"Oof..."
Grey tumbled along the ground. His arm pinned beneath his body at an awkward angle, then it was his leg’s turn, then his head. He thought he was going to snap his neck in two before his body unfurled like some sort of organic spring and he oddly landed on his feet, tapping and hopping at the ground awkwardly before he finally came to a stop.
"Well fuck me..." Grey coughed.
He held the rod in one hand and his ribs in the other, looking around in a bit of confusion. It was only after a bit that he realized that he had tumbled across the entire city. He didn’t recognize where he was because he was literally miles away from where he had started.
"I’m kind of badass, huh?" Grey chuckled. "Now, where the hell is—"
BOOM!
The rod landed heavily in front of him, knocking him off his precarious feet and onto his ass. Grey was instantly convinced she did it on purpose.
"... Are you serious?" the angel lady’s voice buzzed in his head. "What the hell are you doing?"
"Well, this isn’t exactly my fault, now is it?"
"Obviously it is. What are you thinking, jumping in there against a Dominion Class like that?"
Grey blinked and then his eyes lit up.
"Finally come to your senses?"
"Yes," Grey said quickly. "You know about the Dominion Class, right? Why are all these fuckers so broken?"
"That is not what you’re supposed to be asking!"
"Well, lady, I have a reputation to uphold and a company to shill for, I can’t just get my ass kicked, now can I?"
Grey grunted a bit as he pressed his fingers into his ribs, snapping them back into place.
He sighed in relief, rolling his shoulder. "Much better."
"The Dominion Class isn’t something you can just overcome because you feel like it. Bridging the gap to Command Class is hard enough. But Dominion is an impossible barrier."
"You still haven’t learned your lesson yet?" Grey asked, a bit annoyed.
"What is that supposed to mean?!"
"Last time you spent this long wasting precious seconds explaining stuff I’m just going to ignore anyway, I just went head first into a death pool. Do you want a re-run?"
The angel lady let out a grunt of frustration and Prometheus thrummed inside of Grey with excitement. He seemed to get a real kick out of seeing Atlas’ lady in turmoil.
Now that Grey thought about it, she had called Prometheus a little brother. This was definitely peak little brother energy.
"The Command Class is the first step toward godhood. The Vector Class is kind of a precursor. You felt how you’re more in tune with your Neural Frames now, correct? How it’s more specialized and internalized?"
"Sure," Grey said, nodding.
"What do you mean, sure? Yes or no!"
"Lady, we don’t have time for this."
"If we don’t have time for it, then be straightforward."
"Just assume I understand, okay. Blitz through your explanation. Hurry up!"
BOOM. BOOM.
"The Vector Class sets your direction. The Vanguard Class places it at the forefront. The Command Class lets you take control of it. The Dominion Class allows you to bloom it into a law that forces change on the world around you.
"At that level, you’re asserting a Dominion over the world. They’re a fundamentally different sort of existence because they’re twisting laws around them. You can’t just injure someone like that because you want to. Without a Dominion that supersedes theirs, you can’t injure them at all!"
"What the fuck. Aren’t you a Dominion Class weapon? Do something, lady."
"You haven’t been acknowledged by me, and you can’t be unless you have Atlas’ acknowledgement. I have to forcefully allow you the chance to control as much as you have. Let alone giving you access to my Dominion, I can’t be much more than a heavy stick for you."
"Well, thanks for nothing," Grey mumbled as he watched an enormous ball of ink forming in the skies. "... You’ve gotta be kidding me. What is this spirit bomb ass shit."
Grey cringed. He definitely couldn’t get hit by that, but even if he dodged it would level the city. If it collapsed the catacombs under the city, they were screwed.
They’d have to dig everything up before they could make the Mech Soul work properly.
"Is there really no way for me to harm him?"
"The only way to hurt someone at the Dominion Class is to overwhelm their Dominion. Someone with a weaker Dominion could manage it too, but only in close range."
"So what you’re saying is that all I have to do is overwhelm their Dominion."
"What is that supposed to mean? Do you think that’s easy? A Dominion is built on a synergy formed between Level 50 Abilities. The resonance causes a fundamental change to the Neural Frame that makes its chemical reactions as volatile as what you might find in the middle of a star. Trying to overwhelm it is like trying to use a little battery to overwhelm a nuclear reactor."
"Yeah, yeah, yeah," Grey said, slowly starting to understand what the core difference was and where it lay.
He gripped the rod in one hand and exhaled. His eyes began to blaze, his hair dancing with wisps of white that almost made it look more like dancing flames than real filament.
His power thrummed within him.
There was only one thing he had that might be able to bridge this gap.
His Last Paladin thrummed with life.
He pulled on Last Bulwark. Then on Last Endurance. Then on Last Sever and Last Coronation. Then on Last Vigil and Last Ascension.
All at once, he forced them into a center of focus.
His Neural Frame thrummed and shook, trying to buck up against him, but his Branching Frame diverted the destructive energy continuously. Every time it seemed like he might implode from the inside out, the energy split, and then it split again.
A holy energy erupted from Grey and he roared, a white-gold pillar connecting him to the skies above.
There was only one Ability that could form the center of six such abilities.
The seventh Last Paladin Ability and the holy grail that gave the goblins their power.
Last Paladin Spirit.
Steam erupted from the corners of Grey’s mouth, and at that moment, he didn’t believe any Dominion could overwhelm him.
BANG.
He vanished.