Chapter 388: Combined Zones
"What the fuck?!"
"Is he crazy?"
It was common knowledge that eating the energy core of another being was tantamount to suicide, so they could not comprehend why Arthur would willingly do such a thing.
However, they quickly understood why in the next second when they sensed Arthur’s energy surging wildly.
All the magic power and aura he had just expended in repeatedly stopping time, unleashing a ’Cataclysmic Divide’, teleporting and crushing C’s head was replenished, and even the energy he had not yet recovered from his earlier bout with the god recovered as well.
"Now then...Let’s begin Round 2, shall we?"
The gods remained silent even after hearing him openly challenge them, with the sound of the explosions coming from Stelan’s fight with the Inferior Sovereign Divine Humans whose power had been reduced to the Legendary Realm.
Arthur sensed that one of the gods’ presence had disappeared, and the other was very weak, and he inferred that Stelan had dealt with one and was almost done killing the other when the Weakened Divine Humans intervened to stop him.
’He’s making short work of them though.’
For a moment, Arthur glanced in the other godslayer’s direction, and as if they had been waiting for this moment, the gods who were in front of him reacted.
"USE YOUR ZONES!! WE’D BOMBARD HIM TO DEATH!!!"
They didn’t dare underestimate Arthur even the slightest bit, especially after he had killed C faster than any of them could even figure out what was going on.
Besides, even if he didn’t do that, the very fact that his presence was making them drop in power by 2 existence realm stages, reducing them from Intermediate Sovereigns to Superior Legendries was another reason not to underestimate the boy.
They had indeed been in Duskhand with the other five but had left for one of the satellite cities to handle some issues there.
It was only when they finished with their business and emerged from the dungeon there that they saw the SOS messages from Duskhand sent by the Outer City officers.
They quickly rallied as many Divine Human Soldiers as they could, picking only those in the Legendary Realms and above before making their way over as fast as physically possible.
Unfortunately, they were too late and three of their companions were already dead, with the fourth only being half a second from death.
The leader of this trio who practised the law of alacrity, combined this with his lightning powers and blitzed in to save C, while the other two issued orders to the Legendries to help the other soldiers who were being brutalized by Arthur’s summons.
Like Esna, the summoning law buffs that Arthur had used on the summoned hellhounds caused these creatures to deal more damage to the divine factor wielders, and when coupled with the double weakening effect from two godslayers, they could barely resist the onslaught of the hellhounds and lesser dragons.
As if that wasn’t enough, Stelan’s control over blood was so great that one could mistake him for a vampire (His mother IS a vampire), and this enabled him to control the half-dead bodies of the Divine Humans like Marionettes, turning them against their own allies.
That was what Arthur had turned to look at when the leader of the three gods who just appeared gave the orders for the other two to use their ’Zones’ on him.
In the second it took Arthur to turn his gaze back to them, they moved out and surrounded him in a triangle formation, with their divinities gushing out of their bodies with overwhelming force.
As their energies blanketed the area above, they mixed into the ground, a conjuring of their magic powers.
They had clearly seen Arthur devour a god’s divine spark and weren’t stupid enough to still believe that divinity had an extra damage effect on him due to his ’demon’ status, so they didn’t use just divinity as they would with other ’demons’.
Since the Malevolent and Benevolent gods of the planet Gade were not informed well enough about their god race traits, they had zero idea of the existence of a ’Zone’, hence, they could not use this against Layla and Co.
If they had, then a lot of the group’s victories would have gone the other way.
Most importantly, they would not have lasted as long as they did against Kulir. But luckily for them, Kulir didn’t even know he had such an ability.
These gods of Aramis on the other hand, were not so ignorant.
Arthur now found himself trapped in the combination of three Zones, a situation very similar to one that Hades had been in against the gods of Borgeth.
"Nullify his time manipulation, then try to access your True Forms!"
They changed the laws within their Combined Zone to reduce the ambient time law energy in the area of effect, something that would have been quite deadly if Arthur wasn’t comprehending the laws and was capable of generating his own law energy.
As for accessing their True Forms, they weren’t proficient enough with this to be able to use said True Forms when Arthur’s Progenitor Authority was active so that failed woefully.
Nevertheless, this did not deter them from charging towards Arthur at lightning speed, whilst unleashing a storm of projectiles upon him.
Lightning crackled and danced through the air, the forks of electric law energy branching out like vengeful serpents. Simultaneously, flames roared to life, forming spirals of scorching heat that sought to consume everything in their path.
The attacks of the gods were much more powerful than usual due to being in their Zones, and they actually managed to negate a bit of Arthur’s Progenitor Authority that weakened them as well.
Earth, stirred up by the gods’ command over earth-elemental laws surged upward with primal force while pure and blinding light mixed with their divinities formed radiant beams that cut through the air.
This coordinated assault was executed barely half a second after they had taken action to make sure Arthur remained in one spot.
One god, wielding ice magic, froze Arthur’s feet to the ground he stood upon, while simultaneously using space magic to construct the environment around him, limiting his mobility.
Tendrils of flaming light emerged from the ground and coiled around his arms, preventing him from being able to use his swords.
With Arthur effectively restrained, the elemental onslaught commenced. Lightning bolts streaked from the heavens, their jagged paths converging towards the captive progenitor.
The spears of earth closed in with precision and pierced his torso from behind, causing silver-coloured blood to splutter.
Despite having restrained Arthur and subjecting him to a bombardment, the gods had a bad premonition and remained wary, preparing follow-up attacks while closely watching Arthur’s movements.
Their premonitions came true when Arthur suddenly released a surge of temporal energy, acting on the ice magic that froze his feet and the spears piercing him.
He rewound the ice magic back to the point where the magic circle had just formed, before releasing a burst of magic power through his feet to overload and cause the magic circle to collapse.
As for the spatial constriction, he activated Gravitemporal Harmony and used the newly created skill to generate a crushing downforce of gravity, distorting the space around him and breaking free from the constriction.
He intended to release darkness law energy from his body to envelop the magical light tendrils on his arms, but his swords acted before he could do so.
Lostvayne and Celestia sliced through the restraints and freed his arms, allowing him to redirect the magic power he wanted to use on the gravity law energy to the Stellar Guard on his right arm.
The Rule Breaker was activated, generating a giant spherical bubble of energy around him. He felt a slight headache as the simultaneous activation of two Rule Breakers was not something he could maintain for long.
Luckily, he didn’t need to as the attacks reached him a mere split second after he activated it.
The gods’ elemental onslaught clashed against the shimmering barrier of the Stellar Guard, creating a cataclysmic explosion that could be felt by the entirety of Githal. Lightning bolts crackled and danced, flames roared, earth surged, and blinding light converged upon the spherical shield.
The impact was colossal, generating a blinding pillar of light that shot into the skies, and the earth itself trembled with the force of what was considered to be a magnitude 7 earthquake on Aeturn.
The shockwaves rippled through the land, felt even in distant cities of the Githal region.
