Quintess shuddered at the power rupturing his body. His arm was dismantled seamlessly, as though it were paper. The eruptions caused by the dark Ju`wtte threatened to reach his soul while frying every bit of the rest of the body they touched.
The Deity scowled and tried to warp his immense figure away, but alas… while even a slight portion of the gloomy greys were over him, he could not access his ability to manipulate space. In fact, the drab blotch of colour seemed to pull him in as though it were some kind of black hole with glue-like qualities.
Indeed, every blotch of grey over Aigas right now would suppress defences and movements in anyone it touched while dealing fatal damage. That was the automatic Primary assault function of Deific Usurper!
thought Quintess as he carved through the affected bit of him using a powerful Andori, and left it behind while leaping away.
But his enormous body still found itself caught in a few more greys. All of them were unforgiving.
A chunk of the Deity's head, chest and thigh exploded, ruined finely, before he shrunk down to a third of his size, and followed one particularly large blotch of white. Nothing attacked him then – as he had hoped.
As Quintess focused on healing his missing limb, he cursed and noted how this bizarre, supposed Territory worked.
Indeed, the grey blotches within the Imperial Territory attacked who landed within them automatically and indiscriminately, but the white ones did not.
As it so happened, Boron, Listafelle and Fulgardt learned extraordinarily quickly from Quintess' experience. The former two had only just barely lost a finger and wrist respectively before they shrank down and followed the white blotches.
'How troublesome,' thought Fulgardt.
The Deities shared the same sentiment. Quintess moreso. He was seething.
he cried within and fixed Skullius with a glare.
White Amras, thick and bubbly like soapsuds gathered in the healed Deity's hand and forged the shape of a particularly fierce looking vulture. The steam building from the creature's wings suggested that it was immensely hot, but also immensely malevolent. It shot towards Skullius in less than a blink and smashed into him and Ferex point-blank. Thɪs chapter is updated by 𝕟𝕠𝕧𝕖𝕝•𝖿𝗂𝗋𝖾•𝘯𝘦𝘵
Yet, upon making contact, this attack, which could have levelled an average world at worst, barely made Skullius flinch. As soon as it struck him, it broke apart like glass and swept across Aigas as a breeze.
The three Deities were stunned, as was even Fulgardt.
The Immoral would have at least evaded an attack like that. The raw Amras of a Deity was no trifle, after all.
…But Skullius took it to be trifle.
His and Ferex's bodies were radiating the same Amras drawn from Quintess, Listafelle and Boron, after all. Indeed, a faint layer of frothing white Amras coated them like thick blankets.
Attacks from the Deities that sponsored the Imperial Territory, Deific Usurper, had only a 10% chance of actually harming the caster: Skullius!
Fulgardt snorted at this while avoiding a blotch of grey that was approaching him.
'I see. Troublesome indeed,' he thought and narrowed his eye at the grey blotch. 'It's that lightning he uses again. It has a variety of uses, it seems. Travel, attack, defence…'
The Immoral considered it… interesting.
"Is this how you will take my freedom, brat?!" he cried, a grin once again popping on his face.
Skullius took his bow, wakizashi and gladius into his hands. He was ready for an effective offense. During the First Phase of the War Body, he only had access to roughly half of the Seeds of the Fruit of Worlds, his immense soul-manipulation abilities, and of course… these three weapons in his hands.
Ignoring Fulgardt's words, he spared a fraction of a moment to appraise his gladius with the guidance field.
A gladius made from the bones of the Nullinity's Herald. It has blessed with the |Greater Cosmic Law|
Much of the information on the weapon, which indeed sported the same four-dimensional traces as his spine and chausses, was hidden, but still…
'The Greater Cosmic Law, huh?' Skullius thought.
This wasn't the first time he'd used the War Body, but it was the first time he was getting a chance to truly appraise everything it held for himself rather than being fed its features through the words of his phantoms.
