Chapter 22 (UPDATED)

Caleb stood opposite Thrymm, glaring into the titan’s hard eyes. He lowered into a fighting stance, following the natural feeling granted to him by his Brawling skill. His spiritual armor shifted with him, the two fists made of energy settling just outside of his own.

Thrymm did much the same. The ash grey arm started to glow with a deeper color blue, turning almost purple. After absorbing all of the husks so many minutes ago, it looked like Jarnfingr was finally planning on doing something. Then, after purple, came red.

“Shit,” Caleb tensed, ready to leap at any moment. He’d seen how this played out before. Red means lasers.

Jarnfingr’s palm flowed like a superheated piece of metal and one solid beam of destructive energy shot out, heading straight for Caleb.

Caleb clapped his palms together and a wall of stone shot up from the stone in front of him, nearly two feet thick. The luminary husk’s laser’s hadn’t been able to break through walls a few inches thick, so this should–

The wall exploded into a thousand shards. It hadn’t even slowed the laser for a split second. Caleb threw himself out of its path, feeling the immeasurable heat on his skin. One of his spectral fists got caught on its edge and was torn clean through. He clenched his teeth, hitting the ground in a tumble and skidding to a stop. The fist at his side slowly regrew, reforming the parts that had been vaporized over a couple seconds.

He learned two important things in that moment. One: spirit self wasn’t as impenetrable as he’d begun to believe. And two: if that laser hit him in the chest or head, he was dead – no question about it. Neither the stone, nor his spirit self was strong enough to defend against that laser.

Caleb swallowed heavily. It took no small amount of aether to regrow his parts of his spiritual self either. Letting it get destroyed and regrown over and over would sap him of his strength just about faster than anything else.

All of a sudden, the twenty percent odds of completing the Dungeon that the system had given him felt mighty generous.

He glanced over toward Thrymm, just over a hundred feet away. The titan was grinning, baring its yellowed teeth, flesh arm holding the wrist of Jarnfingr as steam rose off of it.

It can’t spam those lasers. That’s my opening. Caleb’s eyes narrowed to deadly slits. Now is my opening.

Caleb dashed around the ruined rubble of his destroyed wall, sprinting straight toward Thrymm. Get in close, that was what he was best at, feeling the rhythm of the fight, letting his fists do the talking, beat the giant to a bloody, messy pulp.

Thrymm’s eyes widened, realizing what Caleb was doing. He lifted Jarnfingr, the light shifting back to blue as a beautiful dome of light formed around him.

Oh, no you don’t.

Caleb leapt into the air, sailing well over a dozen feet up from the power of the reinforced spiritual armor. He cocked one arm back, two fists becoming one. For the briefest of seconds, his eyes met with Thrymm’s through the wash of blue, seeing the titan’s silent contempt.

His fist blurred forward. A shockwave of air boomed outward. The forcefield shattered under the unstoppable force. Caleb couldn’t see through the blinding light of Bonebreaker’s eruption, but he knew what he would find on Thrymm’s face should their eyes meet. Fear. Fear and rage.

The two became locked in brutal combat. Thrymm assaulted him with devastating blows that would crumple a car. Jarnfingr created force fields to block Caleb’s own strikes or create a shell like casing around Thrymm’s fist, making it that much tougher. But Caleb fired back with his own strikes, created his own walls of stone, small ledges and pockets in the ground to disrupt Thrymm’s balance.

His fists moved so quickly they left ghostly afterimages. Each let off a shockwave of power as they drilled into Thrymm. The titan may have been physically stronger, but that wasn’t all a fight was based on.

A slab of stone rocketed out of the ground, kicking back Thrymm’s shin as the titan went for a punch. He lost his balance, falling and catching himself with one, unable to stop Caleb’s fist from taking it in the ribs. Then the ground Thrymm had caught himself on was ripped out from under his hand and he fell fully onto the ground.

It was like fighting someone when you had solid footing and they were standing atop a paddle board.

He ducked in close for another punch and Thrymm roared. The clouds overhead cracked in response and Caleb only barely managed to throw himself out of the way as a bolt of lightning was called down from the sky, striking directly into the titan’s chest.

Thrymm stood back up, smoking, eyes white with rage, unharmed by the electricity.

Caleb couldn’t stop smiling.

This was what a fight should be. Violence and skill intertwined perfectly in motion. His soul sang to him. His brain worked on overdrive, calculating strikes, blocks and dodges like a supercomputer. He felt every cell in his body, knew how they all worked in tandem. Thrymm struck down and he instinctually pivoted his weight, let the fist whistle by him, then use the titan’s own momentum against him and send a spiritual fist crunching into his nose, releasing Bonebreaker. It was executed perfectly.

Thrymm was thrown backward, his broad back cracking into the ground, creating a crater. Caleb didn’t let up. He jumped atop the titan’s chest and let loose punch after punch, bonebreaker after bonebreaker, not caring about how quickly his aether was draining. A fist landed clean on Thrymm’s face, cracking his jaw, two more into his sternum, another in his ribs, in his gut. Explosions rocked the titan’s body over and over. The wind howled around them like a jeering crowd watching the favored prize fighter get the snot beaten out of him.

Caleb felt Thrymm’s Presence slip and he pressed in with his own, going on the offensive with it for the first time this fight. There were chinks in the armor, time to pry them open.

Stone cracked underneath Thrymm’s body with every blow from above. The light was leaving the titan’s eyes, pupils going white, marred with ugly red veins. He was close. The final boss was nearly slain.

Caleb lifted both arms high above his head, his spectral fists rearing back, ready to pummel Thrymm into his grave.

He noticed his mistake a split-second too late.

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Thrymm and his first hand may share a body, but they were not the same creature.

“Fu–”

Jarnfingr shot up from the side, powerful fingers wrapping around Caleb’s body like a vice, lifting him off his feet so they dangled in the air. He tried to push his way out but his arms were squeezed tight against his sides, he couldn’t even budge them. The air was pressed from his lungs and it felt like his eyes were about to burst out from his skull.

Not even his spirit armor was tough enough to keep Jarnfingr from crushing the life out of him. He tried to cry out, but all that escaped his lips was a strained gasp.

Had he failed? Was there nothing else he could do? Nothing else in him to fight? Anguish threatened to envelop his mind, and as black started to edge into the corners of his vision, he almost stopped fighting it completely and let the darkness take him.

Jarnfingr’s palm started to glow with red energy. It was about to laser him at point-blank range.

But then he heard something. Death calling for him? A scream in the wind? Jarnfingr seemed to notice it as well.

The hand’s pressure released, dropping him back down. He inhaled a wheezing gasp, relishing the sensation of air in his lungs and saw a blur of yellow come streaking in from the side.

What the hell?

Lucas zoomed by Jarnfingr, a glowing sword slicing a searing line down the forearm. He hit the ground, turning and skidding backward on both feet, dodging as the sentient arm swatted at him and missed.

Caleb seized the opening. He rolled off Thrymm’s chest and scrambled to his feet, retreating from Jarnfingr’s reach. When he turned, his breath caught.

Lucas stood framed in the glow of his own sword, taller and more muscular than before. Golden radiance haloed his figure, catching along the edges of his tattered clothes and the strands of his hair. He looked almost… regal, eyes lit with righteous fury.