LIGHTNOVELONLINE Chapter 107: Chapter 97 Rush
In a blur, Katley vanished and reappeared behind him with her sword ready to slice toward his neck. Reacting on instinct, Dante swung his scythe to block, but the blade passed through like a ghost.
He barely had time to process it. 'No words... no commands...' She had just phased through his defense. Dante's poker face continued; even if he was slightly confused because he expected her to yell a word to do that, he simply guessed it was a lingering effect.
And Dante struck the correct answer: by erasing uncertainty earlier, Katley stopped playing by the rules. She managed to do quantum tunneling, bypassing his defenses, and even worse, after that, she quantum-locked Dante.
He could feel it in every movement, 'sluggish,' like fighting underwater. Yet, thanks to the relentless force of the love and hate potions flowing through him, he wasn't frozen solid in the spot. Not yet.
His eyes glowed for a fraction, and from his back, a storm of black, dripping hands exploded outward; thousands of them, all twisting and writhing, reaching out to tear Katley apart. They radiated pure hatred, seeking to crush anything in their path. His shadow grew darker, thickening like ink as the spark in his left eye dimmed.
Katley barely blinked. Surrounding her, ethereal blue shields shimmered around her, blocking their hands as if they didn't even exist. She moved through them like they were less than nothing. She said with a twisted and distorted voice, "ExplaiN You should? Why I it,"
Dante faintly wondered what those were and realized that the girl had replied to his question before he could even formulate it.
While they violently clashed in and out in an extremely powerful showcase of power, Katley fervently mumbled to herself, 'I need something lethal but not an overkill... Wait, it doesn't have to be my ability!' a little smile widened on her lips. She had an awful idea, a wonderful, awful idea, but time was running out; she needed to capture him before they came, "THERMODYNAMICS-"
Dante's cold eyes slowly gained a more hateful sparkle, and the fake love aura permeated the air.
his eyes never left Katley's sword as he interrupted her words, "It... is what it is..." The second these words exited Dante's lips, Katley's hand felt empty; there wasn't a hilt to be holding; it was gone, reduced to less than atoms.
'So the little aspect it starting to understand how to leverage his reality-warping abilities...' she thought of that as she yelled angrily, to make a facade, "BITCH! It was extremely costly and was imbued with anti-magic! Years of work gone in an instant and that shit was a few million..."
Dante, unfazed, barely reacted to her outburst. His gaze shifted skyward, locking onto the faint outline of the moon hanging silently above them. His face was emotionless, yet somehow more intense. Yes, In the midst of battle, he stared at the moon as if it held the answers to everything for some strange reason.
*Drip*
A slow, grotesque, inky black liquid seeped from Dante's nose, staining his pink-white face. It wasn't blood; it was something far more 'loathing.' His hand moved unnaturally, seemingly trying to grab something, and with a sharp *snap*, the air around them crackled.
Katley's breath stopped. She erratically scanned her surroundings, with each of her senses on high alert, waiting for the inevitable blow, even focusing more on how her mana reserves reacted at such an event.
But nothing happened.
There was no immediate impact, no blast of energy, no sudden disappearing, just eerie silence.
Like a string pulled tight, waiting to snap, the tension was unbearable. She could feel the weight of something looming, menacing in the corner, but she couldn't see it.
*Snap*
"!!!"
Below her feet, a colossal shadow, so vast and so looming, darkened the battlefield in an instant. Katley's eyes widened in disbelief as she whipped her head upward--
The moon was falling upon her.
--above her, the moon, massive and terrifying, descended toward the ground. It filled the sky, glowing with a hellish red hue like a meteor on the verge of impact.
Katley took a second to appreciate the beauty in it, 'The moon should have theoretically crumbled into little pieces... I wonder why she chose such dramatic attack... can she even survive her own move?'
The speed at which it fell was staggering. Katley calculated she had mere seconds--ten at most--before it would hit. The sheer force would obliterate everything except her and perhaps Dante.
Seeing the moon's surface crackling with fiery energy prompted her to take action now!
If Dante died, it would be a loss to her, making all this ordeal for nothing, and she also needed to take care of her companions, "I hope this pays for not helping them," she sighed, knowing that this was gonna cost her a lot of mana. "COLLISION!!!"
The moon crashed down, but instead of the deafening explosion everyone would expect, it phased through the battlefield, fading out of reality. It was as if the moon was nothing more than a hologram, a poorly rendered image, stuttering and flickering like a broken SFM video.
Katley's vision blurred as the system notification flashed before her, but it wasn't a notification about the fight; it was a message.
A message that painfully pounded in her skull, and soon enough, it would be a total migraine.
Things were spiraling into chaos fast, slipping from her control, and the panic set in deep. 'No bueno,' she thought grimly. Her breath was ragged and uneven as she watched Dante wind up, a punch of pure, fake love heading straight for her like a streak of light.
"INERTIA!"
Dante's strike stopped mid-air mere inches away from her. The force that should've pulverized her simply... stopped.
