Skill evolved!

  Asura Titan’s Body, First Form, Overclocked -> Asura Titan’s Body, Second Form [Rare (P)]

  Level up!

  Level up!

  Asura Titan’s Body, Second Form I -> III

  The moment his Asura Titan’s Body broke through, Zane knew he’d felt this before.

  Right now his bones, his muscles, felt exactly like they had when he'd broken his limits earlier.

  He let out his Chains, and now they shared the presence of his Bone—that aura of natural grandeur, like he stood before an ancient mountain-peak shrouded in distant clouds. The Titan’s dark silver made the base colors. Asura red bloodied it down its length.

  The Forgotten Bone is reacting with the Savage Sage Title…

  Hidden Skill unlocked—Signature Skill evolved!

  Wish Upon a Star + Asura Titan’s Body -> Limit Breaker [Unique]

  While peaking, the wielder exceeds all earthly limits, simulating total breakthroughs in Skills and power Level. Stacks on top of the Asura State.

  No wonder it felt like it had. In that limit break form, he'd been feeling the next level of power—like all his Skills, even his essence, had hit some new stage of power.

  He remembered how his essence had felt, that sheer potency. He wondered if that was how it’d feel at Minor God.

  Sacred Bone Skill gained!

  Overlord Annihilation Charge [Rare (P)]

  With each step the Titan Rhinoceros’s charge gains 50% power, maxing out at ten steps. This rare Overlord version gains 50% more power per step on the base variant.

  Pretty neat—it sounded like it could work with any of his Skills, smashes and slashes both. Might be harder to work it into a strangle. He wondered if it could work with a Solar Storm.

  The Rhinos all stood around him and dipped their horns.

  It was done.

  The Bone was part of him now. And he knew he was carrying the weight of the Rhinos on his back.

  A pause.

  “Well, don’t keep us waiting!” roared Nog. “What’s the damned Skill?”

  He told them about the Overlord charge, and got lots of head-bumps. “That was my first Bone Skill at Minor God!” laughed the Sage. “Hell of a Skill, that one. Only the best of the Rhinos get that one.”

  Then he told them about that Limit Breaker Skill.

  No-one had heard of it before. Not even Shaman Guri. It made sense—it was Unique; the only one of its kind in all the universe.

  “You're telling me you can break through whenever you want?!” said the Sage, leaping to his feet. That’s the kind of Skill that could change the shape of the war—the damned Chaos Cycle! Imagine you’ve gotten to Empyrean—might be you could break past that too. In this Galaxy only Malzareth could do that!”

  Zane already intended on changing the shape of the war; the thought wasn’t new to him. Still, it did seem quite a useful thing to have in his back pocket.

  The Sage cackled. “Wait till that he hears this—that old gunk lizard might just keel over!”

  “Limit Break,” cheered Mook.

  All this talk had Zane pretty keen to test it out, along with that Annihilation Charge.

  But he knew he wouldn’t have to wait long—he’d have a good chance tonight.

  Soon the celebrations were done. They had one final feast, all crowded around a giant stone bowl. That noon the grub stew tasted especially good.

  Half the herd settled down for one last power nap. Gearing up for sundown.

  Then it was time for war.

  ***

  “Well,” said the Sage, hands on his hips. “Don’t expect this’ll take very long. All they’ve got left is a handful of True Gods. That, and a King to clean up—Nog could take that bastard himself!”

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  Nog harrumphed. The old Rhino was still keen to get the Monster King back.

  They watched, ranged in a loose row, as the glacier dimmed, sinking halfway down the horizon. Night was coming.

  But the first thing that came wasn’t a Monster.

  A screech, a flash of red. A string of blasts shot across the sky, dive-bombed to a landing.

  A living eruption of plumage—a Blast Eagle.

  The Rhinos exchanged curious looks, but no-one jumped. They had a peace treaty with the Blast Eagles, and in these times the great tribes of the Plains stuck together.

  Besides—the fellow didn’t look aggressive. Its feathers were disheveled, its eyes a little frantic.

  “This one bears a warning from Vintus, Beast-King of the Lower Heavens!” it screeched. “This noon, Eagle scouts sighted a new Monster Wave crossing into the Wilds…”

  The Rhinos blinked.

  “At least four True Gods, and a Monster King Empyrean at the helm! A hundred Minor Gods to back them. They come to the aid of their existing forces. They come for the Plains of the Ancients.”

  “What?!” roared Nog.

  “Another King?” the Sage blinked. “Things really are ramping up faster than we thought.”

  If he was surprised he didn’t show it. He chuckled. “That lizard must want the Wilds damned bad, if he’s bringing this kind of firepower. Must be the Glacier he’s after.”

  The Eagle looked at the Sage, a bit befuddled. The Sage didn’t look like a man who’d just gotten terrible news. He looked more fired up than worried.

  “Thank you, feathery friend,” said Ronk.

  “Good hunting, Titan Rhinos,” said the Eagle.

  It launched like a rocket and was gone.

