Joaquin held his spear out in front of him. He had no idea how Grey had gotten this strong so fast, not with all the advantages he had, not with all the power.
He had just been a bit shy of becoming a Baron. That had been enough to piss him off, but the only silver lining about this was that the reason he had failed in the end was because he spent too much time trying to claim another inheritance.
At first he thought it would be something that could help him with the Holy path the spear he had received from the Tutorial had given him. But instead of something that matched well with his Holy Spear, he ended up on the path of the Holy Priest instead.
On the one hand, he had heard that Priests were rarer and far more powerful than Holy Knights were. But this wasn’t the path his talent was meant to go down.
While he felt that he could pivot, he would need time, but it had only been a single damn day. There hadn’t been time to do anything.
Where could Grey have possibly gotten all this luck?
Seeing Grey approaching so fast, Joaquin knew that he was finished if things stayed like this. He would die here and everything would end, all because he had offended the wrong person.
"DAMMIT!" Joaquin roared.
He had just stepped into this new world, he wasn’t willing to go out like this.
With a flip of his palm, he brought out the box his sponsor had sent him. He wasn’t supposed to use it this early. It was something he should have waited until he was on the verge of the Established Class to use.
But at this point, he would never make it there.
He flipped it open and as Grey stepped in close, he flipped the bottle inside into his mouth. Without the time to do anything else, he bit down, shattering it and eating both shard and liquid in one go.
...
Grey didn’t know what Joaquin was doing, but he had no desire to find out. Unfortunately, he had underestimated just how determined Joaquin was. There was no time to open the bottle he brought out, so he didn’t even try to.
He watched as Joaquin’s mouth became a bloody mess. It was the last glimpse of something he could catch before a wall of gold blasted against him.
Grey was sent flying, flipping heels over head before he finally found purchase on the ground. He covered his eyes with a forearm, frowning.
The glaring white light pierced into his eyes as though in some vain attempt to blind him completely.
When it faded, Joaquin still stood where he had been before, but Grey burst into a fit of laughter.
The handsome bastard had become a fat blob. His skin was painted in brass, and his hair had completely fallen off, replaced by patterns of white tattoos that looked like they had some higher meaning to them, but Grey didn’t give a damn.
The man looked ridiculous, especially since his clothes didn’t fit anymore. His robes had stretched over his belly so far it looked like he was wearing a short dress now as opposed to actual robes.
He couldn’t even wield his spear properly. When he tried holding it with both hands, his belly got in the way.
"Holy shit, you fat fuck. Don’t tell me you wanted one last meal before I put you in the dirt and went too far?"
Joaquin was looking down at himself in horror, but the one person not laughing was what was left of Bishop Calixan’s projection. In fact, it seemed to be trembling more than ever before.
Suddenly, Calixan fell to his knees and bowed toward Joaquin. He didn’t dare to say a single word more, almost as though even the act of doing so would be blasphemous.
Grey frowned when he saw this. ’Just my fucking luck. You couldn’t just be fat, now could you?’
Grey’s lips twitched as he watched Joaquin accidentally bend his spear in two trying to get it to fit over his belly. He didn’t know how much strength something like that would take, but it certainly wasn’t small.
Joaquin lifted his spear up and looked at its curved form, his eyes wide with shock. And then, a slow realization came over him.
He grew calmer and then his gaze landed on Grey. Though he didn’t say anything, his expression spoke every word.
The whipping sound of wind was all Grey heard before he arched his back once again, barely dodging the spear-turned-boomerang that soared over his nose.
BOOM.
The spear embedded itself into a far wall, crumbling earth falling. It hadn’t even hit blade first, yet its body was imprinted into the stone as though it was soft clay.
’Son of a bitch.’ Grey flipped back to his feet. If not for his PER being decently high right now and his Vampire Lord Frame being fully activated, that would have taken his head clean off.
But he could feel that strength was almost like a by-product of whatever Joaquin had become. What was much more pressing was the dense cloud of Holy energy wafting from him.
’There’s no way he has enough Stamina to keep this up. But it might not even matter if this fat bastard lands a hit on me.’
Joaquin hadn’t even had any form on that throw. He just flicked his wrist and he had that much power. But if he—.
Joaquin stretched out his palms and all of a sudden a large amount of golden energy began to form. It only took an instant for Grey to realize it was the very same magic golden bullets he had been sending at him earlier, and it was just as fast before the first was already coming for his head.
’Fucking fast. Shit!’
Grey dove to the side and a hole was blasted through the wall behind him.
There wasn’t a single sound made, almost like anything the bullet touched was just directly erased.
It wasn’t until a long while later that the BOOM echoed, shaking the catacombs to their very foundation.
’You’ve gotta be kidding me...’