Chapter 609: Kalon’s Last Stand
"Evan is just mimicking everything this guy does..."
Arthur couldn’t help but say this as he saw the railgun on the mech’s shoulder fire high-velocity projectiles laced with magic to tear through Evan’s shield, only for the boy to teleport away and then create a small portal near his avatar’s shoulder and fire a piercing beam of energy at incredible speed.
Kalon seemed to realise what Evan was doing, and in his annoyance, he morphed the forearms of his mech and turned them into gravity disruptor cannons, using them to create a localized gravity well to pin Evan down.
Too bad for him, Evan had his own Gravity skill, one he had taken from Crarox during the initial attack on Plomux.
Evan used Gravitational Maelstrom to create a localized gravity well that sucked in all the buildings and soldiers nearby, crushing them into one ball of flesh and stone which he threw at the gravity well Kalon had created.
Kalon roared and used the plasma cannons mounted on either side of the mech’s waist to unleash rapid bursts of molten energy that’d make hot lava feel lukewarm, but Evan used his Energy Blast skill to unleash similarly hot bolts of flames to counter the plasma cannon.
When Evan attacked with his sword, Kalon used the aether shields of his mech, surprising Arthur as he rarely saw aether manipulators.
The shield provided strong protection against Evan’s attacks, but Evan’s destruction energy eventually overcame them and he started hitting the mech directly.
Kalon also got his hits in, but Evan used his Elemental Shield skill to create a spherical barrier of fire and ice that surrounded his avatar, protecting him from incoming attacks by absorbing and neutralizing them.
Eventually, Kalon used the high-output jet boosters built into the back to fly into the sky, intending to bombard Evan from above, but Evan just laughed and used his wings to fly effortlessly with his crimson gold avatar.
The construct had no conventional weight, allowing him to soar through the air with even greater agility than Kalon.
Kalon tried to use magnetic pulse emitters on Evan to unleash electromagnetic pulses to disrupt Evan’s magic power flow, but Evan blocked them with sheer energy manipulation, negating any disruptions aimed at him.
Since he had no mechanical parts, the EMP attack posed no threat to him.
Enraged that his EMP was negated so easily, Kalon piloted his mech and morphed the chest into a powerful flamethrower cannon.
It spewed esoteric flames imbued with divinity and law energy, capable of burning through magical barriers and even other flames.
However, this was a huge mistake to use flames against Evan—someone who possessed a Flame Skill so powerful that you could split it into 7 Unique Series Skills.
Evan showed Kalon who was boss when it came to flames, unleashing a swirling beam of multi-coloured fire from his construct’s chest that dwarfed the mech’s flames in power and intensity.
His flames were radiant, burning with all the colours of the light spectrum and they overwhelmed anything the mech threw at him.
Eventually, Evan brought his blade down and plunged it deep into the mech’s chest. The divinity energy crystal powering the mech cracked under pressure, sending a cascade of energy discharges throughout the mech’s frame.
Sparks and flames erupted from the mech’s core as its systems failed one by one. The gravitational disruptor flickered and died, and the divinity blade shattered into fragments of light and Kalon couldn’t do a thing as the mech collapsed around him.
Evan then reached into the cockpit and ripped Kalon out of it, holding him close for about three seconds before throwing him down onto the ground.
|Machine god Acquired|
As Kalon crashed not too far from him, creating a massive crater, Arthur gave Evan a round of applause as the boy descended to the ground.
The broken mech crashed near Kalon and the man, still conscious, reached out for it.
Kalon coughed, blood staining his lips as he pulled himself closer to the wreckage, his breath ragged and eyes wide with desperation.
"No... I am a genius! Aramis cannot lose this war—they cannot lose me! Without my brilliance, without my machines, my Artificial Divines, they’d be helpless!! If I die... this whole plan dies with me!"
His voice grew frantic as he called out to the Transcendents with the communication device in his ear.
"Ademahat! Amhins! Emon! Transcendents! Save me! Do you hear me?!"
But there was no response, the Transcendents were too preoccupied fighting the high-rank demons to come to his aid.
Kalon’s face twisted in rage and fear, realization dawning on him that no one was coming.
"Even if... even if I die here..."
His eyes flickered with a spark of madness, but even then, he had the smarts not to say the next part out loud.
’My clone... My clone must survive! It is me! I will buy time... buy time for it to escape. Because I am Kalon, the greatest genius Aramis has ever seen! The best inventor! The smartest man alive! I am the Machine god! And I will live on!’
With a sudden, crazed burst of strength, he slammed his hands against the ground, channelling the last remnants of his divinity.
As a demigod who was lower levelled than Arthur, the progenitor’s mere presence was weakening him by over 30%. His divinity circulation was disrupted, but even so, he was still confident he could prevent Arthur from succeeding in his goal.
Kalon’s body trembled as he forced out his final trump card.
"Unique Skill—Machine god: Divine Overload Mode!!!"
An enormous amount of divinity burst out of Kalon, lighting him with a blinding surge of power.
Metal components around him vibrated violently as they were drawn toward him once again. His body began to distort, merging with the scattered pieces of his destroyed mech in a fusion of flesh and machine.
