Chapter 1071: Within an Inch

[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??]

Celestia’s exasperated voice echoing in his head only made Arthur laugh louder.

"You can’t blame me, Celestia," he replied with a shrug. "Everything was going so well. I thought of a better way to use Death Fire as an AoE and Death Lightning as a single target, so I thought I could combine the two of them and create a Third Form."

Unfortunately, he thought wrong.

"Ugh...I think I cracked my Death and Fire Origin Cores," Arthur muttered with a groan as another wave of pain moved through his chest from the internal damage.

Spitting out a little bit of silver blood, he wrapped his body in cosmic energy and teleported towards the cracked and damaged planet where the Hydra was forcing its battered body back upright, several of its heads still incomplete and slowly regenerating from the tremendous damage Arthur’s Death Lightning had inflicted upon it.

Even more damaged was the Hydra’s soul, as the combination of death and destruction law energies had crumbled several of its soul’s protective energy layers and poked huge holes that were still expanding in those that were left.

"Lucky you," Arthur said while glancing down at the Hydra. "My Form Three blew up in my face, otherwise, you’d have been toast."

"..."

Arthur’s words made the eyes of the Hydra’s middle head narrow deeply.

’That was a failed technique...?’

It could sense the powerful blast that had occurred when Arthur’s energies blew up in his face, and seeing the residues of death, fire and lightning law energies clinging to Arthur’s body, it immediately realised that Arthur had likely been trying to combine Death Fire and Death Lightning.

’If he succeeded in combining those two...’

The Hydra didn’t dare think of the result of Arthur’s success, when it already felt threatened by the failure.

Its final damaged head finally regenerated, and it raised its body fully, looking right at Arthur before speaking.

"...you’ve proven yourself, godslayer. I yeil—!"

The Hydra couldn’t even complete its sentence as three of its heads suddenly dropped from their necks, the pain taking a second to register in its remaining brains.

Its eyes went wide, and it groaned in agony, only to realise that Arthur, who had been in front of it a moment earlier, was now suddenly behind it, raising his hand and flicking blood off a semi-transparent blade that certainly hadn’t been in his hand only a second earlier.

"What the hell... Why?!" the Hydra cried out in disbelief as its remaining heads snapped towards Arthur’s new location.

Hearing its voice, Arthur turned around, raising an eyebrow in genuine confusion.

"What are you on about?"

The look in the Hydra’s eyes went from incredulous to rageful in seconds, and it raised its heads high and shouted.

"What do you mean by that!? I said I yield! I’d agree to be you—"

"Did you forget what I said earlier, Hydra?" Arthur said, cutting it off mid-speech. "I said I was going to beat you within an inch of your life."

"!"

The Hydra’s eyes widened even further at Arthur’s words, and Arthur, infusing more law energy into Celestia’s blade, pointed it towards the Hydra and continued.

"I can still sense a lot of vitality from you, so you’re definitely not within an inch of your life yet. I recently got good with the law of life, so I can tell these kinds of things now."

Chills immediately ran down the Hydra’s spines, but before it could say another word, Arthur thrust his blade forward and calmly declared, |Extreme Nothingness.|

|!|

A purple torrent of energy erupted from Arthur’s sword and crashed right into the Hydra’s enormous body, shredding it in an instant, with several of its heads being torn apart completely as the destructive force ripped through muscles, flesh and bone alike.

The broken planet beneath them couldn’t withstand the impact either, instantly crumbling to dust as the Hydra’s battered body was blasted halfway into the cracks that appeared in the fabric of space-time.

Arthur reached into the broken space and grabbed the Hydra by one of its broken spines before pulling its body out. He then teleported back to the Swamp of Lerna and slammed its enormous body into the ground with immense force, but before the planet could shatter from the impact, Arthur stopped time, then rewound it, undoing all the damage to it in seconds.

After this, Arthur turned his gaze back to the Hydra, whose bloodied body was twitching on the floor of the swamp, its middle head groaning painfully and coughing out blood from its mouth.

"Your middle head is somehow still attached?" he asked with faint surprise. "I wonder exactly what it would take to blow it off...and what would happen to you if I do."

A look of fear appeared in the Hydra’s eyes as it heard Arthur’s words, but before it could try to plead, Arthur dropped down onto its chest and stabbed his blade straight into the base of its middle head’s neck.

"W-wai—AGRH!!"

Arthur twisted his sword within the Hydra’s neck before unleashing a point-blank blast of destructive energy that bored completely through its chest.

