The Bog Golem charged again, this time with both fists raised. It brought them down together in a thunderous double strike aimed directly at Nero's position.

Nero didn't dodge.

Instead, he planted Gungnir in the ground and used it as a vault, launching himself up and over the descending fists. The impact behind him was tremendous, sending shockwaves through the earth that threw him further into the air than he had intended.

But that was fine.

That was perfect.

The Bog Golem, committed to its attack, couldn't adjust quickly enough. Its fists struck the ground with devastating force, and the resulting eruption of stone spikes was the largest yet. They shot upward in a deadly forest, some of them reaching ten feet in height.

The creature stood in the center of its own trap, momentarily off-balance.

Nero called Gungnir to him mid-flight, feeling the weapon tear free from the earth and rocket into his outstretched hand. The Soul Bond between them sang a wicked song.

One of ill intentions and woe. Of death and of blood.

But as Nero began his descent, the Bog Golem recovered. It looked up, tracking his movement, and began to rear back for another strike. This one would catch him in mid-air, vulnerable and unable to dodge.

The creature's fists came together with the force of colliding planets and slammed into Nero like a cannonball.

He was sent flying.

Not just knocked away, but launched like a projectile. The world became a blur of motion as he tumbled end over end, climbing higher and higher into the toxic sky. The impact had been so severe that his body went numb, unable to process the damage.

Nero's consciousness flickered, threatening to abandon him entirely.

But Gungnir was still in his hand. The spear's presence was an anchor, something solid to focus on as everything else, including his body, fell apart.

The world began to slow, or perhaps his perception simply accelerated. Either way, Nero found himself suspended in a strange moment of clarity at the apex of his involuntary flight. Below him, the island spread out in all its wretched, fungal glory. The Bog Golem stood at the center, already moving to intercept his landing.

Nero was perhaps thirty feet in the air and still rising, carried by momentum that would soon reverse and bring him crashing back down. Despite every bone in his body covered in cracks and on the edge of failure...

In that moment, he gained clarity.

He thought about Gungnir. The spear's tendency to alway strike true.

His vision narrowed and became even more focus as a breath of hot air shot from his lips.

His body resonated with the shifting balance.

The relationship and the bond between weapon and wielder, between action and intent.

And then, without quite understanding how, Nero achieved something extraordinary.

His body's wild tumbling suddenly stopped. The chaotic spin resolved itself into controlled rotation. He twisted in mid-air, aligning himself with Gungnir's length, and suddenly he wasn't falling anymore.

He was soaring.

The spear thrummed in his grip, a note of pure joy that resonated through every fiber of his being.

Nero heard it in return. He could feel its excitement and its eagerness.

And of course, its wretched lust for chaos.

Below, the Bog Golem roared up to the heavens in fury. It smashed its fists against its chest, its energy rising to the brim.

The surrounding waters boiled and shot out jets of fumes.

Nero centered his body's momentum with Gungnir's, creating a unified vector of force. His good arm drew back, and this time when he gathered his strength, it wasn't just from his muscles. The power came from his descent, from gravity itself, from the rotation of his body and the spin of the spear.

Everything aligned in perfect synchronization.

The Bog Golem roared defiance and began to raise its arms in defense.

Nero poured every remaining ounce of strength into his throw. His arm snapped forward with mechanical precision, and Gungnir became a streak of silver light as it left his hand.

The words came unbidden, torn from somewhere deep in his chest:

"Stick beats stone, idiot!"

The spear descended like the judgment of an angry god, trailing vapor as it tore through the toxic atmosphere. The Bog Golem tried to move, tried to dodge, but it was far too slow.

Gungnir struck the creature directly in the crown of its head and kept going.

The impact was apocalyptic. The spear's point shattered the stone skull, pulverized the flesh beneath, and drove straight down through the creature's entire body. It punched through chest and core and legs, carrying the Bog Golem's mass down with it until the weapon buried itself in the earth below.

The creature never even had time to scream.

For a long moment, everything was still. The Bog Golem stood impaled on Gungnir like a grotesque sculpture, its body already beginning to crumble. Chunks of stone fell away, revealing the corrupted flesh beneath. The flesh itself began to rot and dissolve, eaten away by forces that had nothing to do with the bog's toxins.

Then the entire structure collapsed, falling apart into component pieces that scattered across the fungus-covered ground.

Nero, meanwhile, was still airborne with no weapon to break his fall. His body was completely numb.

Even worse, he could feel his consciousness gradually slipping away.

The ground rushed up to meet him with terrible speed. He had just enough time to think this is going to hurt before he crashed into a massive cluster of Teargail Fungus.

The mushrooms cushioned his impact somewhat, their soft caps compressing under his weight. But somewhat wasn't enough. Bones that had already been broken shattered further. New injuries added themselves to the collection he was already carrying.

Nero lay there in the crushed fungus, barely conscious, barely breathing.

But alive.

Against all odds, impossibly, he was still alive.

And somewhere in the ruin of the Bog Golem's corpse, Gungnir began to glow.

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