At exactly 9 PM, Gangdong-gu became a battlefield.
No, the word 'battlefield' was inaccurate. Instead, one could call it a deadly game of tag.
The two participants were Soo Jinyoung and Keikoku Amane. Soo Jinyoung had the runner role while Keikoku Amane was the tagger.
Of course, Soo Jinyoung could not afford to be caught by Keikoku's frail hands.
For someone who could manipulate antimatter and thus obliterate his opponent with a mere touch, a fight was nothing more than devising the quickest and most certain method to make contact with his enemy. However, even that was decided with the six wings behind him which could easily cross the speed of sound like child's play.
All he needed to do was strike the target once with those wings and let nature take its course. Even if the target somehow survived the initial impact—which was theoretically impossible without a miracle—they certainly wouldn't withstand the ensuing radiation and would die shortly afterward, regardless of their species.
Keikoku Amane has been the 'Disaster of Storms' for about one thousand years so he could comfortably say that has always been the case.
「 He knew that he was the strongest. Yet... 」
"What the hell is up with those flames of yours?! How are you able to survive a hit from my antimatter without immediately returning into dust, huh?!"
Shouted Keikoku from the skies with a demon-like voice.
「 Why was his heart filled with so much disorder? 」
When they first clashed, Soo Jinyoung was blown away and her left arm was severed. But she somehow managed to restored that severed arm using some blue-white flames of sorts and survived the lingering radiation too.
I don't just understand. First, It was that blonde from before and now, this woman. How many more strange people are in this world?
Keikoku Amane felt like he was punched in the gut. The fact that were people that could negate his Antimatter left a bitter taste in his mouth.
But it was a misunderstanding. Soo Jinyoung absolutely had nothing in her arsenal of skills capable of defending against antimatter. If she hadn't activated a certain skill just in time before the collision, she would have been instantly erased upon contact.
To be precise, It was her trump card which she calls a signature skill.
Pheonix Flame. It was a skill equivalent to the unique trait of the Pheonix species, Immortality.
Not only does It grant the user the ability to manipulate the legendary flames of the firebird, It also grants the user the Immortal-like regeneration of the Pheonix species.
As long as she was not instantly killed—her 'body' completely destoryed and her 'soul' crushed— and still possessed magic power, she can continue to restore herself from all forms of injuries even if her head was destoryed.
Without that skill, Soo Jinyoung's name might as well be 'corpse'.
Moreover, there was the unbearable burden of enduring the excruciating pain of burning, coupled with the relentless mental fatigue brought on by the inflicted attacks each time the skill was activated. So the skill certainly couldn't be called a free lunch.
But Keikoku Amane didn't know that. Even so...
"So what?!" The brown haired disaster gritted his teeth. "No matter how many times you restore yourself with those feeble flames, if you can't step within five meters of my space, you're nothing more than a moving punching bag that can handle alot of punishment!"
While shouting so, his six wings curled up behind him and gathered strength.
"I just came up with something good, make sure you dodge it, Okay? I don't want to make a mess out of that delicate little body of yours!"
If he was a normal boy meeting Soo Jinyoung for the first time, he would have definitely fall in love. But the current Keikoku was filled with a more twisted desire— to make a bloody mess of the woman's body.
Fwooosh!
The six wings unleashed countless black projectiles towards Soo Jinyoung's fleeing back. Looking behind her shoulders, Soo Jinyoung clicked her tongue and evaded the attack using Cloud Steps.
The black projectiles were like tiny needles that phased through anything they made contact with it.
Defending was futile, and using the surrounding buildings for cover proved pointless; even flying through the air was out of the question.
The sky was the territory of the Disaster of Storms. Using Cloud Steps that required mana to create an air platform would only make her an easy target.
Soo Jinyoung thought about using her flames to counter the black needless flying towards her, but quickly discarded that thought as soon as it came.
Those projectiles were created from the antimatter wings. Therefore, they were filled entirely with antiparticles that ignited upon contact with any form of matter, including the gases that make up fire.
If she tried to counter the projectiles using flames, It might cause a huge explosion that might swallow her as well.
"Tch."
Soo Jinyoung clicked her tongue and continued her tremendous sprint. Her sharp eyes tracked the descending black needles, and weaved left and right to dodge them with precision. Yet, it was impossible to avoid them all—several pierced her arms, thighs, and even her head, despite her best efforts. Even so, her flames continued to restore her damaged body parts.
This is getting no way. At this rate, I would be completely on the defensive.
She couldn't engage her opponent in a direct confrontation, but that didn't mean she would simply stand there and take his attacks like a good girl. As she considered her options, a clever strategy suddenly came to mind, and without hesitation, Soo Jinyoung swiftly set it into action.
Soo Jinyoung soared onto a rooftop and unleashed a devastating wave of flames, shaped like a cannon blast. The attack was amplified by the power of the Red Phoenix Sword.
