Chapter 444: Survive I
"You...you’re Duskhand!"
Arthur exclaimed his conjecture; 100% sure he was correct in his deduction of this man’s identity.
Divine Human General Duskhand—the True Master of the Duskhand Bastille which Arthur had destroyed over a month ago.
The man had been grievously wounded after a battle with Alvey and was recuperating in a special location, along with the other Transcendents who were subordinated to him.
As such, the Duskhand Bastille was without Transcendents to defend them from Arthur.
Knowing it was THE Duskhand he was facing, Arthur’s attitude changed.
"Let me correct your misunderstanding. I was not summoned to this world but I came here of my own volition.
And though I fell on the Demon’s side of the planet, that’s not why I joined up with them."
Looking Duskhand right in the eyes, Arthur flared his anti-divinity as he spoke.
|¬ The affronts to life you fools were conducting in that ’house’ of yours...it was disgusting enough to make me never want to join up with you. ¬|
Duskhand frowned when he heard Arthur’s words. There was no way he did not know about the Fake Divine Human experiments. He had even contributed to their success greatly in the past.
Still, to him, it was just a measure taken to resist the forces of the Gozonians. Arthur’s opinion on it mattered not to him.
"You are strong. A Legendary Level capable of besting Sovereigns in combat.
But you chose the wrong side of this war, and that decision would cost you your life."
The moment Duskhand spoke, he held out his right hand and lightning energy crackled around it. Divinity coalesced in his palm and space distorted lightly as he summoned forth his weapon.
A gleaming golden spear with black runic inscriptions around its shaft.
In response, Arthur summoned Lostvayne and slowly filled it with his destruction law energy.
Clearly, Duskhand wasn’t willing to ’talk’ anymore, so he wasn’t going to be able to buy some time with that.
"You cannot defeat me. I would not allow you to summon anything.
The gulf in power between us is unsurmountable. You cannot win."
"Don’t be so confident now. This is WAR. You never know what happens next."
Or so he said but internally, Arthur was wondering if Duskhand was crazy.
’Defeat you? Does this guy think I’m delusional or something? Of course, I can’t defeat a Transcendent.
’Winning’ however, is a different case entirely.’
In this situation, Arthur’s condition to ’Win’ was not to ’Defeat His Opponent’ but to ’Survive Against Them’.
[Five Minutes.]
That was the message that had been transmitted to him via his communicator from Alvey. All he had to do was hold on for five minutes.
’Hold on for five minutes against a Transcendent? What next, I should jump into an active volcano?’
The boy laughed depreciatingly as he took a stance with his sword. Despite not moving an inch, Arthur could not see any openings in Duskhand’s form.
’In that case, I’d create an opening.
Authority of the Progenitor Godslayer: 100% Activation!’
An imperceptible wave of cosmic energy spread out from Arthur’s being and permeated Duskhand’s body, wrapping around his energy core and forcefully reducing his Existence Realm.
Even though he knew about it, Duskhand could not stop the momentary surprise that came above him as he felt his power drop to the Inferior Stage of Transcendence.
’That ability still worked despite our Level difference?!’
In the moment he had that thought, Arthur kicked off the ground and charged towards him at supersonic speed.
"Extreme Nothingness."
The energy of the laws of time and destruction which had coalesced around his sword was launched as a powerful beam of swirling power towards Duskhand’s body.
Distracted as he was, Duskhand was still a Transcendent.
No way he could be caught off guard so easily.
"Thunderous Thrust."
He thrust his spear forward while using a Technique, releasing a surge of lightning law energy that collided with Arthur’s Temporal Destruction.
The collision bloomed into a devastating shockwave, sending ripples of destructive energy cascading outward.
The earth beneath them trembled and cracked under the immense pressure, pulverizing the ground into shards of rock and soil.
Unsurprisingly, Arthur’s Extreme Nothingness faltered in the face of Duskhand’s lightning power. The lightning energy surged forward and engulfed Arthur’s attack with its ferocious intensity, overwhelming it with its sheer power and fury.
