>>5256938"Your weakness surprises me, Griffith. You believe you need, unearned, our army? When you have so many willing to grovel at your feet, you would come here and demand Barnham’s hard-won spoils?"
"And how do you think he was able to achieve those spoils? It was not unbeknownst to the eyes of our leaders." Zodd speaks up.
"Consider this not a forceful apprehension, but an open invitation. All are welcomed in this new world of mine, even the ones who had a past riddled with blood smears and wrongful actions. Given how we have a common enemy invading Midland once more, one would not expect to be so close-minded as to refuse uniting forces in such dire periods." Griffith explains the politics of his utopia, but you are not impressed with any of it.
"So you admit you don’t have any need of Barnham's army, not with what I know you have at your disposal. We would gladly wage war against the Kushans, but not for you, and not under your banner. And if you aim to force the matter, we would gladly declare war against you as well. This is the fate that we desire. We fight for our own purpose."
"A brave mindset indeed, but do not forget of the wishes of the collective. By being an apostle, he has made a contract to obey causality before all else."
"I would rather be exhausted beyond despair as my body is undone by your worst soldiers, than to halt my journey of becoming the strongest! The only reason you are so afraid of my growth, is because you know I will eventually pose a threat to your reign!"
"As someone who has been searching for the strongest for long before you made your pact, know that you are not even close to the higher rankings, and even if you quenched your hunger for a hundred years, you would still be unable to take me down." Zodd lays the truth onto Barnham, but he decides to punch the empty socket on his head that once showed his prideful, horn, spreading the damage to make him drop his head on the floor.
"You say this now, but here I am, punching you in the face before even needing to transform!" Barnham mocks Zodd's cowardly submission as the monster gets up to start a fight.
The crunch in Zodd's jaw was heard by all the soldiers, as he finally loses his patience and jumps on top of Barnham sending him flying up into the sky before ground pounding him on top of his soldiers, crushing the ones who couldn't escape.
Barnham finally transforms into his own form, fighting the goat demon with his own damage resisting strategy. While he ignores the initial blows, a precise scratch in his arm is enough to tear up to the bone, making Barnham quickly bite onto Zodd's shoulder as he attempts to regenerate.
