Chapter 552: Arcadia, The First Planet In All Creation (XXX)
"RUAAARGHHHHH!"
The guardian let out a deafening roar upon being slashed by Aestrea’s swords.
The vortex where its head should be spun violently, pulling in fragments of time and memory from the surroundings.
Its severed arm began regenerating instantly, new starlight weaving together into a larger, sharper limb.
It retaliated without pause.
The guardian swung its newly formed arm in a horizontal arc, the crystallized time blade extending mid-swing to become hundreds of meters long.
The air screamed as the blade cut through space itself.
WHIIIIIIISH!
Slit...!
Aestrea leaped backward, but the edge still grazed his chest.
His obsidian skin split open, black divine blood erupting outward in a pressurized spray.
The wound aged rapidly for a split second before his chaos energy burned the temporal effect away.
He didn’t retreat and used the momentum to spin mid-air and brought both swords down in a devastating overhead strike.
SHIIIIIIING!
The dual blades slammed into the guardian’s shoulder with cataclysmic force.
The impact created a shockwave that shattered floating crystal platforms for miles around them.
The Heaven Swallowing Sword sank deep, greedily consuming the guardian’s essence, while the Midnight Sword carved through its collarbone area, nearly severing the entire upper torso.
Liquid starlight gushed out like a ruptured dam, raining down onto the crystalline ground and turning entire sections into glowing, reflective lakes.
The guardian staggered, its massive body leaning dangerously to one side.
But it refused to fall.
The vortex on its head spun faster, and time around Aestrea suddenly accelerated. His movements became sluggish while the guardian’s attacks sped up.
It brought its other arm down like a hammer.
BOOOOOOOOOOOM!
Aestrea crossed both swords above his head just in time.
BAAAANG!
The impact drove him straight down into the ground, creating a crater dozens of meters deep.
His arms shook from the force, causing his bones to creak, and black blood to leak from the corners of his mouth.
He roared and pushed back with raw strength, using Authority of Gravity to crush the guardian’s arm downward while Authority of Ruin decayed the crystallized blade from the inside.
The arm exploded into glittering fragments.
Aestrea burst out of the crater like a black comet and appeared right in front of the guardian’s chest.
Fwip, fwip, fwip!
He unleashed a furious barrage of slashes, with each one of them hitting squarely in different parts of the guardian’s body.
The Midnight Sword carved deep gashes across the guardian’s torso, while the Heaven Swallowing Sword devoured entire sections of its body, leaving smoking voids where starlight once flowed.
Golden-silver liquid sprayed in fountains with every hit, coating Aestrea’s black hair and face.
"GAAAAAAAAAAARGHHHH!"
The guardian screamed and retaliated by summoning hundreds of temporal spears from the air around them.
Swish!
Aestrea spun like a whirlwind, his swords flashing multiple times to parry each spear.
He cut down dozens of spears, but several still pierced him, one through his left thigh, another through his shoulder, and one grazing his neck, drawing a deep line of black blood.
"Agh... tsk!" He grunted in pain but used the momentum to close in again. He drove the Heaven Swallowing Sword straight through the guardian’s core vortex.
Spluurttt!
The blade sank deep into the swirling mass of starlight and memory.
The guardian’s entire body convulsed violently. Its roar turned into a distorted, dying wail as the sword began devouring its very concept.
Aestrea twisted the blade viciously and activated Authority of Karma, forcing the guardian’s existence to balance against the damage it had inflicted on him.
The guardian’s form started crumbling from the inside out.
Huge chunks of its body broke apart and dissolved into glowing particles.
Its arms shattered, its legs gave out, and finally, the vortex head started spinning slower and slower before cracking apart like fragile glass.
"GRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGHHHH... ruaghh.... gutgh."
With one final, earth-shaking roar, the guardian exploded into a brilliant shower of starlight that rained down across the landscape, slowly returning to the tower behind it.
"...Fucking hell."
Aestrea cursed, taking his time to breathe.
"Manipulating time here... really took a toll on my body," he gritted his teeth. If he hadn’t done that, he’d easily oneshot this motherfucker of a guardian.
Looking forward, a massive arched door stood at its base, glowing with soft inner light.
He placed his hand on it.
