Stronger Together chapter 182

I did not, of course, hold back at all when I punched Fenrir. I  shifted into the third form of klurkor and activated the Archangel  Armor. I'd only expected to be able to last ten minutes, but the massive  soulfire consumption managed to somewhat offset even my klurkor state  and slow the mettalization process. I felt like I could last ten  minutes, which should hopefully be enough. On top of the power of the  armor I also stacked my triple force combo, aspect, Aura, and spell,  with the lightning aspect for speed and launched myself at Fenrir.

A  limb of condensed godsteel flew forward with so much force it ruptured  the air and caused a sonic boom as I moved so quickly forward that it  almost felt like I teleported. I felt like a god in this armor, and I  was bringing to bear more strength than I had ever dreamed of using in  my life. The Archangel Armor boosted my physical power and defense to  truly absurd levels, the spells even working on my arm in such a way as  to turn the raw godsteel into an enchanted weapon that could fell a  fucking Dragon.

I  smashed my fist into Fenrir's face, using my klurkor training to put my  entire body behind the blow, exerting so much force that the ground  cratered under my feet for dozens of foot around me and the punch  landed, no pun intended like the fist of an angry God. I felt myself  howl with internal triumph as I landed the most devastating blow of my  entire life against the god wolf and he...took it. Fenrir's head jerked  slightly to the side as if he'd been casually slapped before rotating  back to smile at me.

I  stood there, frozen, as he reached up to stroke his cheek. "Damn. I  actually felt that. It's been centuries since someone hit me hard enough  to make me feel it. I'm impressed kid." He gave me a look of respect,  which I was honestly fairly proud of, until every nerve in my body  suddenly decided to scream for my survival because something bad was  coming. Even with the speed boost from my armor and the lightning aspect  boosting me, I barely managed to get my godsteel arm in the way of  Fenrir's casual return punch before it hit ME in the face.

Which  was lucky, because judging by how my heaving reinforced magically  boosted and much more condensed divine metal limb creaked if that blow  had hit me in the head it would have shattered my skull like a  watermelon. The pressure would have immediately toppled me if Kara  hadn't appeared behind him and driven a punch into his kidney that  should have shattered a small moon. Because of her ability to fly she  was able to offset the whole ground cratering thing and the impact hit  him full force.

Unlike  Remus and Romulus Fenrir didn't try to shift his focus between us, just  casually jerked an elbow back and slammed it into Kara's face, sending  her careening across the field to smash a hole into the stands that  would have been a lot deeper if Raven and Cinder hadn't been reinforcing  the entire place for days. Kara luckily wasn't down, but her brief  absence gave River and Harry time to throw a pair of spells at Fenrir.  Harry's was a gravity spell that the god wolf barely seemed to notice,  but River used weird variation of a spell Carlos had in the books that  dissipated the force the big mans body generated.

Cinder  and Raven had been working on their abilities together but throwing  around huge weapons that could rip space with so many of us in the way  would be asking for trouble, instead they used the merged spell to  create a magical armor construct around Barb that functioned almost as  well as my Archangel Armor, albeit for a much more limited time. My  redhead streaked in with the Fang of Hati and Kara appeared on his other  side to rain down blows, with Morgan darting in using her semblance and  landing sneak attacks.

The  four of us managed to barely reach a state of partial equilibrium with  the horrifying beast of a man working together because of our shared  klurkor foundation allowing us to operate in sync but every single blow  he threw was still just on the razors edge of murdering the shit out of  us. Meanwhile the drain from the armor was actually overtaking the  effects of my third form klurkor state and I had to shift into fourth. I  had so much extra energy I was able to exponentially increase my  punches, triple stacking force on every one of them.

Fenrir  didn't look flustered at all, on the contrary he looked ecstatic  "Amazing! This is the best damn fight I've had in years!" He had gashes  all over him from the Fang of Hati but somehow he always managed to move  his body so the blade missed anything vital, seeming completely  unconcerned with all the golden blood flowing out of him. However I knew  that this pattern couldn't hold. My body was converting slowly to metal  and even burning off obscene amounts of energy I only had about six  minutes left.

If  I hadn't gotten this armor from the dark elves I would be dead.l If  Raven and Cinder hadn't created that construct for Barb I would be dead.  If Morgan hadn't gained so much more control of her soul through her  work with Raven I would be dead. Hell if Fenrir had manifested his  Authority I would be dead. Speaking of where the hell was that?  Authority was the mark of a powerful god, no way the wolf didn't have  one. I figured given his personality I might as well try something  crazy, so I decided to just fucking ask. "Hey, big man." I grunted out  between blows "Why aren't you using your Authority?"

