Chapter 801: Broken Permanence
While the god was blasted toward the planet below by the shockwave, Arthur was flung upward, toward the planet’s other moon, which was already on the verge of collapse.
Fortunately, he quickly regained his bearings and used his Gravity Authority to repel himself before making contact with its surface, as if he’d landed on it, the moon would have suffered the same fate as the one that had just exploded.
Arthur had already crumbled half of it, after all.
’Lostvayne...what the hell was that?!’
[I should be asking you the same thing, Master. What the hell was that?]
Both sword and wielder were equally confused, and for a good reason.
Arthur’s slash had only been meant as a test to see if his attacks could now bypass Kalvaro’s Permanence. He had never intended to destroy the moon.
Yet his strike had split straight through the celestial body’s core, triggering the violent explosion that had just occurred.
[Even as a Cosmic Being with an affinity for destruction, you shouldn’t be able to access this MUCH Aspectual Power.]
Lostvayne quickly killed the budding conjecture forming in Arthur’s mind; that his newly gained cosmic superiority had somehow increased how much power he could draw from his Aspect, which was, after all, a mass of Cosmic Energy embodying a facet of the Concept of Destruction.
But if that wasn’t the cause...then why could he now access so much more power, and with remarkable efficiency as well?
[Master, this is likely connected to that strange feeling Lostvayne and I had before,] Celestia interjected, reminding Arthur of when the two swords had remarked that he either seemed ’more appealing’ or that he could ’draw more power than he should be able to.’
’Whatever it is, now’s not the time. This guy is still alive, and he reversed the damage.’
[Likely because the damage came from the secondary explosion, not a direct strike. I doubt he’d be able to reset a direct hit from you while you’re in your Manifestation state.]
Lostvayne offered his analysis, and Arthur nodded silently, unfurling his wings and launching himself downward toward the god, now cloaked in cosmic energy.
Kalvaro threw both fists forward, unleashing shockwaves of compressed cosmic energy that tore through space like expanding rings of ruin, rushing toward Arthur with growing intensity.
Though the force behind the waves had increased from the distance they’d travelled, Arthur’s blade met them head-on, slicing cleanly through each one.
The gap between them vanished in seconds, and Arthur brought Lostvayne down in a diagonal arc, destructive energy erupting from the blade.
Kalvaro’s cosmic energy-coated hands rose to intercept, sparks bursting as he parried the blow, catching the edge and immediately yanking his hand back as the destructive energy began eating through the cosmic coating, grazing his skin.
The god retaliated with a palm strike aimed at Arthur’s chin, but Arthur summoned Celestia and blocked it. Anchoring himself mid-space with gravity, Arthur turned his body and lashed out with a kick aimed directly at Kalvaro’s left side.
As his leg shot out, Arthur activated the Cosmic Teleporter, opening a portal he intended to kick Kalvaro through, but the god, with time-accelerated movements, reacted faster than expected.
His hand whipped out, grabbing Arthur’s leg mid-kick, immediately pivoting and flinging Arthur through the portal, following through without hesitation.
Arthur emerged from the other end within the atmosphere of the planet whose moons he’d devastated, crashing down into the centre of a barren continent.
Kalvaro burst from the portal immediately, his fists descending like twin comets, forcing Arthur to dive to the side, narrowly evading the strike.
The impact shattered the bedrock, cracks fracturing outward in spiderweb patterns. In the next moment, the entire continent split apart, massive slabs of land buckling and tilting under the force.
As chunks of rock shot upward from the shock, Kalvaro raised both hands and swept them outward, manipulating the force vectors and sending the debris hurtling toward Arthur like a meteor barrage.
Arthur responded by reversing gravity, sending the incoming rocks flying upward as he rose to his feet and leapt backwards to gain distance.
But the moment his feet touched the ground, he teleported, reappearing right in front of Kalvaro, who barely avoided his sword that cut down at hypersonic speed, drawing a thin line down the centre of his face.
"!!"
"Tsk...!"
Their eyes locked for a moment, one wide with shock, the other clicking his tongue in annoyance at the failed attack.
’He can teleport without the portals?!’