His divine spark burned brighter and brighter and he glared at the two teenagers before him and screamed.
"I’ll take you all with me!!!!"
Roaring out with sheer desperation as his overloaded form spiralled out of control, he swelled his divinity to explosive levels.
"Break Core! Full Burst!!"
A torrent of energy erupted from him, shaking the ground and sending shockwaves through the entire island. His divinity flared wildly, a pulse of overwhelming force that rippled through the atmosphere.
The sheer scale of the energy he was gathering caught the attention of every living being across the island, from the lowest grunt to the highest-ranking generals.
They all felt the surge of power, their heads snapping toward the source. Even Alvey and McEnda who had been busy in their own battles paused, their gazes hardening as they realised the catastrophic loss of forces they’d suffer if that thing was to detonate.
Every soldier from WA-O3 and all the islands surrounding it would die. That was easily 25 million men!
They couldn’t allow themselves to suffer such a loss of soldiers.
Far beyond the island, on the distant moon, the gods who had been observing the events below were taken aback. They were surprised at how much power Kalon was releasing even though Arthur’s mere existence suppressed him.
The chaotic swirl of divinity was building toward its peak, ready to consume everything in its path.
Kalon’s twisted grin stretched across his face as he prepared to unleash devastation. He could see it in his mind—the island engulfed in flames, Evan and Arthur reduced to dust, and his legacy, his genius, preserved through his clone.
But it was then that Arthur, who was facing Evan finally turned in his direction, and when Kalon saw the glow of Arthur’s heterochromatic eyes, he staggered back instinctively.
Unlike everyone else, there was no fear in Arthur’s eyes, only calm indifference.
"You... you can’t stop this!"
Kalon screamed, his voice breaking. Rather than threatening them, it seemed more like he was trying to reassure himself.
"I’ll annihilate you all!"
Arthur let out a small sigh, his expression behind his mask one of mild exasperation.
Then he took a step forward.
Cosmic energy swirled around him and in his Faux True Voice, he commanded.
|¬Oh World, Be Still. ¬|
And the World obeyed.
The violent swirling of energy around Kalon froze mid-motion, as time itself had bowed to Arthur’s will.
The air fell into a perfect silence. The ground beneath their feet ceased to tremble. The oceans around the land stilled, and even the winds refused to blow.
Kalon’s eyes couldn’t even widen in horror as his mind which was still conscious realised what had happened.
He’d thought the amount of law energy he had been about to detonate was too much that even Arthur wouldn’t be able to stop time, expecting that it’d disrupt Arthur’s Time Stop.
He wasn’t wrong. If Arthur tried to stop time with magic, then the law energy would disrupt the flow of his magic and the time stop would break.
But Arthur had Cosmic Energy.
What’s more, as the Progenitor of godslayers, anything Arthur did against a god, was amplified in efficiency and power.
Kalon, was a demigod.
No more words needed to be said.
In the silence of the frozen world, Arthur raised his hand, palm outstretched and his Anti-Divinity poured out in waves.
|¬Pseudo-Authority of Gravity: Devouring Singularity. ¬|
Frankly, this technique was something a bit too advanced for the current Arthur. Even Jamie who was watching the situation with an amused expression had his smile disappear.
He clicked his tongue and muttered something about Arthur being too impatient.
From Arthur’s palm, a marble-sized void formed. Then the overwhelming gravitational law energy expanded its pull to encompass the energy Kalon had tried to release—the destructive divinity he intended to detonate—and slowly draw it into the singularity.
Piece by piece, tendrils of that overwhelming power were sucked inward, spiralling toward the tiny black sphere in Arthur’s hand.
"Hmm? Guess I got ahead of myself there."
Arthur muttered under his breath as he looked at the silver blood spilling from the cracks running along his entire right arm.
The singularity he created was unstable, and what’s more, it was overloaded with all the energy that Kalon had amassed.
The time stop Arthur created unravelled as the singularity’s gravity disrupted it and the singularity trembled violently, on the verge of exploding.
’My Pseudo-Authority is not strong enough to finish it off.’
Arthur instinctively understood this, so he decided to go with a different approach.
|¬Everything began from Null, ¬|
Arthur began, speaking in a low voice.
|¬And everything will eventually return to Null. ¬|
His eyes glowed brighter as the singularity in his palm struggled, thrashing against his Pseudo-Authority that was barely holding it down.
|¬I simply accelerate this natural process. ¬|
As the final words of his chant fell from his lips, a surge of silver energy rose from Arthur’s hand, wrapping around the singularity like chains of light.
Then, with a single word, he gave his command:
|¬Begone. ¬|
In that instant, the vast, volatile energy contained within the singularity was erased from existence.
There was no explosion, no burst of light or sound. It simply vanished, as though it had never been, leaving behind nothing but silence.
Arthur stood there, his hand still raised as he slowly unravelled the powerful gravity that made the singularity in his palm.
Gravity around him inverted for a moment, then returned to normal as he sighed.
"Guess I should have just used AGSD even though I would have had to release the energy elsewhere."
