The Golem army came trudging forward, bearing their grafted weapons on every limb and appendage stitched onto their unnatural bodies.

  And Ethan met them head on with the larval Albion as his backup.

  He cracked his neck, threw his oaken arms wide, and let his [Thorn Hail] fly.

  Ethan, Sys warned. You haven’t fought an army of this size before.

  And? Ethan replied as he watched the scattered splinters of thorns pierce the vanguard of the Golems that charged him. That just means you get to watch how far your Archon has come.

  The thorns sliced through each Golem’s arm and they shrugged them off, some of them opening their stitched-mouths into a chorus of laughter.

  Ethan…

  He smiled.

  Watch.

  Before the first line of attackers could reach him, they abruptly fell to the ground, stone creeping up their skin like a blight on a sea of weeds.

  Petrification Coating: Success.

  The other Golems flinched, and the hesitation of the zombie army was exactly what Ethan needed.

  Greybane glimmered in his hands, and he carved an arc of shadow through the air, letting his Twilight Edge find the next row of monsters and cleave them clean in half. In the meantime, he moved through the crowd, hacking apart limbs that threw themselves at him. Those strikes he could parry left their bearers in tattered, bloody pieces. Those he couldn’t parry didn’t even scratch him.

  [Barkskin: 2 minutes remaining]

  Their strikes couldn’t get through. And for every Golem he killed, his spirit counter just kept on going up. And the branches of the new Albion above him continued seeking out and spearing through the living corpse army without hesitation.

  A series of arrow-shots sounded from above, and he looked to the skies to see a barrage of magic missiles aimed right at his position beside the fountain, each one capable of puncturing Mithril armor. Before the first projectiles struck, Ethan activated Repulsor Shield and hefted it over his head, completely nullifying the arrow strikes. He watched the rest of the hailstorm smash into the Golems surrounding him, dotting their trembling bodies with crimson holes that wept unnatural, corrupted blood.

  They don’t give a damn about their own people…Ethan snarled. And I’m betting that fucking Doctor is watching this whole thing unfold from the comfort of his little castle, sitting there enjoying all this suffering…

  He felt it, then – the exact same feeling he’d felt in the depths of the Trinat forest. Rage. Pure and unfiltered, running through his new oaken veins and pooling at the ends of his bark-covered fingers. He felt lethal. And, with every new slash he made against the endless waves of enemies that kept up their relentless assault against him, he felt himself more and more on the verge of…something.

  Ethan, Sys warned. Stay focused. Stay c-

  He opened his mouth in a bellow that shook the town square, and, feeling his shield heavy with projectiles, activated its Repulsion ability, sending a storm of spectral arrows right back at the Spectators on the town wall that had finished launching their payload.

  He didn’t wait for them to tank the attacks. He’d kill them.

  Ethan!

  He’d kill them all.

  [Wing Buffet]

  A set of branches burst from his back and stretched themselves out into a spidery collection of talons that swept over the fountain square, knocking apart the Flesh Golems who still dared to stand against him. Then, a leathery bloom of green leaves sprung up on the back of his naked wings, forming a membrane. With another flap, he was carried up into the air and towards where the wounded Spectators were waiting for him.

  This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  Barkskin: Deactivated.

  Ethan! Your protection-

  He wasn’t listening. Covered in crimson from head to toe, he flew like a winged demon over Sentinel to sat his hunger on its fleshy defenders. The Spectators launched a collective energy ball straight at him – something charged up from their combined energies, no doubt enhanced by the Doctor’s own power. And all it took was one quick activation of Mana Veil to disrupt the attack completely, leaving the row of grisly ghouls wide open. They braced themselves for a fight, each one linking their arms and readying their next attack.

  But when Ethan landed, no ‘fight’ happened at all.

  He smashed slap bang into the center of their formation with a [Dive] that crushed one of them completely. The other eight fell away like bowling pins, scuttled and scattered, but not defeated. They rose to meet their foe head on, and only then did they see that he had taken to the air again.

