Chapter 514: Curse of the Styx
[What is that thing made of?!]
Celestia exclaimed, her voice echoing in Arthur’s mind, but he ignored her. He swung Lostvayne repeatedly, each strike containing a slash of destruction energy which the Chief Priest parried with skill.
If this Staff was what Arthur thought it was, then it made perfect sense why Lostvayne could not slice through it with ease.
Sword and staff clashed with such force that shockwaves reached the ground below, shaking the very foundations of Iklaque.
As the people evacuated in a hurry, the two continued exchanging blows in the sky, landing hits on each other.
Arthur’s wounds, however, healed almost instantly with a simple time rewind, while the Chief Priest struggled against the insidious power of Arthur’s Null, unable to rewind the damage it caused.
’The fact that he’s able to ’rewind’ in the first place is the issue...’
Such were Arthur’s thoughts as he channelled Anti-divinity around Lostvayne, brightening the silver glow on the blade.
The Chief Priest imbued his staff with more divinity which he channelled from the same source as Idrilla and the Holy Knights.
Silence pervaded the area for an instant and in the next, Arthur lunged forward, swinging his blade in a wide arc and unleashing a slash of power.
The Chief Priest met the blow with his staff, the two forces colliding with an explosion of energy, creating ripples in the air that reached the ground with a deafening boom.
Arthur pressed the attack, his movements a blur of speed as he broke through the divinity protecting the Chief Priest, but the old man was able to counter most of his strikes to prevent them from dealing any damage.
In a swift motion, Arthur feinted left and then spun right, bringing Lostvayne down in a powerful arc. The Chief Priest parried, but the force of the blow sent him reeling. Arthur followed up with a barrage of strikes, each infused with Anti-Divinity, overwhelming the Chief Priest’s defences.
Each strike from Null chipped at part of the Chief Priest’s very Existence, and he instinctively sensed the damage he was taking.
’I have no choice! I’d rewind the entire city later. But I have to kill this outsider first!’
A part of his mind asked him if Arthur was ’really an Outsider’ but he ignored this and infused more divinity into his staff.
"Θεϊκός Θησαυρός: Απελευθέρωση!" (Divine Treasure: Release!)
The top of the staff bulged with power at his command, accumulating a staggering amount of divinity before blooming open like a rose.
From within the rose emerged three serpents, each one squirming with their mouths holding a jewel of a different colour:
Sky Blue, Sea Green, and Obsidian Black.
The power of a deity’s ’Authority’ emanated from the crystals, causing Arthur’s expression to turn strange.
Artemisa and Beatrix whose parents were deities sensed a power similar to their parent’s emanating from it, and their expressions turned dark as well.
’That’s the power of their ’god’? This has become troublesome! Arthur can’t fight that!’
Just as Artemisia had this thought, the Chief Priest shouted at Arthur, his voice filled with righteous fury.
"DIE, foreigner who intrudes on our god’s land!"
He channelled divine power into his staff, unleashing an absurdly powerful beam from the black jewel. The beam, surging with immense energy, effortlessly shattered Arthur’s time-stop and gravity barriers, forcing him to dodge.
As the Chief Priest slowly rotated his hand, the relentless beam continued to chase Arthur who dodged frantically.
The destructive energy obliterated the city walls and everything beyond, carving deep scars into the ground, plunging several dozen kilometres wherever it struck.
The sheer force of the beam destabilized space itself, making teleportation impossible for Arthur and leaving a path of utter devastation in its wake.
Arthur flapped his wings and flew into the sky, and the Chief Priest continued to fire at him after taking a moment to locate the boy.
|¬THREE OF YOU! GET OUT OF HERE!!!¬|
Arthur’s faux true voice boomed across the entire city, reaching the ears of the three teenagers who he was speaking to.
Although they were worried about him, they knew they could not do anything in this fight and quickly escaped to not be liabilities to him.
Though he noticed Artemisia carrying Beatrix and was wondering why Beatrix wasn’t walking on her own, Arthur couldn’t pay it much mind as he had to deal with the beam of energy the Chief Priest was firing at him.
|¬ENOUGH!!!!! ¬|
His voice boomed out once more, this time carrying an undertone of anger as he released a sphere of cosmic destruction energy.
Everything within a kilometre of his position turned to dust and he pulled up on the 10% comprehension of darkness laws he had, swirling the power around his blade as he began to chant.
|¬Know the mercy of the King of the Underworld. ¬|
[?!]
Celestia reacted with shock as she knew that chant, and she knew that the ability it was tied to did NOT belong to Arthur.
|¬With this single strike, I shall send you to the deepest reaches of Tartarus. ¬|
[Master?! What are you doing?!]
Ignoring her, Arthur charged towards the Chief Priest who gathered divinity and fired another beam of powerful darkness towards him. The boy borrowed power from a certain crystal in his subspace and mixed it into the power swirling around his blade.
|¬Be cursed by the Styx! : Avyssaléos Exorismós!¬|
Arthur swung Lostvayne coated in darkness and cosmic energy, executing the technique Hades had shown him in the Crystal Realm over a year ago.
