Chapter 718: “Cruotis Prime’s Consciousness” III
|Void.|
The destruction nova he launched at Arthur was devoured by Jamie’s void, and spatial power surged from Jamie’s body.
Bewússtsein clicked his tongue and roused his cosmic energy to counter Jamie’s ’spatial attack’ only to have his expectations shattered.
Instead of spatial or destructive energy, Jamie’s blade ignited with azure flames and lightning, crackling with both elements as he swung it forward in a diagonal arc.
The shockwaves from his strike caused the air to ripple and crackle, forcing Bewússtsein to raise his arms in defence. But when it slammed into his arms, the intense energy tore his multi-layered barrier and skin, searing deep into his flesh.
As Bewússtsein was knocked towards the ground from the blow, he quickly gathered death energy in his hands. But before he could retaliate, Arthur appeared from behind, his Continent Split slash carrying the force of more than just a continent as it cleaved through Bewússtsein’s shoulder, cutting deep and into his lungs.
’Tsk...not deep enough...’
Arthur clicked his tongue and swapped positions with Jamie again, and as Bewússtsein turned to counter, he met Jamie’s fist zapping towards his side.
Bewússtsein roared and unleashed his death energy in a concentrated blast that shot forward and hit Jamie in the chest, punching a hole through his right side.
But Jamie acted like he didn’t even feel the damage, the power behind his fist not waning in the slightest as it slammed into Bewússtsein’s side sending a pulse of destructive energy ripping through his ribs.
Jamie chuckled lightly as he looked down on his arm and saw the flickering orange flames that had appeared on it the split second before his fist hit. The weight of his fist had also multiplied by over 10 times as well.
When he looked in the direction of the two boys responsible for those last-second buffs, they were already charging at the fallen Bewússtsein.
Gravity condensed and distorted space in Arthur’s palm, collapsing into a miniature singularity which he slammed into Bewússtsein’s stomach. The singularity nearly tore through the man’s body like a black hole consuming everything in its path, his saving grace being the force of the impact that sent him flying.
But even then, he still had a hole blown clean through his torso. His body convulsed, but before he could react, Arthur followed up with a thrust of his sword, activating Extreme Nothingness.
The blade hummed with violet energy as Arthur poured the full weight of his power into the strike. A beam of purple energy erupted from the tip of his sword, blasting into Bewússtsein’s chest with devastating force.
The explosion sent the man’s body flying back, his form skidding across the ground, leaving a trail of blood and destruction behind.
’Beschädigte Wiederherstellung!’
Bewússtsein staggered to his feet, his healing abilities kicking in to mend the worst of his injuries, but his trio of opponents didn’t stop.
Evan unleashed another bolt of lightning, while Jamie sent a barrage of azure flames, forcing Bewússtsein to move even while wounded to avoid his attacks.
Arthur dashed in from behind with a slash, and Bewússtsein ducked to dodge, before throwing his fist upward to counter.
But having expected such a counter, Arthur had coated his body with a thick gravity barrier, preventing Bewússtsein’s fist from reaching him.
Suddenly, time froze and Jamie and Evan closed in from the sides, blue lightning and prismatic flames marring their swords.
Bewússtsein broke out of the time stop with a burst of destructive energy, conjuring earthen barriers in Jamie’s direction to deal with his lightning, and unleashing a pressurised torrent of water to deal with Evan’s flames.
However, the two suddenly switched up their elements.
Jamie’s azure lightning turned to flames, and Evan’s prismatic flames became crimson golden ice. The azure flames melted the earthen barriers and struck Bewússtsein at the same moment that the crimson-gold ice froze the water torrents, along with Bewússtsein’s arm.
’These fuckers!’
Knowing they had switched their elements just to fuck with him, Bewússtsein cursed internally as he tried to retaliate. He unleashed an omnidirectional barrage of destruction energy-constructed weapons, but the three easily teleported out of range and unleashed simultaneous long-range attacks from above.
The three of them continued to mount the pressure, striking before Bewússtsein could properly recover from any attack—force after force, blow after blow, overwhelming the man’s ability to properly retaliate.
Once, he had just been hit by a 200x gravity punch by Arthur and was still reeling from the shock, Jamie darted forward and slashed at Bewússtsein’s chest.
Bewússtsein raised one arm to block and the other to counter, but Jamie feinted, pivoting mid-stride and driving his sword into the man’s left leg.
The blade cut cleanly through the knee joint, severing it with a sickening crunch. Bewússtsein stumbled, his balance faltering as Jamie twisted his wrist and swung his blade in reverse.
With another spatial slash, the severed leg was split into three, the pieces scattering to the blood-soaked ground.
Before Bewússtsein could even fall to the ground, Arthur appeared behind him in a blur of speed, his sword radiating a deadly silver glow.
|Extreme Nothingness: Chaos! |
Arthur’s blade slashed downward from Bewússtsein’s right collarbone, cutting through flesh and bone in a single devastating arc. The attack cleaved deep into his torso, splitting him nearly in two as blood sprayed into the air.
[GRaUGH!!!]
Bewússtsein’s roar of agony reverberated like a thunderclap, but there was no time for reprieve as Evan teleported in front of him, a vortex of flames swirling around his blade.
|Prismatic Vortex! |
The spiralling wave of multi-coloured flames surged forward, colliding with Bewússtsein’s chest unimpeded. The vortex shredded through his flesh, peeling layers away as though his body was being unmade.
