Chapter 608: Kalon
In this universe where experience points governed growth, the EXP Arthur had accumulated was monumental.
The same held true for Evan.
"Damn. First, I fought that Forsaken Divine..."
Arthur was a bit confused about what Evan meant by ’Forsaken Divine’, but Evan didn’t bother explaining and just continued talking.
"And then on Plomux, I just let loose and turned everything in my sight to EXP. I also participated in the subsequent battles in the next week.
And then we fought Idrilla."
When he got to that point, Arthur wasn’t confused anymore and nodded in understanding.
"She’s the reason you shot up close to the Legendary Realm."
"Exactly. She was higher level than me—Level 750—but thanks to Artemisia’s buff that brought me to 700, I managed to hold my own. She wasn’t much of a fighter herself, more of a summoner and necromancer, but she was still way stronger than me. I landed the final blow.
Then I killed two of those four guards in Iklaque, and the Chief Priest—that’s what finally pushed me past level 700.
After that, we ended up on Gozon and because of that, we ended up in those three worlds, Olrerth, Hollora, and Toverus.
And uh... we don’t need words to explain what we did on those three worlds."
Arthur laughed when Evan ended his recollection like that, but he agreed with the Rogue Hero.
On those worlds, especially the first and third, they had been a destructive force of nature.
McEnda II even chipped in there, confirming that the islands Evan left in flames were still burning even now. Or at least, what was left of them was still burning.
[The ’Demon King of Corrosion’ questions if you used his Blessing.]
"Ah, yeah. Your DoT was good."
Evan casually replied to McEnda II, while Arthur—unfamiliar with what Blessing they were talking about—shifted his focus back to the platoon charging at them.
"Really has been a long ride, huh? Of the 20 years I’ve lived, these last four months have been the craziest by far."
Evan mused as he wiped out a group of enemy-summoned monsters. Hearing him, Arthur paused for a moment, glancing at Evan before shrugging and continuing forward.
He knew Evan was older than his appearance let on, the age displayed on his status board referring to his body, not his soul.
Technically, Arthur was the youngest of the three between him, Jamie, and Evan, but that detail didn’t matter to him at the moment.
Their target was now within sight, after all.
Arthur summoned Celestia and charged the blade with dense temporal and destructive energies, before thrusting the weapon forward.
"Extreme Nothingness."
A purple-silver beam tore from his blade, annihilating everything in its path in an instant.
All the defences of the Administrative Compound crumbled, and Aramisians disintegrated as the beam carved a straight, devastating path through the city toward their target.
Divine Humans scrambled like headless chickens, their panicked retreat a mess as Evan dashed forward, hunting down any Level 700+ enemies he could find to further fuel his growth.
The Transcendent Divine Humans and gods were busy engaging the High-Rank Demons and Dark Dragons, leaving only the Sovereign and Legendary Realm guards to protect Ger’s disciple.
However, there was nothing below Transcendence that could threaten the current Arthur, so the moment he crossed paths with the guards, they all died.
The Cycle of Reincarnation was surely going to have to deal with an influx of damaged souls today.
Finally, they arrived at their target location, and after wiping out everything, they finally found the person they were after.
Ger’s disciple, Kalon, was a man who looked barely older than twenty, and upon discovering him, he had his fingers to his temples as if trying to stifle some unbearable pain.
His bunker had been breached, all the guards on him were dead, and space around the entire Archipelago was sealed so he couldn’t teleport.
He also couldn’t use his undersea escape route since Barron’s Vice Admirals spread their auras over the ocean surrounding WA-O3, ready to spot even the slightest ripple.
"Oh, he was a demigod?"
Arthur asked this aloud, and upon hearing him, Kalon raised his gaze to properly look at his attackers.
Locking eyes with two masked teenagers, his eyes widened in recognition. Then, his expression quickly shifted from surprise to fury and he cursed under his breath, his face twisted with frustration and anger.
"You!"
He spat out, his voice echoing as he struggled to his feet
"You’re really going to ruin everything for me here!"
Arthur was about to make a snarky comment when the man staggered back, his hands glowing with strange circuit-like runes.
He extended his palms outwards and shouted, taking action before Arthur could even understand what the runes were about.
"Unique Skill—Machine god!"
The moment those words left his lips, the entire atmosphere shifted. The walls of the building began to tremble as metal law energy filled the area.
Kalon’s body glowed and every piece of machinery around him, broken or not, responded.
As this place was connected to one of the Fake Divine factories, there was no lack of machine components for him to pull towards himself.
Pieces of metal, engines, gears, and other components from the factory began to tear themselves free from their stations, rising into the air and swirling around him in a cyclone of mechanical debris.
The metallic storm whirled faster and faster, and Kalon floated at its centre.
His arms, legs, and torso began to absorb the mass of metal, his body fusing with the machinery as his Unique Skill took effect. The factory floor shook as the larger machines were consumed, filling the air with the sound of grinding metal.
