Zeke was only distracted for an instant, but that was more than enough for a fighter of Silas’s caliber. The slight man swayed to the side, slapping Zeke’s mace as it passed him by. That simple slap contained the weight of a mountain, and it threw Zeke’s entire stance off balance. A split second later, Silas had peppered him with a half-dozen strikes, each aimed at various points on Zeke’s naked shoulder. With each attack, a wave of numbness spread through his arm so that when he recovered his balance, the limb hung limp. It only lasted a few seconds, but it was a testament to how dangerous the man was.

“You still fight like an untrained ogre,” the older man said with a derisive sniff. “I expected more from you.”

“Yeah, I expected better from you, too,” Zeke growled, shaking his tingling arm. After a moment, the blood began flowing and the numbness faded. “I thought you were a good person.”

Silas shook his head, saying, “In this world? There is no good and evil. Even those demons back there were once human beings. They have been tortured and twisted into a mockery of humanity. Do you think any of us are any different? Your entire foundation is built on a mountain of bodies. As is mine. Lady Constance is no different.”

That wasn’t true. Zeke might have killed, and some of his victims may have been innocent. However, he had always endeavored to do the right thing. And he never could have sacrificed his family. That, more than anything, set Lady Constance apart from everyone else, at least in terms of her callous disregard for collateral damage.

“We’re going to have to agree to disagree,” Zeke spat. Then, without any more conversation, he dashed forward. He’d learned his lesson the first time around, though, and instead of a long, sweeping strike of his first attack, the second was short, compact, and contained. Still, Silas slapped it aside. That didn’t dissuade Zeke, and he spent the next few seconds subjecting Silas to a barrage of attacks that turned his mace into a blur.

But all he found was empty air. Silas moved like water, dodging each strike with subtle movements. When he couldn’t dodge, his hands and feet would lash out with just enough force to throw Zeke’s mace off target.

It was a stark reminder of just how far Zeke still had to go. He had the stats. He had the skills. But his technique left quite a bit to be desired. His current abilities were plenty to deal with monsters, but against a true master like Silas, none of his advantages seemed to count for anything.

After that first barrage, Zeke leapt back, tightening his fingers on the grip of his mace. Silas had barely even moved, and yet, he remained untouched. Zeke’s only solace lay in the fact that the older man hadn’t had the opportunity to counterattack.

“Better,” Silas said. “You have graduated from woefully inept to almost average.”

Zeke gritted his teeth in frustration, but he didn’t bother contributing to the conversation. He’d never been much for witty dialogue, so he didn’t see any reason to start now. As he reset his feet, a conflagration erupted in the distance, signaling that Talia had finally reached her mother.

“She is going to die, you know,” Silas said, repositioning his own feet and adopting a stance that looked like it had its foundations in eastern martial arts. One foot extended behind him, while the other remained bent. His right arm stretched out toward Zeke. “She cannot stand against her mother. Help me capture her, and we can ensure her survival.”

“I’ll extend the same offer to you,” Zeke countered. “Help me subdue Constance, and once she’s down, I’ll help you against the demons.”

In the distance, the battle against the demons in the keep continued to rage, and it looked as if the Radiant Guard were getting the worst of it. It wasn’t a question of power – those men and women were among the best The Radiant Isles had to offer – but rather, one of numbers. The demons were far more numerous and almost as powerful on an individual level. In addition, they had the benefit of defending the keep. While Constance had blown a hole in the black stone wall, it still offered a tactical advantage.

But Zeke and Talia – not to mention Silas – were strong enough to tip the balance in humanity’s favor. However, so long as Constance remained in play, neither of them would lift a finger to help her or her forces.

“You overestimate me,” Silas stated. “And yourself. Lady Constance is our only hope.”

Zeke shook his head. He knew a zealot when he saw one. For all of Silas’s apparent rationality, he was wholly committed to the belief that Lady Constance was a being worthy of obedience. Perhaps even worship, considering the fervor in the man’s eyes. And it wasn’t difficult to understand why; he had likely seen her do amazing things. Year after year, he had put the entirety of his faith in the belief that she was the only person strong enough to do what needed to be done. And every time that had been put to the test, she had come through. Beacon had flourished. Silas’s confidence in the woman was well-founded.

He was a lost cause.

Zeke sighed. Then, without any more warning, he shot forward, covering the dozen feet between them in the space of an instant. When he reached Silas, Zeke embraced [Weight of Two Worlds], increasing gravity’s pressure on Silas by a factor of ten. The older man was unbowed. He was a true elite and one of the most powerful people on the continent. As such, he could shoulder the heavy burden. However, it would still slow him down.

