[A/N: To understand why MC is holding back, consider that the less the gods know about MC's true power, the less they can prepare. Showing all his abilities to enemies whom he knows nothing about would be foolish and arrogant. By having his enemy plan to counter one thing while remaining unaware of another, MC gains an advantage. And remember, these gods can destroy multiverses and create new ones with a thought.]
Reinhard fell into the side of a mountain, the stone cracking and cratering around his body on impact. The fact that he had already been flying backward from the recoil of his own punch, combined with the force of the clash itself, meant he was sent rocketing away with far greater speed than either force alone would have produced.
But he stabbed his foot downward into the air as if it were solid ground, anchoring himself against nothing and using the resistance to slow his momentum. Without that, he might have been sent hurtling all the way down toward the core of Terra itself, punching through the planet's crust from sheer inertia.
"Impossible!" The old man screamed, his voice breaking with disbelief as he watched his spear—his ultimate technique, the pinnacle of everything he had spent centuries perfecting—get sent flying back toward him, deflected by nothing more than a bare fist.
He quickly summoned the weapon back to his hand, his fingers closing around the shaft with a grip that trembled despite his best efforts to steady it. He looked at Reinhard, who was already walking through the air at a casual pace, heading back toward him as though what had just happened was a minor inconvenience rather than a clash that had shaken the entire human domain.
Of course, he was shocked. Reinhard had punched his strongest attack head-on, and his arm had suffered no visible injuries from the exchange. How was that possible? The answer was simple—Reinhard had aimed for the weak point of the attack itself.
Just as he had found the death point of Thorin's spell and cut it to disperse the magic, he had identified the structural vulnerability in the Dragon God Spear and directed his fist precisely at that spot. But he couldn't perfectly hit the weak point with complete accuracy—the spear had been moving faster than light, after all, and even Reinhard's precision had limits under those conditions—so he couldn't fully nullify the attack's power. A portion of its force had still gotten through.
"That hurts," Reinhard said calmly, shaking his fist, which was throbbing with considerable pain. He had been injured by the residual force that had slipped past his counter, but the damage was already healing, his regeneration and adaptation working in tandem to undo the harm and ensure the same level of force would be even less effective if it struck him again.
"M-monster," the old man said in horror, the word escaping his lips before he could stop it. From the looks of things, Reinhard was a swordsman by nature—that was where his truest mastery lay. He was at the 9th rank; his mind was sharp enough to put that information together.
The fact that he was this capable without even holding a sword, fighting with nothing but his bare hands and his body, meant that the old man was fighting a fundamentally weakened version of Reinhard. He was facing Reinhard at a disadvantage, and he was still unable to win. The implications of that realization were terrifying.
"Hurry, use it!" The old man screamed toward the ground below, and suddenly, Reinhard felt his body weaken dramatically. A massive magic circle blazed to life on the surface far beneath them, its intricate patterns stretching across the landscape for miles in every direction, covering an area so vast that it encompassed the entire battlefield and everything surrounding it.
Within this range, enemies like Reinhard faced massive debuffs—so severe that they wouldn't even be able to use more than ten percent of their full strength. The circle even nullified any blessings one might possess, stripping away the gifts of the world itself and leaving the target with nothing but their base capabilities, diminished to a fraction of what they should have been.
But while enemies within the circle's range faced such crippling suppression, allies received the opposite effect—a massive buff that granted a full tenfold increase in power. Everything the circle took from one side, it gave to the other, creating a disparity so extreme that it turned any fight within its boundaries into a one-sided slaughter under normal circumstances.
"I see why the human domain stands tall even though they seem hated by all races," Reinhard said softly. This was humanity's trump card—not individual strength, but a system designed to amplify their forces while crippling anyone who opposed them. It was the kind of advantage that could turn even a losing war into a decisive victory.
"The weak fear that which is greater than them," the old man said coldly, pointing his spear at Reinhard with renewed confidence now that the magic circle was active and the gap between them had been forcibly widened. Since the gods were so on guard against Reinhard, he dared not take Reinhard lightly.
"No, more like everything you are today is because of the gods. Humble yourself." Reinhard said while holding his hands out to either side. His words struck a nerve far deeper than any physical blow could have, and they enraged the old man, whose face twisted with fury. He instantly moved to close the distance—just to pause mid-charge when Reinhard took hold of the air itself.