From his Inventory, Kalon summoned components he’d specially prepared for situations like this and they seamlessly merged with the materials he was absorbing from all around him.
Within a few seconds, the raw materials were reshaped, forged together by the Metal and Creation laws his skill commanded.
The outline of a humanoid took form first, the metal twisting and bending into place as the framework solidified. The legs were the first to appear, then the torso followed, powered by an enormous divine crystal at its core.
The arms took shape next, each one equipped with its own set of deadly weapons.
As the last of the surrounding machinery was consumed, the full effects of Kalon’s skill were now revealed for the two boys to see.
It was a giant mech, with Kalon sealed inside the cockpit, which was situated at the base of the neck.
From within the towering mech, his voice echoed, cold and mechanical.
[You wanted a fight? Now you’ll get one!]
Kalon screamed as the mech’s eyes glowed, its systems roaring to life despite its hasty construction.
Standing at a staggering 10 meters tall, the mech towered over Arthur and Evan, its metal frame reflecting the light of the flames of destruction all around them.
On its back, pairs of jet boosters flared to life and from its right hand, a humming divinity blade emerged.
Its left hand shifted, transforming into the energy shotgun, while missile compartments clicked open along its armoured shoulders, ready to fire.
Seeing the mech before them, Evan’s eyes shone with an excited light, like a kid who had just seen their favourite toy appear in front of them.
Arthur was about to summon Celestia and end Kalon in an instant, but Evan held out a hand to stop him.
"Arthur. Leave this guy to me."
Evan cracked his knuckles and spoke, grinning under his mask while Arthur just shrugged and pulled out a chair from his subspace to spectate.
The sight seemed to enrage Kalon but Arthur couldn’t care less.
As for Evan, the Rogue Hero stepped forward fearlessly, shifting into role-playing mode as he called out to Kalon who was glaring at them from beyond the cockpit of the mech.
"You really think that thing’s enough to stop us?"
The mech’s eyes locked onto Evan, and Kalon’s voice crackled through the speakers in response.
[I don’t just think it. I know it.]
And with that, the mech took its first step forward, the ground trembling beneath its massive weight.
The Mech Kalon had created with his Machine god skill stood at 10 metres tall, and even to the untrained eye, it was clearly a marvel of engineering far advanced than the current Aramis’ technology.
’And to think he created it with his skill by gathering up metallic rubble around him...’
Arthur was a bit impressed as he studied the mech.
At the heart of the mech, embedded in its chest, pulsed a large divinity crystal which served as the power source, fuelling every function and weapon the mech possessed.
However, it wasn’t so easy to attack since Arthur could sense a powerful gravity disruption barrier around it.
Looking towards Evan, he wondered how the Rogue Hero wanted to deal with this, and as if responding to his internal question, Evan activated two Unique Skills and one Rare Skill...simultaneously.
First, Evan summoned his Tempest Avatar, a towering full-body humanoid construct and infused enough energy to increase its height to 10 metres, mirroring the size and stature of Kalon’s mech.
This was Artemisia’s Unique Skill which Evan had copied from her, and to arm it, he used two more skills.
His Stout Guardian skill that created a giant shield-bearing knight for defence was instead used to create a massive suit of armour around the Tempest Avatar. Then he used his Harbinger of Ice to create another Ice Construct, this time, a sword of crimson gold ice that became the weapon for his avatar.
The fusion of these three skills created a giant humanoid construct clad in knight-like armour, with a broad shield and a long frost-etched sword in its right hand.
The entire construct was crimson gold, just like Evan’s aura was when he used his Blessing of Destruction and Evan floated up into the chest of the avatar, before making it opaque and impenetrable to conventional sight.
’He just mimicked the mech!’
Now, Arthur understood why Evan wanted to fight Kalon. It’s not that he had any special means of doing so, he just wanted to fight against a mech suit.
It should be noted that Evan’s little construct only took a few seconds to form, so by the time he was done, Kalon had already launched his mech forward with a burst of energy.
The mech’s right hand seamlessly switched into a blade formed with pure divinity, vibrating at supersonic speed and allowing it to slice through targets with ease, but Evan’s ice-forged sword filled with destruction law energy was the perfect counterpart for it.
Its left hand shifted into a shotgun that fired concentrated blasts of law energy, with each shot carrying the force of a small bomb, but Evan used a skill he called ’Burst Cannon’ to unleash explosive blasts of destructive flames, mimicking the mech’s rapid-fire capability.
Hidden in the mech’s back was a missile compartment that housed a series of heat-seeking missiles, and each one was tipped with explosive divinity.
However, when they were launched at Evan, the boy either used his Elemental Weapon Projection to create missiles made of either fire, ice or lightning, or he used his Blade Cannon skill to release five slashes accompanied by pressurized energy bullets that exploded on impact, tearing through the mech’s shields.
"Evan is just mimicking everything this guy does..."
