Zeke strode forward, his grip tightening on the haft of his mace. Even though he was still pulling energy from the earth with [Metallurgical Repair], it was all he could do to keep his shoulders from slumping in exhaustion. Physically, he was mostly fine. His body could keep going for hours – perhaps days – more. But from a mental perspective, he was completely wrung out. And his spirit felt as if it had been chewed up and spat out. In short, he had little patience for the impending fight.

The giant skullcrab, which [Inspection] told him was fittingly called a skullcrab guardian, loomed over him like the world’s most macabre building. Its oversized claws were as big as a sports car, and its face was large enough that Zeke could see all the disgusting details. Once, he’d thought hermit crabs were kind of cute. But now? There was no way he could look at that unnatural face and feel anything but a twinge of horror.

And annoyance, if he was honest.

He just wanted to take a few minutes to rest, to consider his new attunement, and get his thoughts in order. But no – this hulking beast had decided to attack. Perhaps it was on a quest for vengeance because Zeke had destroyed the entire herd of skullcrabs. Or maybe it was just aggressive by nature and would have attacked regardless of Zeke’s actions. Either way, Zeke didn’t think it would listen to reason.

It was a beast, after all. A monster through and through, without even a hint of sapience in its mind. And if there was one thing Zeke was good at it, it was killing monsters. In most cases, he actually enjoyed it, after a fashion. Pitting himself against progressively more powerful creatures was almost like a job, by now. But in his state, there was no way he could enjoy the fight to come. There was too much going on beneath the surface of his mind, and he was far too afraid of losing himself to the corruption of his new attunement.

Sure, he’d been able to pull himself back this time, but would that always be the case? He didn’t know, and so, he knew he’d need to be careful not to lose control so long as he remained in Mal’canus.

“I think you should probably focus on that thing before you start hamstringing yourself with new rules,” Eveline said, pointing to the giant skullcrab. It had skittered a bit closer, moving in that curious, sideways shuffle hermit crabs were known for. It advanced far more quickly than its gargantuan size would suggest, and it was growing closer by the second.

“It’ll be fine,” Zeke said aloud, even though Eveline could read his mind. Hopefully, she wasn’t, but –

“No, I am. I can’t help it, what with you screaming your thoughts,” she said. “You really should get ahold of that. Not every mind-reading soul sliver you meet will be as benevolent as I am. In any case – oh. You’re not listening to me. Why aren’t you listening to me?”

Indeed, Zeke had already tuned the demonic spirit out and was focused on gathering mana and cramming it into the rune that would activate his skill. At the same time, he embraced his Will, flooding his body with potential force. Every step threatened to send him bounding forward with energy, but he kept himself – and his path – contained, pushing it toward his mace. Green mist erupted into being, wreathing his weapon and begging to be released.

But Zeke held back.

Even as his body quivered with unspent potential, he delved into his attunement, dragging more earthen energy from the ground. Yellow tendrils of earth attuned mana twisted up from the ground, wrapping around his legs, and twisting up his torso. After only a moment, they branched off into his arms and, finally, joined the green mist around his mace.

Just as Zeke was about to let loose, the demonic energy he’d so far kept at bay flooded into him, and he only barely managed to guide it into the weapon where it joined the other powers in a swirling storm of black, yellow, and green.

For a moment, Zeke’s mind went white with rage as the excess demonic mana suffused his mind, but with an effort of sheer willpower, he forced it aside and focused on a rudimentary braid of three strands.

Yellow earth energy.

Black demonic mana.

And held together by his Will.

The entire structure felt on the verge of collapse, and Zeke nearly lost control of his skill. The rune was saturated, though, so he only had to hold it all together for another second before, with a roar, he activated [Unleash Momentum] and released the force of thousands of swings all at once.

The braid of disparate energy eagerly flooded into the skill, augmenting it in a variety of ways. The Will of his path of force was the most compatible with the skill, and its effect was the simplest. But in most ways, it was also the most profound in that it made an already-powerful skill that much stronger. Unenhanced, the skill could destroy a building, under the influence of Zeke’s Will, it could topple mountains.

He'd only managed its like once before, and back then, he’d been far too weak to withstand it. But now? He was a very different person than when he’d unintentionally destroyed a third of Jariq. His body creaked under the pressure, but his skin didn’t crack. His muscles didn’t rend. And his organs did not rupture. He remained whole.

