Chapter 978: The Unbalanced Scale
The lasers continued chasing Arthur even after he reappeared on another still-forming planet, reaching him within a second and slicing through that planet as well, blowing it apart as they pursued him through space.
|Shattered Horizon!| Arthur shouted while conjuring an orb of destructive energy that burst apart into many silver lasers, which curved through space, weaving around the debris of shattered planets while colliding with every single beam of destructive light that Luka had launched toward him.
He curved through space and flew directly toward Luka, who was still in the exact position she had been earlier, and she slowly lowered her left hand while opening her palm wide.
Just as Arthur closed the distance enough to attack, she spoke. "All-Encompassing Light."
A sphere of light erupted from her palm and expanded rapidly, disintegrating everything caught within it, and Arthur immediately stopped his advance while releasing his anti-divinity.
|Anti-Divine Gravity!|
Space itself warped, and the light erupting from Luka’s palm warped along with it, displaced around Arthur.
Noticing this, Luka turned an inquisitive gaze toward him.
"So that anti-divinity of yours, it’s embedded into your Gravitational Authority," she said, recognising the reason Arthur’s Authority had deflected her All-Encompassing Light with such ease.
Arthur responded by using World Collapse on her body, but she swung her sword and split the crimson silver sphere before it could begin contracting, and with a star-shaped eruption from the tip of her blade, she unleashed a powerful beam of divinity directly at Arthur.
Arthur instantly activated AGSD, creating a singularity that absorbed the beam of divinity, and the moment the singularity reached critical mass, it exploded, engulfing the entire nascent star system within seconds and vaporising everything within its radius.
Space and time, already fragile in this region, distorted and broke down further, and Arthur shot through the destruction while heading directly toward Luka with Lostvayne and Celestia in both hands.
However, before he could close the distance enough to maximise damage, Luka opened her left palm and condensed divinity within it, clenching her fist around the concentrated power as she spoke.
"Life-Giving Star."
Immediately after speaking, she spun around and closed the distance to Arthur, her fist punching through his cosmic energy and gravity barriers before colliding with his stomach, and just before his body was sent flying, she whispered near his ear, "Don’t worry, it’s just a star. I held back."
The impact sent Arthur flying into a spatial rupture, and he crashed into another random region, smashing down onto a nameless planet.
His body rag-dolled across the ground for several kilometres, tearing through volcanic mountains before finally coming to a halt.
He didn’t have even a moment of respite because the instant his senses cleared, he felt a chill along his spine and leapt away just as Luka’s foot slammed down where he had been a split second before.
The Primordial goddess closed the distance immediately and swung her sword, emanating dull golden light, downward. Arthur quickly coated both of his weapons with the silver light of Null and swung them upward to meet her descending slash in a clash that split the continent they were on in two.
Both pulled their weapons back simultaneously, but Arthur’s next slash came first, the time-accelerated edge of Lostvayne slicing down toward Luka’s shoulder at near light speed.
Luka tilted her upper body slightly to the right, letting the slash slide past her, and in the same instant, she stabbed the tip of her sword into the inner part of Arthur’s right wrist.
His expression contorted as the blade pierced into his wrist, and before he could pull his arm back, Luka’s left hand shot out and gripped his wrist, crushing it with pure brute strength.
Lostvayne fell from his grasp, clattering against the ground, and she immediately stomped on the blade to keep it from moving autonomously, while simultaneously lifting Arthur’s body and slamming him onto his back with immense force, the impact cratering the ground beneath them and widening the fissures splitting the continent.
Arthur gritted his teeth through the pain and thrust Celestia toward Luka, but she stabbed her sword into the ground and caught the blade of Celestia with her right hand.
The divinity coating her palms collided with the anti-divinity erupting from Celestia, sparks of light bursting and arcing through the air from the clash.
Still holding Arthur’s left wrist, she pulled him up and flung him into the air, then knocked down Celestia’s blade before grabbing her own sword and hurling it at the airborne Arthur.
The blade’s tip pierced his torso, the impact sending him through ruptured space and crashing onto a frozen planetary surface.
Arthur skidded across the ice and tumbled onto one knee just as Luka landed not far from him and swung her sword, throwing it at him.
He immediately summoned Celestia in his left hand, coating the blade in anti-divinity and launching the weapon to meet Luka’s thrown sword mid-air.
**BAAM!!!
The two blades collided with equal force, sparks of silver and dull-gold arcing through the air in jagged lines as they clashed.
Luka, walking slightly off to the side, brushed the snow from her shoulders as she spoke.
