Chapter 906 – Blood red skeleton

POV Cerulean Parlor

The doors open as multiple figures rush in, each one offering an exceedingly polite greeting before entering.

"Blessings upon you, Lady Kindness, Lady Lust. It is an honor to stand before your divine presence once again."

"I bow before the grace of Lady Kindness and the majesty of Lady Lust.”

“I bow to your presence, oh Rulers of Kindness and Lust.”

“Sup.”

"My heart to the Lady of Grace, my soul to the Empress of Desire!"

"M-My Ladies! Lady Kindness, your mercy! Lady Lust, your... your overwhelming presence! P-please accept my humble arrival!"

"Greetings, Lady Kindness. Greetings, Lady Lust."

"Lady Kindness, Lady Lust, it is always a true privilege to be in your presence."

More and more members of the parlor rush in. Some of them demonstrate true fear at the presence of the two Rulers, while others simply show their deep respect, and still more are caught up in a straight-up fanatical degree of admiration.

Having received messages from the members of the parlor already present, they’re already aware of the things happening on the screen and, after making their greetings, rush to their usual spots.

The last time so many members gathered was when Nyssa Volare alone challenged the Champion on the 5th floor for the first time. Yet now, it seems there are even more, as the doors continue to open to admit more and more by the second.

New bets are being made all over again, and questions are asked. They learn of the Ruler of Greed’s bet of 100 million, and an anonymous bet of 1 shard. Some are unfamiliar with the human on the screen, so they immediately start asking a series of pointed questions about the man.

Any of the people present could, in a mere moment, deal with any of the Champions currently on the 5th floor. Cerulean Parlor accepts only people at the level of Absolute and higher.

They note how many times the man has almost died, and yet continues to move almost casually afterward, unshaken. Some notice the lucky coincidences that save his life without him ever noticing, while others notice the way he seems to thrive in all of this mess.

A few still snort and laugh at the man, finding his powers so weak in comparison to their own. They can see what’s been done to his body, and most of the parlor views him as a fleeting curiosity. He is someone who will disappear in the next few years, dying off because he gambled too much and set his margins of error too tight. He’s just the same as the many who came before him, for all he might glow brighter for the duration of his short life.

Yet whether they praise him, insult him, or see him as weak, no one is able to take their eyes off the screen.

POV Nathaniel Gwyn

The hydra is nowhere to be seen, and instead, a storm is pushing against me.

I raise my hand in front of me and increase my kinetic output to push against the wind.

It’s dark, the wind roars, I am rained on, and the clouds continue to cover the sky. The storm itself fills the entirety of the crater left in the wake of Regalia's explosion, and I pull the ambient mana and remains of the explosion into my spinning halo as I take a step forward.

My scans bounce through the area like sonar, and blue lightning begins to crackle between the clouds.

It doesn't take me long to realize that I can feel the hydra's presence through the entirety of the storm, as if the storm itself were the hydra. And it’s currently spreading further and further, already well beyond the size of the biggest cities on Earth, and it’s on track to reach the size of a small country.

When the rain finally starts to fall, I quickly realize that it’s both red and toxic. It falls against my defensive layers, dyeing me red and sending smoke sizzling up into the air. The wind picks up more, and I lean toward it as it threatens to blow me away.

I sense the attacks gathering all around me, but I do realize that the hydra doesn't have eyes in this state. I feel these senses sliding against me and rushing through the area. So I replicate my presence and create a series of duplicates all around me, each one perfectly mimicking my current mana signature.

After placing them, a flying tree uprooted by the storm crashes and breaks against me, an entire unmoored river mixes with the red rain, and from somewhere in the dark clouds, two red lasers begin to shoot down, cutting through my fakes. A heavy lightning barrage joins in, vibrant against the red rain and dark sky.

My projectile shoots toward the source of the lasers, but it just passes through without hitting anything at all.

The attacks rain down on my fakes, destroying the already heavily damaged area further as the wind works to sand down entire mountain ranges and uproots forests of trees bigger and taller than my Regalia ever was.

Still attuned to the area, I sense the immense kinetic energy gathering as the air itself begins to shake.

The falcon is slower than it was previously, but it’s still moving at an incredible speed. It pierces through the entirety of the storm, drilling a wide circular hole that lets in light and passes through one of my presences.

Even as it flies past, noticing its target is just a fake, its golden eyes twist and lock straight onto me as I watch it pass by in my state of thought acceleration.

The falcon then disappears through the other side of the storm, and only then do ten or so hypersonic booms follow in sequence.

The structure of the skill array I made is prepared, and I hold the Zweihander in my hand and stab it deep into the ground. The sword leaves a deep ring around it, and white and golden light flashes inside, momentarily lighting up what feels like the entirety of the storm.

Starting at the handle, the sword starts unwinding into long threads that quickly get pulled through the wind and into the storm. Miles and miles of thin, near invisible, and near indestructible threads.