The sheer force of the attack sent him flying backwards, his nearly bisected torso flailing mid-air.
But even as his body was torn apart, Bewússtsein’s tenacity and will didn’t succumb. As he stumbled through the air, he used cosmic energy to fly, then grabbed his dangling right side with his left, pressing it against his torn body.
Life-law energy surged through his body, the light weaving flesh and muscle back together.
’I need more mass!’
Bewússtsein thought this as he summoned a corpse from the ground, one of the billions in his stock. He grabbed it with his left hand, intent on absorbing its flesh to regenerate his missing leg, but Jamie acted faster than he could do that.
Jamie swung his sword, a single slash that sent a cutting field projected into the air. The field slashed apart the corpse before it could be absorbed and the severed pieces dissolved into nothingness.
Evan capitalized on the moment, his sword glowing with a blinding crimson light.
|World Sunder! |
His blade descended in a devastating arc, severing Bewússtsein’s outstretched left arm cleanly at the shoulder.
Bewússtsein’s face twisted in fury and agony, but he barely had a chance to even think of a retaliatory move as Arthur appeared behind him.
|Extreme Nothingness! |
The purple mix of temporal and destructive energies pierced his back, blasting him skyward with its force.
Bewússtsein’s body twisted mid-air, blood pouring from his wounds as his roar of rage echoed across the Core Dimension.
[Todesnova-Sperrfeuer!]
Two-metre-long ’arrows’ of death and destruction energy erupted from him in all directions, glowing with an ominous, black light as they rained down like a deadly storm.
The chaotic attack forced Jamie, Arthur and Evan to scatter, but its range was so vast that it reached them even after they’d teleported kilometres away from Bewússtsein’s position.
Jamie snapped his fingers and used his ’Void’ technique, while Arthur conjured an AGSD, absorbing multiple into the swirling singularity of destruction.
The remaining arrows slammed into the ground, carving deep craters and erupting in violent bursts of energy that would have decimated millions of miles if it wasn’t for the Core Dimension’s durability.
Taking advantage of Jamie’s momentary shift in focus, Bewússtsein managed a successful teleportation, to the far end of the Core Dimension.
By the time Jamie and the others locked onto his position and finally arrived with the intent to attack, Bewússtsein’s body was nearly whole once more.
Most of his wounds were gone and his leg was regenerated, though the silver line where Arthur’s ’Chaos’ had slashed him remained, unable to completely heal.
Bewússtsein’s energy exploded outwards, mixed in with death energy that contaminated the ground around him.
The wave of death energy spread at relativistic speed, with the protagonist trio being unable to react as it reached them.
’What the-!? Why did his attack speed suddenly spike?’
Arthur questioned internally as he used his gravity powers to create a barrier around him. However, the thought quickly left his mind as he realised Bewússtsein’s main goal for that strike.
’He infused the ground with energy?’
"A Bounded Field?!"
Arthur exclaimed aloud, and Bewússtsein’s brow twitched when the sound reached him. Immediately, spatial power surged from Jamie and covered the area, preventing any topographic-type techniques from being deployed.
Naturally, Bounded Fields were no exception.
Seeing as his plan had been thwarted, Bewússtsein switched his approach in the seconds before the dozens of serpentine dragons spewing breaths of flames, lightning and ice that Evan launched could reach him.
[Ruf des Todes!]
He punched the ground and the entire Core Dimension quaked violently. The earth split apart with thunderous cracks and from the gaping fissures, walking corpses like those who’d attacked them on the surface emerged.
But unlike those ones—
"Those guys don’t look like Transcendent corpses..."
"That’s because they’re not!"
Jamie shouted a response to Evan’s observation as he waved his palm, carving out a huge chunk of space itself and deleting the upper bodies of all the corpses occupying there.
However, the corpses—those of the Deity Realm inhabitants of Cruotis Prime that Bewússtsein absorbed—kept spawning endlessly.
The Fallen Deities attacked as one, and the protagonist trio leapt back to gain distance, immediately preparing AOE attacks.
Evan conjured a blazing wall of yellow flames that incinerated several of the walking dead, but the sheer numbers forced him to retreat further.
"They die easily since they don’t have their original power, but ther’re just too many of them. I’d rather fight Triffid’s Vanguards than deal with this!"
"Oy! Evan, don’t jinx us!"
Arthur snapped his head in Evan’s direction when he heard the Rogue Hero’s ominous words, but that second he looked away was enough for one of the corpses to close the distance.
’Ah, shit...’
The thought crossed Arthur’s mind just as the Fallen Deity’s punch reached him, and he was barely able to cross his arms in front of his chest to block.
His body was sent flying into another congregation of corpses that spawned behind him, and just as he crashed, they swarmed him with attacks, intent on tearing him apart.
|Annihilation Pulse! |
Cosmic destruction energy surged like crackling lightning, expanding in a sphere that erased everything in the vicinity.
Alas, Bewússtsein had billions of corpses in stock.
For every one Arthur erased, two more took its place. One managed to flank him in the chaos, ramming into his side with enough force to send him skidding across the cracked ground.
Arthur flipped to his feet, silver blood dripping from his lip, and rewound time around himself to restore the damage.
Meanwhile, Jamie was the one suffering the most. The man could swear Bewússtsein had sicced a million corpses on him.
He knew he was cutting them down in droves, but their numbers didn’t seem to be decreasing at all.
