With hundreds of massive diamond roots snapping toward him like the frenzied tentacles of some homing crystal beast, Seth didn't falter.
The air itself seemed to fracture under the onslaught. Colossal roots, each one thicker than a giant torso and edged with razor-sharp facets, erupted from the shattered stone floor in a deadly symphony of motion. They whipped upward, sideways, and from behind in a chaotic, overlapping storm designed to impale, ensnare and crush anything caught within their reach. The sound was deafening: a relentless chorus of crystalline cracking and grinding as the reinforced diamond tore through debris and stone alike.
Seth became motion incarnate.
As a giant crystalline root whipped blindly from behind, he leaped high, his powerful legs coiling and releasing like spring-loaded pistons. He landed squarely atop the whipping shaft, boots gripping the slick, faceted surface with impossible precision. The root bucked violently beneath him, trying to fling him off, but Seth was already moving. Relying entirely on his superhuman senses, reflexes and the immense speed he had honed through the years, he began to parkour through the chaotic maze of incoming crystals.
He bounded forward, using the momentum of one surging root to launch himself toward another. His body twisted mid-air, arms extended for balance, before his feet slammed down onto a second root. The impact sent a visible shockwave through the diamond structure. Without pausing, he flipped sideways, tucking his body into a tight rotation as three more roots converged on the space he had just vacated. They collided with a deafening crash, spraying glittering diamond shards in every direction like lethal confetti.
Every leap, every flip, every sprint along the hurling, jagged surfaces carried him closer to Beaumont. Seth's breath came in controlled, explosive bursts. His blindfolded face remained eerily calm, focused entirely on the shifting symphony of sound and pressure waves around him. The roots were alive with Beaumont's will, twisting trying to predict his path, but Seth was wind given form. He increased his velocity with every second, using the very traps meant to kill him as his personal highway.
Beaumont's eyes widened in disbelief from across the ruined hallway. His diamond traps were missing completely. The adventurer's jaw tightened as he watched the brawler maneuver like the wind itself, closing the distance at a terrifying pace. Seth vaulted across the elongated curve of a particularly massive root that had arched high like a stone dome. For a brief, almost graceful moment, he stood silhouetted against the destruction behind him.
Beaumont dropped into a wide, rooted stance. Warm amber sigils bloomed brilliantly across his hands and forearms, glowing with increasing intensity. Hundreds of glowing magic circles materialized in the air above and around him, spinning rapidly like targeting arrays.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
The bombardment began.
Beaumont launched a continuous, heavy ranged assault of reinforced rock javelins directly into Seth's trajectory. Each projectile shoots through the air with supersonic force, trailing faint amber afterimages. The hallway trembled under the onslaught. Stone shattered, dust clouds erupted violently.
Seth sensed the pressure waves tearing through the air long before the javelins arrived. He refused to step out of the diamond root dome, refusing to surrender the momentum he had seized. Instead, he braved the assault. Rocks smashed all around him in thunderous explosions of debris. Shards of stone and diamond whipped past his face.
He wove through the chaotic shrapnel with predatory grace, his body bending, twisting and redirecting momentum in ways that defied normal human anatomy. His bare hand shot out with blinding reflex as he reached the perimeter of the root zone. Fingers closed around one of Beaumont's own incoming rock javelins, catching it clean out of mid-air. The impact jarred his entire arm, but Seth's grip was iron.
Reaching the fractured vertical wall, Seth planted his feet and ran vertically across its surface. His boots kicked up plumes of dust and small debris with insane velocity, gravity seemingly optional as he defied the laws of balance. Beaumont desperately tracked the movement, frantically adjusting his firing angle. The bombardment simply couldn't catch the brawler. Javelins shattered against the wall in Seth's wake, leaving craters of pulverized stone.
Realizing the futility of the ranged barrage, Beaumont abandoned the spell mid-cast. At that exact moment, Seth swooped down from the wall like a descending predator, launching himself across the open space, nearly a thousand meters of ruined hallway on the exact same devastating angle.
Beaumont's arm sigils flared brighter than before. He flooded the ground directly ahead of Seth's landing point with concentrated mana. The solid stone floor instantly transformed into a deep, treacherous patch of sucking mud, thick and viscous, designed to trap and drown momentum.
Seth's enhanced senses caught the shift immediately, the change in texture beneath his approaching feet, the wetter, heavier sound of displaced earth. Without breaking rhythm, he channeled every ounce of power in his legs into a singular, explosive push. Muscles corded and released. He launched into a powerful leap, rocketing through the air at speeds approaching the sound barrier, a human projectile aimed straight at the mage.
Beaumont saw his perfect opening. With a savage grin, he manifested a dense cluster of crystal javelins and fired them straight up to intercept the airborne brawler, intending to skewer him mid-flight.
Seth countered in the same heartbeat.
Holding the heavy rock javelin he had caught in one hand and the Relic of Nullification in the other, he spun his body like a drill. The two weapons slammed against the incoming projectiles in a rapid, percussive series of impacts. Reinforced diamond shattered into harmless glittering dust that sparkled in the dim light of the ruined hall. The shockwaves from the collisions rippled outward, but Seth remained untouched, still hurtling forward.
