Chapter 389: Desperate
The Old One’s extended finger suddenly flicked down. As old and slow as he seemed, his reaction was more than fast enough.
A hand formed of fog and energy appeared above them, slamming down so fast Grey almost couldn’t dodge in time.
He screeched to a halt, his knees withstanding a great amount of pressure before he suddenly flipped back and just barely out of the way.
The wind pressure of the palm alone almost toppled him to his ass, but he managed to flip one more time to maintain his balance.
’Well, damn.’ Grey cursed.
Now that he thought about it, he had fallen for a really, really long time. How far had he dropped? A kilometer? Two? More?
Either way, that meant that the attacks the Old One had been sending were at least from that far away, and yet they were powerful enough to shake a city.
If he was less of a loose cannon, he would have probably thought about this before he jumped, but he also couldn’t have known how far the distance was until he did jump.
Now, given how much closer the Old One was now, how much stronger would it be?
No, worse than that, how would Grey defeat someone so strong faster than it could bring a city down on their heads?
"Fantastic." Grey said sarcastically, suddenly lunging to the side as a spear of darkness just barely passed him by.
But then he grinned.
Sure, facing life and death every day could be a real heavy weight on the psyche. But, from time to time...
It was fun as hell.
Grey activated his Steel-Toe Shrouds. He felt darkness and light rolling through his body, a dichotomy flowing through him.
BANG.
He shot forward like he was fired from a railgun. He created his own flow of solar energy, and then used his body like a sail to catch them. His weight plummeted to nothing, and then—.
Chi.
A spear appeared between his brows so fast it was like it had manifested right there, and maybe it had.
Yet, just when it was going to pierce his head in two, Grey’s magnetic current caught onto it and ripped it up and to the side.
Grey grinned ear to ear.
On the one hand, it seemed that he wasn’t the only one with some control over the Fog of Chaos.
On the other... he was still someone with control over the Fog of Chaos.
"Impossible!"
"Very possible, asshat."
Grey leapt up, closing the rest of the distance to the throne so fast the shocked Old One couldn’t quite react in time.
His spear ripped right through the Old One’s chest, but its blade...
Chi.
BANG.
The blade Grey had been relying on for so very long shattered against the back of the throne, spraying out into shrapnel that ripped the robes of the old one apart, only to reveal the fact that Grey had hit nothing but air.
His spear blade had slipped right through the rib cage of the Old One, right where its heart should have been...
The problem was that there was a huge chunk taken out of its heart as though something had crawled into its body and taken a bite out of it.
Then, to make matters even worse than that, Grey broke his own spear.
"Just... fantastic..." Grey coughed, his feet landing on the armrests. "Listen, buddy ’ol pal, I’m sure we can talk this out, right?"
BOOM.
A force slammed against Grey so hard he felt like every bone in his body had shattered at once.
He skid along the ground, coughing up mouthfuls of blood until he came to a slow stop at Amunet’s feet. Considering she hadn’t even moved from the very start, he had definitely flown quite the distance.
Just a little bit more and he could have caught a view up her skirt.
Amunet immediately put a hand down between her thighs and snapped her knees closed, glaring down at him.
Despite the pain, Grey held his hands up. "Guilty."
Grey groaned and stood up, cracking his back, literally. He was pretty sure there were some bones crunching around in there. It was a miracle he was standing at all.
He looked ahead and the Old One was still sitting on the throne, but after Grey’s attack, its true appearance was completely revealed.
A lich-zombie combo with half a head of hair and another half of rotting flesh. It looked like it came right out of a children’s nightmare.
"It’s unkillable while it’s sitting in that throne." Amunet said.
"I figured." Grey said. There was a pretty good reason it hadn’t moved despite them being here.
The real problem, though, was all the hands sitting in the fields around them. It felt like any one of them could come alive any moment now.
That was definitely something that Grey was still wary of. But right now, many of the arms were dormant, and the ones that weren’t were stretching up to attack the city directly.
However, Grey had noticed that the booming from the city had slowed down considerably.
"Looks like those assholes are finally carrying some of their own weight, though."
The only two strong enough to block and cut down the arms were Kaito and Lloron. They had probably woken up, realizing if Grey and Amunet could handle what was going on down here, they should at least do their part from above.
"I can stop him from triggering the arms." Amunet said.
Grey frowned, looking at her. "You can. Why hasn’t he triggered them already?"
"They’re hard to control. I think they’re the corpses of the fallen Old Ones. They have a very... recycle focused culture, so their dead become part of their strength. But they’re also very resentful and it’s hard to keep them alive like this for long periods of time.
"Even for strong Old Ones, managing a large number of them takes a toll. But if he’s desperate enough, or chooses to stop focusing on the city and deal with us first. Well..."
Amunet looked around and Grey’s lip twitched.
She was right. They’d probably die pretty quick if that happened.
"How long?" Grey asked.