[Manifestation - lvl 69 > Manifestation - lvl 70]

I then start boosting myself through the air, just as the falcon passes by, once again piercing the storm with a circular window that rapidly closes up behind it.

Before leaving, I look back at the sword as it unravels. Countless micro-threads, so fine they’re almost invisible, peel away from the handle and catch in the storm. They turn the dense, woven blade into a beautiful, drifting stream of pale blue, gold, and white silk.

I hear the sonic booms from the previous attack and teleport away before the falcon can catch up to me.

Once outside of the storm, the cold hits me again, and I look back at this monstrosity filled with blue lightning and the hydra's blood. It stretches so wide that the scale is difficult to even properly take in.

[Selective Adaptation - lvl 51 > Selective Adaptation - lvl 52]

I take an experimental step out onto the thick layer of ice and then look into the distance, needing to tilt my head all the way back. There is a humanoid golden golem many times taller than my Regalia was. The golem has been pierced by multiple ice crystals growing from the ground. It moves and twists, struggling to get out while the ice grows all over it from where the crystals are piercing it.

Once again, I boost myself and begin to run, slipping a few times on the ice. I sense a new set of kinetic waves and, at the last moment, move to the side. The shockwave of the falcon passing by throws me spiraling across the ice, almost falling in the process.

I cover my feet in mana and make sharp blades sticking out from the bottom that cut into the ice to reduce my drag. Sonic booms catch up to the previous falcon's pass, and I boost myself a few times, creating a few booms of my own.

My speed increases as I skate across the ice, through an area the size of a small country. I lower myself a bit and take a deep breath as the air presses against me from the acceleration, and I push myself faster, accelerating more and more.

Off to my side, I catch a flash of movement and jump into the air as the falcon passes under me. I feel the air in my face and wave my hands clumsily to keep my balance in the turbulence as I fall back to the ice. My speed picks up again, and the falcon's sonic booms and my own start to blend into each other.

After another wide turn, the monster catches up to me. I can sense it right behind me. I look back, watching as it keeps its wings nearly folded, the air smoothly passing around it, changing its direction of flight with the slightest changes to the position of its wings, sometimes just a few feathers. I notice there are a number of barely healed wounds, and a few weak spots.

My defensive layer of mana pushes slightly ahead of me, changing and molding as I let the air pass around and by it. I create a narrow point in front of me, and the drag dramatically decreases.

Just as the falcon begins to catch up to me, I sling myself around one of the craters, heading back toward the giant golem pierced by ice crystals.

The falcon moves with incredible elegance, catching up to me as we change direction. I watch its claws open and stretch ahead, touching and scratching against my defensive layer.

Then I lower myself almost to the point of kneeling and absorb all of my momentum. Just that seemingly simple maneuver requires an incredible amount of attention so my brain doesn't explode inside of my skull, so my body doesn't evaporate under the immense force.

Spinning in the air and even then keeping me locked in its vision as it misses, the falcon passes by, and I focus once again, boosting myself with the same kinetic force I just absorbed.

The ice under me ripples like waves, the area behind explodes, and I launch myself forward at the same speed as before. I pass by the falcon, which begins turning to reach up after me.

The Empyrean Ichor inside of my body surges, and white and gold light sparks up, following the pointy defensive layer in front of me. The snow on my side turns to a blur, stretching into lines, and my field of vision narrows to a single thin point. My thought acceleration damages one of the subminds to the point that I cycle it out and swap it for another one. My Preeminence eyes burn as I continue trying to observe everything.

My unraveling sword in the distance, the hydra's storm, attuning to the changes in the air to track the falcon, the halo spinning over my head, my defensive layers, body reinforcement, all these kinetic forces I’ve been dealing with, and my connection to my fragment.

With all that gathered speed, I reach the ongoing fight and thunder toward the space the thylarin currently occupies.

Just getting near him, his cold begins to freeze even the dense layer of mana in front of me, tempered by all the pressure and strengthened by my own will. But it’s still enough. Half of it breaks into particles of ice, but the other half crashes into the thylarin Champion with the full impact of my momentum.

A massive shockwave ripples outward from the point of impact, tearing the ice apart. Both the thylarin and I are thrown against each other, rolling across the frozen landscape, leaving the golem and falcon behind us.

My body crashes against his, and his crashes against mine, with just ice holding his caved in and near exploded chest together. Even now, after all the damage he took, my attack wasn't enough to kill him outright.

Still, he is dying.

I let his attack hit my defensive layer to get in closer, and the ice begins to break through and encroach on my body. But my blood sparks once again, and with my fingers closed into a flesh and bone blade, I stab through his eye and reach toward his brain.

My fingers break, but I allow an immense degree of my mana output to explode and bounce inside of his skull.

Yet, that mana gets frozen within the immense cold of the thylarin’s body.

[Selective Adaptation - lvl 52 > Selective Adaptation - lvl 53]

[Selective Adaptation - lvl 53 > Selective Adaptation - lvl 54]

[Selective Adaptation - lvl 54 > Selective Adaptation - lvl 55]

While the frost begins to cover me and fights against the output of my Ignition Heart, the dying man keeps slamming his fist against the layer of mana over my face.

