Chapter 673: Progenitor godslayer vs Infernal Verdant IV [Monthly Bonus 4]
The force of the impact compressed Arthur’s ribs, knocking the wind out of him. The boy gasped for air, pain radiating through his chest.
Vonun didn’t care about all that though.
He lifted his lance and thrust it at Arthur’s head, but the boy tilted his head just enough to avoid the tip piercing his skull.
Instead, the weapon sliced through the air next to him, narrowly missing his face. In the same motion, Arthur thrust his left hand forward, and a beam of Destruction Law Energy burst from his palm, engulfing Vonun and sending him flying backwards, his body tumbling through the air like a ragdoll.
|¬Rewind. Stasis. Accelerate¬|
Multiple commands were given as Arthur shot to his feet, moving faster than Vonun’s eye could track. He closed the distance between himself and Vonun in a heartbeat, grabbing the devil by the neck and lifting him out of the crater.
With a ferocious yell, Arthur slammed Vonun into the earth with such force that the ground shattered beneath them, and Vonun’s body bounced back up like a ragged doll.
Without hesitation, Arthur spun around, his body surrounded by a wave of gravitational energy that enhanced his strength and speed. His leg swept through the air as he kicked Vonun across the wasteland that was their battlefield.
The kick landed with such an overwhelming impact that Vonun was sent soaring, crashing through the ground, leaving a massive trench in his wake.
Vonun, disoriented, managed to plant his wooden lance into the earth to halt his momentum. The lance embedded deep into the ground, stabilizing him just as Arthur was already upon him.
Arthur swung Lostvayne down, the blade slicing through the air with a silvery trail of destructive energy behind it. Vonun’s eyes flashed as he tore his lance from the ground and thrust it forward, meeting Arthur’s blow with a devastating clash of power.
The two weapons met with a thunderous explosion, sending shockwaves in all directions, their energies crackling against one another.
Seeing it, one would wonder if it was really just Transcendents fighting.
The ground beneath Arthur and Vonun had long since ceased to resemble the lush terrain of Triffid’s Forest.
Now, it was a crumbling wasteland—deep cracks ran through the earth, splitting it apart like a shattered mirror, while the remnants of trees and shattered rock lay scattered like debris after an explosion.
The force of their collision sent Arthur’s body tumbling into the sky and Vonun chased after him. Both unfurled their wings and rose higher and higher into the sky, creating a storm of divinity and infernal energy.
Vonun lashed out with his tail, swinging it like a whip through the air, attempting to catch Arthur off guard. But Arthur saw it happen before it happened.
He grabbed the tail mid-swing and spun, using the force of the movement to hurl Vonun down to the ground with devastating force.
As Vonun crashed into the earth, Arthur hurled Lostvayne forward like a projectile, the sword spinning through the air with unnatural speed. He accelerated its time, making it reach Vonun in a split second, piercing his chest with a sickening crack and pinning him to the earth like a spear.
Giant shoots emerged from the ground, about to fire beams of energy but Arthur was faster.
|¬Rain down, Destruction! ¬|
By his command, spears of destruction crashed down from above, piercing through the centres of the shoots and obliterating them.
But before they even reached their targets, Arthur descended first, throwing his fist onto Lostvayne’s hilt and hammering it deeper into Vonun’s body, using his raw strength to force the blade through the devil’s flesh.
Vonun’s scream rang through the air, a sound of sheer agony as Lostvayne buried itself deeper, ripping through his wood-covered skin and embedding itself into Vonun’s very soul.
Arthur grabbed Vonun by the neck with his left hand, lifting the devil’s head from the earth. His right fist clenched in a single, powerful motion as he drove it downward, smashing it into Vonun’s face.
There was a sickening crunch as Vonun’s nose broke, the sound of bone shattering echoing through the area.
Arthur didn’t pause. He struck again, his fist slamming into Vonun’s face with brutal force, over and over again.
Likewise, Vonun wasn’t done. In an act of defiance, his tail shot up, aiming directly for Arthur’s back in an attempt to stab him.
Arthur, ever vigilant, spun around just in time to catch Vonun’s tail with his right hand, locking it in a vice-like grip. Then, tendrils of wood beneath them began to rise from the ground, sharp, jagged spikes reaching toward Arthur’s body like the fangs of some monstrous beast.
But Arthur’s right eye glowed and he glared at the tendrils.
A pulse of cosmic and destructive energy erupted from his body, obliterating the tendrils in an instant. They turned to dust, scattering into the air like ash, unable to withstand the force of Arthur’s will.
With Vonun’s tail still in his grip, Arthur tightened his hold and spun around once more, but before he could act, the devil did something unexpected.
Vonun opened his mouth wide, and a massive wooden beam—a solid, raw piece of wood like the kind used in construction—shot out. It struck Arthur squarely in the jaw, the force so sudden and unexpected that it knocked him backwards, his teeth slamming together in a way that made him bite his tongue.
Arthur staggered, the taste of blood filling his mouth, a thin line of silver trickling from his lip.
Inadvertently, he let go of Vonun’s tail, giving the man the breathing space to claw himself up from the ground, still impaled by Lostvayne.
With a strained grunt, he summoned a gigantic wooden arm that wrapped around the sword’s hilt, pulling it out of his body in one smooth, forceful yank.
Blood sprayed from the open wound, and the wooden arm was destroyed by Lostvayne’s destruction energy, but he wasted no time; wood surged over his chest, covering the injury and halting the bleeding in a flash.
