Chapter 934: Splintered Skies
Rishia quickly stabbed her tails into the earth and used them to anchor herself, then spread her wings wide and regained her balance before firing another blast of purple light toward the minotaur’s heads.
The creature leaned aside to avoid the blast, then leapt into the air and spun, building momentum that it used to bring its hands down toward Rishia.
She beat her wings and launched herself backwards, then altered her path to rise into the air, flying over the minotaur as she polymorphed into her humanoid form, summoned her bow, and unleashed a rain of arrows toward its back.
’Imperative Candescence: Rain!’
The purple projectiles detonated across the minotaur’s back in massive explosions, the force knocking its body forward, and though its hands were already on the ground kept it from collapsing face-first, the impact still staggered it.
Seeing this, Rishia turned toward the ocean, where Arthur was blitzing through the air at hypersonic speed to avoid the streams of black liquid spraying from the suckers along the kraken’s tentacles.
She drew her bow and released another rain of arrows aimed at the tentacles, all while shouting a single word.
"Downforce!"
Rishia immediately returned to her true draconic form and shot into the air, and Arthur, who gained a moment of relief as Rishia’s arrows pierced the suckers along the tentacles and blasted holes through them with explosions, turned toward her and used his Gravity Authority on her.
The dragon beat her wings and plunged toward the ground at top speed, and with Arthur’s Authority amplifying her weight, she streaked through the air faster than the beams erupting from the minotaur’s mouths as it rotated its heads to fire at her, then smashed down onto its back with enough force to make a meteor impact seem like child’s play.
Her descent hit like a falling star, the added weight and speed collapsing onto the minotaur’s back as the ground beneath it gave way as if it were soft clay.
Shockwaves rippled through the surface of whatever planetary structure they were on, forcing the creature straight through the crust, which split apart and revealed seething molten magma that was blasted aside by the force of the descent.
The minotaur was dragged even deeper, crashing through the burning layer and into the solid stone below, where the crash finally ended, the surrounding rock fracturing outward in every direction.
Rishia heaved a deep breath, but she didn’t hesitate to beat her wings and fly upward and out of the massive gaping hole as fast as possible, climbing through the rising waves of magma and bursting free just as Arthur’s magic power covered the entire opening.
Silver light burst from the airborne godslayer as he burned through his magic power, activating his Gravity Authority to create a massive gravitational well in the sky above him.
The overwhelming force dragged everything with mass toward it, from the collapsing earth to the ocean waters, and of course, the two creatures they were fighting.
|Gravitational Maelstrom!|
The kraken was ripped violently from the ocean, its enormous body torn free as whole sections of seawater clung to it and were hauled upward in spiralling sheets, the waves stretching unnaturally as they followed it into the air.
Chunks of rock and debris from all directions were pulled along as well, hammering into its body at hypersonic speed, battering its bulk and knocking its tentacles aside in erratic arcs as they thrashed under the combined forces.
At the same time, black blasts of energy erupted from the fractured ground below, shooting straight up toward Arthur’s position in the sky.
Rishia fought the pull of the maelstrom, barely maintaining control as she returned to her humanoid form and drew her bow, releasing a single arrow that was immediately dragged off course by the gravitational pull.
With that test, she instantly calculated the trajectories and fired several more arrows, each intentionally misaligned so they were bent by the maelstrom’s gravity into perfect collision courses with the rising black blasts, the impacts erupting into overlapping explosions in mid-air.
What remained of the ground split even wider, and the massive 250-metre-tall minotaur burst out from the collapsing depths, its body dragged upward and hauled into the sky, carried without control toward the gravitational well where it crashed into the kraken, the two colossal bodies colliding violently within the pull of Arthur’s maelstrom.
Rishia’s body was pulled toward the maelstrom as well, but Arthur rushed to her side and tapped her arm, the pull on her ending the instant he made contact.
Arthur then reduced the range of the maelstrom, pressing his palms together as he compressed it, attempting to crush everything trapped inside under overwhelming gravity.
His magic power began dropping at a dangerous rate, and Rishia, returning to her dragon form, unleashed a full-powered cosmic energy breath at the two cosmic horrors caught within the maelstrom.
The purple beam slammed into them, its energy swirling violently inside the maelstrom as Arthur continued compressing it.
But then the minotaur, its body pressed against the kraken and its fur melting beneath the kraken’s acidic ooze, pierced its claws into the kraken’s body and, with a strained roar from all three heads, began to fuse with it in a grotesque display of mangled flesh and bone.
"The...fuck?!"
"!"
Arthur cursed on reflex, but before he could disengage the maelstrom and force them apart, they completed their fusion, turning the minotaur into a massive three-headed creature whose lower body no longer had two legs, but an innumerable mass of tentacles, enough to resemble a forest of writhing limbs.
Switching off his Authority immediately, Arthur flapped his wings and veered aside to evade the blasts fired toward him, the creature opening all three mouths and flooding the air with explosions.
While Arthur vanished from view beneath the continuing barrage, Rishia threaded her way between the blasts, charging straight toward the middle head while preparing her own breath.
That head began condensing energy to match her attack, and just as it reached its peak, Arthur dropped down from above, halting beside the minotaur’s open mouth and hurling a black mass of gravitational energy packed with all his remaining magic power straight into it.
He followed with a spinning kick to the underside of the minotaur’s jaw, snapping its mouth shut and forcing the gathered energy to detonate inside.
Almost instantly, the singularity he’d thrown into its mouth began its work, gravity folding inward as flesh, bone, and energy within the minotaur’s head were dragged toward a collapsing centre.
The head imploded from the inside out, space buckling as it was crushed into nothing before bursting in a violent blast that carved deep scars into the other two heads, burning away thick fur and flesh and laying bare fractured bone.
Rishia, blown back by the shockwaves, flipped through the air and immediately unleashed her breath attack at the rapidly regenerating flesh of the left head.
Right after, she returned to her humanoid form and drew her bow, pouring as much cosmic energy as she could into it before releasing a single shot, aiming for the stump of its middle neck.
|Crownpiercer!|
The arrow pierced through the bloody stump, burrowing into the exposed interior of the neck and tearing straight through from within, ripping along its inner body until it reached the chest, where it finally exploded with a violent blast that shredded flesh and sent fragments scattering.
The cosmic horror’s entire body was swallowed in purple light as it fell from the sky into the ocean below, crashing into the water alongside torrents of seawater, pulverised earth, drifting magma, and shattered debris that Arthur’s Maelstrom had ripped from below, the impact throwing up towering walls of steam.
Arthur waved his hand and used his divinity to generate a shockwave that blasted away the steam clouds, revealing the black, bloodied body of the fused cosmic horror floating on the water’s surface with its chest caved in.
Rishia knocked another arrow on her bow, but before she could fire, their bodies were immediately flooded with an influx of soul power, and the body floating on the water began to break apart, turning into black dust that scattered and vanished with the wind.
A set of double doors appeared in the sky beside them, and when they noticed it, they glanced at each other in surprise.
Arthur silently raised a palm, and Rishia’s eyes followed it. With a tired sigh, she lowered her bow and lifted her hand to meet his, the sound of their high-five echoing across the silent sky.
