Atticus’s Odyssey: Reincarnated Into A Playground

To Atticus, the view of the world had changed.

The roaring armies, sounds of weapons clashing against one another, the deaths… all of it had fallen away.

The world had turned to a realm of silence.

Here, everything was clear. Correct. His brain no longer filtered information emotionally; perception and decision had become nigh instantaneous.

Through his sights, the world reduced itself to frames and vectors, movement and calculation.

Every sensory input was processed with mathematical clarity; sound, light, motion… all integrated into a predictive model.

In this world, Atticus felt more alive than he'd ever felt before. There were no limitations, no hesitation. Only angles, momentum and probabilities.

He saw what was, and acted with the certainty of a person who knew. A god.

Which was why, as he severed the grotesque arm of the second Sentinel, Atticus already knew what would come next.

The creature's energy rippled unnaturally, spreading downward instead of out.

A tremor in the ground, minor at first, but inconsistent with recoil.

The weight distribution in the Sentinel's stance shifted, its center of gravity pulling left while its core darkened.

A trap.

In less than a second, Atticus saw what was.

Darkness would surge upward in a column from beneath him, then a secondary strike from the flanks, meant to herd him toward the rear where a sword waited for him.

He moved before it happened.

The instant the darkness burst from the earth, he pivoted through the blind angles of the attack.

His movement folded three evasions into one seamless motion. The first pillar scraped the afterimage of his form, the second carved through empty air beside him, and the third erupted just behind as he spun.

His leg, following the arc of that rotation, screamed toward the exact point he had calculated the Sentinel would emerge.

The Sentinel's eyes barely widened before the strike landed squarely on his masked face.

The impact detonated with such force that concentric shock circles rippled outward from the point of contact, distorting the air.

The Sentinel was flung backward in a blur, tearing through the horizon like a comet.

Cities, encampments, mountains, and oceans flashed beneath him; obliterated, split apart, or parted by the sheer wake of his flight.

Through the maelstrom of wind whipping against his back, he managed to raise his remaining hand to his face. His palm came back with a slick, dark liquid glistening across his fingers.

'He read me… again…'

His eyes trembled, wide with disbelief.

'What is he…?'

The sentinel's main power stemmed from the manipulation of emotions. They could amplify, resonate and even feed off from it.

In a world of wills and beliefs, everyone had emotions, even the top echelons of the middle planes.

Without will, without the power to fight back, this power should be uncontested, absolute.

And yet… his ability was failing. His resonance could find no rhythm, no connection. The boy he faced was silent, dead to his influence.

'Why?'

Why did it feel like he was fighting a machine rather than a person? Just who in all the planes was this?

His thoughts were cut short. Through the cloak of roaring winds, Atticus appeared above him like a phantom, katana descending in a blinding arc.

The Sentinel's eyes narrowed the moment he met those cold, emotionless orbs.

A primal instinct screamed at him; move! and he obeyed. His body split into two streams of darkness, narrowly avoiding the cleaving strike.

As the two halves rejoined, his expression hardened.

'He read me again!'

Before he could stabilize, a kick exploded into the side of his head, hard enough to warp space.

His body spun violently, sent hurtling once more across the ravaged lands.

'I can't win like this.'

His face was deformed, black sleek blood leaking from cracked mask.

'I'm at a disadvantage.'

It was rare in the middle plains to battle without will, especially when it was a battle between gods.

Fighting with wills had made battles… simple. The one with the stronger vaster will more often than not always win. The only exception to this was through the use of true will and will arts.

But everything had been made obsolete in this battle.

When was the last time he fought like this? Flesh to flesh, instinct to instinct. He couldn't remember the last time he used his world's power to fight.

Yet, it shouldn't matter.

Information about the boy was accurate. He was a newly ascended god.

Other power systems were blurred out due to the presence of will, centered on the vastness of their world and the energy contained.

Though he hardly used his world's power, he had been alive for millennia. The energy of his world had grown to a level beyond the verge's comprehension.

Though they were in a foreign world, forced to rely on only the energies within themselves, he should overwhelm this child in power, in energy.

'I do.'

He had felt it since the beginning. He was stronger, faster. Yet, he was being pushed back.

'It's him.'

The boy appeared to be built for battle.

Atticus's way of fighting... it was manipulative, predictive.

He would move, thinking he was in control only to realize that he was playing at the whim of another.

'He can fight.'

Not the simple way the majority of people in the middle planes fought, but the cold, instinct-filled way of battle.

The sentinel eyes burned.

'It can't continue like this.'

If it did, there was only one end, loss. Death. Unacceptable.

'I have to clip his wings.'

Everything that gave the boy his rhythm, his power, his way of perceiving the battlefield, it all had to be destroyed.

Bursting from the end of a shattered mountain range, the Sentinel twisted mid-air, regaining momentum. His eyes narrowed to slits as he spotted the streak of blinding light hurtling toward him.

'He's coming.'

The instant Atticus's cold gaze locked onto him, he felt his pulse quicken.

Without hesitation, he spun toward the direction of the earlier wasteland, drawing power from his own darkness.

His form elongated, condensed, and with a deep dip, he blasted forward, transforming into a roaring beam of lightless energy that tore through the terrain, leveling mountains and rending valleys in his wake.

He blipped into existence high above the wasteland, eyes sweeping the scarred ground.

Below, the first Sentinel fought the other tainted thing.

'He's losing…' he registered with slight surprise.