"Get up... get up... get up!" Albert Cole clawed his way out from under a pile of rock, his own regeneration stitching his wounds. He saw the Colossus raise its arm, and his heart, though no longer beating, stopped.
But Vicky was already moving.
Pain was a weakness. He ignored it. His regeneration, fueled by his potent blood and high-endurance body, was already knitting his bones and sealing his torn organs. The pain was still there, a white-hot fire, but he walled it off.
He sprang from the rubble, not in a charge, but in a frantic, zig-zag sprint.
"Too big!" he spat, blood flying from his mouth. "Too strong to meet head-on! Speed! I need more speed!"
The Colossus's arm swept down. It wasn't a punch, but a sideways swipe, fast as a thunderclap, designed to wipe him from existence. The sound of its arm cutting the air was a deafening WHOOOOMPH that was a physical blow in itself.
Vicky was no longer there.
He ran up the arena wall, his Chi-enhanced feet finding footing on the vertical stone, his body parallel to the ground. The monster's hand, large as a house, smashed into the wall where he'd been a microsecond before, obliterating a fifty-foot section of the stands. Rubble rained down.
Vicky leaped from the wall, twisting in mid-air. He was now above the monster's arm. He landed on its massive, plated shoulder, his feet sinking slightly into the shifting mass of grave-dirt and bone.
The instant he made physical contact, the spirits inside the Colossus went insane.
It was like landing in a nest of ethereal vipers. Thousands of spectral, purple hands erupted from the monster's back, shoulder, and chest, all grabbing for him.
It was like running through a field of grasping, intangible thorns. Each hand that touched him delivered a jolt of icy, necrotic energy, sapping his strength and burning his skin.
"Get off!" Vicky roared. He pulsed his Chi, creating a small, explosive flare that vaporized the hands immediately around him. He was standing on the giant's shoulder, just yards from its head.
He didn't admire the view. He ran down its chest, his target clear: the giant, pulsating, violet crystal core.
The Colossus roared, a sound that was a thousand screams at once. It shook the very foundations of the plane. It raised its other hand, not to grab him, but to smash its own chest, to crush the parasite it could feel crawling on it.
Vicky saw the mountain-sized hand coming. He had seconds.
He poured his remaining Chi into his fist.
STR 31 + Full Chi Concentration!
His fist glowed with a white-hot, silver light. He punched the crystal core.
It was like punching solid diamond.
A high-pitched CHING! rang out, a sound so pure it was painful. A spiderweb of hairline fractures exploded across the crystal's surface. A pulse of pure, violet energy erupted from the impact, throwing Vicky backwards.
The monster's own hand completed its swing, smashing into its chest with catastrophic force. The impact would have atomized Vicky, but he was already airborne, propelled back by his own attack. He hit the arena floor, rolling to his feet, his right arm numb and visibly fractured from the elbow down, the bones shattered.
The Colossus staggered. It looked at its own hand, then at its chest. The crystal was cracked.
For the first time, it registered Vicky as a threat.
Albert, from the shadows, watched in disbelief. "He... he hurt it. He hurt it!" His adrenaline surged. He saw a pack of Skeletal Crawlers skittering from a newly opened crack in the ground, drawn by the commotion. "My fight is here!" he snarled, leaping into battle, his own claws flashing. He would keep the arena clear for his Progenitor.
The Colossus's tactics changed. It would not let the insect get close again.
It lowered its head and opened its gigantic, fused jaw. The thousands of spirits inside swirled, coalescing into a vortex of screaming, purple energy.
A beam of pure, concentrated soul-attack, ten feet wide, shot from its mouth. It wasn't a projectile; it was a sustained torrent of destruction.
Vicky sprinted, his 30 Speed his only saving grace. The beam lanced across the arena, chasing him. Everywhere it touched, the black stone didn't just break; it vaporized, leaving a trench of molten slag. It was a giant, necrotic laser.
"Oh Crap, damn it!" Vicky cursed, pushing his body to its absolute limit. He was fast, but the beam's sweep was faster. He was forced back, back, back, his regenerating arm still a useless weight. The beam herded him until his back was against the coliseum wall again. It swung toward him, pinning him, ready to erase him.
"No choice!"
He slammed his left fist into the ground beneath him, his Chi-laced punch shattering the stone floor. He fell through, dropping twenty feet into the dark, subterranean levels of the coliseum—the crypts.
The beam blasted the wall above him, showering him in molten rock and debris.
It was dark, damp, and smelled of million-year-old dust. He was in a maze of tunnels. He could hear the Colossus above him, its footsteps shaking the ceiling, dust raining down. It was hunting him.
It's too strong. Raw power won't work, Vicky thought, his mind racing as his right arm finally knitted itself back together, bones snapping into place. The core is the key, but I can't get to it. It's too big, and its defenses are too absolute. That beam... I can't dodge that forever.
CRASH!
A massive, bony hand tore through the ceiling, ripping a new skylight into the crypt. The Colossus was tearing the arena apart to find him.
Think. Think! How do you kill a mountain?
His eyes fell on the monster's leg, visible through the hole it had just made.
You don't kill a mountain. You tear it down.
He burst from the hole, not at the monster, but away from it. He ran to the far side of the arena. The Colossus, seeing him, unleashed its soul-beam again.
Vicky didn't dodge. He stood his ground.
"Now!"
He slammed both hands on the ground, pouring his Chi—now regenerating, back up to 10 points—not into his fists, but into the floor. He wasn't attacking. He was pushing.
The soul-beam was seconds from hitting him.
With a groan of protesting stone, a thirty-foot-wide, ten-foot-thick slab of the arena floor tilted upwards, ripped from its foundations by Vicky's 31 Strength, amplified by his Chi. He had created a shield.
The necrotic beam slammed into the stone slab. The stone glowed white-hot, then melted, then vaporized. But it bought him two seconds.
Two seconds was all he needed.
He was already gone, sprinting back towards the Colossus under the cover of his own diversion. The monster was blind, its own beam obliterating its line of sight.
Vicky reached its left leg—the one he'd originally targeted. The one that was nearest the molten trench left by the beam.
"If I can't break it, I'll melt it!"
He didn't attack the leg. He punched the molten slag trench.
His Chi-laced fist plunged into the white-hot, liquid stone. The pain was indescribable, a fire that consumed his very nerves. His flesh sizzled and burned away instantly, but his vampiric regeneration was already fighting it, his 30 Endurance warring against the heat.
He pulled.
With a monstrous, inhuman roar of effort, Vicky tore a bus-sized glob of molten stone from the trench. He held it above his head for a microsecond, his arms burning to the bone, and then threw it at the Colossus's ankle joint.
The molten rock splashed, engulfing the joint in liquid fire.
The Colossus screamed—a real, physical sound of pain, not just the shriek of spirits. The heat was melting the sinews of grave-dirt and spectral energy that held its bones together.
It tried to step, but the joint was fused, half-melted. Its leg buckled.
The thirty-foot-tall god of death stumbled.
It didn't fall, but it was off-balance, its left leg rendered useless. It roared in fury, its violet eyes burning with a new, personal hatred. It ignored the beam. It was done with tricks.
It raised its good right leg, its massive, iron-shod foot lifting high into the air, blotting out the dim, purple sky. It was going to stomp Vicky into a paste.
Vicky stood his ground, ten feet away. He was out of Chi. His arms were charred, smoking husks, regenerating far too slowly. He was exhausted.
He looked up at the descending mountain of iron and bone, a shadow of absolute death falling over him.
A desperate, defiant, and half-mad grin split his bloody face.
"Come on then," he breathed.