Chapter 1069: Destructive Death

The opposing law energies continued clashing for several moments before Arthur’s Silver Nebula completely overwhelmed the Hydra’s breath, crushing the entire attack beneath its gravitational force and neutralising it before it could reach him.

But despite this, Arthur frowned lightly, pulling back his hand and unclenching his fist.

"Hmm. That’s not as good as I expected."

Cosmic energy bubbled from his heart, through his energy circuits, and with a soft voice, he muttered three different commands.

|Attribute Resonance. Law Resonance. Force Amplification.|

The three techniques he’d learned from the Spirits of Iohodis in Taemia activated in the same instant the Hydra unleashed another combination breath.

Arthur quickly responded with another Silver Nebula, but this time, the force behind his attack was completely different.

The gravitational shockwave pushed through the combined law and cosmic energies without losing any momentum, continuing forward until it reached the Hydra’s enormous body.

Its cosmic energy shield was easily broken by the space-rupturing shockwave, which then crashed into the Hydra’s body with such overwhelming force that its massive body was blasted through the atmosphere and launched right out into space.

Two of its heads were blown away instantly, while the flesh and bones in a third were nearly crushed to paste.

Its body flew through space and crashed onto the surface of one of the planet’s moons, the impact sending molten rock scattering across the moon’s surface and into orbit. Its body rebounded and tumbled through the darkness of space, only managing to flip around and regain control of itself after several rotations.

The Hydra’s eyes were filled with pure disbelief at Arthur’s attack, which had suddenly become more than thrice as powerful as before.

’He muttered something before he attacked. What did he do!?’

Its remaining six heads looked around in confusion, trying to locate Arthur, while the three destroyed heads rapidly regenerated in a flash, their necks and heads completely restoring themselves in seconds.

|Wow, your regeneration is as ridiculous as the stories say.|

|!|

All nine heads of the Hydra immediately locked onto Arthur’s position the moment they heard his voice, spotting him sitting atop one of the broken fragments of the moon it had just crashed into.

|I don’t think I’ve seen anybody with regeneration this fast since Jamie back in Valmone,| Arthur continued, rubbing his chin lightly.

The Hydra, without even a single word, immediately spewed breaths of poisonous energy that rapidly expanded into a dense green gas field that covered the entire spatial region, catching Arthur within its range.

Arthur didn’t even bother avoiding it, simply shaking his head as he spoke.

|Come on now, didn’t you see that the poison in the swamp didn’t affect m—hmm?|

His words were suddenly cut short as his instincts warned him of danger, and he quickly increased the intensity of the destructive energy layer coating his skin.

’The potency of the poison suddenly increased. For it to bypass my defences...must be a Unique Authority related to Poison.’

Arthur immediately raised his guard, expanding his spatial perception just in time to notice constructs of poison law energy forming within the field of green, each one reinforced with the ambient cosmic energy.

The constructs all took the shapes of enormous serpents and sharp projectiles of varying sizes, all of which shot towards him faster than light itself.

Arthur’s Temporal and Destructive Authorities activated in a flash, and he condensed the law energies of his three active Authorities between his cupped palms, causing space to crumble as a swirling gravitational singularity was born.

|AGSD.|

The violent singularity immediately dragged every projectile towards itself with immense gravitational force, crushing and devouring both the incoming attacks and the poisonous law energy filling the surrounding field.

Arthur then compressed the singularity into his right palm before teleporting away from the Hydra’s snapping jaws, reappearing directly beneath its middle head.

|Let’s test your middle head’s famed immortality, shall we?|

With those words, Arthur delivered a powerful uppercut, violently expelling the singularity’s condensed energy upon impact and unleashing a devastating blast that completely decimated two of the Hydra’s heads, obliterating them down to their necks while heavily wounding the two heads closest to them.

But despite being the one to receive the devastating impact, the middle head wasn’t destroyed, although it was wounded and bleeding.

’I hit the middle one, and yet it survived while the other two closest to it didn’t? Seems the middle one really is special.’

Arthur had barely finished that thought when another of the Hydra’s heads lunged toward him from the side, opening its enormous maw and swallowing him completely inside.

However, the Hydra’s jaws couldn’t close because Arthur was holding them apart with both hands, forcing the creature to unleash a burst of law energy from within its mouth.

