Astoria had seen plenty of strong men swing weapons.
But never like this.
Odin ripped a halberd from the grip of a dead soldier.
Haft cracked, edge dull, it was nothing more than scrap.
And yet in his hands, it shredded through monsters.
The first swing bisected three kobolds outright, their bodies falling apart mid-scream.
The follow-through carried into an orc's chest, shearing through bone and tusk.
Astoria's eyes narrowed as she stood beside Faris with Odin's Soul Armament in her hand.
The Soul Armament Odin handed to her before jumping into the horde.
Through her years of experience, she could tell at a glance.
That wasn't technique.
She could read footwork, angles, and discipline as easily as others read a book.
Odin had none of it.
No stance, no form. Just raw, brutal force.
Faris knew it too.
His own halberd was perfectly balanced for both weight and leverage.
He understood the rhythm of a proper strike, how much power a body could wring out of a single arc.
What Odin was doing broke every single one of those rules.
He swung it like it weighed nothing, while the halberd acted as though it was a relic of the gods.
Every sprint indeed carried him farther than his body should've managed.
Every leap put him higher and longer in the air.
But it still wasn't enough to rip and tear through monsters like he did.
It wasn't technique. It wasn't training. It wasn't even the blessing.
What shredded monsters was Iṣṭva.
And the hundred and fifty Kilos of VM it shoved into the Halberd.
Liora's blessing had unshackled him from the limits of his meagre mana pool, alongside enhancing his strength and speed.
Where before he could add grams, now Odin poured one hundred and fifty kilos of virtual mass into the weapon.
Turning a broken halberd pulled from a dead knight into something straight out of a legend.
Odin's next swing carved the air like a guillotine.
The halberd whistled once, then bit down before shredding a massive mutated troll from skull to groin.
Its torso folded outward, each half peeling apart with a wet roar before collapsing at his boots.
While blood splashed on the cobblestones, and his frame.
His steps were mostly instinct, as though his mind was somewhere else.
[Liora, I know you can hear me!]
No answer.
Just the roar of the horde closing in.
He didn't pause.
The broken sword flashed in his left hand, spinning in an arc as he flung it high.
And a beat later, light flickered across his skin as he blinked to it without even a stutter in his stride.
Mana didn't choke him anymore; he was everywhere at once, vanishing from claw swipes and appearing on rooftops, drawing the mass closer and closer to the colosseum like a red-cloaked shepherd herding wolves.
[Still giving me the silent treatment, huh.]
He dropped onto another roof, boots skidding across tile.
A Manananggal lunged from the smoke, wings folded into a straight dive at him.
Odin's halberd came up in a single, brutal sweep.
The creature split from shoulder to hip, black blood misting the rooftop as its body flung off the edge.
He flung the sword and blinked again, another twenty meters closer to the colosseum.
And the horde poured after him in an avalanche of bodies spilling down streets.
While gargoyles crashed into walls trying to cut him off, hell-hounds blasting fire as they scrabbled over cobble.
[Liora, look, I know I messed up…]
He blinked onto another roof just as a troll's club smashed through the one he'd left.
[I didn't know how good I had it... Because you were the only one I ever had.]
Another blink.
Another rooftop.
Another Manananggal caught mid-flight and bisected without ceremony, its scream cut short as its halves fell in opposite directions.
[And frankly… you're still the only lover I've ever had!]
The glow of Liora's power pulsed under his skin like a heartbeat.
Each teleport was smooth, effortless; each swing hit like a siege engine.
He wasn't just running anymore.
He was dragging the horde with him, step by step, roof by roof, toward the trap waiting at the colosseum.
And still, only her silence answered him.
The streets narrowed into a throat of stone and fire.
Odin vaulted a toppled wagon, boots squishing the fruit that slipped out of it as the horde funnelled after him.
Goblins clambered up shutters, fire-gals belched fire that melted whatever they touched.
Harpies screamed above like knives scraping bone.
Each blink dragged them deeper toward the colosseum but also deeper into the narrowing jaws of the city itself.
[Look, the point is… I'm sorry.]
He ducked under a swinging cleaver, rolled past a spray of violet fire, and came up with the halberd in a low arc, splitting the fire-gal in two.
A kobold lunged from the side; the blade rose in a brutal arc.
Another orc closed from the left.
Odin's the broken sword flashed once before he vanished, blinking out just as their swings came down.
[Thought I'd never get to say this to you, but… I'm sorry!]
He reappeared in a choke point between two burned-out houses, monsters spilling in from every side, claws and tusks reaching.
He pivoted, halberd sweeping in frantic bursts, each strike shredding through every monster in range of his Halberd.
But they were a tsunami.
Claws still slashed his arm.
A cleaver grazed his ribs.
He ducked under a harpy's talons, slammed the halberd haft into a goblin's throat, then flung the broken sword up on instinct.
Light flared, and he blinked just as a troll's fist smashed the spot he'd been.
He landed hard on a tiled roof, breath ragged, the horde's roar echoing up the alley like a living drumbeat.
And then the voice he'd been dying to hear cut through everything, sharp as glass inside his skull.
"Just shut up and fight!"
His heart lurched at the sound.
[Not before saying this… lest I never get the chance again.]
He ran three steps, and hurled the sword straight into the sky.
Mana answered instantly, and he blinked to it mid-air, before once again throwing it even higher above the city and blinking to it.
The rooftops and monsters dropped away, the colosseum's spires a pale shape ahead through the smoke.
Wind tore his hair back.
He hung there for a breath, weightless with the horde boiling below, golden sparkles from Liora's blessing burning along his arms.
[I love you… With everything I got!]
Then gravity reclaimed him, his body and voice both burning as one.
He gripped the halberd tighter, veins thrumming with more VM than the halberd was ever meant to hold.
Gold sparks crawled across the steel, lines etching and splitting like veins in glass.
The weapon vibrated in his hands, the head glowing golden as the weight of five hundred kilos of VM overload was shoved into it.
Wood and steel cracked.
While Odin smiled through blood on his lips.
Before hurling it down into the writhing throat of the horde.
And a beat later, the weapon detonated on impact.
-BOOM!
Not in fire. Or frost.
Something rawer - like the air itself had been ripped apart.
The street caved, monsters vaporized into mist as the shockwave ripped out in a ring that flattened bodies and shattered walls.
A mini-nuke born out of rage and love… and VM overload.
[But still… those are just pretty words. I'll prove it to you… somehow.]
And for the first time, her voice faltered in his mind. "Odin, I— you can't just…"
[You don't have to answer that… And sorry for springing it on you like that… But I had to say it. To let you know, while I had the chance...]
The words bled out with him as he dropped, body cutting through the smoke.
He hit ground hard, knees bending, dust spitting out in circles around him as the ground beneath him cracked.
The broken sword still clenched firmly in his hand.
And the horde came again. Orcs, kobolds, wings blotting the sky.
But he didn't meet them with a hammering heart anymore.
His chest was light.
His grin was easy.
For the first time since waking in this hell, he felt free.
[I know this is cheesy as hell… but then again… it's still nowhere near as cheesy as we used to be~]