Chapter 408 C408. Testing Limits
Nine's entire demeanor changed as he heard the bell-like voice that somehow traveled the distance, filtering its way through the noise, as though his opponent was standing right next to him.
He was completely at a loss for words as he stared dumbly at the emissary, who, despite the presence of the World Devourer that loomed over the planet as it steadily pulled the planet apart underneath their feet, devouring everything that enters its mouth, she appeared completely unaffected and was yet to have moved even a centimeter.
He had expected her to be desperately struggling for her life as she attempted to escape the range of the World Devourer. Yet she seems unaffected by the ridiculously strong gravitational pull of the supermassive black hole within its stomach.
"Impossible."
Nine's entire body went limp. This had been the ace of his sleeve given that everything he had tried up to this point had been utterly destroyed by this dark elf.
How unfortunate.
He had been completely outclassed from the moment the emissary had arrived in that underground base. His lack of information on her was the deciding factor in this battle.
Given that she had been vaguely aware of his hidden innate ability at the time, it was safe to say she had a degree of information about him and had the chance to properly prepare herself against him, while he had been taken by surprise.
The spell scroll he had, 'Gravity infringement', was an insanely rare high-tiered scroll he had chanced upon a few decades ago. Since then, he had never encountered a single person with that skill even amongst the most skilled Gyromancers he had fought.
It was truly a twist of fate, for him to encounter an opponent this strong, with the perfect skill to overcome his ultimate trump card. It was as though the goddess of fate had turned her back on him.
With the conjuration of a celestial beast like the World Devourer, any other Demigods might've lost their life to such a creature that could Devourer worlds and dimensions in mere minutes, as the beast size increases the more it consumes.
Yet, his opponent had been one of the very few with the exact skill granting them the ability to outright reject the laws of gravity, and with enough Magic resistance to pull it off.
Everything around them was being rapidly devoured by the creature, even the core of the planet they had been standing on had been destabilized and was devoured before it had even had the chance to explode.
The very ground and sea beneath their feet was now completely gone and the unstable star within the solar system millions of miles away was already being compressed and pulled towards the creature's mouth, and by definition, the very sun was headed towards them with ridiculous speeds.
As this was already a dying world to begin with, the presence of the World Devourer has only served to accelerate this world's destruction from a few hours at best to barely a few minutes.
Even if they somehow survived the very destruction of an entire universe, they would be forcibly thrown into the nothingness of the boundless void, exposing themselves to beings beyond their wildest dream and far above their comprehension.
"Widened Magic - HellFire Rain!"
Just as Nine's thoughts wandered uncontrollably, Rain made her move as the red sun drew closer to them. Countless balls of reddish black flames spawned all around the massive beast, each ball of HellFire capable of disintegrating an entire city, yet there were several hundreds of them surrounding the gigantic celestial beast.
With the snap of her finger, the fireballs began to rain destruction upon the eel-like creature from every which way.
Or so it seemed.
Upon closer observation, it would seem the fireballs were rapidly being pulled into the creature's mouth only moments before making contact with its skin, no matter where the attack had originated from.
Even attacks from the opposite side of his open mouth were being pulled at a force almost too fast for the eyes to see.
In somewhat of a retaliation to being attacked, the World Devourer swung its tentacles at Rain who casually avoided the path of the massive tentacles as she prepared another spell.
Although she was indeed a Demigod and her mana reserves surpassed any mortal limits, it was still finite and she had already exhausted a majority of her mana on the fight leading up to this point so she couldn't afford to waste her spells on a fruitless endeavor.
However...
Rain couldn't care less. One of the purposes of this battle was to truly push herself to the limit and see how far she could go on her own. If just running out of Mana could stop her then she didn't think she would be worthy of the title of 'Lightning General.'
The first spell she used with 'Silent Magic' was 'Clone Self' as she split into 10 perfect copies of herself even though they're clones only had 70 percent of her abilities.
