Chapter 1070: Forte of the Elements

"Fire’s forte isn’t speed in the first place," Arthur muttered. "So why was I trying to force it? Why was I trying to express the flames with speed?"

The Hydra charged towards him while he was speaking to himself, and Arthur, looking up at the Hydra’s incoming figure, smiled with glee.

His eyes glowed as destruction law energy flowed into his arms, mixing with the death and flame law energies already covering his hands, and just as the Hydra got in close, Arthur spread out both hands and unleashed a powerful omnidirectional wave of silver flames.

|!|

The Hydra immediately tried to halt its charge and avoid the flames, but it was impossible as the wave of silver flames that erupted from Arthur’s body spread across entire light-years’ worth of area in seconds.

It wasn’t a matter of speed anymore, because wherever the Hydra tried to dodge, the silver flames were already there, covering every possible direction and leaving it nowhere to escape.

The flames caught the Hydra’s massive body, and although the Hydra immediately surrounded itself with barriers of cosmic energy, the destruction law energy infused within the flames negated their durability and allowed the Death Fire to burn through them.

As the dark silver flames burned the Hydra’s flesh, its pale hide immediately became dull and lifeless, its muscles visibly weakened, and several of its heads caught by the flames began sagging as the strength within them rapidly diminished.

’What is this strange fire!? A Unique Authority of the law of death?!’

The Hydra groaned in pain as it tried to extinguish the flames with its own Unique Authority’s fire, but the Destruction Law energy backed by Arthur’s Monarch Rank Authority within those silver flames resisted the Hydra’s Authority.

’It’s consuming my body faster than I can regenerate!’

At that realisation, the Hydra unhesitatingly moved its middle head, biting down on one of the necks burning with silver flames and tearing the entire burning head from its body. It discarded the severed head and repeated this with the other three affected heads, its regeneration immediately beginning to create completely new heads in their place.

But even after removing the burning flesh, the Hydra still groaned from the soul damage inflicted upon it by the law of death’s power.

Seeing this, Arthur smiled with satisfaction.

"Wonderful! Since the First Form was a success, let’s go on to the Second one, shall we?"

Black death law energy flowed down his right arm once more, and silver lightning crackled around that same arm, mixing with the black energy as Arthur pointed one finger toward the Hydra.

|Destructive Death: Second Form: Death Lightning.|

The moment the Hydra saw Arthur raise his hand, it quickly tried to condense cosmic energy barriers while simultaneously moving its massive body away.

But the thought of controlling the ambient cosmic energy had barely crossed its mind when a silver flash erupted from the tip of Arthur’s finger, and something shot through space with incredible speed.

In the very next instant, one of the Hydra’s heads was blown completely off at the neck, powerful silver lightning cracking violently around the severed area and across its body.

|GAAARRHHHGH!!!|

The Hydra screamed as blood splashed across its pale white hide, several of its heads immediately snapping toward Arthur, their eyes wide with visible shock at what had just happened.

|Unlike flames, speed is lightning’s forte,| Arthur said, still wearing his satisfied smile as he flicked his index finger forward.

Another bolt of silver lightning flashed, and the Hydra, barely perceiving the attack, tried to move its body to avoid the incoming lightning. However, the bolt crossed the distance too quickly, blasting another one of the Hydra’s heads completely off at the neck.

The Hydra immediately expanded its Poison Field, filling the surrounding area with poisonous gas and blocking Arthur’s perception of its exact position, while simultaneously creating thousands of law energy constructs within the field.

The thousands of constructs and projectiles charged toward Arthur from every direction, attempting to overwhelm him from all sides before he could use AGSD like before, but Arthur, already locked onto the Hydra’s position by sensing his lightning law energy still crackling around its regenerating neck, pointed in its direction and fired another bolt of lightning from his fingertip.

Another silver flash ripped through space, the lightning bolt crossing the distance and almost instantly slamming into the Hydra’s middle head.

Unlike the last two bolts, the lightning didn’t blow the middle head off, but it burned through its pale hide and flesh, splattering blood through space. Even more blood dripped from the corners of the Hydra’s eyes, and it coughed violently as several layers of energy coating its soul shattered in one go.

