Chapter 203: Book 3: Confrontation
It feels good to have my Firmament flowing through me again. I waste no time in kicking things off, activating the Knight Inspiration and feeling myself change; this time, the transformation is smoother than ever, and the pain that usually accompanies it is reduced to nothing more than a dull ache. Like my physical body itself is more malleable as a result of the changes to my core.
That's step one. I follow up by activating a secondary transformation—the Generator Form. The plating of my armor shifts, revealing a torrent of blue-gold Firmament blazing with enough density to rival Guard.
And with a thought, the Knight and I move, a blast of energy propelling us forward.
The ground disappears beneath me. A fraction of a second later, the Hand is in front of me, still pointing toward Ahkelios and Guard—it hasn't had enough time to react. Neither have I, in all honesty, even with Quicken Mind to amplify my reaction times.
An Amplified Gauntlet coalesces around my fist a fraction of a second before it makes contact. Pure energy jets out of the openings in my right arm, and that energy wraps itself around me all the way up to my shoulder and half my chest. It's the furthest an Amplified Gauntlet has ever gone, and I can feel the way it energizes the force I'm already generating with every step.
And then it makes contact.
A boom reverberates through my skull and the dungeon around us, shattering ground and stone alike. There's a moment where I worry I'm going to send the Hand flying into another part of the dungeon entirely—there's enough of a shockwave from the blow that I'm thrown back a few meters, even with the grounding from the new Physical trait. It's an unnecessary worry, though. Guard's chains are still holding strong around the base of the Hand, anchoring it into the dungeon's floor. On top of that, the sheer amount of force I generated, channeled into the surface area of a single punch?
Even with the Gauntlet to spread it out, I blast a hole straight through its flesh.
Its Firmament, really. Whatever it's made out of is pretty similar to what the Integrators are made out of—pure Firmament, compressed and reconfigured into a substance that has the resilience and look of stone but the malleability and flexibility of flesh. Even with a hole burned through it, it doesn't lose its mobility; instead, it immediately whirls around, its index finger directly at me.