Chapter 831: The Rematch! (Patreon)

A/N

Fight scenes are the most difficult for me to write so only 1 chap today, enjoy!

Chapter 831: The Rematch!

It didn’t matter how furious I was or what I thought. This wasn’t some anime where everything revolved around me. After all, I was no threat compared to a Rank 8, and the Otherworldly Being reminded me of this as its gaze fixated on the white-haired man standing to my left.

“You,” was all it said as it disappeared.

The next moment it was right behind Kal with its arm penetrating through his back and coming out through the front of his chest.

"Give me your body," it whispered, a sickly smile on its disfigured face. "Your blood. Your soul."

But when Kal’s dissipated into wet paint, the smile came apart and the figure was left with its arm extended and its fingers closing on nothing.

“How very sneaky,” it sneered, shaking its hand like it was trying to get rid of filth. “Look at this. Look at what I am wearing. A body riddled with failed experimentation with a heart that will give out within the next hundred years." It pulled at the loose skin of the wrist. "This will not do. I will need a great deal more than this before I am comfortable."

With no one else nearby, this was when it realised that I was standing here, or more accurately, it always knew I was here, but it hadn’t bothered to acknowledge my existence. Yet when it focused its senses on me, it froze, seemingly startled by what it saw.

"How interesting," it murmured. "I can sense them all inside it, red, blue, and the energy they all thought was lost - gold.” The skull tilted. "You’re so weak. Pathetically weak. It makes me sick, but even then, you still would have made a far better vessel than this old bag of bones."

I didn’t respond to it for two reasons.

The first was because I was doing everything in my power to not explode and attack with every technique I had in my arsenal.

And the second was because all of its actions and words since it had escaped from the Red Sun told me something very important.

This being didn’t know me, which meant it didn’t remember the past loop. 

Unlike me and Kal, it had been subjected to the power of the time loop all this time even though it was Otherworldly and Transcendent.

We had an advantage that it didn’t have any knowledge about, and I’m glad we did because if we wanted to beat this thing, we’d need every bit of help we could get.

“No…” the word came out slow as its eyes widened in confusion. “You’re more than that. What…what are you?”

With that, it disappeared, and I realised too late that it was coming at me.

Fortunately for me, I wasn’t in the shade of the Eldest Tree for no reason. Just like last time, a sharp root shot towards it.

The figure became visible to my Eldest Tree enhanced senses as it stepped sideways, barely avoiding the penetrating blow.

The root continued on its path, tearing a trench through fifty feet of earth before it stopped against the boulders at the edge of the Sacred Ring.

The figure drew to a stop and raised its hand up in a harmless gesture.

“Fine,” it sighed. “I’ll leave the boy alone…for now.”

Before it could continue what it was saying, its head snapped up towards the sky, narrowing in on a point of blue light that had appeared in the sky - Kal.

“There you are,” the smile returned to its face.

“I won’t let you take this world,” Kal said.

“Let me?” The laugh came out of my teacher’s throat. “This world has already been promised to me in an oath greater than blood. It’s been mine since before your grandfather had a name. You just don’t know it yet.”

With those words, the sky became ablaze in a clash of techniques that even with the Eldest Tree empowering my senses, it was difficult to follow.

However, one thing became obvious almost immediately. The difference between this fight and the previous one was that Kal had done his homework, and he had done it well.

Last loop, Kal had opened with a storm that was the size of a province. The being had built a lattice out of glowing lines in the air and unwritten the storm from the inside, then thrown all of that stolen force back at him.

So, this time, Kal didn’t make that mistake. He painted eleven small birds and sent them in from eleven angles. 

When the lattice formed to devour the birds, they dissipated on their own accord, and the lattice got almost nothing for it.

But it gave Kal the chance to move. He appeared behind the being with a kick aimed at its side.

The being’s eyes widened in surprise, clearly not having expected the speed and the misdirection of Kal’s attack, the strike landed clean, sending the being rocketing through the air, a streak of displaced pressure flattening the tree canopy below into a smoking crater.

Before the dust could even settle, the silhouette exploded outward from the wreckage, its crimson eye sockets blazing with a manic, insulted fury as it hovered mid-air. “Insects!” it roared, causing the very foundation of the Vermilion Vale to shake. “You only dare to bully me because of this weak vessel!”

Both of its hands snapped outward with its palms facing the sky as luminous geometric lines erupted from its fingertips, these were more complicated than the ones we’d seen before, these were a web of overlapping hexagrams and glowing runes that spanned dozens of meters.

As the spell matrix activated, the level of ambient energy in the valley plunged as the being drew it all into itself causing the air to turn heavy and freezing cold.

