Chapter 671: Progenitor godslayer vs Infernal Verdant II [Monthly Bonus 2]
There was no explosion, no cataclysmic eruption of force. Instead, the beam slowly disintegrated, the energy fading into nothingness as it was broken down.
Arthur’s hand reached his throat and he coughed a bit, before speaking.
"Hmm... I’m not very good at this. Let’s not push it."
As he spoke, he raised Lostvayne and swung it down, but despite having swung the blade once in a straight line, six crescent slashes of crimson silver energy shot out in multiple directions. They moved in a semi-circle formation in front of him, carving through the earth as they split the dome to shreds.
"I’d call that Destruction Crescent: Sixfold."
Arthur casually named this attack that shattered time and created multiple iterations of his slash as he faced Vonun. A small trail of crimson silver light extended from Arthur’s vertical pupils, and all of Vonun’s magic circles he looked at were hit with bursts of destruction energy and shattered.
"After becoming a Transcendent myself, I finally understand why the laws of the Cosmos dictate that Transcendence is required for Law Comprehension.
To think I had so much untapped law manipulation potential."
A sly smirk curled at the corners of his lips as he condensed his temporal law energy into multiple points around him.
"Now I’m curious. What would it be like to become a Deity?"
As he spoke, dozens of infernal beams shot toward Arthur at supersonic speed. Without moving a muscle, he warped them away, redirecting their course effortlessly, and returned fire with his own beams of temporal energy.
Vonun’s gaze turned to one of his flower shoots struck by Arthur’s beams. In an instant, it aged rapidly, withering and crumbling to dust.
’An Aging attack. How typical of a time manipulator...’
Arthur swung Lostvayne horizontally, sending another crescent-shaped slash of destruction energy that Vonun countered with a swing of his lance.
"Hmm...I think I’m getting the hang of it."
Energy swirled in front of Arthur, coalescing into a giant orb of darkness with a spinning ring of light around it. In response, Vonun summoned a giant tree with a face itched into its bark.
From its mouth, a massive beam of energy shot forward and Arthur released a similar attack from the spatiotemporal orb floating before him.
The two forces collided with a massive explosion, but Vonun’s attention was elsewhere as spears of crimson silver light erupted from the ground in waves, forcing him to jump off his standing point.
Vonun drove his lance into the earth as he landed, and in response, the ground trembled. Trees erupted from the soil, their trunks and branches morphing into humanoid forms.
From the earth rose an army of hundreds of wooden soldiers resembling Triffid’s Vanguards that charged at Arthur.
Arthur raised his left hand and gravity around the soldiers reversed. They were lifted high, only to be crushed in a single instant, collapsing into splinters beneath the weight of his Pseudo-Authority.
With a leap, Arthur shot towards Vonun, the ground shattering beneath his feet. Vonun, undeterred, expanded his lance, elongating the weapon until its wide flat side formed a shield. He raised it just in time to meet Arthur’s incoming slash.
"Continental Split."
Arthur’s calm voice reached Vonun’s ears and the man just activated his Pseudo-Authority, coating his lance’s shield with darkness law energy.
**BOOOOM!!!!
A shockwave radiated outward on impact, tearing up the earth and splintering the surrounding terrain. The ground for miles buckled, and a violent gust of wind ripped through the air, knocking soldiers hundreds of kilometres away off their feet.
From the smoke, two streaks of light shot out, their weapons flashing as they met in mid-air with a series of thunderous clashes.
Lostvayne flashed, cutting through the air while leaving a silver trail and Vonun swung his lance in response, parrying Arthur’s strikes and sending shockwaves through the air with each blow.
Arthur struck low, aiming for Vonun’s side, but the man parried it once more, before thrusting. Arthur’s time-accelerated movements allowed him to pull his weapon back fast enough and slash down on Vonun’s lance.
The destruction energy of the lance split it in two, but Vonun simply recreated it in an instant and thrust it towards Arthur’s head. The boy ducked, the lance grazing the top of his head, before slashing upwards towards Vonun’s chest.
This didn’t faze the Archdevil who twisted his body, deflecting the attack with the side of the lance. Vonun followed up with a downward swing to catch Arthur off guard, but he missed as Arthur simply leapt to the side.
Spinning around, Vonun blocked the slash that came from the side, but just then time froze and Arthur’s sword pierced through Vonun’s shoulder a second later.
The edge of Lostvayne sunk into Vonun’s tough wood defences, the pain jolting the man to force himself out of Arthur’s time stop with an energy burst of his Pseudo Authority.
The world snapped back into motion as Vonun grimaced, feeling Arthur’s sword embedded in his shoulder. Arthur moved to pull Lostvayne free, but Vonun reacted in a flash, his lance thrusting forward and stabbing into Arthur’s stomach.
The lance’s tip buried deep, and Vonun’s darkness law energy pulsed within, attempting to seep into Arthur’s body, but his Destruction Pseudo-Authority met it, repelling the corrupting energy with a crimson glow.
Still, he took damage, forcing both him and Vonun to stagger back with blood dripping from their wounds.