The lightning permeated through the Hydra’s body, reaching its heart, before following the connection between the Hydra and the constructs it had created.

A split-second later, every construct charging toward Arthur suddenly became engulfed in silver lightning, with the energy exploding outward from within their bodies and blasting the constructs apart into fragments of poisonous energy.

"Huh?"

Arthur let out a confused voice at the sudden destruction of the attacks racing towards him, his left hand, which was condensing gravitational law energy to form a shield, hanging up awkwardly.

"Wait, I added that thing to deal with opponents who could use summons, but energy-created constructs are fair game as well??"

He was clearly surprised by the ability of his own technique, but then he frowned, rubbing his chin thoughtfully.

"But wait, this guy’s constructs are unique, so could it be because of that? I need more testing to be sure of this."

Arthur immediately tried to begin said tests, spreading out both hands, lightning crackling down both arms before erupting from his fingers as ten arcing tendrils that zigzagged through space at ridiculous speed.

The Hydra, infusing its body with wind law energy, was able to raise its speed enough to barely be able to dodge the first three, but the other seven slammed into its enormous body from different directions, tearing across its pale hide, blasting through its tail, and ripping apart several of its legs.

The immense piercing power of the lightning penetrated all its condensed cosmic energy barriers and its thick hide underneath, blasting several of its heads apart, sometimes tearing them away from the neck, sometimes destroying the middle portions of their necks, and sometimes simply blowing their skulls apart.

The Hydra’s regeneration immediately began restoring the destroyed flesh, but Arthur unleashed another barrage of lightning before it could fully recover, bombarding its massive body from every direction.

It tried to fight back with powerful breath attacks, but Arthur simply targeted the heads, condensing law energy and sending bolts directly into their open maws, detonating the condensed energies in the instant the Hydra opened its mouth to fire, and blowing several skulls to smithereens through the resulting explosions.

|Now then, let me take inspiration from the bastard who tried to kill me a century ago.|

Arthur raised one hand upward and lifted a single finger, law energy shooting out the tip and forming a gigantic bolt of silver lightning above him.

He then swung his hand down, sending the bolt descending towards the Hydra, temporal energy accelerating the bolt’s speed beyond what the Hydra’s senses could perceive.

From its perspective, one moment Arthur was condensing lightning, and the next, the force of the impact was sending its body crashing through a random planet, silver lightning crackling across every limb and neck.

The Hydra bashed straight through the planet and through dozens of its orbiting moons, smashing through each celestial body in its path before eventually slamming into another planet half a star system away with such tremendous force that half of the planet’s mass was obliterated on impact, sending enormous fragments of burning and molten rock scattering through space.

Lightning continued crackling across the Hydra’s battered body as its wounds began to regenerate, though noticeably slower than before. Blood spilt from its mouths as it coughed repeatedly due to the immense damage the death and lightning law fusion had dealt to its energy cores and soul.

Millions of miles away, Arthur, peering down at the battered creature struggling to regenerate, nodded to himself with a satisfied smile.

That smile spread into a wide grin as lightning and flames crackled around both arms, death law energy bursting out of his body and mixing together with his destruction energy.

|Let’s take this a step further! Destructive Death: Third For—hmm?|

Arthur’s expression changed mid-speech as he noticed the law energies that he was combining had begun to grow unstable.

|Oh, sh—**BOOOOMM!!!

He couldn’t even finish cursing before the law energies exploded in his face with the force of a supernova, completely devastating the surrounding region, erasing all celestial bodies within range, and even knocking the nearest star slightly off orbit due to the ripples in the fabric of space-time caused by the blast.

The only thing that survived the blast was Planet Lerna, although even the planet was left in a catastrophic state as its atmosphere was completely ripped apart, enormous cracks spread across its surface, and rivers of lava began seeping through the widening gaps.

The blast gradually began to disperse after several minutes, and in the centre was Arthur, coughing loudly as silver blood dripped from the top of his head and over his left eye.

He patted his chest and took heavy breaths to ease the pain in his heart, before chuckling dryly.

"...guess I got ahead of myself a bit there..."

[Master, you’re almost 200, and yet you still got excited like a little kid and tried to use a technique you haven’t properly tested in live combat? Really??]