Chapter 385: Adulation (IV)

Chapter 385: Adulation (IV)

Chapter 385

Adulation (IV)

Flashing lights blurred and burned against the cosmic background of nothingness, two figures repeatedly clashing against one another in a series of mind-bending explosions that seemed powerful enough to dig a hole the size of a mountain in the ground.

Cain continued to procure quasi star cores and suffuse them with a kindle, and the continued to explode. The giant, though, continued to bat them away with his swords, seeming entirely irrational, as though in a decent to madness. The four arms never stopped moving, cutting through the barrier of sound and breaking the spacetime around them with each swing.

The blades left gashes in space as they fired off arrays of burning light, most of which was either black or dark crimson. They were suffused with the kind of Mana that couldnt be found anywhere below the 50th floor, the putrid and holistically shaven kind that underwent thousands of purifications.

Each strike carried the momentum of a thousand winds, and each clash burned amidst the two, procuring explosions that shook the netherspace. Nonetheless, the space stood and lived, always appearing untouched and anew.

Cain blinked forward aggressively, abruptly, past the giants incoming strike, his right-hand palm wide open, Mana trickling down and infusing into a spherical bomb. Spinning as he appeared behind the giant, he threw the sphere as though he were throwing a baseball, though, unlike the latter, the sphere expanded rapidly as it rammed into the giants back.

The ensuing explosion knocked Cain several miles back, and the giant several miles forward, forging massive distance between the two. Cain was the first to recover and, after glancing at the remaining health and Mana, silently cringed. Slamming his palms together, Mana within him burned once more as the leis of Mana lit up around him like fireflies. One mote after another appeared, each the size of a tiny corn, hundreds of them forming a shape of a halo.

On the other hand, the giant roared once again, shaking the surrounding space, as the four blades left his hands, alighting in black and crimson. Three blades formed the shape of a triangle with the fourth one cutting through the center from the bottom, its tip touching the tip of the triangle.

The sheer quantity and sharpness of Mana at the center of the two approaching objects became to dense that they birthed a tiny, but still a genuine, singularity. Shocked at the sight, the woman still found delight in it, realizing it was possible to create a temporal and spatial vortex to literally transfer most of the collision somewhere in the open space.

Working quickly, she spun the singularity forcibly and poured even more Mana into it on top of what it was already sucking. The singularity itself didnt grow, but its radius of impact didand as it approached the sweet spot, the woman did the unthinkable for mostshe reversed it.

The abrupt reversal of flow and even nature of Mana threw the entire aspect of the singularity onto its end, contrasting itit ballooned and tore open a tiny, yet dimensionally massive vortex that linked somewhere, millions and millions of light years away. Without even considering anything else, she pushed more Mana out toward the approaching star and blade, using them to feed the vortex. The temporal and spatial wormhole wasnt the kind that would self-sustain. In fact, it was like a kindled fuse in the raging rainready to implode at any moment.

Cain noticed the oddities, his eye veering upward toward the source of unknown interference; though he didnt recognize the hazy frame within the boundless fog of energy, the Mana signature felt faintly familiar. Besides, it wasnt as though there were many candidates when it came to who could it be.

Looking toward the center, he saw the star and the blade stage within the imminent collision; bracing himself, he heaved what little Mana he recovered and doused himself in it, head to toe, creating ethereal armor. It wouldnt block everything, but it would block enough--especially with the strange hole sucking away a lot of the spreading Mana.

What came soon after, for the time itself was being beyond stretched and bent and distorted, was a simple, blinding flash of light that scorched Cains eyes within a nanosecond. The pain pulsated crazily as he screamed, the sheer ripple of energy washing over him, melting his clothes and armor and even parts of his body. Terrified, he concentrated every ounce of Mana, even suffusing it with the Divine Seed within him, to defend himself--only then did the scorch ease, and his body began regenerating.

He couldnt hear anything--for at the exact moment that his eyes met their demise, so did his eardrums. He couldnt see, hear, feel, or even smell anything--all his senses had been fried, and he was an inch away from being burned to the crisp. He had vastly underestimated the sheer volume and power of the Mana generated by the collision of two attacks of that scale. Cringing inwardly, he wondered what the effects would have been if the woman hadnt assisted them in alleviating some of the pressure.

Eons or seconds or cycles ticked by--for the time was not--before his body was restored to the point where he could hear or open his eyes. By then, everything was gone, he realized--there was neither the star nor the blade there... and there wasnt a giant either. There was just a remnant, he saw, a blood-soaked and ghastly apparition floating there, the remnant will of awe and agony spawned from the last few moments of the giants life.

All else was white, Cain realized--pure, untainted white. There was nothing else there but him and the apparition--and the woman somberly looking at it. Despite having the clear sight of her, her features remained hazy, as though his eyes were too weak to appreciate her form.

Now, her voice was soft and melodic as she turned toward him. That was a bit dangerous, wasnt it?