Chapter 946: The Firstborn of Despair [Bonus 11]
The Extinction Slashes cut through the projection of the past, and immediately, the damage was mirrored on the dragon’s present, several cuts tearing through his skin and spilling blood.
The dragon, however, simply raised his upper body, the glow of light enveloping him healing the wounds in an instant as he stepped forward with a frown.
"I said, use your power of destruction!" the dragon demanded as he closed the distance to Arthur in an instant.
He tilted his upper body to avoid the upward arcing slash from Celestia, then used his left hand to strike the inner part of Arthur’s wrist, cracking it and loosening his grip on the sword.
The dragon then grabbed Arthur’s wrist and pulled him closer, delivering a straight punch with his right fist toward Arthur’s head, and though Arthur raised Lostvayne’s blade to block, the impact forced the blade into his face and cracked his nose.
Reaching out, the dragon grabbed Lostvayne by the blade, ripped the sword from Arthur’s hand, and flung it into the distance before launching another punch aimed at his face.
Lostvayne, however, spun mid-air and shot back toward the dragon’s fist, hitting it from below and deflecting it, causing the punch to miss and slam into the space above Arthur’s head instead.
Arthur kicked the dragon with his right leg and then, with his free left hand, delivered a weighted punch to the dragon’s head, knocking him backwards.
The dragon released Arthur’s right hand as he stepped back, then fired a beam of cosmic energy, which Arthur split with a slash from Lostvayne as it returned to his hand.
Blue temporal energy enveloped Arthur’s right wrist, restoring the broken bone to the state it had been in before the dragon’s grip had fractured it.
With Celestia in his left hand, Arthur charged the sword with cosmic energy and swung it, unleashing a slash of silver light that engulfed the space before him.
The silver radiance erased everything in its path—the ground, the pieces of rock suspended in the air, and even the remaining shards of light from the beam he had split in two.
Seeing this, the dragon shouted, "I said destruction, not nothingness!"
He charged at Arthur, closing the distance in an instant as the ashen light around his fists intensified.
Arthur’s swords collided with the dragon’s fists with immense force, each slash amplified by his Gravity Authority, warping space along the path of his blades.
His Temporal Authority accelerated his body to extreme levels, allowing him to move at incredible speed and causing some slashes to skip through time, vanishing from their original trajectory and reappearing from altered angles aimed at the dragon’s blind spots.
Other slashes were deliberately delayed, suspended for fractions of a second before completing their arcs in unexpected intervals meant to catch the dragon off guard.
The ash dragon answered all of Arthur’s moves with his fists alone.
He intercepted each blade with his forearms and knuckles, meeting weighted slashes with direct blocks that halted them mid-path.
Even when faced with the time-skipping strikes, he adjusted at light speed, rotating his shoulders and angling his wrists so every reappearing blade was parried or blocked without taking any damage.
Delayed slashes completed their arcs only to collide with fists that were already waiting, their added gravity dispersing in bursts against his skin.
Arthur increased the tempo, both swords weaving in crossing patterns as gravity stacked upon gravity and temporal acceleration layered over itself, but the dragon moved through the storm of attacks without losing ground.
He slipped inside Arthur’s guard and delivered a rapid sequence of body blows that forced his blades wide, then hooked a fist into Arthur’s midsection and followed with another to his jaw, disrupting his stance.
The dragon then grabbed Arthur by the collar and slammed him onto the ground hard enough to fracture the reinforced floor beneath them.
Before Arthur could recover, the dragon stomped on his left wrist, pinning it in place with crushing force. He grabbed Celestia by the blade, ignoring the sparks of cosmic energy erupting from the weapon, and ripped the sword from Arthur’s hand before flinging the weapon across the hall.
He then grabbed the hand holding Lostvayne, lifted Arthur off the ground, and slammed him down again with enough force to send cracks racing outward in all directions.
Without hesitation, the dragon flung Arthur toward the wall, his body slamming into it with an explosive burst of energy.
The dragon charged immediately after him, the cosmic energy around his fist condensing into the shape of a four-pointed star as he drew his arm back.
He threw a punch toward Arthur’s chest, but just before it connected, both of Arthur’s eyes turned red, and an omnidirectional sphere of destruction energy erupted from his body, expanding outward with a powerful shockwave that blasted everything around him away, the dragon included.
The ash dragon flipped through the air and landed on his feet, completely unscathed, a satisfied expression on his face as he said, "Finally, you see reason."
