Chapter 741: Training in Devastation
Unnamed High-Level World
Unnamed Star System
DANGER ZONE: Abyss Labyrinth
December 31st
Year 1054, 50th G.C (Valmone)
The ground shattered with a deafening noise, cracks spiderwebbing across the land, tearing through mountains and valleys as an entire continent was wrenched off the surface of the planet.
Tectonic plates screamed in protest, magma gushed from the bleeding wounds of the planet’s crust, and the sea roared as it rushed to fill the void left behind.
Millions of tons of landmass ripped free from the hold of the planet’s gravity, bending under the will of Arthur’s Anti-Divine Gravity Authority.
The landmass was launched into the sky at hypersonic speed, the sheer force sending shockwaves around the globe, the wind howling in its wake.
The floating continent fractured as it moved. Gigantic slabs of rock split away, tumbling upward in chaotic spirals.
Then, the giant chunks of rock ignited, beautiful prismatic flames licking their surface, transforming them into radiant meteorites shooting into the sky like a cataclysm reversed.
Each one was capable of causing an extinction-level event on an average planet, except these meteorites weren’t raining down on the ground, but rising into the air at hypersonic speeds.
At the edge of the planet’s distorting atmosphere, the target of this devastation raised an eyebrow as he spoke.
"Really? You’re using projectiles? Against ME?"
He snapped his fingers, and by his Authority, space distorted, shimmering then cracking as swirling azure-rimmed portals of darkness bloomed open in what was left of the sky.
They pulsed like hungry maws, sucking and devouring the incoming meteor storm. The entire continent’s worth of flaming meteorites vanished into the dark abyss beyond them, swallowed whole without a trace.
Then, the portals moved towards one another, merging into one ginormous portal, which collapsed inward. The devoured mass and energy all condensed into a space-time distorting singularity in Jamie’s palm.
"Here. Have this back."
He said that with a smile, and the sphere in his palm exploded into a storm of annihilation that rained down.
Each raining projectile carved through space, splitting reality at the seams and leaving afterimages of glitching voids where they passed.
Faced with this, Evan glanced at Arthur and asked.
"What are we gonna do about that?"
Arthur didn’t even hesitate to gather his spatial law energy as he responded.
"We don’t do anything about that. We run from that."
His left hand stretched outward and the world turned monochrome. The descending storm froze mid-air, locked in a suspended moment.
Arthur didn’t hesitate to warp himself out of the location—only to reappear in the exact same spot.
"...fuck."
Jamie smirked as Arthur cursed. Once again, the godslayer was reminded who the superior spatial manipulator was.
Colour flooded back into the world, and the attack resumed its fall, with the meteors of death descending even faster.
Arthur and Evan immediately split up, flying in opposing directions while weaving through the onslaught.
Both of them unleashed slashes of sword and destruction law energy, splitting apart the destructive projectiles as they moved.
Make no mistake—despite Jamie’s playful smile, these attacks could actually kill them if they got hit.
Arthur used his Gravity Authority to crush some of the meteors, redirecting others into violent collisions with themselves, while straight up turning the rest into dust.
Evan blew them apart with raw destructive flames, unleashing flaming dragons that surged forward and devoured all in his path with their maws. If any got too close, he switched elements and turned them into chunks of ice.
To add context to the current situation where a poor planet was being subjected to this unfortunate fate, Arthur, Evan and Jamie were "training".
Yes, you read that correctly.
All this continental destruction and extinction-level devastation? Just "training."
This Planet was just the fourteenth in line to be damaged unreasonably by the three Singularities "training" in the past month.
Jamie was teaching the two teenagers how to properly utilize their new powers.
For Evan, it was the ability he had gained after his meeting with Ranus. For Arthur, it was his newly acquired Aspects.
As the two teens weaved through the onslaught of life-threatening projectiles, Evan looked up and shouted.
"Hey, Jay! Can you use your Child of Space skill more?!"
Arthur, who had just swerved past the explosion from two colliding projectiles, shot Evan an incredulous look.
"Are you crazy??!"
Evan, splitting another projectile in two, turned to Arthur and responded.
"What? I just wanted to use it as train-!"
He didn’t even get to finish his statement as his Danger Sense skill screamed alarms in his head, forcing him to immediately flap his wings to generate force that pushed his body forward, a split second before a thin, barely perceptible blade tore through the space he occupied.
Evan’s head snapped towards Jamie whose hand was stretched out, and the man held up his index and middle fingers as he spoke.
"That...was Basic Attack Sequence #1. This, is Basic Attack Sequence #2."
As he spoke, he opened a small gap between those two fingers, then snapped them shut like scissors.
Criss-crossing spatial slashes tore through space, forcing Evan to not only avoid the still-raining space-destroying projectiles but also the spatial slashes that seemed to want to snip his head off his neck.
"...that’s your ’Basic Attack’?"