  “Well,” said the Barbarian Sage, crossing his arms. He faced the herd. “The way I see it, not much just changed! Just means I’m about to have a better time of it. Say—Nog—I’ve got an idea. Hear me out?”

  “Go for it.”

  He cracked his knuckles. “I’ll take on this New Wave. Nog, you take the other Monster King—Ronk! You back up Nog and beat up the rest of the True Gods. We’ll go after the big ones, right off.”

  Nods all around. “That leaves the horde to the rest of you. Must be two hundred Minor Gods?

  They’ll damn near outnumber you three to one, I s’pose!”

  He turned to Zane.

  “Think you can handle ‘em?”

  “I’ll destroy them,” Zane informed him.

  “Attaboy.”

  Nog came to the fore.

  “Hear me, Rhinos,” he roared. “It's time to take a stand for our damned home. Might be two to one. Might be three to one. Ten to one, and I’d still take one Rhino over the lot of ‘em!”

  He snorted. There was no sleepiness in the old fellow today. He was all fired up—more than Zane had ever seen him.

  “They think they’ll run the Rhinos right over, with that big horde. Bah! Today we’ll show ‘em the Titan Rhinos’ll never yield. Not if the whole damned galaxy’s against us!”

  He raised his horn high, and it caught the glimpse of the dying light.

  “Better to fight like the Titans of the Undying Cliffs, shaking our fists at the heavens, even as we go under—than to run like dogs, and leave not a damned ripple in history! Rage, damn you, rage, and you’ll do the Rhinos proud. Mountains rise and fall, but the Titan Rhinos stand strong.”

  He harrumphed. “I, old Nog, have spoken.”

  Having said his piece, Nog plopped back down.

  Together, the Rhinos bellowed.

  ***

  They came as the light dimmed.

  A festering cloud creeping over the horizon.

  Spearheading that army was a dragon with nine heads, each spewing a different flavor of corruption. Black Lightning. Black Fire. Black Ice.

  The Empyrean Monster King.

  Around it milled a herd of drakes—True Gods, each spewing their own dark element.

  Right beside it, a hyena as big as an Elephant. Red eyes, a maw full of slavering acid. The second King. It had its herd of True God hyenas too.

  And backing them up in their hundreds were the Minor God Monsters—nearly all peak Minor Gods.

  A horrible carnival of looming dripping oozing shapes. Too-big eyes, teeth as big as sickles, grotesque distended limbs, too many to count…

  It was a scene ripped straight from a child’s nightmare.

  But the Titan Rhinos stood in a line, and looked them down, and not one of them showed a trace of fear.

  That was the Rhino way.

  The Gods and the Empyreans broke out of the pack. The drakes, dragon, hyenas, growling challenges; the elements started foaming at their mouths…

  “That’s our call,” said the Sage. He gave Zane one last slap on the back. Then he stomped off and blasted for the dragon.

  Black flame lanced out. Black lightning cracked at him like a whip but the Barbarian Sage moved with a savage grace, a grace you’d never expect from a man his size, laughing all the while. His spear came out and gravity, reality, sank around its tip.

  He leaped.

  A black sphere exuded from him. Not a domain, which flooded the air with Law. Not a distortion field, which changed the nature of reality.

  Zane knew it was the Sage’s own universe.

  It didn’t crack reality, or distort it. It shoved this universe aside, and asserted itself. The Sage’s was like a black hole.

  The sight was arresting to Zane.

  There was fighting back against a domain. And you could bear a distortion field’s weight.

  A True God drake soared at the Sage—but the moment it got caught in the field, it froze—stuck in the black.

  Then its eyes bulged; it barely had time to shriek—and it was crushed. Crumpled like waste paper.

  Wiped out in a blink. There was no fighting back. It was in the Barbarian Sage’s world, and there he was absolute.

  Zane got a certain feeling in his heart whenever he saw great power. It was no wonder they said only an Empyrean could fight an Empyrean. The higher you went, the more the gulfs between power levels grew…

  Meanwhile, Nog was getting going too.

  His horn gained its own gravity—and he started down an Annihilation Charge. In seconds he’d built a head full of steam; each step trembled the Plains. Nog roared.

  On the other side, the Hyena King howled and unleashed its inner universe. It blew out fast—an endless wintry forest where the trees ran a thousand feet high, weighed down by black snow, the sort of forest a God would enter, and never find his way out.

  Then Nog’s world crashed out of him too—an angry sea of molten steel, like the undying cliffs in motion.

  All around them, the True Gods unleashed their realities too. But after that first drake they kept a careful distance, supporting the Empyreans.

  None of them could compare. As the dragon and the Sage came together, as Nog charged that giant Hyena, they didn’t seem like beasts at war. They were worlds at war.

  ***

  But Zane didn’t have time to linger on it.

  They were dueling a thousand miles up. But the bulk of the army went around them, a tide of peak Minor Gods. He sensed a half-step True God there too.

  Those were his to crush—and after his time here he’d come to regard these Rhinos as his people. This place was his home now too.

  These Monsters had no right to it.

  It was time to clean house.