Chapter 657: Infernal Archdevil Commander: Yujia III
Yujia saw Arthur’s next move before it happened— a feint, a deceptive thrust of his sword aimed at her chest, quickly followed by a real strike aimed at her side.
Her halberd was already swinging in an arc to intercept his blade mid-feint and disrupt his true attack.
But then something changed.
Arthur didn’t thrust.
To her shock, he moved differently—far outside the future she had seen. Her eyes widened as Arthur raised his hand instead, and before she could react, the world around her froze.
Her time stopped.
A blast of destructive divinity shot out of Arthur’s palm, crashing into her stomach reopening the wound Lostvayne had dealt earlier.
As her body was blasted through the air, still frozen, Arthur closed the distance with a teleport and finally made the thrust she had been expecting, except that it wasn’t a feint.
|¬Extreme Nothingness! ¬|
Time and Destruction coalesced into a swirling mass of violet energy around Arthur’s blade, releasing a beam of power that shot forward.
At the last split-second, Yujia broke out of Arthur’s time stop and twisted her body, resulting in Arthur’s strike hitting her shoulder and not her chest like he’d been aiming for.
The concentrated force tore through her, shredding the atoms that made up her body and punching a hole right through her shoulder, taking out her dominant arm in a single blow.
She let out a cry of shock and pain, her entire right side burning as the destructive energy ripped through her flesh.
Arthur’s cold, calm voice reached her ears, his tone filled with a sense of superiority.
"Are you forgetting I have a Pseudo-Authority? Or have you not comprehended the law to that level?"
His left eye glinted with a dangerous light as he lowered his sword.
"I can change the ’future’ you see into whatever I want you to see, and you can’t do shit about it."
"..."
Yujia’s face twisted with fury, her eyes glowing molten red as rage surged through her at the realisation of what Arthur had done.
From the very beginning, Arthur could have interfered with her future sights. He could have changed the future she was seeing, but he didn’t.
He let her continue seeing the future, and he kept on acting according to the future she had seen. This built her confidence in her future vision, allowing her to counter his attacks and level the playing field.
The boy bid his time, waiting for her trust in the future she was seeing to be as deep as possible. Only once her confidence was unshakable did Arthur subtly use his Pseudo-Authority to weave a false vision.
By the time she realised this, she was already 70% through swinging her halberd, and her balance was off. In her unbalanced state, Arthur stopped her time and fired a blast of energy at her torso, reopening her wound and finishing the job with Extreme Nothingness.
’Tsk...’
Just as the wounded Archdevil was boiling with rage, Arthur was also fairly pissed. The reason being the fact that at the last split second, Yujia had dodged his attack.
Arthur didn’t want to drag this battle out and had been targeting her heart, aiming to end the fight with that. But alas, that instant of desperation to survive caused her to release all her power and she broke out of his time stop at the last split second, causing his strike to hit her shoulder instead.
As for why she was able to break out of his time stop, it was simple. Yuja was a transcendent.
Regardless of how much power Arthur possessed as a nonstandard and due to his unidentified level, Arthur was still essentially a Sovereign.
Existences had innate resistances that scaled based on their Existence Realms. Yujia in particular, was more resistant to Time as she comprehended it.
Arthur could stop her as he pleased because he possessed a Pseudo-Authority and superior-quality energy.
But in the end, she was still a Superior Transcendent, an existence close to Exuviating, with only her lack of a Pseudo-Authority barring her.
Was she to attain one, then the surge of power that came with it would close the last gap between her and the Deity Realm.
If she released all her power, she could break out of Arthur’s time stop.
Arthur took a deep breath, pouring more of his magic power into his Destruction Pseudo-Authority and Yujia winced even more, blood spilling from her lips.
From the outset of this battle, Arthur had not used any technique tied to his Destruction Pseudo-Authority. The reason was simple; his Pseudo-Authority was focused on causing as much damage to Yujia as physically and spiritually possible.
He was focused on controlling the energy that had been inserted into her body with the first Extreme Nothingness, forcing that energy to rampage within her.
As such, Yujia had to constantly and consciously use a portion of her power to fight back against Arthur’s Pseudo-Authority.
Arthur’s Pseudo-Authority kept her at a disadvantage, forcing her to fight on two fronts: against him, and against the destruction that spread through her like a slow poison.
Sure, she was a Transcendent, but this was an Authority over a law—something she did not possess.
Just like how Arthur could completely ignore the convention of a Sovereign being able to stop a Transcendent in time and stop her with his Pseudo-Authority, Yujia could not so easily brush off Arthur’s destruction energy because it was backed by his Pseudo-Authority.
Even if Arthur was not consciously focusing on trying to damage her with it, she still wouldn’t be able to expel that energy as fast as she would if it was an attack by even another Transcendent. It would take her days to expel Arthur’s destruction energy from her body.
Arthur took a deep breath, absorbing ambient magic power and attributing it with his destruction law energy as he watched Yujia closely.
She could NOT heal her arm.
