Chapter 837: Crucial Insight
Getting up from the centre of the crater his crash had carved into the ground, Baruuk lifted his gaze toward the direction he’d been blasted from with a frown.
’That was a Breath...with Divinity. Is he a Divine Dragon of some sort? But why can’t I sense his Draconic Factors? What race is this guy?’
Baruuk wanted this information in case his opponent possessed any hidden racial abilities he needed to anticipate, but none of his analysis techniques were pulling any data on Arthur.
’He has to be from a race I’ve never encountered before.’
Settling on that conclusion, he quickly reviewed the information he’d gathered so far.
’He has an unknown Aspectual Authority. Immense destruction resistance that took my Aspect several minutes to finally break through his defences and activate, possesses divinity, controls gravity, can teleport, and has immense physical strength that defies his frame.’
Baruuk’s flesh started to writhe under his clothes, black scales forming over his skin as he moved forward with demonic energy leaking from his body.
’But that’s not all. I’ve absorbed several Aspects of Destruction to strengthen mine, and my Aspectual Authority should be stronger than his, but it didn’t activate instantly. Why?’
Space fractured before his eyes as he spread his three pairs of black draconic wings, launching into the air faster than Arthur’s dropkick could land on the ground where he’d just been.
Arthur’s heel crashed into the ground with a deafening roar, ripples of compressed force radiating from the point of impact.
Deep tremors rolled across the planet’s surface, shockwaves tearing through the crust and sweeping over continents in silent waves that bent forests, lifted seas into brief walls of water, and sent storms spiralling in their wake.
High above, Baruuk’s brows furrowed as he sensed the scale of what had just occurred without the expected planetary destruction.
’That attack... I would’ve taken damage if it had hit me, and somehow, this planet didn’t explode from the impact? How?’
Arthur looked up at him, and seeing the godslayer’s now glowing red eyes from his Aspect Manifestation, Baruuk came to a sudden understanding.
’Esoteric Authority! He has an Esoteric Authority powerful enough to bridge the gap in Aspectual power between us!’
Convinced this was the case, he spread his arms, his nails elongating into claws, while Arthur silently summoned both Lostvayne and Celestia.
The sight of the two Cosmic Weapons didn’t ruffle his composure. He simply activated an Authority and infused his arms with demonic energy, his flesh and scales turning metallic, boosting their cosmic energy conductivity.
’The only weapon I need is my body!’
With that unspoken declaration, Baruuk shot down towards Arthur, moving with speed incomparable to only a minute ago.
’...!!’
Time slowed, and every movement Baruuk made entered Arthur’s vision, letting him barely deflect the claws slashing down from above with Lostvayne.
’Fast...!’
The follow-up attacks from Baruuk’s feet striking the ground and Arthur retaliating with Celestia collided violently.
Baruuk swung his claws, and they met Arthur’s raised sword, the impact pushing Arthur back several metres.
He leapt through the air, landing behind Arthur before spinning and slashing at his neck, an attack Arthur blocked with Celestia before stabbing with Lostvayne.
Baruuk jumped back to evade, and Arthur leapt after him, using gravity to increase Lostvayne’s weight as he swung down and unleashed a Continental Split, but Baruuk dodged the slash with ease, stomping on Lostvayne’s blade with his foot, his claws slicing through the air toward Arthur’s eyes.
Arthur unsummoned Lostvayne, slightly destabilising Baruuk’s footing, and took the chance to launch a Weighted Impact punch that knocked the Dragonkin’s head back.
He summoned Lostvayne again, infusing the blade with both destruction and sword law energy to amplify the raw damage of his attacks, and Baruuk, reacting instantly, coated his claws in black cosmic destruction energy to meet Arthur’s slashes with equal force.
Swords collided with claws again and again, each clash sending shockwaves that killed the planet more.
His nonstandard nature aside, Arthur had a higher base speed than average thanks to his Temporal Authority, and still, Baruuk was fast enough that Arthur had to actively accelerate his movements with time just to keep up.
Every slash and thrust from Baruuk’s claws threatened to tear through Arthur’s guard, the edges of black energy grazing just inches from his face, arms, and torso. Arthur blocked with both swords, redirecting the force as sparks of crimson-silver and black energy erupted at every point of contact.
Arthur swung Lostvayne horizontally, increasing the gravity acting on Baruuk to slow him, but the Dragonkin broke Arthur’s downforce with his destruction, blocking the edge of the blade with the back of his right claw and rotating his body, deflecting the strike while simultaneously swinging his left claw toward Arthur’s side.
The wind from the slash grazed Arthur as he barely pulled back, a thin cut opening on his arm where the black energy scorched his flesh. Almost instantly, his cosmic energy was drained as Baruuk’s Aspectual Authority activated, widening the small cut into a gaping wound with a burst of black destruction.
Ignoring the pain and damage, Arthur countered with a rapid double strike, both swords slicing toward Baruuk’s chest, and Baruuk met them with his claws, the impact sending both fighters tumbling backwards before recovering in a synchronised leap.
Arthur thrust Celestia forward, simultaneously trying to slow Baruuk’s movements using both Time and Gravity, but the Dragonkin’s destruction broke through it all, letting him maintain his speed as he slashed with his claws to meet Celestia’s blade mid-air, the impact bending space around their clash.
