Chapter 1124: What Is This |
The human domain was illuminated in a radiant purple light so blinding that even the paragons watching the scene had to shield their eyes from its rays.
Then came the shockwave. But surprisingly, it wasn't violent. Instead, it felt like a wave of light air washing over them, gentle.
The humans, Evolari, and Nullite fell utterly silent as the blinding light began to fade, unveiling a dense haze that cloaked the entire domain in a shroud.
A burst erupted from the center, scattering the mist in every direction. Then… they saw everything.
Ozeroth, cloaked in a blinding purple glow, hovered calmly in the air, twin hammers gripped loosely in his hands. But that wasn't what seized their attention.
In front of him, where the towering wooden beast had stood moments ago, was an endless fissure, a yawning chasm that split the earth and stretched kilometers into the horizon.
No one spoke. Not a word. Even the paragons' eyes trembled as the truth sank in.
One strike.
That beast, whose aura had dwarfed theirs, the one moments away from tearing them all apart, had been erased.
"Will you be okay?" His deep voice rolled over them. "I have to head back to him."
The paragons were jolted from their reverie. Avalon, Magnus, and Anastasia's expressions all shifted. Was he in danger?
But before they could speak, the air split with a deafening boom.
Their gazes shot upward to see the skies had changed. They had turned into a maelstrom of blue and green, like a storm of battling gods.
Volatile energy clashed violently, rippling across the heavens.
Then, with no warning, two colossal pillars of green and blue pierced down from the storm clouds, plummeting toward the earth like divine judgment.
"Those two fools!" Ozeroth growled.
In a blur, he appeared in front of the humans and their allies. His aura erupted, and the purple dome surrounding them thickened.
The pillars struck the earth.
The explosion that followed was indescribable. Earth shattered. Mountains cracked. The sky itself seemed to tear.
Their blows shook the domain as shockwaves of raw devastation spread in every direction.
Ozeroth clenched his teeth as the wave slammed into him, its sheer force pushing him back a step. "Shit!" he cursed under his breath.
It wasn't just the power that made this dangerous.
It was their Will.
Just standing in the presence of such overwhelming force, especially when they were imposing their Wills onto reality itself, was enough to make anyone with weaker resolve feel like their minds were tearing apart.
And because Ozeroth was still tethered, limited, by his bond with Atticus, his own Will was weaker than it should've been.
But right now, he was the only thing keeping the others, even the paragons, from losing their minds entirely.
BOOM!
The sound of a collision shattered the brief silence. Then another followed. And another.
Ozeroth's eyes snapped forward, sharpening as they cut through the haze.
There they were.
The Gardener and Whisker.
The former's face was twisted in pure hatred; the latter's cold and calculating.
They clashed at impossible speeds, their bodies wreathed in blue and green Will, amplifying every move to divine proportions.
Each time they met, a violent ripple of Will burst outward, a shockwave that slammed into Ozeroth's shield again and again, forcing him back step by step. Cracks webbed out along the dome, trembling with each hit.
Then suddenly, the Gardener's Will flared.
Caught off guard, Whisker's expression twisted. Their next collision erupted in a monstrous blast that sent Whisker hurtling through the air like a meteor, flattening everything in his path as the terrain was shredded beneath him.
Before anyone could even breathe, the Gardener vanished.
Another thunderous series of booms echoed in the distance. Louder. Farther. Everywhere.
Ozeroth's gaze sharpened further.
'They've moved to other domains.'
Their battle had spilled across Eldoralth, and despite the distance, Ozeroth could still feel every tremor of their clash from here.
They were tearing through domains, one after the other, clashing, clashing, and clashing again without pause.
'I can't leave.'
Ozeroth threw a glance behind him.
There was no telling where on Eldoralth was safe anymore.
Not when those two were fighting like that.
They were everywhere at once—disrupting entire domains, spreading waves of terror that cracked the very foundation of the planet itself.
And worse… they could come back.
Even a single pass-through, even a brush against this domain while he was gone… and everyone here would die.
Instantly.
Even the paragons.
Ozeroth's expression darkened.
'Shit.'
…
A violent spiral of energy ripped outward, radiating from the point where two forces collided.
Elderish's gaze narrowed.
"What is this?"
Earlier, Elderish had decided that killing Atticus' family would keep the boy from making a foolish choice.
Even if Atticus ended up killing him in anger, at the very least, he would've inadvertently saved Eldoralth.
But because of Atticus' unrelenting attacks, he had been unable to leave. Elderish had resigned himself to ending it all.
He had morphed the aura around his arm into a blade and struck with his full power, piercing toward Atticus at a speed the boy couldn't match.
But…
Atticus' suit had suddenly lit up, and his aura intensified. Not only had he matched Elderish's speed, he had also met the attack with one of his own.
Elderish's eyes sharpened.
"Have you been hiding this power since?"
The surge of energy had healed all of Atticus' wounds and restored his body beyond even the peak.
'Why would he hide it?' Elderish couldn't understand.
What he didn't know… was that Atticus hadn't been trying to hold back anything.
The power he had just displayed was a result of all the beatings Elderish had inflicted. Despite its evolution, the exosuit's ability to absorb and release attacks at twice the power was still there.
But from the beginning, it had always been for a very brief period. One attack at most.
And that was the same attack Atticus had just used.
Atticus felt the overwhelming surge of energy leave his body, and in the next instant, he dropped to his base state.
'So soon…'
Just blocking Elderish's full-power attack had drained everything he had saved up. And not only that, the suit had fallen into stasis from being overused.
Elderish's eyes, which had moments ago lit with hope that Atticus would finally be able to end it by killing him, froze.
Atticus' power was returning to normal.
With a push, a blast ripped from their blades meeting, sending Atticus hurtling back, slamming onto the earth and forming a deep crater.
Elderish's eyes fell on Atticus as the haze cleared. His expression twisted into anger as realization dawned.
"You're too narrow-minded to see you're making the wrong choice. I'll beat you until you're unable to move. Then I'll go after your family."
His aura exploded as he vanished from the air.