I channel and release multiple blasts in quick succession inside of his skull. Each of them would’ve been enough to obliterate a mountain or two, and yet they just keep getting frozen again and again.

My effort picks up as I sense the falcon coming close once again.

[Attunement - lvl 29 > Attunement - lvl 30]

Even then, it is not enough.

So, my eyes narrow, and all my efforts combine. My defensive layers disappear, along with everything else I have been keeping in the background. The entirety of me goes into channeling mana. The sheer force of it twists and breaks through my body, and my hand explodes as I throw it all into his head.

[Redistribution - lvl 84 > Redistribution - lvl 85]

It bounces wildly inside, his face swells, and his skull explodes from the inside, causing the shrapnels to cut through me.

A kill notification pops up, and a countdown of one second given to myself starts.

The dead thylarin's fist slides down off my face, and the ice on my body breaks down, taking all the skin and muscle with it.

My ichor remains as I hold onto it, standing there as just a skeleton wrapped around my internal organs, while the blood I’m pulling on covers all of my bones and clings to me, turning them from white to red.

I move my eyes inside of my skull and feel my organs fall out with nothing to hold them in place.

Without the thylarin's domain, mine replaces it, expanding from my Fragment of the Nameless Tree, which now towers high up in the distance.

All kinetic movement in the area halts at once. The snow, all the thousands of golems, the wind.

And the falcon.

It stops just a few steps in front of me with its claws outstretched.

There aren’t many shapes I have as much experience manifesting as that of an orb, so I create one, weaving it out of threads and tempering it with the tiniest fraction of that immense pool of kinetic energy.

Then I fire it off in front of me, channeling, redistributing, and using all the kinetic energy absorbed by the tree to launch it.

[Redistribution - lvl 85 > Redistribution - lvl 86]

It stabs through the eye of the falcon, passing through in a mere moment, and then that shockwave follows, nearly exploding the monster in its entirety.

A notification dings.

My organs haven't even fallen away yet as I teleport once more to where I left my Zweihander. The storm that was surrounding it is gone, and instead, off to the side, lies the hydra, just a tenth of the size it was at the start, entirely covered in my threads and unable to move as they cut into it.

One more time, all my minds snap into one as I redistribute all I have, strengthening these threads and pulling them together.

An attack consisting of two red lasers shoots at me in a last ditch effort, moving so slowly as the one second I had stretches to an incredible length. It’s one of the fastest attacks I've seen, yet it seems to move so slowly through the air as the threads begin to cut into the weakened hydra.

Even then, I know I won't make it in time as I begin to move and tilt. One of the lasers will hit my head. My mind is fast enough to perceive it, but the rest of me can’t keep up.

I'm not in a state to avoid the lasers, so as that second comes to an end, dozens of ideas flash in my mind. Teleportation, kinetic energy, disruption, deflection. I take the properties of the lasers into consideration, my state, and the speed at which I can do any of these, yet nothing is fast enough.

The laser is almost in front of me when I get an idea, and I activate the arrays I need. Then the laser stabs into my skull, easily piercing through it, through my head, and then out of the back of it.

At that moment, the hydra gets cut apart entirely, diced into small pieces. And it almost begins to regenerate, but the orb I used to kill the falcon passes through the cubed up pieces along with the shockwave, which entirely destroys everything else.

And this time, another notification dings in my head.

Time returns to normal, and I use kinetic energy to move, pulling on my hands and lifting them up to catch something.

I almost don't want to look down, and there is no sense in even turning my head down, as I can't see currently. I couldn't teleport my whole body fast enough, but I managed to teleport a smaller part of myself.

Forcing myself to stop thinking about it, I teleport my brain and spinal cord back where they belong, and for the first time, I use the healing marks from Lily. All of them.

All across my red skeleton, my flesh and skin start to grow again, complete with an array of circuits that will take longer to restore properly, and blood that will take a bit longer to redirect.

My vision snaps back into place, and I look around, taking a step, before falling to my knees, only to quickly stand back up. Then I fall once more, and only then do I realize how weak I feel. My legs, my hands, my entire body, all of it’s shaking.

I feel like throwing up, and I do, only coughing up pieces of my body and some blood.

A wave of panic washes over me as I feel fear of what could be. My mind races as I immediately start replaying everything that’s happened.

I forcefully calm my breathing, taking one breath after another as I absorb the still, cold air. I reach up and touch my head where the laser pierced through, and then I stand up, this time properly.

One after another, my subminds snap back into place, defensive layers surround me, and I attune to the area around me. My senses start shooting all around, and after sending a quick signal, the fragment of my tree shoots off in the distance and snaps back to the back of my left hand.

The tree holds together for a moment, then begins to crumble and fall as the golems move in closer.

I claim the three keys, turn around, and leave to find the portal back to the 4th floor.