Arthur opened his mouth, and almost as if anticipating it, Baruuk did the same, divinity and demonic energy condensing into orbs before their lips and erupting as beams that collided instantly, tearing apart the fabric of space and vaporising everything nearby.
The blast sent both of them hurtling backwards, and Arthur, releasing Lostvayne from his right hand and channelling summoning law energy through his hand, formed a three-layered summoning circle.
|Authority of Summoning: Three-Stage Summoning|
Divinity flowed into the circles as Arthur silently cursed his inability to combine it with his Gravity Authority because of its ’Anti-Divine’ modifier.
The Three-Stage Summoning technique summoned a legion of existences below his level, a small squad on par with him, and for the third stage, a single existence above his Realm.
The process wasn’t instantaneous, though, and by the time the legion of Low-Tier Deity Realm Divine Dragons summoned from various corners of the galaxy emerged from the circles, Baruuk had already closed the distance.
His claws slashed toward Arthur, and Arthur, holding Celestia in his left hand, infused the blade with divinity and extinction law energy, swinging down to release a thin line of silver streaking forward at blinding speed.
|!|
Even with Baruuk’s reflexes, he couldn’t completely dodge it, having the tip of his nose and the claws in its path sliced cleanly, without resistance.
Arthur silently commanded the summoned dragons to charge, and seeing this, Baruuk frowned.
|Summons? You disappoint me, Foreign Candidate,| he muttered, raising his left hand.
He then waved it down, and immediately the remnants of his fleet, filled with his subordinates who had been waiting outside the planet’s atmosphere, knowing interfering with his battle would earn his ire, took it as the signal and charged in.
Fighters flew in, firing beams at the divine dragons, while some of the humanoid dragons and dragonkin under Baruuk leapt from the fighters, dashing to clash with the dragons Arthur had summoned.
Arthur watched the battles erupt calmly before turning his gaze upward, reaching out with his right hand and clenching his fist.
|Get over here.|
He pulled his hand down, and a massive amount of cosmic energy gathered in the sky above, forming a swirling cosmic gate.
From it, a gigantic 5,000km-wide celestial body emerged, expanding before the combatants’ eyes as it ignited in crimson-silver flames and descended toward the ground at hypersonic speed.
Faced with this, Baruuk, regrowing his severed claws, leapt off the ground and shot toward the descending moon, swinging his claws.
|Futile!|
He split the colossal mass into five clean pieces with his claws, causing it to explode in a fiery burst of destructive energy that finally completely obliterated the planet beneath them.
The explosion’s cosmic energy shockwave hurled debris at the combatants, both Baruuk’s minions and Arthur’s summons, forcing them to conjure shields and activate defensive Authorities in a desperate attempt to protect themselves from the obliterating impact.
Amid the ensuing explosion, Baruuk couldn’t help but notice that the divine dragons Arthur had summoned weren’t harmed by the fragments of debris coated in Arthur’s crimson-silver energy.
He just happened to see one of said dragons hit squarely in the face by a massive chunk of the destroyed moon, taking a full blast of Arthur’s destruction energy, yet it somehow remained unscathed, even though the destructive energy should have erased its scales, burned its flesh, and likely torn away half its face.
Seeing this, Baruuk’s thoughts immediately went to a specific ability of the Authority of Destruction he himself possessed, one that prevented destructive attacks from harming anyone the user didn’t intend to affect.
His eyes widened as he came to a realisation, and he quickly shot out of the exploding planet’s ruins, waving his hand to tear a cosmic gate through space and diving through it to chase Arthur, who had already teleported to another planet.
Bursting through the other planet’s atmosphere, Baruuk shouted,
|Selective Destruction! That’s your Aspectual Authority, isn’t it?!|
Arthur, who was about to complete the second stage of his Three-Stage Summoning, turned toward him with a faint frown, practically confirming Baruuk’s realisation.
That cluster of Cosmic Destruction energy within Arthur’s soul indeed embodied the facet of ’Selective Destruction’.
It explained why one of Arthur’s previous attacks, which Baruuk had confirmed should have destroyed the planet, had left it intact, and why Arthur’s attacks caused far less environmental damage than Baruuk’s own.
Arthur was using his ’Aspectual Authority’ to apply his destruction selectively, choosing Baruuk as the sole target.
Years ago, Barda had explained to Arthur that every Natural Aspect embodied and represented a specific feature of the Concept it was derived from.
He’d told Arthur that his own Aspects were no different, and that he’d eventually discover which ’feature’ of Time and Destruction his Aspects represented, which would be the most efficient and powerful applications, and that using the Aspect to apply any other facet of the Concept would be wasteful compared to utilising that primary feature.
What Barda hadn’t known was that Arthur only had to go through that ’discovery’ process for his Aspect of Time.
By that point, Arthur had already intuitively known which feature of Destruction his Aspect embodied.
He didn’t have a fully concrete understanding yet because Lucifer hadn’t taught him that part of Aspect Manifestation, and had only shown him how to draw out the attributed cosmic energy of an Aspect and use it to affect reality.