The slash of dark silver energy surged forward, cleaving the Chief Priest’s beam of darkness into two halves. The slash continued its relentless advance, reaching the Chief Priest, who raised his staff in a desperate attempt to block.
**BOOOOOOOM!!!
The explosion was cataclysmic and the unleashed power divided Iklaque in two, consuming the entire city and reducing it to a pile of ruins with no survivors.
Arthur’s slash did not stop there; it split apart the distant hill, blasting the temple atop it to pieces. A giant fissure, kilometres deep, scarred the earth, marking the path of destruction.
Dropping to the ground, Arthur scanned the aftermath with his eyes. He saw Artemisia standing strong, a spherical shield of power around her and the other two, likely powered by an artifact from her father, blocking the residual energy from his strike.
His concern quickly shifted to Beatrix, whose presence felt weak... very weak. Even Evan’s presence seemed weaker, but the more pressing matter was the Chief Priest, who was somehow still alive.
Upon arriving before the battered man, Arthur saw that his left hand had been erased from existence, while his right tightly gripped the golden staff.
The black jewel on the staff was a lot dimmer than usual, but the other two were still very full of power.
"...h-how... h-how d-do you... h-have our god’s p-power?"
"I should ask you that.
How do you have My father’s power?"
Arthur’s words finally revealed why his expression had been very strange ever since he saw this old man.
The Authority he sensed from that obsidian black jewel on the staff...was the same Authority Hades possessed.
He used Hades’ technique so he could see the Chief Priest’s reaction and the man reacted in the way he expected.
"Father?! Imp-guh! Impossible!"
The Chief Priest was in disbelief. How could Arthur be the son of their god? As far as he knew, their god had no children!
"Where did you get this staff?"
Arthur stepped closer to him and asked, and seeing the boy’s sword still glowing with silver light the Chief Priest panicked.
He still remembered how he felt a piece of his soul ’vanish’ when Arthur’s blade touched him.
Raising his right hand, he pointed the staff at Arthur and shouted.
"D-don’t Come close-rr!!"
"..."
Arthur ignored him and calmly walked towards him, only for the man to say something that made him stop.
"I-if you... k-kill me... your f-friends... w-would die!"
"...what?"
Though the boy wanted to instinctively reject his words, he remembered that Beatrix’s presence was very weak, and Evan also seemed off.
|¬Artemisia! Bring Evan and Beatrix here! ¬|
Arthur didn’t take his eyes off the man as he called out to the goddess, only turning away when Artemisia got close.
Evan was in a relatively good condition, and could still walk on his own, but Beatrix couldn’t even stand and had to be carried by Artemisia.
Her breaths were heavy, she was sweating all over and her legs had completely turned black.
’This...Darkness Corruption? No...it’s familiar...’
Arthur racked his brain to find where he noticed this similar condition in the past, and the answer came from Celestia.
[It’s what your father used!]
’Dad...?! The Curse of the Styx!’
The moment he realised what it was, he turned back to the Chief Priest, but the man unexpectedly fired a beam of darkness towards Arthur at that moment.
His instinctive reaction was to freeze it in time.
But the ’Authority’ in that beam overpowered Arthur’s Pseudo-Authority of Time, rendering him unable to freeze it.
Just as he prepared to slash it apart with his sword, something peculiar occurred!
A sudden pang of pain struck his chest as something burst out from his subspace of its own volition, flying into the path of the oncoming beam.
It was a crystal of dark divinity, the very same crystal that Hades had given Arthur on the Crystal Realm’s Planet Sele!
Though Arthur had exhausted its power when subduing Lostvayne, he had kept the empty crystal. Now, that empty crystal was absorbing the power from the Chief Priest’s beam of darkness.
The shockwaves pushed Artemisia and Evan away, yet Arthur remained completely unaffected.
The crystal Hades gave him not only absorbed the power in the beam but also began drawing in the remaining power from the Obsidian Jewel it originated from.
Initially, the darkness from the Staff’s Obsidian Jewel attempted to lash out at Arthur, but it abruptly turned docile and began swirling around his body like a pet seeking its owner’s favour.
Eventually, the crystal reached its limit and ceased absorbing power, leaving only a small amount within the Obsidian Jewel as it fell harmlessly into Arthur’s open palm.
"...w-wa-what?"
♧ ♧ ♧
Hey y’all, it’s your friendly neighbourhood author, _michael here. 👋🏽
THIS NOTICE IS VERY IMPORTANT
With Volume 2 fast approaching its final arc, some changes have been made to the story, as such, previous Chapters have been edited.
One of such Chapters is Chapter 180, the Volume 2 Teaser.
Please, endeavour to check it out again to see the new content.
Thanks for your understanding and I look forward to you continuing on our Godslayer’s Legend.
This has been _michael.
Over and Out!✌🏽
