Chapter 915: Engine of Creation
|[Confirmed: Elimination Target is still alive.]|
Valkalonex immediately turned its elongated head toward Arthur’s general direction, and then, for the first time since it appeared, its massive body moved, shooting through space at sub-relativistic speed.
"Fuck."
Arthur cursed as he lifted his right hand and summoned Lostvayne back into his grasp, cosmic energy pouring from his body and into the blade as he spoke to the Ego within.
’Cosmic Sword of Destruction, we’re going all out.’
[My reserves are full. I’m ready when you are,] Lostvayne answered, the silvery lines along the blade lighting up with a muted glow as the power of destruction began flowing into Arthur’s body.
|Soul-Devouring Oblivion!|
The Weapon Authority activated with a burst of crimson light and crackling cosmic energy that streaked across the vacuum, the sound lingering long after Arthur had already launched himself forward, his power of time accelerating his movements until they matched Valkalonex’s speed.
He opened a Cosmic Gate with his Teleporter, flew into it, and reappeared behind Valkalonex, bringing his sword down with all his might.
But despite the unexpectedness of his attack, Valkalonex reacted quickly enough to rotate its upper body backwards, its massive arms sweeping through space as cosmic energy condensed within all four palms.
Even so, it didn’t get the chance to use that power against Arthur, as a streak of purple lightning tore through space and slammed into its back, piercing the cosmic energy shield surrounding its body and opening a gap that a rather annoyed purple-scaled dragon immediately exploited.
|Umbra: Half-Moon! Tsukikage!!|
Darkness gathered in her palms and formed a projection of her naginata, purple lightning crawling along her arms as she thrust the weapon with all her strength, forcing Valkalonex to rotate two of its arms to intercept the naginata’s piercing tip.
At the same time, Arthur brought Lostvayne down with everything he had, destruction energy pouring from the blade and splitting through space in six flashes of crimson light.
|Destruction Crescent: Sixfold!|
The six slashes collided and tore through the condensed masses of energy in Valkalonex’s palms, splitting them apart and making them explode, then continued through the multi-layered shields around its arms, carving large gashes into the mechanical limbs. Then, the lingering destruction energy erupted at Arthur’s command, the blasts widening the holes in its colossal body.
Even then, it still moved its two upper arms, circuit-like lines lighting across their surfaces as they conjured multiple polygons of light from cosmic energy mixed with several ambient law energies.
But before it could charge those polygons of light with enough energy to make them useful, a streak of silver light descended from above, piercing straight through the centre of the one on its left hand and releasing a burst of cosmic energy that broke its structure apart and forced the gathered power to scatter, before continuing toward its right hand.
A dozen layers of energy shields appeared instantly, blocking the streak and slowing it enough to reveal its shape, a semi-transparent blade with a thin line running along its centre.
Celestia pierced through the shields one after another, but she couldn’t pass all 12. Even so, her help bought enough time for Arthur to charge another Extreme Nothingness and fire it at the right palm from an angle the shields didn’t cover, the blast colliding with the polygons of light in an explosion that slammed the entire massive arm back into Valkalonex’s body.
Barely a second later, Rishia attacked again, the rain of arrows loosed from her bow tearing through space and hitting Valkalonex before it could restore its full body shield, the detonations from the impacts producing enough force to knock its planet-sized body forward, closer to Arthur as he spun and unleashed another Chaos slash at it.
The silvery light split the shield before it, crashed into its body, and carved a massive gash across nearly half its torso, erasing all the wires and metal plates that made up that section from existence.
Now in the centre of Valkalonex’s massive body was a gaping slash wound that sparked with residual silver energy that crackled across its surface.
Arthur immediately created a Cosmic Gate leading to Rishia’s side, and the moment he emerged, he quickly spoke.
"I need you to help me bombard this thing so it doesn’t have a chance to hit back, so I can have an opening to use ’Breaking the Sky’."
"Huh? What are y—!" Rishia froze mid-speech, realisation dawning in her eyes as the memories of her first meeting and battle with Arthur crossed her mind.
She recalled the last sequence of attacks Arthur had used then, ones so powerful that they could have killed her if his makeshift weapon hadn’t crumbled and Aleksas hadn’t intervened.
Now that Arthur was strong enough to absolutely trash the him of then, how much stronger would the technique be now?
She nodded without any further words, a half-moon illusion flashing behind her as she recreated her naginata projection, then immediately charged towards the enormous foe before them, allowing its personal gravity due to large size to work on her and drag her closer faster.
As for Arthur, he continued to use his Anti-Divine Gravity Authority to prevent his body from being dragged towards Valkalonex, summoning Celestia in his left hand and disappearing into another cosmic gate.
The two of them roused their energies in preparation to attack, but just as they closed in to strike, Valkalonex unleashed a powerful burst of cosmic energy that pushed them both back.