On  the one hand reminding the uber powerful god wolf that he wasn't using  his trump card might have been a mistake, but on the other if he wanted  to use it he would be and finding out why might give us an angle we  could use to beat him. Fenrir laughed uproariously, sounding just barely  winded as he replied in an excited voice "I'm not like those pathetic  lesser gods. I don't manifest control over the world I exert my  Authority over myself. My body is my temple I guess you could say. Power  is the only real authority!' He lashed out with a devastating haymaker  that Kara knocked off course with a tackle, but even the mostly  deflected punch shook me in my armor.

I  grimaced, so if I understood him right he was using his godly power to  reinforce and impose his will on his own body. That kind of explained  how he was able to go toe to toe with people like Odin and be basically  invincible. One the upside that meant that this approach would work if  we could hit him harder, on the downside he had no magic weakness we  could exploit, we had to figure out some way to just fucking ground and  pound the bastard. I conjured a force aura shield construct around my  fist, adding another layer of power multiplication to my godsteel arm  and quadruple stacking all my abilities in a way I promised River I  wouldn't.

Fenrir  just tanked the blows, getting more and more excited but clearly  showing the damage from these new harder hits. The consumption was so  insane from the combination however that I managed to reach equilibrium  with my klurkor state again but even with my armor my body physically  couldn't keep up with this level of output. My muscles were all tearing  and reforming with more godsteel worked into them, increasing my  conversion rate and breaking the minor stalemate I had managed. Four  minutes left until I was a walking statue and my klurkor state vanished.

Fenrir  was a monster. We were all using advanced kryptonian god martial arts  in conjunction and he was somehow meeting or diverting every single  blow. Barb's knife strikes missed every organ, he tanked most punches  and returned them so fucking fast we couldn't keep up. His entire combat  style was basically just an extremely refined form of instinctive  brawling, he was clearly someone who polished a completely self made  style over millennia of actual combat with the strongest enemies and it  showed.

After  going all out I was managing to actually wound him with my punches, but  it wasn't enough, this son of a bitch was just a force of nature.  Everything about how he fought reminded me of how he lived his life.  Brutal, unrestrained, allowing nothing to stop or hinder him. Fenrir was  a fucking tidal wave, a category five hurricane in human form, and his  sheer momentum was slowly crushing any hope I had of breaking this  fucking stalemate. He'd clearly been holding back on us before but now  he seemed to be going all out and loving it.

I  was starting to panic, taking riskier and riskier chances in battle to  bring him down, and the girls followed suit, but none of it seemed to  phase him. He was in tatters, bleeding ichor from a hundred non lethal  wounds and with several broken bones in his face but that madman's grin  never slipped or even faltered. He was loving this. And then a sword  came scything out from behind Kara, into an opening I'd barely even  noticed until it was exploited, and Gard joined the fight.

The  valkyrie was glowing with an ethereal light, a pure white shining  nimbus of power around her as she chanted in old norse, and something  about the power made me think of Odin. She was a shieldmaiden of the all  father and she had called for her god to give her strength, and her god  had answered. As Sigrun joined in with us the tide began to turn,  slowly at first, with wounds piling up in slightly more debilitating  places, but as they stacked on top of the damage we'd already done  Fenrir began to show more gaps.

Despite  the turning tides, the god wolf never lost the deaths head grin, he  laughed and howled with joy as we tore him apart one blow at a time, his  bones cracking under the combined assault of Kara and my punches as his  life waned and the Authority reinforcing his godly body waned, golden  blood flowing from his mouth and nose as Barb and Gard's strikes landed  on more vital areas. But every blow was still thrown to kill, every  strike still riding a knife's edge of ending one of our lives.

Cornered  animals fight the hardest, and somehow I got the impression that Fenrir  knew he was going to die, but not only was he not unresolved to his  fate, he welcomed it. He didn't have a death wish or anything, he was  just joyful to die in such an amazing battle, this was what he'd always  wanted, a true fight, and if he couldn't survive then so be it, it just  meant that he was too weak and had found someone worthy to end his long  life. I'd expected this fight to drag on, but I had been wrong, that was  never how this was going to go.

Fenrir  was the type of person to throw his whole soul into a good battle. The  second we showed we were worth fighting he was always going to go all  out, to put it on the line and see who was stronger. Finally the last  blow pierced his heart, and even his body couldn't sustain itself any  more. He dropped to his knees, with Gard's sword in his chest, hacking  up golden blood and looked up at us with a massive cheery grin. His  voice was strong, but wracked with coughing and blood as he spoke his  last words. "Thank you all." Then Fenrir, the god wolf, the king of all  great beasts, toppled forward and died, still smiling to the end.