  The next thing they saw was a pair of lambent green eyes staring down at them within the oaken flesh of the flying Drytchling Prime. And a single, glaring eye of crimson that gleamed above it as it opened its mouth wide and…

  [Roar]

  They never saw another thing again.

  In the second after Ethan unleashed his wail of fury, the craniums of the Spectators were ruptured completely, exploding in a cacophonous hail of blood, viscera, and broken bones. The rest of their bodies fell away like dominos, flailing and twitching in their death throes before throwing themselves over the side of the curtain wall and splattering across the village floor.

  Meanwhile, the village people – those who had dared who exit their houses to witness the unfolding battle – saw the Archon for the first time. They saw the demon who had come to break the world.

  And they stood motionless, terror stricken and panicked as Ethan looked down at them and leveled his blade.

  “If you value your lives, return to your homes!’ he shouted down at them from the town wall. “My fight is with the filth that you serve, not you.”

  But even as he said those words, and the people – merchants, washerwomen, children and paupers – looked up at him with nerve-stricken eyes, there was that other little piece of him that told him he didn’t really believe in his words.

  There was another part that told him to admit he enjoyed the slaughter…there was another part that did enjoy the slaughter.

  He couldn’t understand it. Before, in the body of the Lighthouse Keeper, and even in the body of the Salmandrike, he’d never felt this kind of intense fury during a battle – especially one where his friends weren’t in mortal danger. These people – they weren’t threats to him, were they? They were just people.

  But they were cut from the same cloth that had slain countless hybrids in this world. These were humans. These were the people who were too weak to oppose Kaedmon. People who were too weak to think for themselves.

  Weak. Weak, and pitiful. Just like he’d been. But not like he was now.

  E-Ethan? Sys asked.

  He shook his head, clutching the glowing eyes of his Host and trying to process his thoughts. But no matter how much he tried to shake the strange fury from his head, he couldn’t blink away the red haze that lay over his eyes like a grisly filter.

  The bodies twitching at the fountain below…there were so many.

  And the humans staring up at him, standing tall with his wings sending blood spatters across the night sky…they were terrified.

  This wasn’t him. This wasn’t who he was. It never had been, no matter what he’d been through in this world. What was happening he-?

  The dark Albion suddenly shuddered, and its vicious branches, filled with the speared-through bodies of the Golems, turned and flew towards the gawking humans.

  “No!”

  The scarred tips of the tree made it almost an inch towards the faces of the first screaming villagers before Ethan dove to the front of the crowd and activated {Albionic Authority}.

  Instantly the tree’s branches recoiled, as though it had just been dealt a blow to its leafy gut.

  “Stop!” Ethan growled. “They are – they are not our enemies!”

  The tree gave another shudder, as though hearing this statement with no small degree of disbelief. Meanwhile, the humans scattered, running back to their homes – some of them making a break for the village gates.

  Let them go, Ethan thought, still holding his hands high to suppress the aggression of the newborn tree. There’s no need to…intervene.

  Still, the dark crimson haze was creeping up from the corners of his eyes, bleeding his retinas with the desire to kill. It was not a desire that was coming from his own mind. It couldn’t b-

  Ethan!

  The piercing wail of Fauna lacerated his thoughts of bloody murder. He looked at his Memory Rune, saw it pulsing, and heard the stuttered voices of his friends as they called out to him.

  Guys? He asked. What’s happening down there?

  No response. Nothing but screams, and the sound of something…breaking.

  Guys?

  This time the sound traveled. He could feel the earth move beneath the fountain square. He could feel the entire underbelly of the village give way to something that was rising up from the ocean – something that was towering over the ships at port and even the venerable old lighthouse at the town’s edge. Something that – when it rose to its full height – blocked out the moon itself.

  A giant composed of bundled-together corpses. The Flesh Golem to end all Flesh Golems.

  ---BOSS BATTLE: INITIATED---

  THADDEUS, THE FLESH TITAN. LVL 120