Silas grunted in surprise as a tremor shook the ground, but when Zeke aimed another attack at him, he reacted much the same way as he had before, slapping the mace aside with ease and efficiency. So their battle began in earnest, with Zeke constantly on the attack. Silas, for all his martial mastery, could do nothing more than defend against Zeke’s onslaught.

Frustrated, Zeke’s mace became a blur as the green energy of his martial path and the red mist of his skill swirled in the air. To outsiders, the two men were barely perceptible, they moved so quickly; Zeke’s style had always hinged on his ridiculous strength, but he still had agility and dexterity that far exceeded that of the continent’s elites. And he put those stats to the test as he eked more and more speed from his body.

Meanwhile, in the distance, explosions continued to erupt as the fight between Talia and her mother escalated. Cracks of thunder joined the cacophony as Abby rained one [Thunder Strike] after another at the demon army. A hundred other skills resulted in a hundred other sounds, creating a discordant symphony.

But Zeke paid them no mind. He only had so much concentration to spare, and with his skill constantly draining his mana as well as his mental energy, he couldn’t afford to give more than cursory notice to the other battles.

As he fought, Zeke began to manipulate the weight of his body as well as his weapon. One second, he would be heavier than a mountain, and the next, lighter than a feather. Suddenly, a subtle shift of his weight slowed his weapon just enough to throw Silas’s attempt to block the weapon off, and Zeke was rewarded with his first landed attack. It was little more than a graze, but there was enough force behind that strike that it sent the older man spinning away. He recovered quickly, but Zeke advanced with a grim expression.

Zeke had Silas on the back foot, now. It was only a matter of time before he caught him again. Soon, the rhythm would break, and Zeke would –

Zeke’s mental gloating was cut off when Silas suddenly leapt high into the air, and at the apex, teleported down to aim an axe kick at his armored shoulder. When it connected, Zeke’s entire body convulsed as wave after wave of agony spread throughout his body. It completely bypassed his racial resistance to pain, attacking him with a fervor he’d only experienced once. Back then, he’d stupidly combined a pair of unknown ingredients that had completely ripped his body apart. It was only through sheer luck that it had also rebuilt him, improving his race. As ill-advised as that act had been, it had prepared him for a reborn life filled with pain. So, even though he felt as if he was being steadily torn to shreds by the rampant energies contained in Silas’s kick, he managed to maintain his wits enough to dodge the man’s next attack.

Silas’s fist crackled with white lightning that singed Zeke’s cheek as he narrowly avoided it. Using every ounce of control he possessed, he leapt backward. His body trembled as he tried to corral the rampaging energy within him. It only took a second, but Silas wasn’t going to give him an opportunity to recover.

The man became a whirlwind of punches and kicks as he subjected Zeke to a barrage of attacks, each one sizzling with that same white lightning. Zeke hunkered down, angling his body so that he took the majority of the attacks on the armored portions of his body. The thick metal absorbed most of the energy, but enough leaked through that his flesh beneath sizzled anew with every attack. The unarmored portions of his body fared much worse, and the attacks left jagged scars along his skin.

It only took a few seconds, but in that time, Zeke was struck dozens of times, and it only ended when he shifted [Weight of Two Worlds]. Instead of weighing down on Silas, the shift resulted in two sources of gravity – one in the sky, the other in the ground – pulling him in opposite directions. It wasn’t enough to rip the man in two, but it did cause Silas to stumble, which gave Zeke the opportunity to aim a [Life Scythe] at him.

The red blade of energy cut through Silas like a giant scythe, yanking vital energy out of his body and returning it to Zeke. The wounds of Silas’s barrage of attacks didn’t completely heal, but the vital energy quenched the worst of the pain.

“Interesting,” Silas said, spitting blood onto the ground. Some of it flecked into his white beard, staining it red. Perhaps his endurance wasn’t up to the task of dealing with Zeke’s skills after all. “Weight. And vitality theft. A potent mixture.”

“I thought so,” was Zeke’s response. Then, without warning, he swept his weapon through the air again, and another [Life Scythe] sliced through the air. Silas leapt over it, but by the time he landed, Zeke was on top of him once again.

The martial artist was clearly slowed by the ongoing skill, [Weight of Two Worlds], but even then, he managed to redirect Zeke’s continuous attacks. He even found room to strike out from time to time, but even when they landed, they didn’t have the potency of Silas’s previous strikes. They were still dangerous – probably more so than any human he’d encountered so far – but it would take dozens to make much of a difference for someone with Zeke’s constitution.

