Infinite Paths: The Raging Phoenix

"This should have been beyond his current endurance level," Loks thought.

Rain was using his mana to recover as fast as he could, but even so… getting hit like that and healing at the same time should have been impossible. Rain soon began to get up, and Loks looked at him while furrowing his eyes. It was better to finish him off as soon as possible… that was a weird feeling to have, but Loks felt that he would regret that if he weren't to kill Rain right now.

The machine god began to shake his body once more for a moment, and then his six arms suddenly fused together and became just one. Those arms were insanely muscular and thick. While their mass shouldn't have increased that much, it was clear that each punch would be three times more painful…

Rain looked at that and then looked to the side before spitting some blood on the floor… In the next moment, he raised his guard and waited for the enemy to make his move.

All of a sudden, Rain's right side of his face was hit, and he was pushed to the side; before he could even take a single step, another punch came from the opposite direction came… and then the powerful rain of punches started.

With each vicious strike, Rain's once chiseled features contorted into a grotesque mask of agony. The force of the punches caused his eyebrows to swell rapidly, bulging outward until they obscured his eyes entirely, leaving him blind to the onslaught. His skin, initially pale, flushed with the rush of blood, turning a fiery shade of red as capillaries burst beneath the surface.

The relentless assault continued, each impact sending shockwaves of pain through Rain's skull. His lips split, crimson droplets of blood mingling with the sweat and tears that cascaded down his battered face. The bridge of his nose caves under the force, blood gushing forth in a torrent, mixing with the salty tang of sweat and iron.

As the beating persists, the discoloration intensifies, spreading like an ominous stain across Rain's visage. Shades of purple and blue begin to bloom beneath the surface, a testament to the severity of the trauma inflicted upon him.

"He… hehe… hehe," Rain laughed a bit between punches.

The machine god stopped when he realized that Rain was laughing… that seemed like a good sign that he had gone mad from sustaining brain damage. Loks made Rain get concussion after concussion, so it didn't surprise him that such a thing had happened… What was surprising was the fact that Rain was still conscious.

"Hehehe, I look so much forward to my turn…" Rain said while smiling.

It seemed that somehow, Rain still believed that he had a chance for a turn around… that was supposed to be impossible since the enemy wasn't exposing himself to counters, and he could attack anyone, anywhere, with no restrictions.

Loks looked at Rain once more with a serious expression… it was time to end things as soon as possible. He was pacing himself to avoid unpleasant surprises… but Rain's friends were causing a lot of problems, and so he had to do something like that.

As the confrontation escalated, the machine god tapped into its power, channeling its corrupt energy to amplify his strikes. With a sinister intent, he began to infuse his metallic fist with crackling tendrils of dark energy, a malevolent aura enveloping its appendage like a shroud of maleficence.

In the blink of an eye, the transformation was complete. The once mundane fist was now a weapon of devastation, wreathed in flickering bolts of purple lightning that danced and arced around its surface with an otherworldly glow. Each discharge crackles with an ominous hum, a harbinger of the destruction that is about to be unleashed upon Rain.

The sight is both awe-inspiring and terrifying, a manifestation of the machine god's unholy power made manifest.

"Finding all the parts of your body will be troublesome, but I believe that finishing you off life will give me satisfaction like few things ever did since I came to be."

"Your life must be pretty boring then," Rain said.

Lok's eyes glew with a dangerous glint, and then, in the next moment, he punched Rain's face. At the moment Rain face got hit, he used his secret technique… a combination of Charged Punch, Portal Conjuration, and Light Speed. Rain's face was pushed backward, but he still hit the machine god with even more power.

The entire body of the machine god contorted like it had been smashed by a massive hammer and then was sent flying to the wall of the interior of the head of the colossus body. Like it was a tomato, it was smashed against the wall, and the impact made the whole structure fall forward…

The skill Origin Punch was added to Rain's path.

LV 15: Origin Punch: a powerful punch that becomes stronger the longer you charge it. Thanks to the nature of the techniques involved, this attack can't be blocked. Each level grants an extra second of charge of the attack, and each level multiplies your strength temporarily. Cost: 100.000 mana and stamina per second charged.

Rain didn't have time to celebrate that his plan worked and that his secret technique was better than he had envisioned… the reason for that was that he lost his right arm… the punch that was powerful enough to defeat the machine god had too much power for his arm to withstand… and the flesh exploded upon impact.

In the aftermath of the devastating impact, Rain found himself writhing in excruciating agony as searing pain radiated from the remnants of his shattered arm. The force of the blow was so immense that his limb bore the brunt of the explosion, leaving behind a mangled mess of torn flesh and fractured bone on his shoulder.

"Shit, fucking shit... talk about self-inflicted pain," Rain thought while he was shaking. "I bet that I can't use this a lot."