Chapter 288: Vs Gilbalar III
Check out my entry for the WPC August: Beyond the Bloodline.🔥
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’She’s trying to obscure my vision? No! Something’s off about this smoke!’
He held his breath and flew up into the air, looking down and seeing that Nicole and Edward had taken quite some distance from the explosion.
’Even her allies stayed clear of it, there’s definitely soemth-!’
"Huh?!"
Gilbalar’s thoughts were cut off when he felt a liquid trickle down his nose, touching it with his hand and seeing it to be a very familiar golden liquid his heart pumped daily.
’I was right!’
He did not have the time to celebrate as Nicole shot up into the air at full speed, thrusting her Bullet Lance in his direction.
The man twisted his body to dodge, and just when he was about to retaliate, Nicole suddenly let go of her lance and spun her body around faster than he expected, delivering a high kick to his head.
He crossed his arms in front of his face and blocked the girl’s kick, but the force was great enough to knock him back to the ground.
’She used the momentum of her charge to kick me, huh?
And those two winged aliens...they’re weak to my divinity. I should-!’
As if cutting his thoughts off had become some sort of raining fad, Esna appeared beside him right before his feet touched the ground.
"Sup."
The godslayer girl tapped him on his shoulder twice, marking him with two Resistance negation debuffs, physical and Elemental in Nature.
In her other hand, was a spear of dark light, one which she stabbed into his back and activated a certain spell.
"Delay magic, Activate."
’Hex of Divine Disruption’
"GAAHHH!!!!"
Gilbalar screamed out in pain and rage, spinning his body and swinging his left arm in an attempt to clothesline the red-eyed girl.
Esna, having expected some sort of retaliation, bent her body backwards to avoid having her neck getting caught by his outstretched arm.
The man’s retaliation, however, was two-staged, as he spun his body around and threw his right arm coated in black flames towards her.
Feeling the sweltering heat from the flames surrounding his arm as it made its way towards her face, Esna had one word to say.
"Nope!"
***KAAABOOOMMM!!!!
A massive earth-shaking explosion rang out as the punch landed, shattering the earth and crushing everything within a radius of over a kilometre.
Shockwaves overlapping shockwaves spread out, reaching the City of Vako in the distance and causing spiderweb-like cracks to spread across the city walls.
Looking at the cloud of dust and smoke that rose hundreds of metres into the air, Esna felt cold sweat down her back as she asked with a shaking voice.
"...Did...did he just...try to punch me...with THAT?"
"You do realise you’re the one he wants to kill the most out of all four of us, right?"
Edward who was beside her on the large bird-shaped water spirit carrying them replied to her words as the spirit flapped its wings and flew towards Nicole’s direction.
’Even my sacrificial artifacts would have not been able to save me from that.’
Having narrowly escaped death at the hands of a being an entire realm above her, Esna once again, thanked her stars that she spent so much time increasing her proficiency with the blink spell.
Meanwhile, Gilbalar was having the worst time ever.
In the middle of the cloud of smoke and flames, the god was down on one knee, with a pool of golden blood on the cracked ground in front of him.
He pulled out the spear of dark light that Esna stabbed him with, breaking it to pieces with his hand, however, it did nothing to help his current predicament.
The man’s heart thumped wildly, as blood seeped out of his wound, a frown appearing on his face as he realised his regeneration simply wasn’t working.
He then attempted to heal himself manually with divinity, but that was the worst possible decision he could make at this moment.
"GAHHHHH!!!!!"
Gilbalar screamed out in agony as the instant he roused his divinity, the energy went haywire in his body.
His energy circuits overloaded and fried, his blood vessels burst and tears of golden blood seeped out of his eyelids.
A metallic taste filled his mouth and he coughed wildly, vomiting an amount of blood that would have rendered a normal human anaemic in an instant.
If it wasn’t for the fact that Epic realm existences had more powerful bodily functions that required a lot more blood in their bodies, then he might have passed out right now.
However, at the same time, he was able to realise the effect of whatever Esna had done to him.
’She messed with my divinity!’
His magic power and aura were still working like usual, but when he tried to move his divinity, his brain sent him warning signs.
The Hex Esna had cast on him was one that rendered beings who possessed holy or divine energies unable to use said energies for a certain period of time.
It was a dark elemental spell, as such, the elemental resistance negation marks Esna placed on him made it easier for the spell to take effect.
Now then, Gilbalar was a being who had once controlled the power of the law of darkness, and he was even able to use it to mutate his original bright red flames and turn them dark.
So it stood to reason that he had a certain level of dark elemental resistance, and it was something that Esna who was a whole realm below him should not have been able to trump easily.
Sadly, Esna was a godslayer, a being whose every action against him had increased efficiency, damage and whatnot.
Gilbalar didn’t know about all of that, but what he did know was that now that Esna had prevented him from using divinity...
’I can’t use my Zone!’
Zone.
A racial ability of the god race that had similar effects to topographic type techniques like bounded fields.
It required divinity to activate and it gave the god who activated it an edge in battle, with stronger gods being able to imbue elements into the space within their zone or control the laws of physics within it.
However, for the current Gilbalar, forget controlling the laws of physics, he couldn’t even control his own divinity.
He made the decisive decision to seal his divinity, to prevent himself from reflexively using it again.
And right after he did that, he sensed a presence coming down from above, looking up to see the figure of a brown-haired human falling down towards him.
Gilbalar roused his magic power to combat fight him, rage filling his eyes, however, he noticed the human mutter something and then...
’He disappeared!
Teleportation? No...besides, he’s still nearby. I would be able to pinpoint him with my divine sense but I cannot use divinity now.’
He gritted his teeth as he spread out his aura, trying to pinpoint Edward’s exact position but failed woefully due to the perception inhibition enchantment Esna put on him.
"Rumbling of Heaven."
"?!"
Gilbalar’s senses screamed at him and he instantly backed away, just in time to avoid the arcing upward slash from Edward’s long sword that suddenly appeared in front of him.
The blade tip almost scratched his nose and he felt just how much power was in the sword, realising it would not have been a pretty sight for his face if the blade touched him even a little bit.
He stretched out his right hand and created a sword of flames with magic power, swinging it towards Edward’s neck but the boy reversed his grip and delivered a diagonal slash downwards.
**BOOMM!!
The two blades collided midway and the magic power in them exploded, knocking back both combatants by a few metres.
Gilbalar spun around and landed on the floor, rousing his energy and recreating his flaming sword before releasing eight forward slashes in quick succession on top of one another.
Slashes that Edward’s instincts told him attempting to block would be a very bad idea.
As such, he trusted his instincts and jumped out of the way with all his might, leaving the slashes that had lost their target to gouge a few dozen metres deep into the ground and crystalize the sand around the gashes due to the heat they carried.
But Gilbalar didn’t even know if his attack hit or missed, as he was now engaged in a heated sword fight with Layla.
Combat between the two was not stationary, with them hacking and slashing at each other as they flew off the ground and into the air.
Shockwaves spread out omnidirectionally each time their blades clashed, pushing them back a bit before they charged back at each there once more.
Gilbalar increased the density of the flames in his sword, intending on melting Layla’s weapon but the sword didn’t even have a single dent on it.
’What sort of weapon?!’
Layla was the daughter of a Grand Duke of the Hell Universe’s Devildom, it was only expected that the sword she was using wasn’t made out of common metals that could be easily melted.
The man clicked his tongue as he coated his fist with his dark flames before sending a punch towards Layla’s head, but the girl only tilted her head to the side and dodge his punch, grabbing his arm and thrusting her sword toward his chest.