But by this time, Arthur had already unfurled his wings and taken to the skies.
A sonic boom later, Duskhand was right on his tail, lightning law energy condensing around his spear as he thrust it out.
Just before the mass of power reached Arthur, the boy’s left eye flashed with light and Duskhand’s arm came to a stop.
"?!"
"Cataclysmic Divide!"
Arthur spun around and unleashed a slash of destruction and extinction energy, but in the single second it took to reach Duskhand, the man broke out of Arthur’s time stop and twisted his spear to block the strike.
Immediately after, he slashed down with his spear, releasing a projected cutting wave of lightning that parted the clouds.
’Mountain Split!’
Arthur poured his cosmic and destruction energy into it, swinging down his blade and releasing a massive slash of crimson silver energy that crashed into Duskhand’s cutting wave.
Despite having the force of a mountain behind his strike, Arthur’s attack proved to be barely a match for Duskhand’s ’Normal Attack’.
The two energies met in mid-air, their clash resulting in a massive explosion of crimson and gold sparks as they nullified each other.
Arthur closed his wings and nosedived towards the ground, but before he could get far, the skies darkened as countless pillars of lightning descended from above, connecting the heavens and the earth.
’Thunderstorm!’
Even the demons and divine humans fighting in the distance were caught up in the AOE attack, however, the one whom it was intended for dodged each strike with paper-thin margins, almost as if he could see into the future.
’It’s not almost, he CAN see the future!’
Duskhand thought this as he saw Arthur fly through his lightning barrage without wings. He had been preparing to target Arthur’s wings to ground the boy but seeing he could still fly without them; the man reduced the priority of that action.
’Even if he can see the future...it matters not if he cannot react fast enough.’
With that thought, Duskhand covered his body with lightning power and elementalized his body, transforming into a streak of lightning that blitzed right in front of Arthur in an instant.
’Tempest Fury.’
Duskhand summoned a swirling vortex of wind and lightning, creating a storm of elemental chaos that threatened to engulf Arthur whole.
With barely a metre of distance between Arthur and the attack, his Pseudo-Authority of Time activated and the swirling mass of golden lightning and wind turned monochrome.
In a split second, Arthur switched Pseudo-Authorities and unleashed one of the Path of Destruction’s default techniques.
|¬Destruction Pusle! ¬|
Arthur’s destruction energy concentrated into a point within the centre of Duskhand’s Tempest fury, creating a volatile energy core.
In the next second when Arthur’s time stop was broken out of, the core detonated and released a surge of destructive power that ignited the tempest and caused it to unravel in a cataclysmic explosion, scattering its forces and dispersing its energy in all directions.
Arthur’s gravity inclined and the boy’s body was abruptly pulled backwards, but even that was not fast enough for him to escape the full brunt of the blast.
**KABOOMM!!
The explosion erupted with such force that Arthur’s gravity inclination was overwhelmed, and he was violently propelled backwards by the shockwaves with far greater force than he had exerted with his gravity energy.
The blast lifted him off his feet, hurling him through the air like a ragdoll with unstoppable momentum. He soared uncontrollably, tumbling and twisting as he careened through the sky, the sheer power of the explosion carrying him over a hundred meters before he crashed onto the ground below.
As Arthur struggled to his knees amidst the chaos, his brain analysed the damage he had taken. His uniform bore scorch marks from the intense heat of the blast, and his face was marred by burns that still crackled with residual lightning energy.
Silver blood dripped from his wounded hands and face, staining the ground beneath him, but he scarcely had time to register the pain as he looked up to see Duskhand’s spear looming dangerously close to his face, poised to strike.
**SWOOOSHHH!!!!
Thought Acceleration, Slow Time, Gravity Manipulation.
All three were used in an instant and Arthur was just barely able to avoid Duskhand’s spear impaling him in the face.
Sure, his body was ’Nigh-Immortal’ as a Sub-Cosmic, but he had zero intentions of finding out what would happen if he lost his head.
