“What should I do then?” Jonathan replied, banishing his spirit.
Alcadram smiled evilly. “You’re going to need that.”
He snapped his fingers, and a wave of golden light washed over the world. When Jonathan’s vision cleared, he was standing in a self contained arena, a sphere of golden fire surrounding a disk of rock. Opposite to him stood a copy of himself, made out of pure Divinity. It was close to his own strength, but as far as he could tell, had none of the weaknesses of mortal flesh. It was more like an elemental than anything else, meaning that it was great practice for Jonathan to use his elementally enhanced Divinity against.
Alcadram was nowhere to be seen, and indeed, his very presence had disappeared. Instead, Jonathan was buffeted by an aura much more in line with his own. Grinning, he strode forwards, cracking his knuckles. “Show me what you got,” he said, before surging into motion, Divinity threading its way through his muscles.
Streaking forth, Jonathan reveled in his new speed. While not shown on his status sheet, as it was hidden, his Divinity had undergone a quantitative and qualitative leap in strength, with both his reserves and its potency vastly superior to before. Smite previously had boosted his stats to around half again his normal strength, but now that level was the baseline for the skill. By investing more of his reserves, Jonathan could almost double his stats, turning into a true monster of the battlefield.
His feet barely touched the ground, a few steps taking him to before his foe. Jonathan’s fist snapped back and gathered power from both his muscles and Divinity, ready to strike. The elemental didn’t move until the last moment, conjuring a shield of flickering gilded flame, interposing it between itself and Jonathan’s punch.
Jonathan drove his fist forwards, lengthening his Divinity into a spike before him, aiming to pierce through the shield with his mastery of the Void. With a sharp retort, the spear impacted the center of the shield. With a grinding hum, the disk of golden energy began to rotate, faster and faster until every part of its surface skittered along below Jonathan’s attack. This made it so that he was unable to target a single area, rendering his attack far weaker than it should have been.
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The elemental drove its shield forwards, knocking Jonathan back. Then it punched him, a sword of Divinity forming before its hand. It slid in through a gap in his armor, moving at speeds that were a blur even to his enhanced eyes. Blood ran down his armor as he reeled, but he didn’t retreat for long. Jonathan snarled and summoned his Divine Spirit, the purple amalgamation of elemental energy and godhood springing from his chest. The energy construct leaped at the Divinity elemental, fists swinging. Gouts of purple flame seared the air around it as it attacked, occluding Jonathan’s vision.
A series of sharp cracks rang through the air as fists met shield, before a shattering noise indicated that the shield was broken. Jonathan raced in through the clouds of the Void, gathering his elemental power for a supremely powerful attack. Maw of the Void, his strongest skill, had grown immensely with the addition of pure Divinity to its skill matrix. Now, rather than summoning colorless flames of pure destruction, the skill pressed a weight down upon the world, the weight of sovereignty and Divinity. Divinity of the Void. Everywhere within Jonathan’s field of vision was within his control. A pillar of destructive energy snapped up around the elemental, its flesh burning away beneath the onslaught.
Now that Jonathan could modulate the flow of energy to his skills, he was able to enhance them to a ridiculous level. Sending a quarter of his remaining Divinity reserves into the manifestation of the Void, it exploded upwards in size and potency. Reality sagged around the beacon of elemental energy, the air itself fleeing in fear. The elemental writhed as its very being was assaulted by Jonathan’s attack.
Jonathan shot towards the monster, his fist coated in the pure expression of his godhood. Flames of violet tinged gold erupted around his fist. As he neared, his Divine Spirit punched towards the elemental, quickly joined by its master. Two fists, one made of flesh and blood, and the other of purple fire, impacted the core of the golden hued specter, blasting it apart into shreds of glowing energy. The dome of Divinity cracked asunder around Jonathan, and reality peeled away to reveal the smiling faces of Sarnakthros and Alcadram.
