Chapter 742: Trainning or Torment?
Arthur slashed at a nearby rift, channelling the destructive power of his Aspect into the strike. Crimson-silver energy erupted from his blade, consuming not only the rift but every other fragmented space connected to it, shattering the distorted battlefield in a chain reaction.
But Jamie’s expression didn’t change as he reasserted his command over space, reforming the rifts.
Evan’s flames burst forth in tandem, indigo fire taking shape into massive chains that shot through the rifts, twisting through incomprehensible directions before bursting from a tear behind Jamie, coiling tightly around his arm.
Jamie barely had time to raise an eyebrow before Evan pulled on the chain, dragging him through the rift and pulling him out near his own position.
Simultaneously, Arthur’s sword zipped through the air, its edge mere moments from slicing Jamie’s neck when the man suddenly grinned.
"?!"
In the infinitesimal space between Arthur’s blade and Jamie’s neck, ’New Space’ was ’generated’, forcing an additional gap between them. In the split second bought by that extra distance, Jamie warped space and transformed the area into a labyrinth of dimensions stacked atop each other.
Evan tried to attack Jamie, but the moment he moved, he found himself not moving closer to Jamie, but suddenly appearing behind Jamie.
He immediately spun around and unleashed a slash of destructive flames, but his flames collided with an invisible dimensional wall between him and Jamie, stopping just short of reaching the man.
"How’d you expect your attack to connect when you’re in a different dimension?"
Jamie’s teasing voice echoed from all around, his grin mischievous as he extended his right hand and trapped Arthur in a spatial bubble.
He clenched his fist, and space began collapsing inward around Arthur, threatening to crush him under its immense force.
"Tsk! Lostvayne!"
[On it.]
The crimson-silver light surrounding Arthur vanished immediately, its energy drawn into Lostvayne in his right hand. A sky-blue layer of energy replaced it immediately, and Arthur quickly gathered that power into his left palm, then moved his fingers as if adjusting an invisible knob counter clockwise.
|REWIND!|
Immediately, the laws of time intertwined with space twisted, rewinding the entire area to the moment before Jamie transformed it into a labyrinth of dimensions.
Everyone was returned to the instant when Jamie emerged from the spatial rift after Evan pulled him with the indigo chain.
This time, instead of slashing at Jamie with his sword, Arthur merged the crimson destructive power of his blade with the blue energy in his left palm. He activated his Spatial and Gravitational Authorities, combining all four energies into a singularity which he launched at Jamie.
|AGSD!|
Arthur’s singularity devoured the space in its path as it moved, sucking everything around towards it, even Jamie’s body.
But in a split second, Jamie cupped his palms together, and the space between them caved inward and collapsed, blooming into a misshapen fist-sized black hole.
Without hesitation, he pushed it forward, sending the miniature omnivore streaking towards Arthur’s incoming singularity.
The two met in a collision of energy and gravitational waves that erupted omnidirectionally, rippling across the fabric of space-time.
The gravitational waves released as the singularities combined slammed into Arthur and Evan’s bodies, sending them hurtling uncontrollably through the air.
By the time they managed to stabilize themselves and searched for Jamie, they found him overfeeding the combined singularity in his palm with cosmic energy causing the dark mass to swell, growing even more unstable.
The energy forced the singularity to its critical limit in an instant, causing it to convulse before violently regurgitating all the energy it had consumed.
The unleashed tidal wave of cosmic energy and gravitational forces surged outward in all directions, leaving Arthur and Evan no choice but to go on the defensive.
Arthur erected a gravity shield, its force bending space around him to deflect the crashing waves of energy. At the same time, Evan’s flames expanded into a massive, spherical barrier, the red fire burning away the gravity laws infused within the oncoming surge.
But even with their defences, the impact was overwhelming. The force of the blast and the immense gravitational energy distorted space enough to tear open localized rifts.
Faster than the two could react, the rifts sucked their bodies and flung them through space, ejecting them high above a distant continent and sending them crashing down like meteorites.
Though they had crashed in completely different areas, neither had a moment to recover when an invisible force suddenly seized them, yanking their bodies through space as if they were mere puppets on a string.
The immense distance between them vanished in an instant, and before they could react, their heads slammed into each other at supersonic speed.
The impact sent a deafening shockwave rippling outward, tearing through the atmosphere and flattening the surrounding landscape.
Arthur barely felt the damage, his superior durability allowing him to endure the collision with only a momentary flash of white in his vision. As the flames engulfed Evan’s body, they were repelled by the defensive layer of cosmic energy surrounding his body.
But Evan wasn’t as fortunate. The difference in toughness made the clash devastating—his skull cracked under the force, pain lancing through his head as his vision blurred.
The culprit—Jamie—appeared above them, compressing space to forge an invisible blade which he slashed downward at Mach 30, aiming to cleave them both in a single stroke.
Arthur’s left eye flashed with a memory of the grim future, and he immediately moved. Lostvayne’s edge erupted with a crimson-silver radiance as he brought it up to meet Jamie’s attack.
The moment their blades collided, space fractured, and an overwhelming shockwave erupted, vaporizing everything within a hundred kilometres.
The force of the impact sent Arthur hurtling towards the ground, his body landing with a crash shattered the land, carving out an immense crater that stretched for miles.
Evan, his head wreathed in green flames, conjured a swarm of serpentine dragons, each with crimson fire seething in their maws as they lunged at Jamie from behind.