Even if she had some regenerative artifact, Arthur would never give her the chance to use it. Understanding this, she grimly tore away the last threads of flesh connecting her mangled limb and called her halberd to her remaining hand.
The instant Arthur moved, she swung her halberd in a wide arc, unleashing a torrent of molten lava in a tsunami-like wave aimed to engulf him.
But Arthur, unflinching, slashed downward with Lostvayne, splitting the searing wave cleanly in two and closing the distance between them.
With a furious roar, she unleashed a blast of pure infernal energy from her core, a shockwave of molten rock that slammed into Arthur, sending him crashing down onto the scorched ground below.
Arthur landed with a heavy impact, the earth-shattering beneath him as Yujia, still bleeding from her wound, took to the sky again.
She swept her wings and summoned an immense mass of lava from multiple nearby volcanoes. The ground trembled as a sea of lava rose above her, and with the force of a tsunami, she hurled the molten mass down at Arthur, intending to bury him alive beneath the burning rock.
But again, Arthur was unfazed.
As the wall of lava descended upon him, he gripped Lostvayne tightly and swung the sword downward. The blade glowed with destructive cosmic energy as he activated his technique—Cataclysmic Divide.
The slash cleaved through the air, splitting the sea of lava cleanly in two. The molten waves parted before him, each half of the lava flow diverging to either side, unable to touch him.
Then, the slash itself carried on, a shockwave of destruction surging toward Yujia.
Yujia dodged and gritted her teeth, forcing her energy into the wound and using raw power to cauterize the gaping hole where blood spilt from.
The heat of her own energy sealed the wound, and then a stream of molten rock burst out of it, forming a replacement arm made entirely of solidified lava.
But his arm could never be as strong as her original. It was slower and lacked the flexibility and durability of her real arm.
However, there was not much she could do right now, not when Arthur was already closing the distance.
She grabbed her halberd and raised it high, charging to meet Arthur and slamming the weapon down with the force of a mountain.
Arthur raised Lostvayne to block, and just as she expected, he condensed gravity around her makeshift arm.
The weight alone was enough to crack the molten rock, and as she swung her halberd again, the pressure shattered the replacement limb into fragments. Yet, Yujia refused to relent. Even as her arm was destroyed, she recreated it, pouring more energy into shaping a new one.
The two clashed again, Lostvayne meeting Yujia’s molten halberd in a fierce exchange of blows. Each time Arthur struck, the force of his gravity powers chipped away at her makeshift arm, breaking it apart only for Yujia to reform it again.
"You’re persistent."
Arthur spat as they locked weapons, faces mere inches apart. Suddenly, he inhaled sharply and released a close-range blast of destruction energy which Yujia barely dodged.
**Tsss!
Yujia heard her skin burn as Arthur’s breath attack grazed the side of her head, drawing blood. But she forced herself to bear it, dodging sideways just in time to avoid Arthur’s slash aimed at her neck.
At that moment, Arthur’s destruction energy in her body pulsed and his gravity powers violently yanked her back into his range.
Before he could attack, she gave him a taste of his own medicine, releasing a blast of molten fire from her mouth that forced Arthur to create a gravity shield.
The molten blast collided with his barrier, but even as it shattered, Arthur was already moving, slashing toward her makeshift arm again.
The blow landed, and her molten limb turned to dust, but Yujia poured all her strength into her left arm, pushing Arthur back and giving herself the distance to make a full swing.
Although Arthur blocked with Lostvayne, the force of her strike sent him skidding backwards across the cracked earth. Lava sizzled beneath his feet and he charged forward once more, a pillar of silver energy erupting from his sword to meet her incoming slash.
**BOOOMM!!!!
Despite the damage she had taken and the disadvantage of her weakened limb, Yujia was still holding her ground. Every time her makeshift arm crumbled under the pressure of Arthur’s gravity techniques, she reformed it, her eyes blazing as she struck with all her might.
Arthur used time power to accelerate his speed and packed the force of increased gravity behind his every strike. He predicted her moves and acted accordingly, aiming directly at previous wounds to worsen them.
Yujia didn’t dare let any of his attacks hit, either blocking with barriers of energy that were destroyed instantly or parrying with her halberd.
She released sure-kill techniques with ferocity, but as she was weakened, the power behind them was reduced.
With every strike, molten energy rippled off her halberd, and her wings burned with flames that tried to sear Arthur’s skin.
Arthur dodged by the thinnest margins, but he was not unscathed by her attacks. Her halberd grazed his sides once, and then she transformed her makeshift arm’s fingers into claws that raked across his shoulder.
A line of silver blood trailed down his arm, the wound glowing red-hot from the sheer heat of her molten touch. Arthur’s breath hitched as her next attack slashed through his side, a deep gash forming before he could pull back.
But even as blood dripped down his body, Arthur stepped forward to attack, his eyes glowing as his wounds rewound. The blood on the ground evaporated as if it had never been there.
Of course, not all wounds healed as the energy packed into her attacks was no small stuff—but any recovery was better than none.