Katley used her advantage; she prepared herself to capture this aspect for at least a month, thinking about what she would do if he tried to kill himself, "The Sova. K. device should be enough to contain you; your reserves aren't infinite and probably not bigger than mine."
She prepared her throat and said an unknown word, "GWPT-GTKP!"
The place froze, everything turned monochromatic, and new colors began appearing that were in the basic spectrum; even the own Katley couldn't name them because they were foreign to any universe humans had set foot on.
Turning her eyes to the left, she saw a bar half empty; seeing how her mana reserve dimmed and some of her abilities activated to prevent her from falling under 50%, she mumbled, "An alien word... Ugh... 'Fang' is gonna be a pain on the ass with this..." Katley began drinking more mana potions, "now to wait 10 seconds in this frozen time, and the artifact should activate-"
*crack*
Katley underestimated one critical thing about this aspect, and it's fair as it isn't really that common for such an event to occur.
First, gods don't simply exist in isolation. Normally, a god has many underlings, better known as 'followers' in its control.
The number of followers varies, but often, they hold an army that equitably shares the power in proportion to your rank. Of course, the higher your rank, the more power this god shares with you. At times, they even enhance your abilities, thereby augmenting your strengths to a whole new level that others can't reach.
Despite being an immortal god and having the solution to any problem he may have, Aqarath is the ultimate procrastinator.
So: Aqarath isn't too interested in creating a "cult." Heck, he only chooses aspects from time to time because he has to.
With eternity at his disposal, everything could always be postponed until,
TOMORROW...
What does all of this mean for the sole faithful follower of this god?
Without a crowded pool of followers, without others to steal Aqarath's divine energy, this lone devotee didn't just receive a fraction of the god's power.
He received all of it.
Every single blessing, every ounce of power that could've been given across a multitude, now coursed through a single one.
And in a universe where luck and talent are everything, where just a single scrap was the difference between day and night, that meant one thing: He wasn't just another player--There was no competition. No shared blessings.
Just raw, undiluted power.
*Crack*
The sound of the crack didn't send her into a state of fear; deep inside, she expected it, "FUCK FUCK FUCK!" she was slowly being absorbed into a panic state, 'I didn't waste a lot of potions and time for you to simply die!!!'
Before she could react, a punch connected with her chest, sending her flying backward, crashing into the dirt. She gasped weakly, barely able to form the words. "I stopped reality... I erased concepts beyond your comprehension... HOW ARE YOU MOVING?!"
Dante's pink body began melting in an amalgamation of love and hate; his skin barely kept itself from breaking apart and transforming into an otherwordly creature. The thing in front of Katley long ago stopped being human; right now, it was a monster that just resembled a humanoid form.
He paused as if he was answering her question silently within the storm that was in his mind.
Then, with intentional slowness, Dante began walking toward her, with each step resonating with an eerie, otherworldly sound. Two massive ethereal wings erupted from his back, black and pink, jagged and beautiful. They stretched wide, casting a terrible light over the battlefield, making an unholy spectacle of majesty and anguishness.
Dante's eyes blazed with an intensity that seemed almost feral as he advanced. His every movement emanated a tangible cold dread that seemed to seep from the void within him. Thousands of icy, pink-black spectral hands unfurled from his back, restraining Katley's exit. He murmured emptily in the frozen air, "You've taken everything from me, and now, I will return the favor…"
The thousands of hands, hands emanating malevolence, stopped inches away from her, forcibly trying to tear her apart, and with a voice devoid of warmth or humanity, he murmured, "I will tear you apart, flesh from bone…"
Dante's hands, brimming with pure malevolence, stopped just inches from her body, twitching, itching to shred her apart into little pieces as the many barriers that protected her disappeared. "I will tear you apart, flesh from bone..."
*Step*
Katley's vision darkened as Dante loomed closer. His face twisted into something dimmer, something beyond hatred, and she could no longer see the faint heart mark that burned at his heart. "Dismantle your remains into specks of dust, leaving only a faint whisper of your name..."
*Step*
"I'll fracture your thoughts into a myriad of pieces until all that remains is the echo of your terrified screams…"
*Step*
"and I won't rest until I've scattered your body to the farthest reaches of oblivion where the very fabric of your existence will yearn for nonexistence…" (Add step SFX after each paragraph)
*Step*
He stopped, towering over her, "Here..."
*Step*
"And..."
*Step*
"Now..."
*DING!*
------
Authors note:
(I'm lazy and have no time, I KNOW! AND SHUSH! This chapter is 2k words long)
Also remember this:
At last, the corrupted girl stands alone. A vessel is coveted; it's the body they claim. Ten executioners await, one more than ready to seize her with a wave. Ending with a chaotic unease and many souls at the edge of a flame.
VI Träumend
And then, in the middle of all the chaotic cries, four red threads intertwine, being fate's grand surprise. Sealed by four witnesses: a girl with stained, ravishing hair, A guy favored by earth and heavens themselves, A whispering yellow thing with many eyes and mouths, and, as time passes by, someone with a touch as gentle as a lover's kiss.