Chapter 4348: Falling Apart (part 2) |
The metal shards left the Storm Griffon’s and the Bastet’s wounds the same way they had entered, dealing them no further damage and allowing them to resume their attack.
Even whole, the weapons Salanoth had prepared were too small to be a real threat to someone the size of a Divine Beast. Without the Zero element, they were flies to the Upyrs, and Tezka’s trick had delayed them for barely a second.
Yet that second was enough.
With Uragar still out of commission and Salanoth too focused on fueling the Eternity Seal to do anything else, Tezka was free to deal with the Divine Beasts. He sheathed Endless Night and opened dozens of small Cinder Steps the moment Jorl and Akhton entered Chaos Dimension’s range.
The Suneater shifted his center of gravity, and gravity itself shifted with him. The two Upyrs’ weight increased severalfold, breaking their stance and making them fall towards the Cinder Steps.
Tezka threw a barrage of quick jabs that entered the Cursed Gates and emerged on the other side with their kinetic energy increased by one hundredfold. The Suneater had the mass of an Emperor Beast, and his strength was spent, but a short burst of Unbreakable Bond accompanied each punch.
The enchanted armor caved and shattered under Tezka’s surgical strikes, and then the same happened to the tendons and muscles that supported the Upyrs’ bodies.
Darkness fusion kept Jorl and Akhton from feeling pain, but also from understanding why they collapsed to the ground like puppets whose strings had been cut.
"This Chaos Dimension may be as small as the first time I conjured it as a newborn Abomination, but this is still my world. I make the rules in here!" A second shift in his weight reversed the gravity, sending the two Upyrs to crash into the stalactites that dotted the cave’s ceiling.
’Now Chaos Dimension covers only one-tenth of that, and Tezka’s strength is but a fraction of what he had when he arrived here. It’s as if I became as weak as Aran, yet even though the Upyrs outnumber and outmatch him, they can’t defeat him.’
’We’ll gape at his tactical skills later. Now focus!’ Solus’ voice snapped Lith out of his daze. ’If Swirling Wind loses even one bit of its strength, Salanoth’s Eternity Seal will squash us like bugs.’
’Yeah.’ Morok nodded, taking regular, deep breaths to maintain Invigoration. ’I can’t believe that cursed bitch can kill us without even trying. We are experiencing solely the side effects of the Severed Sky array, yet we can barely hold on.’
’If we let the gravity field bind us, we’ll be paralyzed, and our defensive enchantments will stop working.’ Tista grunted with effort. ’At that point, one spell will be enough to kill us all.’
"Come on, kid." It took Tezka everything he had to take one step forward. "Let’s see what happens first. Me running out of mana, or you dying by my hand!"
Tezka advanced by another step under Salanoth’s terrified gaze.
’No, no, no!’ Her Davross body couldn’t handle the strain from channeling the power of the Severed Sky array for so long, and conjuring the Eternity Gate array so many times had overloaded her pseudo cores.
Cracks formed along the surface of the cursed ring, and she didn’t shatter only thanks to the self-repair abilities of the legendary metal from which she had been crafted.
’He should already be dead! I was supposed to need one Eternity Seal and one Infinity Blade to kill him once and for all. Why isn’t it working? Why is he still alive?’
The cycles of falling apart and self-repairing degraded the Davross’ durability, making the cursed ring last less with every iteration. She released the Eternity Seal spell, hoping that the strength she had left and her allies would be enough to win.
Lith and the others felt as if tons of rock had just been lifted off their heads, while for Tezka it was as if he had shrugged a planet off his back. Yet he too wasn’t in great shape.
Keeping Chaos Dimension active took a huge toll on him, but he knew that in his debilitated state and without the protection of his spell, he would be easy prey for the four Upyrs.
He kept Chaos Dimension at his reduced size not to consume more mana and bolted forward with all the speed he could muster.
"Not so fast!" Uragar’s host took a deep breath of Invigoration, and the Book of Knowledge conjured three tier five Spirit Spells, Phoenix Smash.
The emerald fire would burn at Chaos Dimension, and without it, the Suneater lacked the strength to be a threat.
"Right back at you!" Tezka opened his water and earth tails, releasing a pillar of Zero and another of Corruption.
The Cursed Ice struck the Spirit Spells while they were still taking form, turning them into fire-shaped ice sculptures. The Cursed Earth struck next, shattering the Phoenix Smashes into bits and altering their energy signature.
Uragar found himself ablaze with the mystical fire of his own Spirit Magic that now didn’t recognize him as its master, nor did it answer to his will. Tezka also conjured the tier four Chaos Spell, Mourning Rain, to exploit the opening.
The barrage of bolts of Chaos tore Uragar’s host to shreds and turned the Book of Knowledge into a Davross sieve, putting him out of commission again.
"It’s just you and me now, kid!" Tezka roared. "Your Severed Sky array is a pain in my neck, but the silver lining is that it stops everyone else from casting arrays as well! Your big ass magical formation takes so much space that there’s not enough left for anything else!"
"Sala- I’ll-" Jorl tried to tell the Ring of Space that she needed to hold out only the time for him to take a few more breaths of Invigoration, but talking was too much for his tortured body.
Tezka’s fists had crippled the Storm Griffon and the Bastet to the point that darkness fusion only kept them from losing consciousness. Moreover, the Suneater’s blows had shattered their bones, and the impact with the ceiling and the following fall had punctured their organs.
The two Divine Beasts were as helpless as blind puppies and would remain that way until they healed.
"Stay back!" Salanoth tried to conjure a new Eternity Seal, but weaving its first rune was enough to crack her real body and ruin her focus. "You have no idea what you are doing! There is too much at stake!"
"Now you want to talk?" Tezka said with cruel laughter. "Don’t worry, I’m not one to hold a grudge, and I’m a sucker for a good story, especially a sob one. Enlighten me!"
Endless Night’s elemental crystals flared, turning its edge into an Infinity Blade. Under normal circumstances, the Ring of Space would have scoffed at it, but things were anything but normal now.
’One hit. All it takes him is one hit, and I’m screwed!’ Salanoth conjured an Infinity Blade of her own and desperately tried to block the rain of incoming blows.
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