Arthur expected poison, wind, or earth, but instead, blazing flames suddenly erupted from the Hydra’s maw, causing his eyes to widen in shock.

|!|

The attack crashed into his body with an enormous explosion, sending him flying through the vacuum of space and towards planet Lerna.

Mid-flight, Arthur flipped around and regained his balance, stopping short of falling into the planet’s poisonous atmosphere, his surprise at the unexpected attack still visible on his face.

|And here I thought you didn’t play with fire,| he said, looking toward the glowing gems embedded within the Hydra’s chest.

|You would be a fool to assume I would willingly advertise all my cards,| the Hydra replied with its middle head, while the remaining eight heads began condensing breaths of poisonous flames within their maws.

The Hydra’s eight heads unleashed compressed torrents of green fire that streamed through space at faster-than-light speed, arcing through the vacuum as they converged on Arthur from different directions.

Mid-flight, each one suddenly split into two, and those resulting torrents split into two again, transforming the attack into a massive rain of compressed poisonous flames that came toward Arthur from virtually every direction.

Arthur raised a hand and condensed Destruction Law energy in his palm, activating his Destruction Authority as the orb exploded into countless thin, laser-like beams that erupted in all directions.

|Authority of Destruction: Shattered Horizon.|

The crimson silver beams of destruction collided with the poisonous flame torrents near-instantly, destroying them all before they could reach Arthur.

As the flames disappeared around him, Arthur smiled lightly before looking towards the Hydra.

|Well, I may be new to the business, but I can play with fire as well.|

Black law energy flowed down his right arm as he spoke, while crimson flames burned across his left arm, and Arthur slammed both palms together, combining the two completely different law energies.

The colours of both energies immediately changed, transforming into brilliant silver flames that burned around his hands.

|Let’s test out this new technique. Destructive Death: FirstForm.|

Arthur then thrust both palms toward the Hydra, the silver flames gathering around them before he declared his new technique’s name.

|Death Fire.|

A powerful stream of silver flames shot out from his palms, tearing through space towards the Hydra with tremendous force.

However, with the ambient cosmic energy coating its body, the Hydra flew through space like a fish in water, easily avoiding the incoming torrent.

Arthur moved his right hand, redirecting the silver flames to follow the Hydra, but despite its enormous size, the creature was incredibly fast and continued avoiding the pressurised torrent with ease.

Then, the Hydra suddenly charged straight towards Arthur at top speed, and facing this charge, Arthur pulled his left hand to the side, splitting the torrent of flames into two torrents that shot curved through space and shot towards the Hydra from both sides.

But the creature easily evaded both torrents once again, immediately responding by firing blasts of compressed cosmic wind towards Arthur.

Arthur teleported away to avoid them before unleashing another pair of silver flame torrents from both hands, but the Hydra, flying through space, effortlessly dodged every attack, even as Arthur turned to follow its movements and keep his continuous streams of silver flames directed towards its body.

The Hydra continued returning fire with powerful breaths, its attacks spreading into dangerous scattershots that filled the surrounding space.

Arthur used Shattered Horizon to intercept and destroy the rain of incoming attacks, but no matter how many torrents of silver fire Arthur fired, the Hydra continued avoiding every single one of them with ease.

"This is quite the problem," Arthur muttered with a soft sigh. "It’s not fast enough."

He increased the speed of his cosmic energy circulation before unleashing another pair of silver flame torrents towards the Hydra with greater speed, but the Hydra once again avoided them by turning its massive body through space, moving its heads aside to avoid them while simultaneously releasing powerful breath attacks.

The Hydra charged towards Arthur again, several heads lunging towards him with their enormous maws open as they attempted to bite him.

Arthur evaded the first two heads and immediately fired a torrent towards the third, but that head twisted through space and avoided the attack before releasing a point-blank breath that blasted him to the side.

In that instant, five more of the Hydra’s heads lunged towards him with poisonous flames boiling in their maws, and right as they fired their breaths, Arthur unleashed the silver flames coating his hands in a wide, uncontrolled burst to counter.

The sudden explosion of flames consumed the Hydra’s green fire and blasted the attacking heads backwards, creating enough space for Arthur to teleport away.

He reappeared several thousand miles away, a deep frown on his face. However, that frown suddenly vanished as his eyes went wide with realisation.

"Wait a second..."

Arthur slowly looked at his hands that still had faint tongues of silver flames burning around them, and he suddenly burst into laughter.