I rushed the monk, filled my body with strength, and slashed at him. He ducked under the blow, but I caught him with a rising knee that catapulted him upward. Fire danced over the Sundered Heart, and I hit him with a roaring Untamed Torch. The monk laughed as the flame washed over him and propelled him higher.
I jumped into the air, called Flight to my aid, and tackled him in mid-air. The clearing vanished beneath us, and branches tore at my face and hands as we hurtled through the canopy of Danibo Forest.
The monk sliced open my leg, but I caught him in the nose with the hilt of my sword as we fell. He grabbed a nearby trunk to stop his fall, his fingers hooking into the bark, digging into the wood, and pinning him in place. I whirled through the air, activated Flight again, and landed lightly on a branch like it was a platform in a video game. The monk glared at me and scrambled higher up the trunk until he found a foothold.
“You bring shame upon your mantle, heathen,” he spat.
“I didn’t summon a pack of demons and feed the locals monster flesh,” I replied. “I didn’t betray the Wandering Path. And I definitely didn’t attack the guy sent by your boss to bring you back. Be honest, do you really feel proud of what you’ve done?”
“I—” he began.
I sprang from my perch, my Flight technique changing the dense foliage into solid footholds and giving me a burst of momentum. The monk ducked as I slammed a kick into the tree, right where his head had been a moment before. My reinforced body smashed a burning hole in the trunk and filled the air with splinters and ash. I slammed the Sundered Heart into the tree as a handhold, just before the monk swung at me with his dagger. I caught his arm on mine before he could bury the blade into my neck.
I knew I couldn’t match his strength, so I stretched up and kicked at his face. The monk snatched my ankle and hauled me away from the trunk. The Sundered Heart came free of the wood with a whipping crack, and I caught myself in mid-air with Flight before I could plummet to the forest floor below. I rotated my body, slammed my shin into the monk’s shaven head, and forced him to release his grip. He snarled as he dived at me, but I levitated myself upward and released the flow of Vigor through my Flight channels.
My feet crashed into his back, and we plummeted toward the ground. I stepped into the air again just as the monk smashed into the forest floor with enough force to crater the earth. He grimaced, hauled himself out of the hole in the ground, and glared up at me. I perched myself on another branch and balanced the Sundered Heart across my knees.
“Not so tough in the air, are you?” I said.
“Your reliance on basic Augmentation simply shows your lack of training,” the monk snarled. “I spent centuries refining my body to physical perfection. Learning how to channel the forces of the universe most efficiently.”
“And how’s that going?” I asked with a gesture to the shattered ground around him. “You’re getting busted up by a kid with a handful of parlor tricks and inferior experience. Maybe you should have spent more time out in the field.”
The monk tore a chunk of stone from the ground and hurled it at me. I leapt aside, and the boulder ripped through the tree beside me. The mighty oak groaned under its own weight and gave way in an ear-splitting crash. I stepped off the air, bounced from branch to branch, and charged up a hail of Stinging Palm thorns. A hundred tiny splinters ripped from my free hand and buzzed toward the monk like a hail of bees. My technique hit the aura of pure heat around him, filled the air with ashes, and blinded the monk for a fraction of a second.
“You need to do more,” Nydarth encouraged. “This foe will not fall to regular Augmentation, Master.”
I released my flow of Vigor. As I hit the ground, the monk charged out of the ashes and drew his arm back to throw his dagger at me. I switched my physical Augmentation channels from fire to water just as the monk threw his weapon. The knife hurtled toward me like a bullet, but I swayed to the left and snatched it out of the air.
“Running out of ideas?” I asked.
The monk sprinted at me again with a screeching howl, and I reached within for the powers of earth and wood. Plank Pillars erupted from the ground, and I stomped downward with a Ground Strike. My makeshift spears flung out of the earth from the force of the strike and smashed into the monk. They blackened as they struck him, but the force and size of the projectiles were too much for him to anticipate. A length of wood the size of my shin ripped into his gut and slammed him into a tree. I fed my body with more Vigor and sprinted after him like the world’s best track runner.
I slid the Sundered Heart back into its scabbard and yanked the Depthless Dream from my harness as I ran. The monk snarled at the piece of flaming wood in his gut and looked up. His eyes widened as I drew my warhammer.
“Nail, meet hammer,” I said.
I screeched to a halt, switched up my channels again, and used every ounce of momentum, strength, and gravity at my disposal. The monk couldn’t have stopped