The wind gathered in Reinhard's hands, streams of air condensing and compressing and folding over one another until they solidified into the shape of a sword. The moment the blade took form, it began shining with a brightness so overwhelming, so intense, that the old man had to physically look away, his eyes burning from the sheer radiance the sword emitted. No—it wasn't light. It was mana.
The wind sword was drawing in and concentrating so much ambient mana that it radiated energy like a miniature star, the blade humming with a power that made the air around it vibrate and distort.
The old man moved quickly, far faster than before with the tenfold buff coursing through his body, closing the distance at a speed that would have been impossible for him just moments earlier.
But the wind blowing around Reinhard had shifted, forming a barrier of razor-sharp currents that surrounded his body like a living shield. The winds cut sharper than the sharpest blades ever forged—they sliced through everything that came near, and all of the old man's defenses, his mana reinforcement, his physical durability, his protective techniques, were treated as though they didn't exist.
The wind barrier carved through them without resistance, without slowing, without acknowledging that they were there at all. In horror, the old man shot backward, retreating at maximum speed while clutching the stump of his arm, which was now missing from the elbow down. The head of his spear was gone as well, severed cleanly by the same wind that had taken his limb.
"No…" The old man's pupils shrank to pinpoints as Reinhard brought the wind sword down in a single, decisive motion. He wanted to dodge—every instinct in his body screamed at him to move. He wanted to flee, and he was more than fast enough to dodge under normal circumstances, especially with the tenfold amplification still coursing through his veins.
But this sword, this attack, paralyzed him on a level that went beyond physical restraint. Something about the strike locked him in place, not through force, but through an overwhelming certainty that settled into his bones—the absolute knowledge that even if he ran to the end of the world, this attack would reach him.
There was no distance far enough, no speed fast enough, no defense strong enough. This was death, and it had already decided where it would land.
Reinhard brought the sword down, and a massive sword beam erupted from the edge of the wind blade. The beam shot forward in a blinding arc, tearing through the sky and flying into the distance far beyond the horizon, its light stretching across the world.
But after a few moments, those watching from below saw it appear again—the beam emerged from the opposite direction, soaring high above the battlefield and forming a luminous ring around the entire planet before finally fading, its energy spent after circumnavigating the globe.
"A second 9th rank?" Reinhard said, raising an eyebrow as he looked at the newcomer who had saved the old man at the last possible moment, pulling him out of the sword beam's path in the split second before it would have erased him from existence.
"Thank you," the old man said, his voice shaking badly as the reality of how close he had come to death settled over him. He had been a heartbeat away from being erased by an attack that had just circled the planet.
The newcomer, an old woman whose presence radiated a quiet but immense authority, simply nodded in acknowledgment. She looked at Reinhard with a serious, calculating expression, her mind already working through what she was seeing.
Reinhard was weakened—suppressed to less than ten percent of his true strength by the magic circle below—and yet he was still this capable. He had disarmed and maimed a buffed ninth-rank combatant while operating at a fraction of his power. The implications were staggering.
"I call upon the gods for their help." This newcomer was the former saintess of the Holy Church, and like all saintesses throughout the church's long history, she possessed the ability to call upon the gods for direct assistance. In her case, she had reached a level of devotion and divine connection so profound that she could summon an avatar of the gods themselves—physical manifestations of their power sent down to fight on her behalf.
From the sky above, lightning boomed with a deafening crack before it fell in a blinding column of white-hot energy. Reinhard flashed to the side, avoiding the lightning strike as it hit the ground with enough force to crater the earth, though the magic circle below remained completely undamaged by the impact.
At the spot where the lightning had struck, two figures now stood. A white-haired man appeared first, his body crackling with residual electricity, his eyes glowing with an inner light that spoke of power far beyond the mortal realm.
Beside him stood a man encased in heavy armor from head to toe, a shield on one arm and a spear, his presence radiating the weight of a thousand battlefields.
Reinhard looked at the gods for a long second, his expression unreadable as he assessed what he was now facing. Then he moved, taking hold of the wind and sweeping it behind him in a wide arc just in time to block the white-haired man, who had appeared at his back in an instant, aiming a devastating sneak attack at a speed that most beings wouldn't have been able to perceive, let alone react to.
Reinhard's eyebrow raised as his wind blade met the god's fist and failed to cut through it. The white-haired man's fist was sheathed in lightning so dense and so potent that it served as armor harder than any material Reinhard had encountered. He could cut space itself, but this god's lightning was built differently—it existed on a level that resisted even his cutting power.
