Chapter 933: The Beast of the Plain
Not all Cosmic Horrors were on a level where even Ultimate existences couldn’t kill them and could only force them back beyond reality.
Raikis might have been unhinged, but he wasn’t reckless enough to pit Rishia, someone Aleksas clearly favoured, against a Cosmic Horror that could kill her instantly.
"Calm down, Rishia. Think about it logically," Arthur said. "Whatever’s behind that door is definitely powerful, but it’s also definitely not something the two of us can’t defeat, even if it’s going to be a difficult fight."
"I know that," Rishia replied, "but fighting something whose existence constantly corrodes your mind is easier said than done."
She clenched her fists silently, purple scales briefly spreading over her arms, then took a deep breath and relaxed, the scales fading away.
"Using that runestone was the right choice. Cosmic Horrors that can die can only be killed with cosmic energy."
"Seems my judgment wasn’t off then," Arthur said, a satisfied expression appearing on his face.
He stepped forward, placed his hand on the left door, and pushed it open just enough to peek inside.
Immediately, the wave of cosmic energy swept over him, bypassing the gravity shield around his body. He bit his lip to maintain focus and scanned the space while avoiding the mass of darkness at the centre.
The area looked like an open plain covered in vivid green grass, and from the distant roar of waves smashing against rock, it seemed to be near a cliffside.
When he finally turned toward the dark mass, he saw a bulky, muscular creature covered head to toe in thick fur, sitting on the ground with a long tail ending in a bushy tip resting against the grass.
Even while seated, Arthur estimated it was at least 200 meters tall, and though its head hung low with its back facing them, he could make out shapes resembling horns jutting from either side.
He released the door, letting it slam shut, took a breath, and said,
"Yeah, that thing’s messed up."
"Of course it is," Rishia replied. "Even if you can rationalise their appearance, they constantly radiate ’chaos’ from existence."
Arthur tapped a finger against his temple and considered their options, and after a few seconds, he spoke.
"Speed," Arthur said, then turned to Rishia and went on.
"That’s your forte, isn’t it? We’ll lean into that. We hit it as fast as possible, as hard as possible, with everything we’ve got. From the fur and build alone, it’s clearly durable on the outside, so if we want to deal maximum damage, going through there is the worst approach."
"What do you suggest?" Rishia asked.
"Internal damage," Arthur replied. "Most creatures aren’t as durable on the inside, and I’m hoping the same applies here. It has to have some kind of mouth or opening, and if it does, I’ll use this."
He opened his palm and compressed gravity until a tiny black dot appeared, only to vanish a moment later.
"I’ll shove a gravitational singularity into whatever opening I can find. That should deal serious damage and create a larger opening for you to use your bow. You’ve recovered that Crownpiercer technique of yours, right?"
Rishia nodded silently.
"Good," Arthur said. "Use that for the finishing shot."
"Your plan relies on a lot of chance," Rishia noted.
"Of course it does," Arthur replied with a shrug. "We have no idea what abilities that thing has."
She could only agree.
After taking a deep breath, Arthur pushed the door open again, and as the wave of cosmic energy poured out once more, Rishia spoke.
"I’d like time to adjust, but that isn’t really possible when dealing with mental corruption."
She paused, placing her hand on the other door, then added, "Ready when you are."
In response, Arthur activated his Anti-Divine Gravity Authority, lightening his body as much as possible, then kicked the doors open and sprinted across the plains to the left.
At the same time, Rishia spread her wings and shot to the right, and the moment they moved, the massive creature reacted, rising to its feet as its height climbed past 250 meters and its bull-shaped head lifted.
That head split into three, one turning left, one right, and one forward, and the heads facing Arthur and Rishia condensed pitch-black chaotic cosmic energy in their mouths before firing beams straight at them as they tried to flank it.
Both of them immediately adjusted their paths to evade the energy beams, and as they did, the middle head turned toward Arthur, its mouth opening as it fired another focused blast of black energy along the route he’d just taken.
The blast slammed into the ground ahead of him, the explosion hurling his body backwards and toward the beam behind him, but before he collided with it, he used his Gravity Authority to pull himself sideways.
With only a moment to react, Arthur couldn’t properly fine-tune the attractive force of the gravity well he created to drag himself to the right, and he was instead thrown through the air with tremendous force, off the cliffside and out over the ocean.
His wings spread from his back the instant he cancelled the technique, and he beat them once, increasing his speed as he shot high into the sky at hypersonic speed, curving to rush straight back toward the three-headed, minotaur-like creature.
But just as he did, a massive black tentacle burst from the waves below, shooting upward and wrapping around his body in an instant.
"Wha--gurk!?"
He couldn’t even finish exclaiming in shock as the tentacle coiled around him, trying to overpower the final layer of gravitational force around his body that was pushing it back and crush him within it.
Rishia, who’d just evaded the focused cosmic energy blasts, leapt back and looked up at the sky, her eyes widening when she saw Arthur caught within the tentacle.
’There were two of them!?’
The tentacle immediately tried to pull Arthur down into the ocean, and the godslayer instantly understood that if it succeeded, it was game over for him.
He poured as much magic power into his Origin Core as he could, and with everything he had, screamed out.
|ANTI-GRAVITY!!!|
Immediately, the gravitational force acting on him, the tentacle, and the existence it was connected to reversed, and all three were violently hurled toward the sky above.
Waves rolled and crashed against the cliffside as a massive kraken was torn free from the ocean, its body sporting far more tentacles than necessary, and the upper half of its head wasn’t curved like normal, instead flattened into a broad surface that gave it a semi-circular shape rather than an oval.
The creature had no eyes, only a long mouth stretching from one end of its 50-metre-wide head to the other, packed with rows of jagged teeth, likely as numerous as its tentacles.
Arthur immediately released a burst of magic power to break free from the tentacle’s hold, then spread all three pairs of wings wide as he summoned a thousand floating spears of divinity and dropped them onto the kraken with the force of a hailstorm.
Simultaneously, the three-headed minotaur reached out with both clawed hands toward Rishia at sub-relativistic speed, leaving the dragon with barely any time to evade.
In the second before its claws reached her, Rishia returned to her full dragon form and raised her own hands to meet it, the two sets of hands colliding with an impact that sent bright sparks of cosmic energy scattering outward.
Rishia’s feet gouged into the earth and carved long grooves through the land as she was forced back by the three-headed minotaur, whose palms were large enough to grip both her arms up to the shoulders, even while she was in her full dragon form that stretched about 50 metres from head to tail tip.
The minotaur lowered its head as it pressed her backwards, its mouth opening to condense cosmic energy, and seeing this, Rishia mirrored the action, her jaws parting as a torrent of purple energy poured forth and rushed to meet the black beam that erupted from the minotaur’s mouth.
The two torrents met head-on, purple and black colliding in a violent clash that warped the space between them, fracturing it in layers moments later and tearing it apart like sheets of glass to reveal a strange region beyond, where bands of colour from across the light spectrum bled through in shifting waves.
That unstable gap quivered as the opposing energies ground against each other, but the black breath slowly began to overpower the purple light, the spatial rupture spreading wider with every passing moment.
Eventually, the minotaur’s breath overwhelmed Rishia’s, the force of the energy crashing into her body and throwing her backwards, her massive frame carving deep furrows through the ground as she rag-dolled across the land.