By contrast to the effect of his Will, the yellow earthen energy did not make the skill stronger, per se. Instead, it made the unleashed momentum more solid. It was the difference between being hit with a pillar of wind and being struck by a sledgehammer, though even that didn’t really do it justice.

And then there was the black demonic energy. It didn’t add any force, and it certainly wasn’t meant to bind the skill more closely to reality. Instead, it instilled a hunger in the skill. A need for violence. To Zeke’s untrained mind, it felt almost as if the skill grew jagged edges that were not only meant to make it more lethal, but also to inflict the maximum amount of pain. Fitting, considering what he knew of demons.

As the trio of energies mingled with the mana and momentum that normally fueled the skill, the governing rune quivered as if on the verge of collapse. That forced Zeke to clamp down on it with his runecrafting senses, and he refused to let it unravel. But it wasn’t easy; the skill simply wasn’t built to accommodate so much power.

Thankfully, the strain only lasted a second before he completed his swing, unleashing a torrent of momentum, augmented by his Will and his twin attunements.

The skullcrab guardian, despite its undoubted power, never stood a chance.

Neither did the ground beneath Zeke’s feet.

The moment Zeke unleashed his skill, the earth shattered. Black sand erupted into the air, pulverized into a fine mist, and the bedrock shattered into tiny pebbles as a huge fissure tore its way toward the skullcrab. Even the air ignited with the passage of so much momentum.

At the last second, the huge crab saw its own impending death, but it couldn’t reverse course. Nor could it dodge. It was helpless before the wave of pure destruction barreling toward it.

Even as the skill ripped through the monstrous creature, crumpling its shell like it was made of paper and pulverizing its more vulnerable body into black paste, Zeke slumped to the ground. The force didn’t stop with the crab; instead, it tore across the landscape for a half mile before dissipating.

And then, everything was silent, save for Zeke’s panting breaths.

“What…what was that?” asked Eveline.

“My best shot,” Zeke mumbled, falling forward onto his hands and vomiting blood. Perhaps he wasn’t as capable of handling that much power as he’d thought. But at least he wasn’t falling apart. Greedily, Zeke reached through [Metallurgical Repair] to drag some earthen energy into his body, but he came up completely empty. “W-what…”

“It’s gone,” Eveline said, answering his question. “All of it. I…I don’t…I don’t like this…”

Neither did Zeke, though he found it difficult to give voice to his thoughts. For the first time in quite a long while, Zeke felt truly exhausted. There was no mana with which he could sustain himself, the skill he often relied so heavily upon was now useless, and his body was entirely drained of mana, whatever fuel powered his Will, and more mundane energy as well. What’s more, he could feel that his body hadn’t fared nearly as well against the rampaging energies as he'd first thought.

If multiple organs weren’t ruptured, he would have been surprised, and that was saying nothing of his bones or muscles. The only thing that seemed to have escaped unscathed was his skin.

Eveline, whose voice was weak and trembling, muttered, “I feel…lesser…”

Zeke agreed with that, too. “I think…I think we need to…move on,” he croaked, coughing up another mouthful of blood. It looked almost black.

Eveline said something, but Zeke couldn’t hear her. It didn’t matter, though. He knew what he needed to do. So, marshalling his stubborn refusal to die, Zeke dragged himself to his feet. He took one stumbling step. Then another. And another after that. Each one felt as if he was moving a mountain, but he continued to shamble forward. Some steps came via sheer forward momentum. With others, he was forced to shove the entirety of his willpower into the motion. He kept going all the same, though.

Sometimes, his efforts weren’t enough, and he fell face first into the black sand, but he couldn’t stop. Not even when he forgot why he needed to keep moving. Bit by bit, his awareness faded into one, simple tenet – keep moving.

Fortunately, none of the native wildlife seemed willing to confront him. Perhaps they’d been scared off by his display of power. Or maybe he’d killed them. Either way, he couldn’t force himself to think about such things. Instead, it was all he could manage to simply put one foot in front of the other.

Eventually, he stumbled to the ground and couldn’t regain his feet. That’s when he started crawling. At some point, he couldn’t even manage that much, but instead of simply giving in, he dragged himself forward. His fingers were ripped to shreds by the sharp rocks buried in the sands, but it was a distant pain, easily overwhelmed by the sheer emptiness inside of him.

Then, the tiniest trickle of earth attuned mana sank into him. Like a man dying of thirst, he drank as deep as he could – which wasn’t much, but it gave him enough energy to continue dragging himself forward. With every inch, the trickle grew a little wider until, at last, it became a torrent. Energy flooded into him, fueling [Metallurgical Repair] and healing his destroyed body.