Immediately, one of the clones consumed the last of her remaining Mana, as she augmented herself with her skills, using several layers of stealth and charged at the World Devourer head-on.
The clone used several skills and secret techniques, including, Thunder God's Descent and Absolute Rend. However, the World Devourer was more than just a moving supermassive black hole.
The creature's body oozes a degenerating and soul-corrupting mist and completely disintegrates anything that comes in contact with it. Unfortunately, even with the ridiculous severing capabilities of the skill, Absolute Rend at such close range, the World Devourer could still force the attack into being devoured in its stomach.
With the clone's weaker stats compared to Rain, she could not withstand the degenerating mist of the World Devourer and disappeared.
Rain smirked despite having confirmed that even close-range attacks, which she specialized in, weren't very effective. She and her remaining 9 clones then moved to surround the creature and cast their spells.
"Chaos Magic - Hellfire Meteor."
Insanely massive fireballs the size of actual asteroids, gathered above the gigantic monster as they began to rain down upon it. Upon first observation, it would seem Rain had wasted the last of a Mana doing something that was destined to fail.
However, destiny to Rain was only a fragile string underneath her fingertips.
?Fate Manipulation?
Just as the giant fireballs were about to strike the creature, they all suddenly took a sharp turn as they were promptly devoured in its mouth. Well, all but one.
*Boom!
The was a devastating explosion on the back of the massive eel and the creature let out an audible scream in pain.
Nine's eyes widened, he could barely believe his own eyes, nor comprehend what had happened. To his knowledge, nothing should've been able to land on the celestial creature's body. Yet, what was this?
He firmly refused to believe this.
Rain, on the other hand, was slightly disappointed. She has used Fate manipulation to alter the possibility or rather destined all ten of her attacks to bypass the creature's gravitational suction and hit so she could test the creature's level of resistance to fate and only one of her attacks had hit.
This meant this conjured creature had a ridiculously high resistance to Fate alterations and probability manipulation. Still, the smile on Rain's face soon returned as a 10 percent success rate was still impressive.
However, after the flames that burnt the back of the creature were suppressed, the creature's back was already rapidly recovering at a staggering pace. Clearly, the beast was also absorbing the energy from whatever it was devouring and growing stronger.
If left unchecked, this beast would rapidly become unstoppable and even become a threat to the infinite multiverse, or worse, the entire omniverse.
"Hahahaha... Useless! You can't defeat such a beast. It's foolish."
Given that his escape plan has failed, Nine was now in the same boat as Rain as he could not afford to let this creature devour this world, he wasn't even sure he could survive the destruction of an entire universe as he was yet to become a true Demigod.
Even so, his will to fight had been utterly crushed and all he could do was simply await his inevitable demise.
So seeing his creature rapidly heal from such a devastating attack made him feel like they were now in the same boat. If so, what was the point of such pointless resistance?
"Is that so? Then watch me. I'm not allowed to die before her after all, besides, I can't afford to make Lord Ty disappointed in me."
Rain smirked as the buzzing crashing sounds of electricity could be heard even at a distance, black lightning began to dance across her entire body and her eyes shone with a bright blue hue. At the same moment, the entire dimension began to tremble.
*Thump. Thump. Thump...
Its mouth slowly began to close as it kept retreating backward even though its movement speed was incredibly lacking. For some reason, Nine felt as though the For the first time, Number 9 sensed Rain's aura, his heartbeat increased as his eyes dilated and they began to bleed and his blood boiled. He could feel every fiber of his soul and body trying to escape at all cost but there was nowhere to run.
She slowly stretched forth her arm as she pointed a finger at the creature and it immediately started to retreat, the force of its gravitational pull reducing drastically. It was clear, as a celestial, it could sense that something was terribly wrong.
Its mouth slowly began to close as it kept retreating backward even though its movement speed was incredibly lacking. For some reason, Nine felt as though the creature's death was imminent.