In the next instant, he lunged toward Arthur, who spit out a bit of blood and gripped Lostvayne tightly.
They clashed again, each swing more brutal than the last, every blow landing with a force that fractured the very earth beneath them.
Their bodies blurred, each strike sending shockwaves rippling through the air. But as Arthur brought his sword down for a powerful slash, Vonun twisted, his body moving with surprising agility, and planted a swift, brutal kick into Arthur’s stomach.
The force of the blow sent Arthur hurtling back, flying through the air like a stone flung from a catapult. He crashed through a line of spiked trees Vonun conjured, his body smashing through their trunks until he skidded to a halt, gouging a trench in the earth.
Memories of the Future: Auto-Activation.
Streams of temporal energy flowed into Arthur’s chest, acting not on his will but on that of time itself.
Immediately, Arthur’s eyes shot open and he pushed himself up, taking to the sky with urgency. In that same instant, the ground beneath him erupted, splitting open with a thunderous crack.
From the depths of the earth, the gaping maw of an enormous black dragon emerged, its jagged teeth glinting as it surged toward him with terrifying speed, intending to crush him in one swift, merciless bite.
Thinking quickly, Arthur infused and coated his arms with crimson-silver energy. With gravity, he formed a shield to hold the dragon’s jaws at bay.
The beast’s teeth ground against the barrier, but it could not close its maw around him. Gritting his teeth, Arthur reached out and grabbed onto the dragon’s massive fangs, using blasts of destruction energy to shatter several of them.
He then dug his fingers into its wounded gums and, with a display of brute strength, pried the dragon’s mouth open wide enough to leap out.
In the process, one of the beast’s jagged teeth sliced into his arm, leaving a thin line of blood trickling down.
As he landed on the ground below, he snapped his fingers, his destruction-infused blood reacting to his will. The droplets left on the dragon’s teeth detonated with a series of violent explosions, sending shrapnel through its mouth and leaving it wounded.
Chest heaving, Arthur teleported away, appearing a safe distance from the blast.
’Rather than the dragon’s sudden appearance, I’m more worried about what it has been doing since...’
Arthur thought this as he glanced at the Black Dragon Charisse had called Murobis. It had been absent since the battle began and was now suddenly appearing from the ground...why?
Vonun wasn’t going to answer even if he asked, so Arthur instead focused on dealing with the dragon.
’I can’t fight them bo-!’
Arthur’s thoughts cut short and he staggered, his vision blurring for an instant.
[Master!]
Celestia’s voice jolted him back to consciousness and he raised his hand, willing the ambient cosmic energy to form a gravity shield in front of him that blocked the full power breath of the Black Dragon.
The Black Dragon’s breath slammed into Arthur’s gravity shield, its force crashing against the shimmering, semi-circular barrier he’d created.
The powerful beam split around him, carving deep trenches into the earth on either side, gouging out a massive V-shaped scar in the ground.
As the dust settled, Arthur stood at the apex, completely untouched.
Looking up at the Dragon bleeding from its mouth, Arthur spoke.
"I know exactly how I’d deal with you lizard."
The dragon let out a deafening roar, fury blazing in its dark eyes as it lunged at Arthur, its maw wide open, ready to crush him in one deadly bite.
At the same moment, Vonun charged forward, his lance poised to strike. But in a blink, Arthur disappeared, reappearing further back with a flicker of cosmic energy.
Immediately he landed, he traced his foot in a quick arc across the ground, drawing a circle in the earth. A time bubble expanded around him, slowing time within it to give him more time to act.
|¬Pseudo-Authority of Space + Attribute Resonance: Summoning. ¬|
With his spatial power on the Pseudo-Authority level, Arthur could now summon creatures from much further away, and stronger existences that needed more power to cross space.
Opening his subspace, he poured out divinity crystals—fragments of the Titan god Novak’s broken Divine Spark—each one pulsing with Transcendent level energy.
His right arm had scratched on Murobis’ teeth earlier, and so from there, he splashed his blood on the crystals as the magic circle formed before him.
And then, in his true voice, he shouted out the name of the spell he had used to summon Barron’s Hydra in the Triton’s Ark.
|¬ Apex-Beschwörung! ¬|
The moment Arthur activated his spell, the magic circle flared to life, drawing all the summoning law energy within his soul.
In Arthur’s mind, he had something like a priority list for the law of summoning to cycle through. If it couldn’t get the first, then It’d go for the second, if not, the third, and down to the fifth.
Only if it failed to find anything meeting those first five, would it then randomly summon something. Whatever was going to appear, however, was surely going to be a Superior Transcendent.
But Arthur didn’t need to get that far.
He was in the Infernal Dimension. Within this Dimension, there existed a creature that met the criteria for his top choice.
So, the moment the Law of Summoning’s power took hold, Arthur sensed it.
The Divinity Crystals he dropped on the magic circle vanished—the creature had accepted his offering.
And so, Arthur shouted.
|¬The Divine Spark of a Deity, your offering... and the destruction-infused blood of a Progenitor, the catalyst.
Get out here and serve me—¬|
The space above Arthur’s head fractured like glass, with Vonun and Murobis arriving just in time to see this phenomenon. Both their eyes widened in shock as they met the sight of two dark-crimson pupils glowing behind the fractured space.
And then, Arthur’s voice boomed out, declaring the name of the existence he had summoned.
|¬—Beast of the END¬|
