effects.

As a result, he had few self-buffs.

To compensate, he had a vast repertoire of healing spells, but, most importantly, he had a celestial-tier item to aid him. He put his branched fingers to his leafy chest. The black band around his wrist surged with crackling crimson energy.

The red eyes lining the band opened, rolling around as they channeled the power of the imprisoned eldritch entity Sho-Gath, master of malevolent forces in the universe and known for blood-pacts.

Bloody red particles flowed from Li's body to the eyes. The [Thousand Eye Bands], as a celestial-tier item, used its unique ability of converting damage into a resource to expend for powerful spells in Sho-Gath's arsenal.

By tanking not one, but two volleys of Chi-You's arrows and reaching down to nearly half health, Li had suffered enough damage to unlock some of the item's stronger spells.

The eyes suddenly widened, and a burst of crimson energy blasted upwards, reaching up all the way into the sky.

Li started to grow, his form becoming so large that it towered over Chi-You, casting a shadow over the god who was enormous in his own right. Crimson red eyes began to manifest all around Li's body, opening and directing their hateful glares all to Chi-You.

This was [Abyssal Gigantism], an A+ ranked buff that, at the cost of making Li's hitbox bigger and reducing his agility, would impart his spells and physical attacks with explosions of eldritch energy that dealt a significant portion of the original attack's damage.

Meaning, his next attack had to be big.

As big as possible.

And he had the perfect spell in mind.

Li grasped his staff in both hands and raised it high in the air.

His looming figure seemed a shadow of death, an incarnation of unfeeling judgement that would smite even gods into nothingness.

All this time, he had casted B and A ranked spells. Strong spells, to be certain, but all of them held level requirements that, at the highest, were level 100.

What would happen when he cast an Ultima-class spell? A spell that required an existence beyond level 100 to cast? Something far beyond the realm of even the god standing before him?

A magic circle emanated around Chi-You, then another one, then another one, then another, until there were countless magic circles swirling around the god, the outermost circle revolving so far away that it spanned nearly into the horizon.

"[Call to the Cosmos: Xiclotl Falling]"