Arthur’s frequent use of the Cosmic Teleporter to create portals had led Kalvaro to mistakenly believe it was his sole method of spatial movement.
Had it not been for his own fast reflexes, that slash could have split his face in two.
Kalvaro instantly generated an upward force, shooting into the sky as a streak of dark brown light, narrowly evading the next three crescent slashes Arthur unleashed in rapid succession.
’He’s gotten faster!’
The god’s eyes narrowed as he saw the godslayer leap off the ground, closing the distance with twice the speed he had shown earlier, sword swinging upward in a diagonal arc.
|Region Permanence!|
Divinity burst outward, and the world before him gradually slowed, but Arthur vanished right before entering its range, reappearing upside-down behind Kalvaro.
Just as the god turned and attempted to spread his divinity in that direction, Arthur attacked.
|Destruction Crescent (Sixfold).|
Six crescent-shaped slashes of destruction energy erupted from a single swing of his sword, effortlessly tearing through Kalvaro’s Region Permanence.
One of the middle slashes struck Kalvaro in the chest, tearing through his Authority, rupturing flesh, and slicing through bone.
The impact sent him hurtling back toward the ground, but the god regained his balance mid-air, avoided the falling fragments of the broken moon, and instantly reactivated his Temporal Permanence Authority.
*CLICK!
"?!"
Kalvaro’s eyes widened as the slash across his chest wasn’t reversed, but instead, his current state, injury included, had been established as his new ’fixed’ condition.
On the bright side, the wound couldn’t worsen, but it also couldn’t heal, just like his left side, which had been burned by Arthur’s Extreme Nothingness.
He had no time to reflect on this, though, as Arthur had already closed the distance with teleportation, sword descending once more.
Kalvaro roused his divinity, unleashing a concentrated beam of energy aimed at Arthur from point-blank range.
*SWSIH!
The attack was effortlessly cleaved in half by Arthur’s sword, which had already swung sideways, as if he had been expecting it.
’Not as if, he was!’
Kalvaro realised this as he caught sight of Arthur’s left iris shifting from a glowing blue to crimson red.
His own eyes lit up as he activated his own Authority to peer seconds into the future, coating his fists in cosmic energy and launching them forward, generating shockwaves at the locations where Arthur’s swords would strike, even before the godslayer had begun the motion.
Suddenly, a crack ran through his future vision, the images distorting as Arthur’s black sword moved through an arc totally different from what he’d foreseen.
’His eye is blue again!’
Kalvaro immediately jumped to avoid Lostvayne’s sweeping slash aimed at his legs, while clenching his right fist and striking downward.
|Right Fist: Brown Impact!|
Kalvaro’s fist shot down to meet Arthur’s ascending slash, then he leapt back to evade the follow-up horizontal swing from Celestia in Arthur’s left hand.
Arthur pulled Celestia back and lunged with a thrust, his left eye glowing blue as temporal energy coursed through his arm and mixed with the destruction energy cloaking Lostvayne.
|Extreme Nothingness!|
|Attraction: Right!!|
*BAM!
Force was applied to one of the many falling fragments of the broken moon, sending it crashing into Arthur’s outstretched right arm, striking it and forcibly diverting the trajectory of the purple-silver torrent that erupted from his sword.
"Tsk!"
Arthur clicked his tongue, pulling his arm back, unsummoning Celestia, and charging after Kalvaro with just Lostvayne.
On edge at the possibility of Arthur suddenly resummoning Celestia, Kalvaro coated his arms in cosmic energy and activated his Force Authority.
|Authority of Force: Impact Veil!|
A field of energy expanded around him, subtly diverting all approaching forces sideways before impact, including the force of Arthur’s sword aiming for his neck from the right.
Kalvaro took advantage of the already altered trajectory and punched upward, releasing a small shockwave that knocked the blade even further off course, then forward in and countered with a punch aimed at Arthur’s face.
’Shear Force + Rupturing Impact!’
His fist ripped through the air, but stopped shy of just hitting Arthur, blocked by a barrier of compressed gravity.
|Repel.|
**BAAMM!
Arthur’s command released a gravitational repulsion force, launching Kalvaro backwards and smashing him through a lone mountain, where he burst out the other side with his legs skidding across the ground.
