The Earth After Rebirth

Which made Kiro wish he could tame it. The obsidian rock and lava made it irresistible to look at. It was like looking at the sunrise at night, it was hard to explain the kind of situation it was for him. It was just alluring for him.

But he knew he couldn\'t tame this, in Asgard, there were monsters, then there were beasts. This thing in front of them was a monster, something the game made to be slayed. He wondered if his taming could be strong enough one day, to tame monsters.

Ding!

[It\'s a possibility...]

"How?" He was used to the system reading his mind so he didn\'t freak out much. He just wanted to know how to go about taming monsters.

[...]

The system, like always, didn\'t give him answers head on. He felt frustrated but at the same time understood that it was probably just it\'s code.

"Well, Hubris, we have to work together here."

They waited with bated breath, it felt like eternity. Kiro couldn\'t stop the fear welling up inside of him. No matter what it was, the thing in front of him looked like a titan of sorts. The ones from stories of gods.

Of course he\'d never seen one, but the fear he felt at that moment told him this was something that birthed even gods.

Even though it wasn\'t bigger, it felt more intimidating than before. Then everything went quiet, Kiro swore he could hear his blood boil beneath his skin, it sounded like waves crashing onto his bones.

"Goosebumps."

The place where it had eye sockets suddenly lit up with a bright red. Kiro thought orange eyes would make it more attractive, the red made it look evil a bit.

It made its first move by punching the ground, shaking it uncontrollably, making Kiro lose his balance.

The ground shook with earthquake level turbulence, as he always did, Kiro used Ryu to ensure he didn\'t fall. Though this little trick didn\'t seem to phase Hubris, even a little bit. He was standing still, watching their foe with interest and caution.

With a single stride, it closed in the gap between them, and packed a punch that drained all the air in Kiro\'s lungs. He remembered the feeling all too well, with Isaac. It felt exactly like this.

If Hubris\' fire tickled it before it didn\'t do anything this time around. It was instead being absorbed fuelling it\'s strength, not the flames per se, just the heat it exuded. The more heat it consumed the stronger it seemed to get, Hubris gave up attacking it with his flames.

The weather was peculiar where they were. The rain happening outside, caused a mist that alluded Kiro\'s senses. The only one who could see through it was Hubris, but neither of them had the time for Kiro to be coddled. The golem attacked at crazed speeds.

It attempted to elbow him, Hubris quickly melted into his ethereal form and fell back, he was however followed by erupting volcanoes. The noise they blessed his ears with made them ring with great pain, as if the little explosions attacked not just physically but with sound as well.

Fortunately for him, he had perfect sense. If he couldn\'t use his ears, he could just use some other sense to compensate for the inoperative one.

All this happened in a span of a second, Kiro had just swallowed a potion. He blinked right in front of it, it was already aiming to crash his skull when Hubris activated fear inducement and it was stunned in place.

Even though they were just red lava, Kiro had seen a panicked look in its eyes, they darted from left to right pretty fast. Clearly it was thinking of a contingency plan but no matter what it did, it couldn\'t move.

Kiro remembered the only thing that worked back then was lightning. But for some reason, he could not produce the same lightning he did back then. Tried as he did, he failed. He opted for bolts as his makeshift fists, he pounded the thing none stop.

With every punch, came a thunderous roar. He wanted to destroy it\'s torso completely. It was working too, with each of his punches, he left dents and hot orange liquid trickled out of wherever place his fist found.

It didn\'t take it another second and it was out of its trance, it swatted Kiro to the side his body crashed on the other side of the mountain. He was tired of being thrown around like he was nothing, for a moment he considered not getting up at all.

"Sh*t, Hubris use affliction." He shouted activating blink and whirlwind.

"I\'m trying, it\'s not, working!" He yelled back.

He appeared in front of the golem with his palm ready to strike, it dodged and he missed it by an inch. It threw a lava coated punch, it was the heaviest thing he\'d ever received from this game. His insides were burning.

It\'s punches could transfer the heat from its fists to whatever it was punching. Causing a slow but progressive corrosion on the inside.

Another punch followed it, and rendered his arm useless. Hubris pounced on it with his maw wide open, he landed on its shoulder and refused to let go no matter what.

Kiro quickly drank a restorative potion from the leftovers Hiro made for Hubris. His insides and arm were restored.

He activated lightning once more, this time the lightning he wanted showed itself. It looked like lightning rain coursing through his fingers, he condensed it into a ball that hid his palm entirely.

Hubris was still attached to the golem\'s shoulder. This would be a perfect time to sneak an attack. He blinked in front of them, and drove his lightning palm through its chest.

It was blasted into smithereens, not before taking his whole arm with it. Kiro fell on his behind taking a deep breath.

"This--mountain--is--dangerous."