The cosmic energy surrounding his body intensified, but just before he could charge at Arthur again, he raised an eyebrow and turned to his right, lifting his right hand to catch the blade of the naginata sweeping toward his neck.
He squeezed his hand, and the light coating his palm overwhelmed the darkness the naginata was made of, crushing it into pieces.
His left fist shot toward Rishia, who had charged at him from the side, but before his fist could make contact, Arthur acted, turning Rishia’s body into an anti-gravity well, which repelled the dragon’s entire body, knocking him away from her.
|Amethyst Fulgur: Stormcall!|
Lightning descended from above, striking the dragon’s body consecutively.
At the same time, Rishia summoned her bow, pulled it back, and released her strongest Imperative Candescence arrow, Candescent Edict, the four-fletched projectile flying straight toward the dragon.
Simultaneously, Arthur activated Eradication Torrent, spears of destructive energy manifesting from all directions and shooting toward the dragon.
Rishia’s arrow and Arthur’s Eradication Torrent hit the dragon at the same time, and Arthur then condensed an orb of destruction energy in his hand and threw it at the dragon like a baseball.
|Destruction Nova!|
What followed was an eruption with the force of a star, the crimson silver light filling the entire hall with its furious glow.
To no one’s surprise, despite cracks running through the hall and the decorations completely wrecked, the hall wasn’t entirely destroyed.
For it to serve as the stage for Floor 6 of this tower, it had been reinforced by Wyndella’s Cosmic Authority, making it durable enough to withstand immense impacts.
Arthur, breathing heavily as he used his Temporal Authority to rewind the burns on his skin from where the dragon’s fist had hit him, looked toward Rishia and said,
"What took you so long? I could have really used the help earlier."
"Why don’t you try jumping into a condensed hypernova while stripped of all your Authorities?" Rishia retorted as she reconstructed her Tsukikage, coating the weapon with lightning while turning a flat stare toward Arthur. "You can talk about me being late after surviving that."
Just as Rishia spoke, the cosmic energy before them swirled upward and then dispersed forcefully into the surroundings, revealing the figure of the ash dragon who stepped forward, some burns scattered across his skin and a few bloodstains, all engulfed by light and beginning to heal before their eyes.
"Seriously, what is wrong with both of you?"
Looking at Arthur, he said, "Why did it take you so long to start using your Destruction Authority? Were you trying to catch me off guard or something?"
Then, glancing at Rishia, he asked, "How are your constructs so weak? I crushed that thing with barely any light. If that’s the best you can do without summoning that weapon’s true form, that would be an immense disappointment."
The two of them silently reinforced their grips on their weapons, coating them with law energy, and seeing this, the ash dragon held out a hand to halt them.
"Wait a moment, I want to understand something. Are you perhaps willing for me to reveal the full extent of the abilities I can use to test you before you start fighting at full power? Such a tactic is completely useless against me, but I suppose you wouldn’t know that since you’re clearly ignorant of who I am."
Sighing softly, the dragon restored all the damage from Arthur and Rishia’s attacks as he said, "Very well, then. Allow me to enlighten you."
The moment the dragon spoke, a powerful storm of cosmic energy erupted from his body, a vortex of force swirling around him with immense intensity, shredding the debris lifted into the air by the winds into dust.
The dragon’s black eyes glowed, and taking a step forward, he spoke in his True Voice.
|I am the firstborn of the Dragon of Despair who cursed all of creation, the first Great Rebeller who defied the Will of Despair that engulfed the early Cosmos. I am the one who blurs the creative line between reality and illusion, the Supreme Commander of the Creation Dragonflights who serve the Creation Dragon Wyndella.|
Rishia’s expression immediately paled at his words, and as illusory scales appeared on the neck and arms of the humanoid dragon, he spoke the name that had just come to Rishia’s mind.
|I am Harlamagne vi Levite.|
Arthur didn’t just stand and wait for him to finish speaking and charged forward, Lostvayne wreathed in crimson silver energy as he raised it overhead.
But through the storm of cosmic energy surrounding the ash dragon, Harlamagne, proved far more challenging than he expected, as it felt like moving through a mire, the pressure of the dense energy slowing his movements.
Extending his right hand toward Arthur and Rishia, Harlamagne spoke.
|Be trapped in a world of doomed creation.|
Clenching his fist, he declared,
|Pure Fiction.|
The ash grey light of creation erupted from his body, expanding outward in all directions as a sphere that engulfed everything around him, filling Arthur and Rishia’s vision as their consciousnesses were cut off.