As Zeke fought, he continued to experiment with varying weights, and over the course of a dozen exchanges, he managed to develop some insight into how it affected his speed and momentum. He embraced that, and his mind was enveloped in his martial path. In some ways, it was identical to what he’d felt when he’d first established his path way back in the troll caves. Back then, he’d been faced with a troll warlord who, at the time, was far beyond him in technique, skills, and raw stats. But he’d gained some insight into his martial path, which allowed him to turn the tide.

This was similar. But it was also wholly different. Zeke was far more experienced, and his technique was light years beyond what it had been back then. In those caves, he’d swung his mace like an untrained caveman. Now, he was a warrior who’d spent thousands of hours training and almost as much time engaged in life-and-death battles. In that time, his path had shifted slightly. Some of that was due to his skill choices – specifically [Unleash Momentum] and [Weight of Two Worlds] – but the roots of that shift could be traced to his experiences as well.

In the demon realm, he’d briefly brushed against a much higher concept, and it had nearly ripped him to pieces. But it was undeniably powerful, resulting in the decimation of the demon horde. That flavored the shift of his path as well, pushing him toward the concept of force.

It was the core of who he was. He wasn’t some clever warrior who looked for the smart or most efficient way around a problem. He was a runaway train that wouldn’t stop for anyone, and he faced his enemies head-on, challenging them to match his might. He was force incarnate, embodying that ideal with his every action. He chose a path, and woe be unto anyone who got in his way.

As Zeke fought, he embraced that path, and something snapped in his mind. However, unlike what had happened back in the demon realm, when everything had felt like it was crumbling under some untenable weight, it felt like the final piece of a puzzle sliding into place. For the first time in his life, he felt whole. In fact, until that moment, he hadn’t even known that the piece was missing. Now, though, he questioned how he’d managed to put one foot in front of the other without stumbling. A notification flashed before his eyes, but he quickly pushed it away with a flick of his mind.

Suddenly, Zeke’s body erupted with unfocused force, green energy swirling around his limbs. Silas stumbled, and Zeke forged ahead, swinging his mace with inhuman might. Before, he’d been strong. Now, his strength impacted the world on a conceptual level. When Silas tried to slap his weapon aside like he had hundreds of times before, the mace didn’t even tremble. It continued on, its path undeniable until it crashed into the older man’s shoulder.

Bones crunched as Silas was driven into the ground. But the old master wasn’t without tricks of his own, and he leapt from the ground with speed rivaling Talia at her fastest, and his foot connected with Zeke’s chin.

Zeke’s head snapped back a single inch, and Silas’s foot crumbled. Letting out a roar, the man reached the apex of his leap and used the same teleporting axe-kick attack. His other foot came down on Zeke’s unarmored shoulder, and the same agonizing energies tore through Zeke’s body.

The force of the kick sent a shockwave through the air, flattening the meadow’s swaying grass. But Zeke remained unbroken and unmoved.

Part of that was because he’d increased his own weight a hundred-fold, but it was also due to his newfound insight into his martial path. He wasn’t invincible; he just refused to be moved.

Ultimately, for all his well-developed technique, Silas was not one of the Chosen few who’d been picked to represent the various deities. As such, he’d never had the opportunities Zeke, Constance, or even Carlos had been given. He made up for that with unparalleled technique and powerful skills, but when faced with Zeke’s undeniable power, which had been further bolstered by his breakthrough into the next level of his martial path, it was all for naught.

When he landed, Silas collapsed to the ground. His crushed feet were simply incapable of supporting him.

“H-how…”

“You focused so much on technique,” Zeke said, stepping forward. “That would have worked in the old world. But here? This is a world of magic, Silas. Can’t you feel it? The underlying concepts of the universe run through everything we do. You neglected that because you were stuck in the old world.”

“I don’t understand,” the man muttered.

“And that’s why you lose,” Zeke stated. Then, without any more conversation, he brought his mace down with a huge, overhand strike. Silas tried to block. He even attempted to activate some skill. But his defenses crumbled before Zeke’s path-empowered attack, and in an instant, he was no more.

But Zeke wasn’t happy about it. He didn’t feel a sense of accomplishment. For all that they’d been on different sides, Zeke liked Silas. The old man had gone out of his way to help him, way back in Beacon. But he’d made the mistake of hitching his wagon to the wrong horse.

As if to punctuate that thought, another explosion echoed in the distance, and a huge conflagration spread across the meadow. At the center of those roiling flames was a glowing Constance who was holding her scepter high in the sky as she cackled madly.

Zeke rolled his shoulders, then took off at a jog in her direction. Silas had been a problem, but the real enemy was still alive.