The door responded immediately, sliding open with a deep, resonant hum that vibrated through his bones.
Inside... there were stairs.
An endless spiral staircase of pure crystalline steps, winding upward into infinity.
There were no flying platforms, or shortcuts... just fucking stairs. Millions upon millions of them, stretching so high that the top disappeared into blinding light.
Aestrea stared for a long moment.
"I can’t fly..." he muttered in complete annoyance. "Does this mean I need to fucking walk all of those stairs?"
The planet seemed to answer with silence.
The rules of Arcadia were clear: no flying, no teleportation, no sensing ahead. You walked... You earned it.
He scratched the back of his head, letting out a tired sigh.
"Fine."
He took his first step onto the staircase.
Swoosh!
A spear condensed from pure divine energy shot out from the wall at blinding speed, aimed straight for his head.
Aestrea lowered his head at the last possible moment.
The spear whistled past his ear, grazing a few strands of his black-and-white hair before embedding itself into the opposite wall, where it dissolved into light.
"...Seriously?"
He furrowed his eyebrows, clearly irritated by the sudden spear. Taking a deep breath to center himself, he continued upward.
Swoop!
FWIP!
The traps started activating relentlessly.
Spears of condensed divine energy fired from the walls every few steps.
Blades of frozen time slashed out from the steps themselves.
Illusory clones of that same guardian appeared from before appeared, swinging massive weapons made of pure divine energy.
Gravity flipped randomly, trying to throw him off balance. Whispers of doubt and past failures echoed in his mind, attempting to slow him psychologically.
Seeing this, Aestrea directly started running.
He moved at full speed up the spiral staircase, his body becoming a blur of black and white energy, but unfortunately for him, with every single step he took, another trap triggered.
SWOOSH!
He dodged a spear by leaning sideways, then jumped over a set of rising blades that emerged from the steps.
CLANG!
He blocked a swinging axe of frozen time with the Midnight Sword, sparks flying as he kept running without stopping.
A section of stairs suddenly turned into liquid starlight, trying to swallow his legs. He used Authority of Ruin to decay the trap mid-step and kept pushing forward.
The higher he climbed, the more vicious the traps became.
Hundreds of temporal spears rained down from above like a storm.
Aestrea spun both swords in a defensive whirlwind, cutting them apart while sprinting upward.
Slit!
One spear grazed his shoulder, aging the flesh instantly into wrinkled, cracked skin. He burned it away with chaos energy and continued.
Whispers started growing louder in his head as memories of every time he had failed, every loved one he had lost, and every death he had endured...
The planet was testing his own resolve... and that only made Aestrea’s expression gradually turn colder and colder.
He firmly gritted his teeth in determination and pushed his body even harder than before.
Hours slowly blurred into days as he ascended without rest.
His body was covered in countless small wounds that healed almost as quickly as they appeared.
Black and golden blood stained the crystalline steps behind him, only to be absorbed by the tower itself.
The staircase seemed endless.
Every time he thought he was getting close, the tower extended further, adding more trials. Illusory versions of Chronos appeared, taunting him.
Visions of his lovers waiting endlessly in the Divine Realm tried to break his will.
Still, he ran... even if his legs burned, as for some reason, his body stopped regenerating. His mind was assaulted constantly, but his will remained unwavering.
He had come too far.
He had sacrificed too much.
He would not be stopped by stairs and petty trials.
Days passed inside Arcadia.
Finally, after what felt like an eternity of relentless climbing and dodging the many traps he triggered, Aestrea reached the top.
He burst through the final set of traps, which was a barrage of time-reversed blades and collapsing steps, and stepped onto a vast, open platform at the summit of the tower.
Swooosh!
He instantly felt a wave of fresh wind... it was a different kind of wind, like it was welcoming him or something similar.
Then, as he looked forward, his eyes narrowed slighly as he locked into the platform right in front of him.
In the center of the platform, floating gently above a crystalline pedestal, was the first Divine Trumpet.
It was majestic, it looked like a massive, golden instrument shaped like an ancient horn, glowing with inner primordial light.
Runes of creation danced across its surface.
The power radiating from it was so immense that the air around it warped, creating soft ripples in reality.
"Ugh... Finally."