Stomping his foot on the ground, Vonun summoned giant pillars of wood from the ground in large numbers, bending them inward crush, and the boy responded with a pulse of destruction law energy that shattered them to splinters.
Vonun snapped his left fingers and more pillars emerged, forming a wave that surged to crush Arthur from all angles.
|¬Tri-Pseudo Authority Activation: Gravity, Space, Destruction. ¬|
The ambient cosmic energy bent to Arthur’s will and moved the laws around him, intertwining them.
Around Arthur, the air trembled and silvery fissures began to crack open around him—small tears in the fabric of spacetime.
Each rift pulsed with a deep gravitational pull, bending light and drawing in everything in its vicinity. The fissures multiplied, forming a fractured halo around Arthur, their edges shimmering with a silvery power of nothingness that gnawed away at ’existence’ around it.
As Vonun’s summoned pillars of wood surged toward him, the gravitational pull of Arthur’s fissures drew them in, splintering more than half under the gravitational pressure.
The remaining half was drawn deep into these rifts, and in an instant, the wood disintegrated, vanishing into a cascade of shattered particles, torn apart and crushed by the force within each fissure.
Every single pillar of wood met the same fate—obliterated entirely as the fissures swallowed them whole, and ground them to nothingness.
|¬Giving ’Names’ to things gives them power...
For an idea I thought of on the fly, it worked pretty well, so I guess I have to ’Name’ it to make it stick...¬|
The boy muttered this as he rubbed a hand on his chin, and suddenly, a surge of energy burst from his body, surprising both him and Vonun.
|¬Oh...seems like my accumulated EXP has started falling in again. Intermediate Stage now...¬|
With that burst of energy, came a burst of inspiration for the technique name.
|¬Let’s keep it simple. ¬|
Arthur looked up to see Vonun releasing wave upon wave of attacks. Jagged wooden pillars shot up and curled inward, tendrils erupted from the earth, snaking and trashing towards him, while spiked spears formed in the air, shooting down at supersonic speed.
As a final flourish, a storm of infernal energy beams pierced through the sky, aimed directly at Arthur from all directions.
It was a full-on barrage.
Facing the first wave, Arthur drew upon cosmic energy and he spoke the simple three-word name he had chosen.
|¬Halo of Oblivion. ¬|
The words left his lips, and immediately, the space around him began to distort. The silvery fissures of spacetime exploded into existence, more numerous than before—doubled in size and potency.
Vonun’s attacks were drawn in instantly, as if the air itself had become a vacuum. The giant wooden pillars groaned as they were sucked into the rifts, their mass becoming insignificant in the face of the tearing forces.
Spiked tendrils twisted in mid-air as they were devoured whole, snapped apart, and crushed by the immense gravitational forces of the rifts.
The beams of energy collided with the expanding rifts, vanishing as quickly as they were created.
The silvery fissures pulsed, closing in on the crumbling remains of the first wave of Vonun’s attack, while the fabric of spacetime around Arthur turned fragile.
|¬Named it. Works even better now. ¬|
A smile appeared on Arthur’s face, but it disappeared just as quickly as it emerged. Halo of Oblivion had only dealt with the first wave of Vonun’s attacks.
More wooden projectiles, tendrils, whips, and beams surged towards him, the sheer volume threatening to overwhelm him.
He knew relying on Halo of Oblivion again wouldn’t be wise—its energy consumption was too much for a battle of this scale.
So, with a quick decision, he kicked off the ground, shooting up into the sky.
Immediately, the tendrils of wood and beams redirected, homing in on him like guided missiles. As he ascended, Arthur dropped time bombs behind him, and one by one, the attacking tendrils collided with the bombs, causing massive explosions that rippled through the air.
But the onslaught didn’t stop.
New wooden projectiles continued to surge towards him from the ground, so he twisted in the air, spinning to release a single Extinction Slash.
A thin silvery line of energy sliced through the attacks that had followed him, slicing through them with surgical precision as they tried to close in.
Then, with a powerful push, Arthur shot higher into the air, narrowly avoiding a gigantic wooden arm that reached out to grab him.
As he ascended, he clenched his left hand into a fist, using the power of gravity to crush the giant arm into a tiny ball of splintered wood. He then hurled the ball at Vonun who knocked it away with his lance.
Arthur closed the distance in the second Vonun used to knock it away, but just as he was about to strike, the ground beneath him caved in and a beam of energy erupted from the earth.
’Tsk...’
Clicking his tongue internally, Arthur accelerated his movements with time, spinning and swinging Lostvayne downward.
It wasn’t a special attack or skill, just a regular energy slash that sliced through the beam of energy.
The moment the beam was cut, Vonun dashed beside him, aiming to strike with his lance at the wound he had inflicted earlier.
However, Arthur’s reaction speed was even faster. He teleported, avoiding the lance strike and reappeared below Vonun.
Grabbing his leg, Arthur flung Vonun to the ground, sending the man crashing hard into the earth.
As Vonun collided with meteoric force, Arthur was already upon him, Lostvayne raised high. He swung down, unleashing a Continental Split and Vonun quickly sacrificed his wooden lance, transforming it into a barrier to block the blow.
But under the force of Arthur’s slash, the hastily made barrier was pointless.
