Chapter 176: Question Asked
Two monstrous figures, one large mechanical chimaera whose essence infected the world around it. The other was a beautiful star in human-ish form, which forcibly melted everything around it.
Neither side was staying still as projectiles were being fired by both sides, and as I charged forward, he pulled waves of metal from the ground to try and crush me.
The other fighters on both sides were still giving it their all. I could see the land on the planet being terraformed into disaster zones as large sections were torn up by tornadoes, completely frozen over, or burned the ground to black ash. Every flavour of destruction was being properly shown off. The power-up head idiot was giving his troop was certainly helping, as that, with all their equipment and resources, gave them a powerful advantage, but there had been a moral hit with my performance.
I could feel it. They were ready for a man-made god, a human who has surpassed humanity and broken through the limits set by the universe, to destroy everything in his path. Then stood I, a being unaffected by his abilities and wouldn’t go down no matter what.
It really brought a smile to my face.
The leader of an organisation that had caused me so much misery was so confused as I burned all his dreams in front of him.
My flames flared with my excitement.
The black waves of metal mana clashed against my torrent of energy. The winner was observed in a moment, as my energy, empowered, consumed all in its path.
“Come on! Is that the best you got!?” My laugh warped as I continued my charge.
I can feel your fear. Try to hide it all you can, but it won’t escape me.
My solar flare of body went ballistic as my light melted through his sea of metal slope. His constructs were doing nothing to stop me, and while through his metal sea of weight around, he desperately tried to come up with other solutions.
I could feel the curses he applied piling on, but they were mana curses; they couldn’t impact me. Lasers of black mass fired at me from numerous directions, and while powerful enough to break through the toughest of armour, I could easily dodge them. Blocking them could be possible, but I didn’t want to risk too much damage in this state; I was slightly unstable after all. I was doing my best not to blow everything up.
He declared. “I am beyond human! I can’t be stopped by someone like you!”
Cleaving through the wave, I focused my energy to harden the metal mana and kicked it towards him purely to insult him. I had managed to attack him with his own contract, and he was certainly deeply angry and ashamed about it. So far, he had enjoyed overpowering other people’s mana and using it for his own madness. Sure, he couldn’t use mine, but at least I hadn’t been doing anything strange with his mana, until now.
I love that pain you are feeling~!
His suffering was my delight.
Our endless battle, fire and light against an all-consuming mass. His power flew up and rained down from the sky and spread out as his life empowered his desperate assault.
In a blitz of Starlight, my body flashed across the battlefield, dodging the large meteors of black metal and finally reached my target.
Within striking distance, he swung his deformed arm as it morphed into a monstrous mechanical claw, and my burning blade chopped it off. He couldn’t even scream as my body then exploded with energy for a pinpoint supernova.
The dark mana in the vicinity evaporated, and as he moved, he tried regenerating the damage as he went through a constant cycle of suffering as my flames brought pain to his soul, and he was quite lucky, as I couldn’t inflict the amount of pain that had been dealt to me.
As his consciousness tried to rescue him.
My claw of burning Starlight dug into his metal goop as it reached for the core of his body.
“You call yourself beyond a human?” I scoffed, “You haven’t even got to name your race yet, and let me tell you, ‘human’ is taken.”
I revealed some basic truths that he likely didn’t even understand.
His body was a pile of filthy metal mana goo that had formed an almost void that sucked everything into his being.
Searching through the large mass, I found my target.
Flames calmed down for a moment before exploding with blinding light as my hands dug into his mass and my energy fought against the matter that tried to devour me.
Despite his struggle, I could only laugh as the black sludge melted around my hands. Starlight spikes continuously fired from my back at everything that tried to close to save their pathetic leader. Each one became a new source of fuel for my flames and a statement that nothing they could do would be able to stop me.
I pulled the remains of his human from out of the throne of sludge and gripped him by the neck.
“Who are you…” His voice sounded hollow as the joy of life was drained from it. “Why did you—” He looked for a reason that I had to exist.
“No, we don’t know each other.” I shook my head. “We are strangers, only fighting because your ego, your plans, and your absolute piece of shit nature brought harm and conflict to everything you were only adjacent to.”
My claw of Starlight embedded itself into his chest. My energy pushed against his mana and forced it out of his body, preventing his regeneration by not allowing his overflowing energy to return to his body. His detailed control had completely fallen apart due to his inexperience in handling large amounts of mana. I understood the feeling, but it cost him. He wasn’t able to manoeuvre his mana through the gaps.
“All that power, but it couldn’t be kept in a single body.” I stared into his black hollow eyes. “Be happy you died on your throne, you rat bastard.”
He tried to reach for my neck as his body collapsed due to pressure from the surroundings, my power, and his own mana, crushing his body as it tried to return.
It didn’t take long, as I made sure to make this quick to not cause any unneeded risk. His body burned away, but his power was still seeping deep into the land, and the power that had spread to his followers had not disappeared, and the remaining constructs were acting on their last order. Some people didn’t even know their leader had died due to the fact that the energy was still pervasive all around us.
Sigh… I’m feeling tired, but it is good to see that everything worked.
His energy required me to clean it up, but that shouldn’t be too hard. My empowered form was something I had to slowly deactivate, which was why I wasn’t immediately cleaning up the filth; the pressure it was emitting helped counteract the energy and decreased Existence’s influence, if only slightly. Any breathing room was always nice after all.
I watched everything unfold around me. Lila was alright and had retreated with the rest of the people she was working with so she could recover and be safe. Nina was doing her best but looked relieved. She had noticed the enemy had been defeated and that I looked to be alive.
The core of energy inside of me calmed down as part of the energy was released, and some was returned to my domain. There was still a lot within my body, as it would take time for it to fully leave without damaging everything around me.
Okay, time to start removing the remains.
My flames began to eat away at the corpse and the mana on the ground and in the atmosphere. It had also infected and seeped deep into the ground, which wasn’t something I could easily clean up. So I was just going to let that dissipate naturally. As long as I could clean up what was on the surface, that would begin to weaken the enemy and remove the pressure on the allied force. The black mana on the ground was still a dangerous hazard.
As the fires consumed the mana, I felt a sudden surge in the mana that felt different, and I turned around with a spear in hand, but I couldn’t see anything as I felt the void grab me—and spit me back out.
In front of me, I saw hills of green, mountains of snow, a valley of lava, and stars I recognised all too well.