The distance closed in an instant.
Beaumont pulled back, sliding along the stone floor by manipulating its surface with earth magic, turning the ground beneath his feet slick as ice. Seth hit the solid ground with a heavy thud that cracked the stone beneath his boots. Without hesitation, he hurled the captured rock javelin with bullet-like force, the projectile screaming through the air.
Beaumont seized control of the incoming stone mid-flight, his amber sigils flaring as he reversed its momentum and shot it straight back at Seth. The brawler ducked beneath it with perfect timing, the javelin whistling over his head close enough to ruffle his hair. He dashed forward, undeterred.
Determined to halt the relentless approach once and for all, Beaumont triggered a localized earth trap. The floor beneath Seth's right foot suddenly liquefied and sank, locking the limb deep into shifting stone up to the calf.
Seth's forward momentum halted for a split second.
Capitalizing instantly, Beaumont erupted a massive, razor-sharp pointed boulder from directly between Seth's feet, aiming to impale him from below with devastating force.
In the absolute nick of time, Seth executed an impossible athletic gesture. He bent his torso violently backward, arching his spine until his back literally brushed the jagged, debris-strewn ground. His right foot remained securely locked in the earth, but his upper body formed a perfect, straining bridge. The sharp boulder detonated upward with a thunderous crack, missing his chest by a mere millimeter. The wind of its passage sliced across his shirt.
Maintaining that frantic, contorted pace, Seth dug his fingers deep into the cracks of the jagged floor, veins bulging along his forearms. With a roar of raw power, he leveraged his upper body strength to violently yank his right foot free from the stone prison. Stone fragments exploded outward. He instantly redirected his posture toward Beaumont's position and leaped in heavily, closing the final gap.
Beaumont had barely bought enough time. His voice tore from his throat in desperate triumph.
"Tectonic Armor!"
Super-dense plates of reinforced earth and diamond-fused stone violently clung to his frame, forming a thick, segmented exoskeleton that glowed with amber light. The armor encased him from head to toe, heavy and imposing.
Seth closed the distance instantly.
Beaumont crossed his forearms in front of his face, bracing for impact. He predicted Seth would naturally target his head, the classic instinct of any brawler.
But he never expected what's to come.
Seth delivered a brutal, heavy jab directly into Beaumont's groin. The blow landed with the absolute fury of a thunderbolt. The sheer physical pressure bypassed the reinforced earth armor like fragile glass, transferring devastating, concentrated force into the mage's most vulnerable center. The impact was sickening. Beaumont's eyes bulged. A wave of nerves welled up in his throat as agony exploded through his nervous system.
But Seth wasn't done.
With blinding speed, Seth snapped his left foot down, heavily pinning Beaumont's right boot against the floor and locking him in place. The mage's posture destabilized further. Seth then delivered a snapping kick directly into Beaumont's left knee. The joint buckled with an audible, wet crack, destroying the adventurer's stance and forcing his upper body to bend forward involuntarily in excruciating pain.
Following through the momentum with flawless fluidity, Seth executed a spinning flip kick. His heel connected with devastating precision against Beaumont's temple.
CRACK.
The absolute kinetic force blasted Beaumont backward. He went sprawling across the ruins, his armored body tumbling violently. He slammed against a giant fallen ceiling slab, the impact shattering part of his Tectonic Armor into flying fragments. Momentum carried him through a large boulder, which exploded into rubble on contact, before he finally rolled to a heavy, broken stop deep in the debris field.
Beaumont struggled to rise. His body shimmer under the agony. Blood poured profusely from his nose and left ear. His eyes were bloodshot, the whites turning a dark red. He couldn't take in his surroundings properly. His once-reliable earth senses were entirely blacked out, replaced by a deafening, high-pitched ringing that echoed deep inside his skull like a screaming siren. His vision swam and blurred, the world tilting sickeningly.
What... what is going... going on? His thoughts fractured in pure panic and disorientation.
Seth materialized through the swirling dust cloud directly in front of him. Beaumont's ruined senses barely registered the presence before it was too late. Seth casually brushed him off his feet with a powerful shove, lifting the mage slightly into the air. Before Beaumont could even begin to fall, Seth unleashed a devastating dropkick directly into his torso.
The impact was cataclysmic.
Beaumont was hurled backward with terrifying force, his body smashing violently into a massive structural slab. Cracks spiderwebbed across the stone from the point of collision. The sheer trauma pushed the adventurer past his final limits.
Something inside Beaumont snapped.
Screaming in pure, unadulterated madness, his overflowing mana detonated outward in a violent, orb-like explosion. The blast shattered the surrounding ground in a wide radius. Chaotic dust and rocks swirled furiously around his bleeding frame like a localized hurricane, forming a protective yet destructive maelstrom. Mana flames licked across his broken armor as he desperately attempted to mount one final, frenzied counterattack.
Seth was a
lready dashing straight through the blast zone.