Yet Jamie thwarted the attack without even glancing at it. Keeping his gaze locked on the spot where Arthur had fallen, he extended his left hand and curled his fingers inward, folding space around the approaching dragons and suspending them mid-motion.
Clenching his fist, he compressed the space around them, reducing the massive serpents into marble-sized embers which he casually erased from existence with a small void energy pulse.
Right then, Arthur unleashed a surging wave of destructive energy—a crimson-silver torrent that defied gravity as it barrelled toward Jamie in the sky.
But instead of defending or evading, Jamie teleported directly into the heart of the attack, slipping through it like it wasn’t even there. He cut through the wave and reached Arthur at the end of it, his palm striking out and slamming into Arthur’s stomach.
Space collapsed inward, crushing Arthur’s body with a force equivalent to the planet’s gravity multiplied nearly 500 times.
Arthur vomited silver blood as his ribs snapped inward under the force, but the ambient temporal laws enveloped him, rewinding the damage and instantly restoring him before it could incapacitate him.
Jamie was about to strike again when Evan burst in from the side, his sword engulfed in a blazing inferno of destructive energy, its tip streaking toward Jamie’s head like a comet.
The man jumped back to dodge, but Evan, having anticipated that, had angled his approach perfectly, allowing him to easily swing his sword in an arc. The burning edge of his sword carved through the air and struck Jamie square in the chest, hurling him backwards with the explosive impact.
The explosive force of Evan’s full-powered strike instantly transformed the surroundings into a sea of fire and lava, with the resultant shockwaves scattering the molten liquid even further.
Arthur seized the opportunity Evan created with his successful strike, ’skipping’ the time he needed to close the distance and appearing in front of Jamie in a fraction of a second.
Cosmic destruction energy surged through his sword as he thrust it forward, activating his Extreme Nothingness Authority for a full-powered attack.
But Jamie, ever unpredictable, warped space at the last moment before the attack connected, redirecting Arthur’s strike through a spatial fracture and sending it straight at Evan.
"?!"
"fu-!"
The two barely had time to react before Lostvayne’s tip collided with Evan’s Gazebind shield.
**BOOOM!!!!!
The resulting shockwave tore the sky apart, blasting Evan across the horizon. He tore through three floating islands, leaving trails of crumbling stone in his wake, before finally slamming into the ground, blood spraying from his mouth upon impact.
His left arm was a mangled wreck, but even more shocking was the sight of his trusty shield which had withstood all sorts of attacks—now marred by a deep crack!
Arthur, reeling from the backlash of abruptly retracting the energy in his attack at the last possible moment, had no time to recover before Jamie’s foot drove into his side with brutal force.
The impact sent him hurtling downward like a falling star, crashing into the magma sea below. The molten waves erupted on impact, geysers of lava shooting into the sky as Jamie casually dusted off his palms, like someone finishing a routine task.
With a snap of his fingers, Jamie teleported all three of them onto one of the few floating islands Evan hadn’t smashed through, tossing the two teenagers onto the ground like discarded rags.
"Lesson’s over, kids."
Neither Arthur nor Evan could respond—they were too busy groaning in pain from their serious wounds.
It shouldn’t be forgotten that Evan’s left arm was still a mangled mess, a state that would have been far worse if Arthur hadn’t managed to retract the power of ’erasure’ in his Extreme Nothingness Authority at the last second.
As for Arthur, while Jamie had only kicked him, it was important to remember that Jamie was a High-Tier Deity realm existence.
Even a restrained kick from someone of that calibre was more than enough to send Arthur’s HP deep into the red.
Still groaning from the pain of his fractured ribs and arm, Arthur forced out a few words.
"...and I didn’t land a single hit..."
That was true. Throughout this entire training session, Arthur hadn’t landed a single successful attack on Jamie. The only one who had was Evan, and even then, it was just once.
Jamie took a moment to ponder this, before nodding in agreement. Snapping his fingers again, he activated his Authority of Life, sending a surge of energy through their bodies.
Evan’s arm twisted back into place, his wounds sealing shut as if they had never been there. Arthur’s ribs snapped back into place, and his lungs, which were punctured by the fractured bones, mended seamlessly.
He spat out a mouthful of dark blood before taking a deep breath, his body finally free of pain.
Then, Jamie began speaking.
"Alright. There’s a lot I could nitpick, but I’ll just focus on the major issues."
He turned to Arthur first.
"Arthur, you have too much of a time lag when switching between your Time and Destruction Aspects.
I understand that using both Aspects simultaneously is difficult, since you only obtained them a month ago, so it’s fine to switch between them instead.
However, the time you take to switch is too long. I can think of five different attacks I could have launched in that window.
Also, while redirecting the cosmic destruction energy into Lostvayne was a smart move, it was risky. If I had attacked your sword at that moment, the link would have shattered, and the Aspect’s power would have flowed into you uncontrollably.
You can’t handle Time and Destruction simultaneously yet, so that would have been a disaster.
Lastly, while it’s fine to rely on Lostvayne to channel the Aspect’s power for now, you can’t rely on it forever. You need to learn how to activate it on your own, because there may come a time when you won’t be able to use your sword.
Superior Weapon Law Manipulators can forbid others within their range from using their ’Weapons,’ after all."
Once he finished with Arthur, Jamie then shifted his gaze to Evan.