Evan, having barely dodged five of those slashes, looked up at Jamie with a fearful gaze. However, the man only smiled evilly as he held up his right palm and asked.
"You wanna see my ’Intermediate’ Attack?"
Spatial law energy engulfed his palm and he slammed it down. Instantly, a mass of spatial power carved through all the space from the sky to the planet’s surface, devouring the raining projectiles and gouging out a huge chunk of the planet’s magma layer.
Despite the heat of the flames engulfing his sword, Evan felt cold sweat drip down his back as he took in the devastation a single swing of Jamie’s hand had caused.
"...but I didn’t wanna see the Intermediate Attack."
Arthur, equally stunned, turned to Evan and spoke.
"You asked for this. You deal with it."
And with that, he conjured a spatial gate and jumped into it.
"Wait for me!" Evan yelled, diving through the gate after him—just as another mass of spatial power devoured the air behind him.
Upon reappearing, they were met with a surging wall of water that crashed into their bodies faster than they could react—which was a lot, considering both of them could easily dodge attacks moving at over 8000 m/s.
The force sent them tumbling through the air, straight toward the sea of magma that now occupied the space where the continent Arthur had ripped off once was.
Evan slammed onto the molten rock, his clothes sizzling as the intense heat melted through the fabric. He quickly forced himself to his feet and shot into the air, glancing down at his half-melted clothes as he cursed.
"Fucking Hell!"
A voice behind him immediately echoed his words.
"Fucking Hell?"
"Hell Unleashed!"
Evan spun, his sword appearing in his palm and erupting with prismatic flames in the same instant he swung it at Jamie who appeared behind him.
The wide slash of prismatic fire roared forward with the ferocity of a tsunami, scorching through the air for miles. However, the attack simply phased through Jamie as if he weren’t even there, continuing onward into the distance.
"The power behind it is good. But it’s all kinda pointless if it doesn’t hit."
"Spatial powers are a cheat—BAMM!!!"
Jamie’s fist slammed into Evan before he could even finish his sentence. Though Evan managed to raise his shield in time, the force of the impact sent shockwaves ripping through his body, violently fracturing the bones in his arms.
Evan’s body was sent flying again, but he didn’t go too far as Arthur intervened, halting him mid-air to kill his momentum before dragging him out of the sphere of frozen time.
"Let’s get serious, Evan."
"You don’t need to tell me twice."
The moment Evan responded, his body erupted into a blaze of powerful, multicoloured flames. The shockwaves from the eruption radiated outward for miles, parting the sea of magma beneath him.
The universal laws surrounding Evan began to burn as his body emerged from the eruption of flames, appearing as nothing more than a humanoid silhouette wreathed in shifting fire, flickering between hues that distorted the visual senses of anyone looking.
Not far from him, Arthur, unaffected by the surge of flames, summoned Lostvayne in his right hand. Cosmic energy surged into his body from the blade, resonating with the Aspect of Destruction within his soul and drawing its power forth in response.
The destructive energy coursed through him, enveloping his body in a crimson-silver glow, while crimson circuit-like markings spread across his right arm, snaking up to his chest.
The two boys said no further words.
Without hesitation, they charged toward Jamie, moving so fast that even the strongest Transcendents would struggle to catch even a glimpse of them.
Jamie snapped his fingers, expanding space to slow their approach, but Evan’s flames burned through the very spatial laws expanding the space, while Arthur’s cosmic destruction energy consumed the fabric of space that was being expanded.
Seeing this, Jamie only grinned, effortlessly teleporting away to evade their initial attacks. His laughter echoed through the air as he bellowed.
"Good! Good!
Allow me to respond in kind!"
A torrential wave of cosmic energy erupted from his body, distorting the surrounding space as his lips parted to call out a command.
|Imperial Privileges; Second Privilege: Space|
The moment Jamie invoked his ’Privilege’, the fabric of space twisted and coiled in response to his Cosmic Authority.
Arthur and Evan moved the instant they felt the shift, bodies launching forward at velocities that blurred their bodies into streaks of light.
They reached Jamie in barely a second, their weapons tearing through the spatial distortions blooming in front of him and crashing into his body in a storm of raw destructive force.
However, Jamie simply collapsed the energy of their attacks into a singular point, compressing it until it was erased from space itself, before moving through the void left behind by its annihilation.
He reappeared above the two teens, his fingers snapping loudly. The sound seemed to shatter the world around them into thousands of fragmented spatial rifts, each one leading to a different part of the star system, showing some twisted reflections of Arthur and Evan from angles that should not exist.
’No, they do exist. We just can’t perceive them!’
It barely took Arthur a second to understand that Jamie was messing with higher dimensional directions, with Evan figuring things out a moment later when the flames he radiated vanished into a rift, pulled in a direction his brain couldn’t process.
Gravitational forces began shifting erratically as space compressed and expanded at random, creating an environment where movement became a risk.
