His body now even more closely mimicked his petrified form, for despite the presence of a left arm it was merely floating at the shoulder, his back was still littered with dozens of bayonets. A single crystalline core shone embedded halfway in his breast, right where his heart ought to be, plain for all to see. It seethed with such terrible power that one would’ve been hard pressed to ignore it, even if one was entirely blind to matters of the arcane. The General raised his hand, and with a snap of his fingers, a pulse of brilliant light was emitted from his core, traveling down the pillar he stood atop and through the earth, causing the ground to open up and swallow any and all flame-possessed it could, leaving only a few dozen behind. Once the pulse reached the outermost edges of the battlefield, its true purpose was revealed, for a great stone wall suddenly rose up out of the ground around the battlefield’s perimeter, tall enough to entirely overshadow even the tallest of trees.

“THOSE OF YOU BRAVE ENOUGH TO HAVE COURTED DEATH BY CHALLENGING ME, I COMMEND YOU,” the General’s voice resounded.

“EVEN IF YOU CANNOT BE PERMITTED TO LIVE, I STILL HAVE MY HONOUR AS A WARRIOR, AND SO I SHALL STRIKE YOU DOWN BY MY OWN HAND. COME!”

A hailstorm of bullets, cannonballs, Ignis beams, offensive magicks, and high-velocity anti-cultivator shells was set loose upon Ubul, but… Nothing seemed to penetrate, or even move him. He just stood there and took it, seemingly invincible, before smugly squatting down atop his pillar as he looked down on the many people throwing everything they had at the immovable object that he was.

Zelsys didn’t particularly care.

She stockpiled Aether in her second stomach whilst forming a ball of lightning in her mouth, making her way towards the seven pillars. The beast-slayer jumped a substantial portion of a pillar’s height, using its side as a springboard to vertically leap towards another, repeating this once more, burning the contents of her second stomach and using Thundercharger in order to send herself flying directly at Ubul. As she flew, she opened her mouth and, forming an arc between her tongue and the Butcher, wreathed its blade entirely in killing light, delivering an instant and deadly strike to the general’s back…

…Or that was what she tried to do, anyway. Just as the hooked point of the Butcher’s blade bit into his back he nearly caught her, whipping around and grabbing for her, a grab which she only escaped by the virtue of her quick thinking and a fortuitously timed use of Graze Pulse alongside a burning of what kinetic energy she’d saved in her battery. Even in the moment of this brief slipup, she felt his crushing strength, his fingers digging into muscle through her trousers as he tried to pull at her right arm and left leg in an attempt to dismember her. The Primordial Self decided that it was an all too plausible threat, deciding to tap further into the resource stockpiles it had built, flooding the body with even more Rubedo, spending some of it to produce copious amounts of Vitae while also further increasing Zel’s perceived time dilation by a further fifty percent.

The general leapt from his high perch down onto the ground, the force of his impact carving a crater into the earth.

Yet again they clashed, and yet again he grabbed Zelsys, clamping his hand around her right arm, pulling and squeezing in an effort to break her bones and rip the limb from its socket, but she defied him by calling upon the earthly spirits and turning her steel-like muscle to literal iron, strengthening her bones with the ability of iron to bend, yet spring back to its initial shape. Even still, she knew it wouldn’t be long before his monstrous strength prevailed, and so she wreathed her right leg in killing light as to deliver a side kick, baiting out his right arm, and carving into his side even still by hyperextending her knee. She let his fingers dig into her flesh, only then hardening it to trap him, now finally slamming her left hand against his chest, aiming it directly at his core, and releasing all the charge she’d built up within her left arm and its armor, reducing the telegraphing for her impending Thundercannon to a bare minimum.

Nevertheless, Ubul was far beyond human, his terrible strength matched by speed, and he was able to pull his hands free, kicking her away just as she pushed the trigger lever the final stretch of the way. Her chest caved in on itself, sternum pushed inward and made to crush her windpipe, a strike specifically tailored for use against Fog-breathers. Even still she found the Aether to invoke Heartbreaker with a wheezing, breathless whisper, her aim turning sharply to the right as the white meteor ripped forth from her gun.

Even Ubul wasn’t fast enough to dodge something like this, a shell approaching twice the speed of sound. The blinding-white starstreak hit squarely into the middle of his chest, just nicking his core, sending a wide crack across it as its energy discharged. The resultant serpent-like manifestation escaped right out of Ubul’s back, leaving behind a hole barely as wide as a finger, dissipating into chittering sparks. Makhus fell upon him in this moment, as the walking mountain stumbled, raising a hand in gesture, invoking: “All wears away, but stone remains!”

With these words did his core glow, and the hole in his chest was closed shut, but Makhus was already upon him, his arm filled with alchemicals, clad in his Iron Rider armor, his sword shining with the belt’s magick. When he reached Ubul, going at the general from the left and behind, Makhus snapped into a perfect cutting stance in an instant, and the ill-defined spout of arcane power sharpened into a hair-thin edge of light that perfectly conformed to his sword.