The Achievement Junkie

"Don't get distracted, Grixor!"

The mighty Earthen God turned his glance back to the fight at hand, unable to stop frowning after seeing Sybin killed and Sillo in a futile fight. His aura of earth energy continued to condense and Grixor showed his fangs in a frightening roar.

"Shut up, Grixor. If you can beat me, then hurry up and make it happen!" laughed Moranti, constantly throwing attack after attack into the defensive god.

Though Moranti was unable to pierce Grixor's defenses, cracks were made with each swing of Moranti's scythe. With one god focused purely on DPS and the other specializing in defense, it was a rare sight to see.

Suddenly, Moranti frowned and teleported away. "I'll warn you again, don't touch her!"

A twenty-meter wide slash of spatial energy arched toward Lyrun without mercy. The Elf God was forced back as Moranti reappeared at his side and swatted away Lyrun while he sheltered himself in a ball of green energy.

"I'm just trying to end this sooner," argued Lyrun, shaking his head. "Don't blame me for using viable tactics."

"The next time you try, you die. You can forget all past friendship if that happens," Moranti stated, leaving nothing to his opponents' imagination.

Grixor roared, "Not a bad idea! Let me try!"

Moranti divided his attention, constantly vanishing and reappearing to face both the lv. 98 Earthen God and the lv. 97 Elf God. Dragas's many buffs greatly boosted his abilities, but that was partially countered by Lyrun who had removed most of the debuffs that Dragas had created for Grixor and Lyrun. Their grudge match was picking up steam and beginning to get more emotional than anticipated.

Another match taking place over the battlefield of mortals was between the Fox God and the God of Time. The lv. 97 mage with mastery over time and wind magics sought the life of the lv. 91 beast of hell-fire, who also wished to claim the life of his opponent. Both were tricky opponents in their own right.

However, one combatant began to stick out quite quickly.

"Try harder, Kori!" Tralbok chuckled.

The Fox God snarled and rushed after the mage. Kori spat out a dozen hell flares, cutting off Tralbok routes of evasion and trying to force a head-on collision.

But Tralbok's wind blades would preemptively destroy the hell flares and redirect the explosions. His use of time magic allowed Tralbok to make the tiniest moment of an opening into the perfect window of opportunity. All Tralbok need to escape the path of the fireballs was a fraction of a second, something he could make for himself now that Kori's level had diminished and his own level had increased.

"Coward!" howled Kori.

Smiling to himself, Tralbok suddenly flipped around and charged toward the fox. Tralbok's speed sharply increased and his staff was pointed forward as wind energy gathered to a point around it. Effectively, Tralbok had turned himself into a speeding projectile. But adding time magic to the attack made it nigh unguardable.

To Kori, the sight was as if Tralbok was was in a movie scene moving frame by frame but had removed half of the frames. Before Kori could properly react, Tralbok flew past him with hearty laughter.

"Try harder, Kori! I wonder how many more seconds you can squeeze out of your life!"

The Fox God bared his teeth but said nothing. Kori increased the temperature of his flames to the absolute maximum. He didn't care about energy expenditure or the blood falling from his severed tail in Tralbok's hand. All Kori wanted was to stop Tralbok from ruining the plan. That's all that mattered.

*****

"Want to make things interesting?" Jack laughed but no response came. "Why are we holding back? We should just get this over with, right?"

Not giving Torian any time to think, a figure of Jack appeared with his hands in range of threatening Torian's skull. When the Storm Dragon lashed out in retaliation, the image became ethereal and wasn't affected by Torian's lightning covered claws.

A second image appeared as well. Then a third. Before Torian could blink, there were three copies of Jack rushing to put a hand on him.

"Enough!" Torain roared, covering himself in shocking amounts of electricity and electrocuting anything that dared get too close. All three images of Jack were vaporized, leaving the distant smiling image of Jack alone.

CHOMP!

Just as Torian was about to counterattack, he felt the painful crunch of his scales and hot breath invading into his shoulder and neck. The Thundering God increased the outage he emitted and lashed out with his tail. Though Torian managed to run through the chest of that Jack, he was unable to stun the transformed hero and failed to stop Jack's immediate attack.

"AAAAAAAAAHHHH!"

Torian cried and shouted in agony as purple and black flames entered his body and exploded from within.

After unleashing a single spectral flare, Jack backed off with heavy breathing. The distant image of Jack smiling faded away as blood spilled from Jack's open gut. "Ow…" The hero grunted and groaned, not hiding the pain he felt. "How about… we call it a draw?"

"INFIDEL!"

Torian chomped down on another three potions and rushed toward the retreating Jack with unbridled fury.

Glancing toward Estonya, Jack groaned as he flew off into the sky and headed further north toward the Polt Federation. But that didn't' stop Torian, who was hot on Jack's trail and gradually overtaking him.

"COWARD! FACE REALITY AND DIE PEACEFULLY!" the roars of the raging Storm Dragon spread for kilometers as Torian refused to hide his anger from the world.

As the two figures darted northbound and vanished from sight. The true Jack sighed. With great effort, Jack finally got Torian away from the others. Jack then shotgunned two health potions to speed up the healing process, resealing his open gut at a pace that would be visible to the human eye if Jack weren't invisible.

Once the bottles were emptied, Jack blinked away in a small flash of purple light.