Zeke sank to the ground and let out a long, slow sigh of relief right before he passed out.

Sometime later, his eyes fluttered open, and the first thing he saw was a pool of drool that had accumulated beneath his mouth. With great effort, he summoned the strength to push himself upright, and he sat back on his heels, surveying the damage.

All around him was devastation. The black dunes had been scattered to the wind, and the enormous skeletons had been tossed aside or ground into dust. Looking back the way he’d come, Zeke saw that he’d only managed to travel about a hundred yards from the scene of the fight, but there was a clear line of demarcation between the vacuum of power his skill had created and the rest of the world. It was as if everything for a fifty-yard radius had lost something vital to reality.

“The mana is gone,” Eveline stated. “I…I have never seen that before.”

“Me neither.”

“You don’t understand,” she spat, clearly distressed. “You saying that doesn’t mean anything because there’s an entire world you haven’t seen. Two of them. But me? I’ve traveled far and wide, and I have never seen anything that could drain so much…everything from the world. No mana, attuned or otherwise is left. It’s as if there’s a hole in the world, now. A hole you created.”

“I didn’t…I mean, I had no idea that would happen,” Zeke admitted.

“You don’t say,” was her sarcastic response. Eveline looked none the worse for wear, but Zeke couldn’t help but remember how ephemeral she’d looked after he’d unleashed his momentum and killed the skullcrab guardian.

“I’m sorry. I know you were close to dying there,” he said.

“Don’t get sentimental on me now,” she said, putting her hands on her hips. The gesture made her look even more like a precocious child. “We’ve still got a long way to go.”

“Do you know what happened?” Zeke asked. He’d used all three of his sources of power before when he’d broken the chains, but the result had been nothing compared to what he’d just unleashed.

“Twin attunements,” she said. “It…I don’t think that’s ever happened before. If it has, it wasn’t in this Circle. Perhaps in the lower realms…but the world simply can’t support that level of power. So, that skill, it drained everything. I would suggest not using it again unless you have no other choice.”

“I don’t have to empower it with both attunements,” Zeke stated, unwilling to give up his most powerful ability. “And give me a minute before we head out. I need to use another skill.”

“Best not do it here,” she said. “The atmosphere is still unstable. I don’t think you can affect things as much as you just did, but…well, I didn’t think you could do it the first time, either.”

“Fine.”

With that, Zeke pushed himself to his feet, wobbling in place when he did. It would take a little while for his body to recover what it had lost. He considered summoning the tower, but thought –

“What tower?” asked Eveline.

“Uh…”

“A tower you can summon? And it has some spatial shenanigans going on? I have to see this,” she said, obviously having read his mind again. “And no. I’ve told you a dozen times that I can’t help but hear your thoughts. This is a you problem, not a me issue.”

“I can’t summon it right now because I left it back on the other side of the portal,” he said. Then, he explained his deal with the kobolds and why he didn’t want to mess with their migration. The tower had been stationary for long enough that they’d probably finished moving in, but he didn’t want to cut things so close. In a few more weeks, perhaps he would chance it.

“Interesting. Very interesting,” she said. “You’re already building an army…”

“It’s not an army,” he stated. “I’m just helping people who need help.”

“You don’t really believe that, do you?” she asked. “I can see into your mind, remember? I know you want to use them to break free of the dwarven city once you’ve completed your quest here.”

“Whatever. I’m still not summoning the tower now,” he stated. It just didn’t feel right to do so when he’d promised to take care of the kobolds. Besides, he’d roughed it before, and he could do so again, even if it wasn’t something he was looking forward to.

Eveline actually agreed with him, and as he started forward, she continued to chatter on, often flitting between one subject and the next in the blink of an eye. Zeke muttered responses in all the appropriate places, but his mind wasn’t on the inane conversation. Instead, he was fully focused on what had just happened. He’d tapped into a level of power that exceeded his current realm. For the second time. Only in this instance, he was far better off. Before, he’d been forced to spend months healing in Jariq before he was back to fighting shape. But now? Every step he took away from the scene of the battle brought with it healing and energy. His recovery time would be counted in a day or two, rather than months.

So, even though he’d promised not to use his new braiding technique unless it proved absolutely necessary, Zeke was more than a little eager to see if he could push things even further.

Eveline knew it, too, but she pointedly didn’t warn him away from it. Likely, she was just as interested to see how far he could go. On that, at least, they agreed.