It was as though Fate itself had ordained it.
"I suppose I should thank you. I haven't gotten to unleash my full power freely till now. One dying world shouldn't be a problem, should it? Oh well."
Before Nine could even comprehend the meaning behind her words, she had already unleashed her power.
Dark Lightning - Wrath of Destruction.
Lightning as black as the void of space, eagerly jumped from her fingertips as they greedily lashed onto everything and anything, beit solid, air, physical, magical, conceptual, temporal, dimensional, or even imaginary, nothing was spared from their wrath.
Not even Rain herself was spare from the rampage of her own spell. Yet, she luckily protected by an unusual magic barrier that reflected the lightning back at the world around her, sometimes even multiplying the magnitude of the attack.
Naturally, the black lightning completely consumed the World Devourer, destroying both the supermassive black hole within its stomach and its entire existence.
In mere moments, what was once a celestial beast, had been reduced to absolute nothingness by the fangs of the Dark Lightning.
Even then, the attack still didn't end there as the lightning greedily tore through the fabric of this dimension's reality, consuming both space and time, burning the sun itself, and destroying the entire universe around them without any signs of slowing down or stopping.
"Oops... I might've gone overboard a bit. Oh well, time to go."
Just as she willed it, the black lightning, even as they rampaged through the dimension, completely avoided the dumbfounded Nine, both his pride and will, already shattered as he aimlessly floated away in the void of destruction.
Seeing the dead look in the eyes of the previously proud and arrogant elite of Number, Rain chuckled as she prepared to cast the spell, "Plane Shift" once more.
She did not possess the spatial manipulation or domination skill like Zelda or Tyler so she could not teleport between dimensions with her shadow skills and even a high-tier teleportation spell like Gate could not accomplish this task.
The only abilities she knew could achieve this was her master's Warp and the 8th Tier spell, Plane Shift which she had used earlier when bringing Nine here.
Unfortunately, Rain could not cast such a powerful spell as a 7th Tier Magic Assassin and could only achieve this feat with the aid of the magic artifacts on her person. Besides, she was already out of Mana and was only operating on fumes.
She understands that this fight would've been unwinnable if she didn't possess these artifacts gifted to her by her beloved. Both items combined for a prolonged period also granted a massive boost to her stats, and their abilities were incredible.
??????
Bracelet of Minerva. (Indomitability)
Magic Artifact - Divine Class
Bestows the user with the Indomitable powers of the goddess of Contradiction, Destruction, and Protection, Minerva.
Primary Effects:
Indomitable by Shield.
A barrier that absorbs the energy from magical or anti-magic attacks directed at the user and stores or reflects them several folds.
Grants protection against the backlash from the Bracelet of Destruction.
Secondary Effects.
Anti-Detection.
Protects the user from scrying effects which makes it impossible to be tracked by magic.
Enternal Youth.
The Bracelet prevents its user from aging, which will allow them to defy death as long as they can stop themselves from being destroyed.
??????
Bracelet of Minerva. (Destruction)
Magic Artifact - God Tier.
Bestows the user with the Destructive powers of the goddess of Contradiction, Destruction, and Protection, Minerva.
Primary Effects:
Wrath of Destruction.
Calls down a storm of highly destructive pure black lightning at the user's will that brings havoc. Destroying anything from a single planet to entire universes.
Can kill the users if protection is not used.
Secondary Effects.
Soul Corruption
Infuse all users'attacks with soul destruction attributes.
Plane Shift.
Grants the user the ability to travel between dimensions.
??????
Rain sighed in relief as she took a breath but failed to pull in any air. Her attention quickly we g back to the dire situation around them as she could not afford to waste anymore time here and attract unwanted attention.
With the use of one of her magic artifacts, she appeared before Nine and they disappeared just as this dimension seized to exist within the vastness of the omniverse, a phenomenon that seem to have drawn the attention of a particular entity.
One who sits above the throne, in the Palace of Stories.
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