The Red Pheonix was the guardian of the south and they happened to be fighting in Gangdong-gu, which was located at the southeastern of Seoul. As long as she was facing the opposite direction with her back facing South, she would be able to produce high amount of firepower. Even with the power of one of the Four Gods.
Swish!
Keikoku's over twenty-meter-long wings effortlessly nullified her attack with a dismissive whoosh and cut through the air like massive blades towards Soo Jinyoung's position.
Soo Jinyoung used Cloud Step to evade the demon-like wings that crashed into the building and split it vertically in two.
Swish!
The six wings behind him instantly recovered form and he flew into the sky at once by breaking through the rooftop and flying through the hole.
But once he reached the skies...
"Huh? Where did she go?"
Keikoku swept his gaze around but he failed to find his opponent. Her appearance had completely disappeared like a ghost which caused a frown to appear on his face.
Playing hide and seek now, huh? I see. She's trying to buy herself some time to come up with some strategy out of her ass. It would take a lot of time to destory every building one by one and I'm too lazy to do that. So how do I fetch her out?
A child with a loaded gun can kill a man, but becomes truly dangerous once they learn how to reload it. In Keikoku's case, he had encountered an opponent who could regenerate endlessly, no matter how many times he destroyed them.
Simply put, he had found the best test subject for his abilities.
"Ah, I know! Would that work? I've been wanting to try something like that out, but the calculations are a little messy. But it should work, right?"
With a crazed smile, Keikoku Amane flew further upward into the air. He ascended higher and higher until he reached a satisfactory distance of several hundred meters in the sky.
Soo Jinyoung who had noticed him leaving tilted her head, confused.
Was he trying to run away?
She frowned. But she also didn't feel that was his true intentions. Why would he suddenly leave when he has the complete advantage? No matter how she thought about it, It didn't make sense.
She could tell he was plotting something, but couldn't figure out what.
[Many constellations grasps by the overwhelming sense of a bad omen.]
The constellations? She had been ignoring the indirect messages of the constellations that would appear here and there, but that message truly caught her eyes.
Wait, could it be...
Her blood ran cold.
Her worst fears became true when she heard a loud boom!
The sound penetrated into her ears and almost tore apart her fragile eardrums. The sensation of blood flowing out from her ears could be felt and the entire world seemed to shake.
It was not a metaphor. There was an intense vibration that could felt on the ground that resembled an earthquake. It was a terrible shockwave that spread throughout the earth.
The cause was a gigantic sonic boom. To be precise, the result was the sound barrier being broken more than 88,000 times in a millisecond.
Soo Jinyoung's vision slowly cleared, and she saw something falling from the sky to the ground at incredible speed while clearing the clouds.
Upon closer inspection, she realised that 'something' was a black cocoon which spinned rapidly like a high-speed drill. She wondered what it could possibly be, then finally recalled that it was descending from the heights of the sky where Keikoku Amane had vanished into.
"?!!"
She received a strong shock as alarm bells went off inside her head.
The entire blood cells and vessels inside her body were screaming at her to run away.
She must escape before that thing hits the ground.
If she doesn't escape, she'll definitely be ruined.
Soo Jinyoung immediately leaped out from her hiding spot and activated Cloud Step at full power.
Before she could even take her third step, her mind came to a heart-wrenching realisation.
Even if she uses the movement technique to the fullest, she won't be able to escape the blast radius on time. It was likely that she would be blown apart before she even leaves Gangdong-gu.
"Tck!"
Soo Jinyoung gritted her teeth. In the end, she decided to activate all her defensive skills at once and tank the explosion.
KABOOM!!! A heavy impact echoed.
In an instant, all sound was engulfed.
The area where the black cocoon had landed erupted like a colossal bomb and unleashed a torrent of flames that consumed everything in Gangdong-gu. The shockwave radiated outward, leveling structures and shattering glass windows in its fiery wake.
The scorching inferno mercilessly engulfed Soo Jinyoung's fragile body, her screams swallowed by the roaring flames, as the fire swept through the district in an unrelenting surge and devoured everything in its path.
The shockwave rippled outward, reaching neighboring districts and heralding a catastrophe that echoed through the city...
A giant mushroom cloud formed over Gangdong-gu. A horrific mixture of flame and smoke rose high into the sky and casted an ominous shadow over what remained of Gangdong-gu.
Nothing was left untouched.
All the buildings were destroyed, the roads lay in ruins, and the Jamsil Bridge had collapsed. Even the neighboring bridges and districts suffered from the shockwave's impact. Additionally, radiation spread alongside the sea of flames and made it evident that Gangdong-gu had been transformed into a dead zone where no living organisms could survive.
It was utter destruction, reminiscent of a nuclear explosion.