Chapter 849: Construct vs. Construct
It shouldn’t be forgotten that, though she was currently humanoid like Arthur, Altrishia was a dragon. Her original body was her Draconic Body, not this polymorphed humanoid one.
’In that case, those things are probably her tails.
Considering there were six of them at one point, it’s fair to assume she has at least six tails in her dragon body.’
Six was a lot, but Arthur had just seen a ten-headed dragon, so he wasn’t surprised that a descendant of that ten-headed dragon would have six tails.
Arthur tossed the scale aside, took a deep breath, looked up at the sky, and shouted,
|Hey, Berlal. This is enough for a warmup, isn’t it? Anymore, and it wouldn’t be fair.|
Altrishia looked at him in confusion, and for a moment, there was silence. Then Berlal’s voice echoed in response.
|True.|
Then, a loud snapping sound echoed across the land, and Berlal spoke.
|You’re free to use your FULL Authorities, Arthur.|
The sound of something cracking rang in Altrishia’s ears at those words, and cosmic energy burst out of Arthur’s body in the form of steam.
"!"
Her eyes widened as she began to sense more Authorities from Arthur, and the levels of the ones she could already sense rose to match her own.
Seeing her expression, Arthur chuckled and said,
"You seem to have been misunderstanding something."
He stretched his arms as he continued.
"I said my power was being suppressed earlier. But I never said I was the one suppressing it."
Arthur inhaled deeply, then exhaled, relishing the feeling of his Origin Cores pumping law energies through his body as he extended his right hand and released Celestia.
The sword dropped and stabbed into the ground, and Arthur stepped forward, stomping his foot and cracking the earth.
A chunk of rock floated up, and using gravity, he pressure-crafted it into the shape of a sword, reaching out to grab it and activating his Mid-Rank Sword Law Authority.
"...what is the meaning of this?"
Altrishia asked with a frown, lowering her raised bow, and at her question, Arthur glanced at the earthen sword in his hand, infusing it with sword law energy to strengthen its durability as he replied.
"Well, I gotta make do with this now. I mean, if I use Celestia..."
He raised his gaze to meet hers, not a trace of playfulness in his eyes as he said,
"...I might kill you by accident."
"..."
Altrishia remained silent, her eyes studying Arthur without a word, as if searching for any hint that he was joking or taunting her.
Naturally, she found none.
Arthur was completely serious.
Understanding this, Altrishia took a deep breath, infusing cosmic energy into her bow and triggering a small transformation.
Crackling purple veins of lightning snaked along her bow’s length as it grew in size.
A pair of dark purple horns emerged from the sides of her head, and scales appeared on her arms, sparks running along her limbs down to her legs.
"Allow me to apologise for my earlier remarks. It seems I was mistaken."
"?"
Arthur raised an eyebrow in surprise at her words, clearly not expecting an apology, but he shrugged, resting his sword on his shoulder as he said.
"Hmm...about that. Let’s see if you can hold up long enough for me to satisfy a certain Continuum Dragon. I’d consider accepting your apology then."
Altrishia looked momentarily confused at his words, but she quickly pushed the thought aside, raising her bow and drawing its string with an impassive expression.
Silence fell for a moment, the planet’s spin stirring a gust of wind in the space between them.
And then...
|Candescent Mandate.|
|Extinction Slash.|
Altrishia’s three-fletched arrow and Arthur’s sword moved simultaneously, the thin silver slash of energy colliding with the arrow of purple lightning in an instant.
Arthur teleported behind her, swinging his sword in a diagonal arc, but without turning her body, Altrishia pulled her bow behind her back and fired another Candescent Mandate at close range, the arrow clashing with Arthur’s sword in a burst of cosmic energy that tore a hole into the ground.
Altrishia spun anti-clockwise through the explosion, her right leg striking Arthur’s side and sending him flying with a kick, and she leapt into the air, drawing her bow back to fire a double-fletched arrow.
|Candescent Decree: Rain.|
The double-fletched arrow burst into a shower of arrows that filled the sky, each one plummeting at hypersonic speed, and lowering her bow, she clenched her fist and declared.
|Stormcall.|
The skies darkened as cosmic energy gathered, and Arthur, who had just used his Shattered Horizon technique to block the rain of arrows, was immediately met with a descending three-pronged bolt of purple lightning at the same moment Altrishia’s tails shot out of his shadow to strike him.
Raising his left hand, Arthur created an AGSD to absorb the descending lightning, and the immense gravitational pull forced her tails off target, making her retract them before they could be consumed by the singularity already devouring her Stormcall.
The instant Arthur’s AGSD reached full capacity, he condensed the volatile energy in his palm and slammed it into the ground beneath.
|Extreme Nothingness Authority: World Collapse.|
The planet was instantly engulfed in a crimson silver bubble of light, which immediately shrank, crushing the planet within, just as the energy from the AGSD Arthur slammed into the ground tore it apart from the inside.
The constructing bubble of the ’World Collapse’ collided with the explosive force of the AGSD’s eruption, instantly reducing everything in range to nothing but space dust, except for Altrishia, who wrapped herself in a multi-layered spherical shield of cosmic energy.
She immediately dismissed her Volt Aegis and flashed right behind Arthur, pulling her bow back to the limit as a four-fletched arrow crackled between her fingers.
|Candescent Edict.|
|Chronosphere.|
An orb of blue temporal energy immediately surrounded the arrow the second it left the bow, freezing it in time.
Altrishia, though taken aback by the revelation of Arthur’s temporal abilities, didn’t just float there and let his descending sword reach her neck.
|Umbra Authority.|
The glow of Arthur’s sword cast a shadow across Altrishia’s body, and when she activated her Authority, the shadow expanded to cover her entirely, engulfing her and warping her out of the path of Arthur’s slash.