Simultaneously, Valkalonex’s mechanical True Voice echoed in their ears.
|[Target Information Updated.]|
|[Additional Enemy Analysis Complete.]|
|[Detected Threatening Attributes: Time, Destruction, Lightning, Darkness.]|
|[Detected Dragon Factors.]|
A giant gear wheel appeared behind Valkalonex’s body, its design following the same red, black and gold theme of the Mechanical Lifeform.
|[Switching to Weakness Targeting Mode.]|
|[Deploying Countermeasures.]|
|[Activating Engine of Creation.]|
The gear turned once, and from the gap between each of its several thousand teeth, beams of light erupted, bursting into countless smaller beams and forming a massive shower of destructive light that shot towards Arthur and Rishia, homing in on them even as they moved around to evade.
Upon noticing the homing properties of the beams, Arthur immediately turned around and activated his Authority of Space. Combining its power with his already active Authorities of Gravity and Destruction, he manifested multiple silvery rifts in the space around him in a 360-degree radius.
The immense gravity of the rifts pulled the thousands of beams homing in on him away from his body and into the rifts, crushing the energy with the combined power of gravity, destruction and his Null.
At the same time, he unleashed a burst of destruction energy, creating countless thin, laser-like beams that erupted in all directions from his body, slicing through space and colliding with any more beams coming for him, each one exploding on contact.
A flash of purple light illuminated the edge of his vision, and for a split second, his right eye turned just enough to catch Rishia releasing an arrow that burst apart into many smaller arrows, a technique similar to the Shattered Horizon he’d used moments earlier.
But within that same split-second, as his attention was divided, Valkalonex moved, as though it had been waiting for exactly that opening.
|[Machine god Authority: Organic Decapitation.]|
Five polygons of crimson gold light manifested behind his head, beginning as a pentagon before increasing their number of sides as they expanded outward.
From the centre of those polygons, an immense beam of light erupted, aiming to remove Arthur’s head from his neck, but the combination of his time-accelerated reactions and the compressed gravity barrier created by his Anti Divine Gravity Authority allowed him to bend his upper body just enough to the side to avoid it.
Even so, part of the beam grazed the right side of his face.
It was only a light touch against his cheek, but that single graze burned away all the skin from his chin up to just beneath his right eye.
"Argk!! Creation law energy!?"
Arthur had already expected it to wield creation-related powers after hearing it repeat ’Engine of Creation’ twice, but even so, he hadn’t recognised the attack as a creation-based strike until the moment it made contact with his body.
His hand reflexively moved to the side of his face, and in that same instant, a triangle of light appeared beneath his feet, with a square manifesting beneath the triangle at the same moment.
A mirror construct manifested in the space above his head, and beams of light shot out from its edges, attempting to link together.
’Annihilation Sphere!’
Arthur released destruction energy from his body, the outburst expanding in every direction as a rapidly growing sphere that erased not only the light constructs above and below him, but also three additional sets that appeared in all four cardinal directions around him.
While Arthur handled this, Rishia was dealing with her own targeted attacks, piercing beams of light law energy that sought to banish her darkness, each one infused with the extracted power of unfortunate Dragonslayers who’d been captured by Valkalonex in the past.
In other words, she wasn’t only facing an attribute disadvantage, but the attacks also carried Anti-Dragon factors.
Make no mistake, Rishia had put in effort to address her weakness to light law energy, especially since she controlled lightning, but while in her Coronant Regalia, which primarily coated her body in darkness, her acquired resistance to pure light laws was far lower than normal as the cost of reinforcing that darkness, and when combined with the fact that Valkalonex’s attacks inflicted immense damage, she couldn’t afford to be hit even once.
Just as she curved her body around one of the nearby rocky planets, grabbing some of the asteroids forming its ring and hurling them toward the beams pursuing her, one of Valkalonex’s massive palms appeared directly in front of her face, with dozens of polygons of crimson gold light appearing before it as the palm thrust forward toward her.
At the same time, the other three arms shot toward Arthur, and as he swung his sword to deflect one of them, the two upper arms cupped the space around him, forming a crimson gold sphere of light that sealed him inside.
|[Machine god Authority: Creation Collapse + Destructive Refraction]|
Immediately, the palm thrusting toward Rishia glitched, and the elbow of that arm opened, from which nine additional palms of the same size emerged, each one manifesting polygons of pure light as they all thrust toward Rishia together.
Arthur, meanwhile, was met with the sight of eighteen forearms appearing from the elbows of the two arms enclosing him, all of them slamming their palms against the sphere of energy around him and compressing it with the intent of crushing him inside, while he resisted with an Annihilation Sphere, pouring as much cosmic energy as he could into its expansion so it could withstand the compressive force of the crimson gold sphere of light.