'If these weapons all have this Cosmic Law, then why did Serenity make a big deal of me acquiring Maximum Jaqquezjaqqz? I haven't even gotten any utility pertaining to this Law from that Parlous Nature!'
It was mystery indeed, but Serenity was no longer here to answer that.
Fulgardt clasping his hands together forced Skullius' attention back to the tasks at hand.
"You must feel utterly proud of yourself for keeping the mechanics of a domestic power system even after reaching Divinity," he said. "But you're not the only one!"
Amras exploded from Fulgardt and flashed forth.
In 0,000013 of a second, it had constructed a fully functional Territory that trapped Skullius within its clutches!
Indeed, continuing to use features of domestic power systems after reaching Divinity was quite common in the wider reality. Better yet, when something like a Territory was used with Amras rather Nitros, the conditions for casting it (those that humans, Sif and Giants had to abide by) became obsolete; Fulgardt didn't need to call out the Territory's name. (In truth, neither did Skullius, really.)
But Skullius was unbothered by Fulgardt's Territory.
A sandy beach under a starry, night sky was the 'Imaginary GeoScape'. Graves, great and small rose from the sand, some clearly meant for distinguished beings, and others for those Fulgardt likely didn't care for. Indeed, the graves represented enemies Fulgardt had felled, some of them Deities, some of them mortals.
As Fulgardt cackled, Skullius smirked.
"Is this your way of avoiding my Imperial Territory's automatic attack function? Clever," he said. "You must have reinforced your Territory on the outside significantly given your confidence that I won't simply smash it with my own."
"Well, I don't mean to brag, but you can't best me in any aspect of Aigas' power system, brat."
Skullius brandished his gladius with one hand while pointing at his temple with another. "Is that so? I see it differently, though. One of the perks I get because of my Imperial Territory is something only Deities have access to. I can see Aigas' future. Well, in this case, because so many Divines are here, I see many, many futures."
"Your Territory thrives in none of them. Before mine, it might as well be a thin paper wrapping."
Fulgardt had already shuttled towards Skullius before he finished the sentence.
But the Sovereign of Refined Anarchy had already a seen a future among hundreds. He knew what Fulgardt meant to do.
Ferex zoomed out of the way before Fulgardt could land a grizzly punch empowered by Exorbitance.
The Apostle was putting all the Deific Amras he was receiving to good use. With his soul powers, he had immediately manufactured himself as an artificial soul that he fed all this power. In turn, since the soul learned from the body and the body learned from the soul, his strength grew rapidly. The added touch of Skullius feeding him information through their mental connection made it seem as though the Apostle was faster than he actually was!
Fulgardt snapped behind him after his failed attack. Skullius had drawn his bow and loosened an arrow that might as well have been a condensed length of light.
It was atrociously fast. Fulgardt hurried to swat it away after lathering his hand with [Evil Darkness], but to his dismay, Skullius' gladius – thrown from the distance – was flying towards his chest while the Sovereign's wakizashi, its hilt chained to a length of Enlightened Ju`wtte was also swiping towards his neck from his right flank!
'Don't underestimate me, brat!' Fulgardt thought.
[Just Light] worked wonders for his speed. In that impossible fraction of time before he took on all three attacks in rapid succession, he might as well have had multiple bodies from a third perspective. After swatting away the light arrow, he struck the gladius down with his elbow, and ducked the wakizashi.
It was an astonishing feat. But…
An uppercut caught Fulgardt just as he was hunched.
Skullius, adorning a large gauntlet around his arm that looked rather hairy, with fascinating locks of bone along its length, smashed into the Immoral's jaw with all the force of three exploding worlds. But the damage to Fulgardt's physical body might have been the least impressive.
His soul felt as though it were being pulled apart from all asides in that impact. Perhaps it was, in fact, torn.
Perhaps that was the reason behind Fulgardt's roar of agony as he streaked into the sky of his Territory, blew through it and landed back inside the Imperial domain of the Sovereign!