She reappeared behind him, her drawn-back bow sending another arrow of crackling lightning flying.
|Candescent Edict: Rain.|
That single four-fletched arrow burst into a thousand arrows converging on Arthur from all directions, an attack that was practically daring him to trap them all in Chronosphere if he could.
And of course, Arthur obliged.
Temporal energy erupted from his body in a massive wave, creating a spherical domain around him that instantly slowed every projectile that entered to a crawl. Seeing this, Altrishia calmly snapped her fingers and detonated the thousand arrows.
’Law Resonance. Force Wave.’
Arthur countered the explosions with an omnidirectional wave of gravitational energy that dispersed the blasts, then immediately dashed through the emptied space straight at Altrishia, who pulled her bow.
As he closed the distance, small pockets of darkness appeared in the empty space, and Altrishia’s tails shot out, each aiming for a different vital point.
Faced with this, Arthur simply spun around, coating his sword in destruction energy as he swung it.
|Destruction Crescent: Sixfold.|
Crimson silver light flashed as six crescent-shaped slashes collided with the six, bladed tails, knocking them aside.
However, the time it took Arthur to do that was enough for Altrishia to fire another arrow, which, instead of being blocked or avoided like the others, Arthur spun and raised his left hand to catch.
The moment he touched it, he stopped the arrow in time, spun it on his fingers, and threw it straight back at Altrishia at three times its original speed.
|!|
Altrishia moved as fast as she could to dodge the unexpected strike, but she couldn’t fully evade it, and her shoulder was grazed by the arrow, which immediately exploded in a burst of temporal energy, rupturing the scales across her right arm.
Arthur flashed to her side and swung his sword, and she raised her bow to block the attack.
Before the weapons even collided, Arthur’s time-accelerated left hand shot out and grabbed Altrishia’s arm, and as their weapons met, he covered her in cosmic energy and triggered a forced teleportation, but Altrishia unleashed a burst of cosmic energy that shattered the spatial channel, cancelling it midway and forcing them back into mainstream space before they reached their destination.
|Umbra: Half Moon.|
The illusion of a half-moon flashed behind her as darkness law energy solidified into a two-metre-long naginata with a curved scimitar-like blade. As she gripped it, purple lightning flowed from her arm into the weapon, etching crackling patterns along its shaft.
She swung the naginata to meet Arthur’s sword in a space-distorting clash, the two weapons separating and meeting again several times within a second.
As she swung her polearm, her tails emerged from the shadow cast by the lightning engulfing her weapon, lunging for Arthur’s vitals and forcing him to retreat to avoid them.
He tossed the sword aside and placed it in temporal stasis, then slammed his palms together and infused them with energy.
As he separated his palms, a long spear of crimson silver light formed between them, and he twirled it before swinging it to meet Altrishia’s descending naginata.
"Let’s see who’s got the better construct."
"..."
Altrishia wordlessly threw a kick to Arthur’s right side, which he blocked with a gravity barrier, his pupils darting to the side and locking onto a nearby star.
|Anti-Divine Gravity Authority.|
|!|
Altrishia, about to swing her weapon upward, suddenly felt an immense force pulling her body skyward, eyes narrowing as she immediately realised what Arthur had done.
’He increased the effect of that star’s gravity on me to slow my movements!’
|Coronant Regalia!|
Her dragon heart pumped out more cosmic energy, releasing it in a burst of purple lightning, the shadows cast by the light wrapping around her to create a solid armour of darkness crackling with purple energy.
A half-moon crown appeared on her head, and her hair instantly braided into a long ponytail as darkness spread across her clothes, transforming her gown into a high-split dress of shadows, sparking continuously.
An obsidian breastplate materialised over her chest, with a matching belt, forearm, and knee guards humming with violet energy.
Arthur felt the power of his Anti-Divine Gravity Authority break under the combined force of her two Unique Authorities as she closed the distance, her naginata descending at blinding speed.
He met her charge head-on, swinging his spear to deflect the arcs her weapon carved, sending sparks of violet lightning and crimson destruction scattering through the vacuum.
They clashed repeatedly, strikes and counters flowing smoothly as they tried to outmatch each other, but with every impact, faint fractures spread along the shaft of her naginata, thin lines splintering further as the duel continued.
Altrishia thrust her naginata, the crescent blade cutting through space as it aimed for Arthur’s chest, and when he dodged to his left, she seamlessly transitioned into a sweeping strike meant to follow him.
Arthur blocked the weapon with his arm wrapped in a dense gravity barrier, then thrust his spear to meet hers, only for her to use her speed to pull back and swing her weapon to deflect it instantly.
Her next strike came from above, a descending slash meant to cleave through everything, but Arthur blocked it with his spear, then released one hand from his weapon and reached out with it, grabbing her wrist.
"?!"
’Authority of Time: Temporal Imaging.’
A blue flash of light erupted from his hand and washed over her, and a loud clicking sound echoed through the silence of space as he captured her existence in that frame of time.
Sensing something was wrong, Altrishia discharged violent lightning through her arm, forcing Arthur to release her, then swung her naginata in a horizontal arc, aiming for his neck.
Arthur ignored the flickering sparks of lightning that paralysed his left arm and attacked with his right, and when their weapons collided, his destruction spear cut straight through her naginata, shattering the shadow construct into pieces.
As the fragments of her construct scattered through the vacuum, Arthur, wearing a smug smile, spoke.
|Seems like I have the better construct.|
His claim of being ’better’ elicited a frown from Altrishia, her eyes narrowing as she commanded the ambient cosmic energy and responded.
|You only have the type advantage.|
