Chapter 954: The Nested Reality [Bonus 18]
"From the moment you two stepped onto this Floor, you were already inside my World of Doomed Creation."
Harlamagne’s words confirmed the grim reality that Arthur and Rishia found themselves faced with.
The first time he had used Pure Fiction against them, he had not deactivated it and had instead expanded it to encompass the entirety of Floor 6.
So when they arrived at Floor 6, they had willingly stepped into Pure Fiction’s pocket reality, completely unaware of the truth.
The fight up until now had taken place entirely within Pure Fiction. Harlamagne had simply chosen not to trap them in distorted versions of their memories as he had done before.
"Nesting pocket dimensions is possible, and the same applies to pocket realities," Harlamagne said. "You only succeeded in stopping my attempt at creating a nested Pure Fiction within the one that encompasses this floor."
The dragon shook his head, a light chuckle escaping his lips as he looked at their expressions.
"You’ve done well. Unfortunately, ’well’ is not ’enough’," he said. "But worry not, you can try and try again."
Harlamagne raised his hand, white light gathering at his fingertip as he prepared to blast them back to Floor 1, but before he could act, he glanced to his right and moved his hand, blocking Celestia’s blade as it flew at him from the side.
Immediately, the divinity and anti-divinity within the blade erupted alongside the condensed temporal and destructive energies, forming an omnidirectional wave of purple energy that engulfed Harlamagne’s body.
The reworked Extreme Nothingness: Seismic Surge hit at point-blank range, but that still wasn’t enough to give Arthur time to close the distance to Harlamagne after summoning Lostvayne.
|Be crushed.|
**BAMM!!
At the sound of Harlamagne’s True Voice, Arthur’s body was instantly slammed down onto the ground with immense force.
|Smashed.|
The second word intensified the pressure, a humanoid-shaped imprint forming in the floor as his body sank deeper into it.
|Broken to pieces.|
By the third command, Arthur’s bones began to creak under the stress, fractures spreading across his skeleton.
Arthur’s skin burned under Harlamagne’s light of creation, silver blood streaming from his nose and the corners of his eyes, and as he pushed Celestia’s blade aside, Harlamagne spoke with a sigh.
"Did you not hear a word I said earlier? You’re within a reality of my creation. Nothing awaits you but defeat."
Harlamagne raised a finger, light condensing at the tip as he prepared once again to send them back to Floor 1.
Arthur’s thoughts ran thousands of miles per second, cracking his brain as he tried to figure out a way to victory.
They couldn’t afford to be sent back to Floor 1 again, forced to face even stronger enemies and deal with the increasing number of conditions required to clear each Floor, particularly not when Harlamagne had already seen his reconstructed World Collapse.
The thought of Floor 1 reminded him of something that Rishia had said after their first defeat, about what she had felt when the light of Pure Fiction first interacted with her Authority’s power.
’The laws were adjusted...!’
An idea sparked in Arthur’s mind, a gamble with a slim chance of success.
But choice was a luxury he currently didn’t have.
’Lostvayne! Consume all the souls I have in store!’
[As you wish.]
Black tendrils erupted from Lostvayne’s hilt and pierced into Arthur’s skin, the silver lines running along the sword’s blade like veins taking on a crimson hue, the Weapon Authority of the cosmic weapon releasing a burst of destructive energy that broke him free from the force pinning him to the ground.
|Anti-Gravity!|
Arthur’s body instantly shot upward toward the ceiling, and seeing this, Harlamagne silently waved his palm, forming a barrier to block Lostvayne’s destruction, and by his will, a downward force was generated to slam Arthur back toward the ground.
The instant he gave the command, Arthur roused his cosmic energy and activated Extreme Nothingness again.
|WORLD COLLAPSE!!!|
Crimson-silver energy erupted from Arthur’s body, but instead of enveloping Pure Fiction, whose dimensions Arthur didn’t know, the energy expanded around his body, similar to how his Annihilation Pulse technique behaved upon activation.
At the sight, Harlamagne couldn’t help but shake his head.
’Internal destruction? Impossible. He doesn’t have the Authority level required to perform internal destruction on a pocket reality as complex as mine.’
Having understood Arthur’s intentions, he completely dismissed the actions and paid no further attention to them, certain that Arthur was bound to fail.
It was that confidence in Arthur’s impending failure that delayed Harlamagne’s reaction by one second, a single second that Arthur used to execute his true intention.
The crimson-silver sphere expanded to encompass the entire hall in an instant, and Harlamagne’s eyes widened as he realised what Arthur’s true intentions were.
’He’s not trying to destroy Pure Fiction from within. He’s trying to destroy my control over the universal laws inside Pure Fiction. Ha! He got me good there.’
The ash dragon’s lips curled into an amused grin.
"A bold move! Futile, but bold nonetheless."
The moment Harlamagne said that, Arthur unfurled all his wings and beat them, propelling himself down towards the ash dragon with movements accelerated by time.
’Attacking me directly? Why should I meet you head-on?’
Harlamagne’s body began to shine, elementalizing into light, but in the instant before his elementalization completed and his body became light itself, the silent Rishia acted.
She activated her Umbra Authority and melted into her own shadow on the floor, leaping out of Harlamagne’s rapidly disappearing shadow, her skin scarred with burns from light law energy.
However, she didn’t care for that as she grabbed Harlamagne’s body from behind before it lost all physical mass, an illusory moon appearing behind her as she unleashed darkness from her body to wrap around his, interrupting his elementalization.
Realising he wouldn’t be able to fully elementalize before Arthur reached him, Harlamagne instantly opted for a different approach.
His right hand shot out, scales appearing all the way up to his elbow, and his nails lengthened into claws which he swung toward the descending Arthur, who had Lostvayne raised above his head.
’A wide swing with no regard for defence? I don’t think you can follow through with that now, can you?’
The ashen grey light of creation coated his claws, and unless Arthur diverted power toward defence, Harlamagne’s attack would land as a fatal strike.
Harlamagne was confident that the creation-fearing Arthur wouldn’t ignore such a threat, but when the tips of his claws pierced Arthur’s skin, the ash dragon’s eyes widened ever so slightly.
’Oh?’
His claws cut into Arthur’s side, digging in through the flesh and tearing through the organs beneath, spilling silver blood into the air.
Surprise coloured Harlamagne’s expression, and meeting Arthur’s glowing crimson eyes, the dragon came to a realisation.
’I see. He broke out of his self-imposed shell...’
The crimson pillar of light rising from Lostvayne turned pure silver as Arthur brought the blade down in an instant.
|Extreme Nothingness: Chaos.|
The calm True Voice echoed in Harlamagne’s ears several seconds after the blade had already cut into his shoulder, tearing in through his torso and heading straight for his heart.
The powerful slash phased right through Rishia, completely ignoring her existence, even though she was holding Harlamagne’s body to immobilise him with her darkness and was in the line of fire.
Arthur and Harlamagne’s energies ignited against each other, filling the entire Floor with bright light as the reality around them crumbled.