"I didn’t use cosmic energy there, so you can heal that little broken wrist of yours with your Temporal Authority."
True, she had just crushed his wrist with brute strength, so nothing was preventing Arthur’s Authority of Time from reversing the damage. In fact, he had already done that before she even finished speaking.
He rose to his feet, breathing heavily as he moved in the opposite direction from where Luka was walking, the two of them circling while their weapons continued clashing mid-air as she spoke.
"You know, I have an avatar of mine doing a little background investigation of you right now, and I have to say, the results aren’t really matching what you’re showing me.
I mean, sure, you had Aleksas’ little girl helping you, but you still beat one of Kalonex’s probes, right? Where’s that guy? Where’s the one who fought Harlamagne?"
She adjusted her angle, walking closer to the clashing blades while shaking her head and adding, "I expected a lot more than just...this."
Luka snapped her right fingers, and her sword flew back into her hand. Celestia instantly returned to Arthur, and they swung their blades at the same time, the weapons meeting in a clash that cracked the frozen ground around them, sending shockwaves that blew the snow away for miles.
Pushing back against Arthur’s blade with brute force, Luka demanded, "Show. Me. More!"
Arthur removed his left hand from Celestia’s hilt and threw a Weighted-Impact punch toward Luka’s face, but she reacted instantly, catching his wrist with her right hand before the punch could connect.
"Do you really want me to break your wrist again?" she asked, her expression incredulous.
Arthur didn’t respond, instead opening his clenched fist and summoning a pair of golden scales in his hand.
"??"
Luka’s eyes immediately darted to the artifact as she sensed its cosmic power, and in that instant, Arthur mentally screamed the activation command.
’Scales of Balance!’
|Weigh our Existences!|
Cosmic energy erupted from the scales, engulfing both of them, and at Arthur’s instant designation, he and Luka were completely immobilised as the Ceremony of Weighing Existences began.
The Scales of Balance possessed the ability to initiate a Ceremony of Weighing Existences, conducted with two parties: the User and designated allies (if any) and a Designated Target or group of Targets.
Depending on the ’Overall Power’ difference between the User and the Targets, ’Compensations’ were granted to the User, allowing them to ’BALANCE’ their Power Level against a more powerful foe.
Most importantly, while the Ceremony was in effect, both parties could not move or use any of their abilities.
Or at the very least, they shouldn’t be able to.
However, it didn’t take even a second after the Ceremony began for Luka to turn her incredulous gaze toward Arthur as she spoke.
"Really? Balance?"
Sparks erupted from the scales in Arthur’s left hand, his eyes widening as the cosmic artifact’s Authority was forcefully deactivated, the resulting burst of cosmic energy sending his body flying back into an icy wall.
The Ceremony of Weighing Existences was disrupted, and Luka stepped out of the cloud of dust and smoke, her expression furious.
"You! You really know nothing about me, do you? An artifact of Balance? Against me, of all people?"
Her tone betrayed pure disbelief that Arthur had even considered this as an option.
"I was not born of Chaos like the Origin Multiverse and half the Cosmos. I came into existence through the power of the Cosmic Force of Balance, and you decided to use an artifact that borrows Balance’s Authority against me, of all existences in this chessboard of a Cosmos?"
She scoffed and closed the distance, reaching out to grab the Scales of Balance from Arthur’s hand as she added, "And on top of that, an artifact that steals power? Really?"
Luka clicked her tongue in disappointment as she pulled the scales from his hand and tossed them aside.
Arthur immediately slashed at her with Celestia, the silver light of Null erupting from the blade as he attempted to unleash Extreme Nothingness: Chaos, but before he could complete the motion, Luka deflected his sword with her own and immediately followed with a thrust of her sword straight toward Arthur’s chest.
Her left hand shot out and caught Lostvayne’s blade, stopping the sword that aimed straight for her head in the same instant that her sword’s tip met the cosmic energy barrier of the Stellar Guard, sparks of cosmic energy filling the air.
Without the slightest resistance, her blade pierced through the Stellar Guard’s cosmic barrier, the artifact around Arthur’s left hand cracking and exploding in a burst of cosmic energy and smoke as her sword stabbed through his chest, through his heart, and out the other side.
She immediately withdrew her sword, and silver blood splattered from the wound as Arthur’s body dropped to his knees and collapsed weakly to the ground, Celestia’s voice in his mind growing distant as his vision was consumed by darkness.
.....
....
...
..
.
"Huh? I just got you. It’ll be troublesome for me if you die off so soon."