He intended to blast the whole neck off, but despite the destructive energy reaching as deep as the Hydra’s heart, the bone connecting the middle head to the rest of its skeleton was somehow still whole.

It was damaged, heavily cracked, but was still connected.

Before Arthur’s eyes, the gaps in the bone immediately filled up, and flesh rapidly formed around it.

"Your regeneration is still fast," Arthur said as he unsummoned Celestia. "Let’s see how much of a beating it’ll take to finally slow down your regeneration."

With those words, he unleashed silver flames from his fist before declaring, |Destructive Death: First Form: Death Fire.|

His fist crashed down onto the Hydra’s middle neck again and again, with dark silver flames spreading across its damaged flesh each time.

But despite the repeated attacks and the severe damage inflicted upon its middle head, the bones in the neck connecting it to the rest of the Hydra’s skeleton refused to break completely.

The cracked bone repeatedly healed as fresh flesh rapidly regenerated around it, keeping the middle head attached despite Arthur’s continuous punches.

Only when the Hydra’s regeneration finally began slowing down did Arthur stop his repeated attacks and lower his fist.

"Hmm, I suppose this is enough."

Arthur pulled back his hand, raising his left fist to wipe the blood from his right hand, only to realise that his entire body was drenched in the Hydra’s blood.

’It’s simpler to just use magic.’

With such a thought, he snapped his fingers and wiped the blood away from his body in an instant with a cleaning spell, while simultaneously replacing his bloodied clothes with an identical short-sleeved T-shirt, black jeans, and sneakers combination.

The previous set of clothes instantly turned to dust, and Arthur turned around just as Alexia reappeared, floating lightly in the air as she looked toward him.

"Was it really necessary to go this far?" she asked, her eyes moving toward the battered Hydra.

"It was," Arthur replied casually. "If I find the opportunity, I’m probably going to do something similar with Fenrir."

Hearing this, Alexia narrowed her eyes slightly before responding, "You can’t become a leader with pure raw power alone, not unless that raw power eclipses theirs by an insurmountable margin."

"True," Arthur replied with a nod. "But trying to rule with charisma or earning respect is going to take a while, and until then, I’ll have to use raw power to keep them in line."

Silence fell for a moment after Arthur spoke, then Alexia shrugged and returned her gaze to the Hydra.

"Are you going to use Race Conversion now?"

In response to that question, Arthur glanced down at the bloodied Hydra and said, "Well, yes. But before I do that, I’m going to need you to help me heal it up."

Alexia raised an eyebrow after hearing Arthur’s request. "I was wondering exactly why you brought me here, but this? Really?"

Arthur simply smiled softly, while Alexia rolled her eyes before snapping her fingers and activating one of her many Aspectual Authorities.

Blue temporal energy erupted from her hand before descending toward the Hydra’s body like falling raindrops, spreading across its enormous frame and rapidly accelerating its innate regeneration.

The Hydra’s damaged flesh began regenerating at staggering speed, with its wounds closing and destroyed body parts rapidly returning until its entire body had been restored.

Now fully healed, the Hydra slowly got to its feet, all eyes looking at Arthur with a mixture of annoyance and fear.

Arthur ignored that gaze, teleporting above the Hydra’s middle head and placing his palm on the back of its head.

"Now then, this is probably going to hurt more than the beating I just gave you."

Before the Hydra could even respond, Arthur activated his Progenitor Authority and calmly declared, |Race Conversion.|

Silver circuit-like patterns immediately appeared across Arthur’s arm, extending from his body and into the Hydra’s. Arthur’s blood momentarily grew hot, his cosmic energy reserves rapidly consumed as anti-divine factors based on his own were generated and infused directly into the Hydra’s body.

The Hydra’s enormous body collapsed, and its necks began twitching violently like earthworms bathed in salt, but Arthur didn’t break direct contact with it.

Looking up at Alexia, he then asked, "Please, can you help me accelerate this process? I don’t think my Temporal Authority can do anything about this."

"You really brought me here to be your fast-forward button?" Alexia immediately asked with an exasperated expression.

"You make it sound bad when you say it like that," Arthur replied with a light laugh. "I just need your help accelerating things, that’s all."

"That’s exactly what a fast-forward button does, Arthur," Alexia immediately snapped back.

Nevertheless, Alexia still activated her Aspect and used its power to accelerate the entire process of Race Conversion, rapidly transforming the Hydra into a godslayer-dragon.