But Kal was never going to let the technique fully anchor, he wasn’t some amateur.

Instead of attacking with a spiritual technique, probably because he’d realised that the lich-like being’s physical combat was a weakness in this vessel, Kal closed the distance with terrifying velocity.

As he appeared directly above the being, the spell matrixes tried to shift in order to intercept him, but Kal slipped inside its defensive arc like a falling meteor and struck the being’s chest with fists enhanced by Rank 8 energy.

Boom!

The being shot down into the earth with a catastrophic shockwave that shattered the ground into a spiderweb of deep, boiling fissures, causing dust and pulverised stone to erupt into a towering cloud in the shape of a mushroom.

For a heartbeat, there was silence, and I actually felt hope.

After all, the body it was wearing wasn’t the most powerful Rank 8 in the world, the body of someone who was capable of decapitating someone as powerful as Kal. No. The body was that of my master’s, a Rank 7 Skybound who was more interested in his experiments than with his own personal power.

But the low, rasping chuckle that echoed from the dust told me that sure, while the vessel was worse, the weakened version was still something a Rank 8 couldn’t handle, even if that Rank 8 was a time looper.

“You really thought it would be that easy?”

A blood-red matrix, pulsing with chaotic energy, ignited beneath the rubble, turning the smoke of the crater into a violent crimson color. The geometric lines didn’t hover in the air anymore, instead they sank directly into the being’s skin, causing the surrounding skin to fizzle.

Before anyone could react, the being vanished.

My eyes narrowed. It was too fast. Even with the Eldest Tree amplifying my perception, it was too difficult to keep track of its movements, let alone get involved and support Kal. Eldest Thorn must have been thinking the same thing because he let out a frustrated sigh.

Bang!

It was only because of the impact that sounded like a thunderclap that I realised that the figure had connected its bony fist with Kal’s forearms, which had come up defensively at the last microsecond.

The sheer kinetic force blasted him backward through three separate stone outcroppings, turning the boulders into gravel.

“This world’s energy is incomplete,” the being whispered, materialising inches before Kal before he could come to a stop. “How could you even think of defeating me like this?”

Its fingers shot out like spears, reaching forward to pierce everything in their path.

Kal twisted his body to redirect the strike, but the being’s movement was layered with an auxiliary matrix that warped the local gravity. The blow shifted mid-air, bypassing Kal's guard and driving straight into his ribs.

Kal gasped, vomiting out a crimson mist of blood as the sickening crunch of bone breaking ran throughout the clearing.

Before he could drop to the ground, the lich grabbed him by the collar of his robes.

“You’re mine now!” the being hissed, its eye sockets blazing with malicious glee.

“Kal!” Lady Laelyn called out, taking a step away from Eldest Tree before Beric held her back.

“My Lady, the lad was right,” the old soldier attempted to reassure her. “This is beyond us.”

They both looked at me helplessly, hoping that I had a solution to this predicament, begging me to do something. Even Elder Thorn was watching me with his fists clenched, waiting for instructions, waiting to join a battle that we likely were not able to win.

Dammit!

They were right.

Even though I knew I had no chance against it, we couldn’t just stand here and let Kal be devoured. The end of Kal would foretell the end of the world. With clenched teeth, I reached inward for the Dharma Vessel, that was the only technique I had that could potentially reverse the situation.

That was when the sky split open and two men walked out.

The first one was a lean figure wearing all blue, his coat was still catching up with his fast arrival, and the second one was an old monk in grey robes, but more than the sight of them, what brought me some relief was the hundred and eighty feet golden giant Dharma Vessel that accompanied them.

The figure's eye sockets flared as it looked up at the behemoth towering over it.

“Who dares to a—”

The lich never got a chance to finish its sentence.

A flash of azure energy whipped past it, snatching Kal from its grip and sliding him back toward the safety of the Eldest Tree's roots while at the exact same time, all eight golden hands struck from every angle in a blinding cascade of divine light that atomized the surrounding air.

The being was sent across the vale sideways, taking the top off a ridge, going through a stand of crimson trees and turning them into splinters, and hitting the valley wall hard enough that a slab of rock the size of the monastery's great hall came down on top of it.

Then the rubble moved, and it climbed out.

"I would have dodged that," it said as it slapped the side of its own skull hard, "had it not been for this pesky voice in my head that will not shut up."

My eyes widened at that because I understood what that meant. Elder Molric was still in there. He was still alive, and he was fighting.

The figure lowered its hand and smiled at us with half a face I knew.

"Good," it said, nodding at the Rank 8s before acknowledging those of us under the shade of the Eldest Tree. "Seven of you. With your souls, I should be able to make this vessel respectable."

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