'He blocked my attack?' The white-haired god was shocked, his eyes widening at the sight of Reinhard's wind barrier holding firm against a blow that should have shattered any mortal defense like glass. He hadn't expected anything in this world to stop him.
Reinhard kicked off the air, propelling himself sideways to avoid a spear thrust from the armored god who had closed in from below during the exchange. That spear had pierced through the wind he was using to clash with their attacks.
With a flash of movement, Reinhard's leg swung in a devastating arc and slammed into the armored man, who managed to raise his shield just in time to absorb the blow. The impact still sent the armored god rocketing away despite the block, his feet carving trenches through the sky as he struggled to arrest his momentum.
In that same instant, the wind around Reinhard exploded outward in every direction, expanding into a dome of razor-sharp currents just in time to intercept the lightning-covered fist that had been aimed at the back of his skull.
But the white-haired man wasn't playing around. With a roar that cracked the atmosphere itself, the god unleashed a pulse of lightning so intense that Reinhard's wind barrier shattered, the currents torn apart and scattered by the sheer voltage coursing through the air. But the wind had served its purpose—it had bought Reinhard the fraction of a second he needed to twist his body and avoid the fist before it connected.
In the same motion, he released his control over the wind entirely and let himself fall, dropping out of the sky like a stone. His timing was perfect, because in the exact spot where he had been hovering a heartbeat earlier, a sea of swords came flying in from the direction of the armored god—hundreds of blades launched simultaneously, each one aimed with lethal precision at where Reinhard had been. But the swords shifted mid-air, redirecting their trajectories, and shot downward after Reinhard as he fell, tracking him like a swarm of predators locked onto their prey.
Reinhard instantly moved, catching the wind again and using it to propel himself through the air in an evasive pattern. But he was slow—with only ten percent of his strength available to him, he was far too slow to outpace divine weaponry.
The swords quickly closed the gap, their edges gleaming with holy light as they bore down on him. But he acted quickly, reforming his wind blade, and with a series of rapid slashes, his wind cut through the pursuing swords like they were nothing—each blade shattering into fragments of light the moment his wind touched them.
'His swordsmanship improved.' The god of war thought in shock from where he hovered, watching the exchange with eyes that had witnessed countless millennia of combat across every world in existence.
Reinhard's swordsmanship was improving mid-combat, visibly and measurably, growing sharper and more refined with every single exchange. Just one clash ago, Reinhard hadn't been able to cut through the lightning god lightning covered fist.
The second time, the god of lightning was forced to go all out when he sensed Reinhard's swordsmanship was capable of cutting through his lightning.
But the third time around, Reinhard cut through them like a knife through butter, as if the swords that had given him trouble moments earlier were now made of paper. His adaptation was working in real time, analyzing every failure and converting it into mastery at a speed that defied all reason.
"Your improvement speed is unmatched, what a shame…" The god of lightning waved his hand toward the ground, and the magic circle below suddenly exploded with newfound power, its light intensifying dramatically as more energy was funneled into its suppression field.
The debuffs pressing down on Reinhard grew heavier, pushing him even further below his true capabilities. But the god was forced to pause his casting when the god of war appeared before Reinhard in a flash, and with sword in hand, clashed directly with Reinhard, who slashed forward with the wind as if it were a blade, meeting divine steel with nothing but compressed air and technique.
"Who is the better swordsman?" The god of war grinned behind his helmet, his voice carrying the eager anticipation of someone who lived for moments like this—the thrill of crossing blades with a being who could actually match him. But all he got in return was Reinhard's indifferent gaze, flat and unimpressed, looking through him as though the god of war himself was just another obstacle standing between Reinhard and where he needed to be.
[A/N: MC didn't block any attacks. When he used the wind to seemingly block, he was in truth attacking.
Omni-Weapon Proficiency is being used to control the wind. In MC's hands, anything is a weapon, even the wind. Hell, even sound is a weapon he can take hold of.
MC is heavily nerfied in this battle, allowing his swordsmanship to shine. Again, everything shown is all without Blessings, and MC activily and suppressing his ability to adapt.
MC is a bit arrogant and doesn't really put the heroes into his eyes... seeing as he isn't even at 10%, and with him not using his hex and only using his swordsmanship and omni weapon proficiency, if he is facing 2 avatars of a god and is holding his own. He would only grow stronger as he adapts to those avatars.]