Chapter 1325: Appalling Hour of Battle

The Dragon Lady roared and slammed into the other one.

Her entire body had become a moving catastrophe.

She crashed through the abyss with wings spreading storms in her wake, her snow-white scales blazing beneath torrents of Dragon Essence while blood from earlier wounds traced dark-red lines between them. Her claws ripped trenches through the ground whenever she struck, and every sweep of her tail produced booms deep enough to shake frost loose from the distant ceiling.

Blue-white brilliance of her Dragon Breathe gathered inside her throat until Phei could see the glow burning through the thinner scales beneath her jaw. Then she opened her mouth and drowned entire portions of the cavern beneath a flood of cold so dense that the air froze visibly before it.

The torrent struck the World Transcendent barrier.

Ice flowered across the shell.

Layers upon layers spread outward in seconds, climbing over one another until both monsters disappeared beneath what resembled a frozen mountain.

The larger beast moved:

The entire mountain cracked apart.

Phei responded before the debris finished falling.

Hundreds of Void-Blood weapons pierced through the opening, each one seeking whatever portion of the barrier had weakened beneath the Dragon Lady’s breath.

They struck causing the pale membrane to ripple violently.

For the first time, Phei saw several dark scars remain.

Tiny.

Almost contemptibly small.

Yet they remained.

His grin appeared immediately: "There you are."

The humanoid World Transcendent turned toward him.

That was the moment Phei learned he had finally become irritating enough to deserve attention.

The creature vanished.

His instincts screamed.

Phei brought his sword across his chest right before its fist struck him!

The hand looked almost ordinary compared with the beast’s overall size; pale-blue essence circled the knuckles in tightly compressed spirals, grinding against itself until the air shrieked around the fist. Frost nearby was dragged into the rotation and pulverized into shining dust before the strike ever touched him.

Phei saw the knuckles approach.

Then the storm entered his body.

The fist smashed through his sword guard and buried itself into his chest.

The compressed power around it detonated.

Phei felt the impact travel through his chest, ribs and spine before exploding out through his back in a colossal white torrent. His internal organs seemed to jump inside him while his breath vanished completely, and the cavern behind him disappeared beneath a hurricane of pale essence filled with ice fragments, stone and blood torn from the battlefield.

His body became part of the debris.

Phei was launched through one crystalline ridge and entered another before the first finished collapsing. He broke through a third, vanished inside a frozen wall and continued travelling while kilometers of ancient ice split along the route of his body.

The World Transcendent turned away.

That insult hurt worse than the punch.

True Void Sense found a hollow inside the rubble; Phei disappeared.

He returned beside the other beast’s flank with blood running from his mouth and his sword already thrusting forward.

The barrier was absent there from his last attack.

For one heartbeat, Phei almost thought his perception had failed.

But bare frozen flesh indeed lay directly before him.

His eyes widened.

His blade struck; the Void-Blood sword entered its flesh:

—several inches in.

A wet resistance closed around his sword before the monstrous density of the World Transcendent’s body finally stopped further penetration.

Phei felt hot blood crawl over his hand.

His grin became savage:

"Got you."

The other creature, the humanoid that had attacked him slowly turned its head to see him already back and attacking the other:

Its face had changed.

Frustration had finally entered those frozen features, tightening the flesh around glowing cyan eyes while a low guttural sound escaped its throat. The noise carried enough malice that nearby crystals trembled.

Phei’s grin widened.

He probably deserved what happened next.

Ice grew into the World Transcendent’s hand so quickly it seemed vomited out by the surrounding winter. A greatsword formed in a single breath, crude, colossal and thick enough that its edge alone stood wider than Phei’s torso.

The beast swung:

Phei withdrew his sword and twisted.

The greatsword struck his ribs.

But the blade shattered upon impact.

Cracks exploded through the frozen weapon the instant it encountered Phei’s tempered Dragon skin, racing from the edge to the hilt before the entire structure burst into a blizzard of crystalline fragments.

Phei had just enough time to appreciate that before the strength behind the attack took him:

His body folded sideways.

He struck the floor hard enough to create a crater, bounced from it, smashed through a black stone ridge and ricocheted into another frozen shelf before finally tearing a trench hundreds of meters long across the cavern.

Pain burned through his ribs.

Several bruises darkened almost instantly on him.

Inside his chest, something felt deeply rearranged.

Phei coughed blood across the frost but the Dragon Regeneration stirred before the droplets finished freezing.

The bruises began retreating beneath his skin and the damaged muscle tightened.

Bones shifted back into their proper places with quiet internal clicks while the ache through his organs slowly lessened.

Phei stood.

Across the ruined abyss, the humanoid World Transcendent was staring at him.

Phei wiped the blood from his mouth.

Then smiled.

The expression appeared to offend the creature beyond reason.

That became the misery of the remaining battle.

The two World Transcendents discovered very quickly in the following thirty minutes as he jumped between them attacking the humanoid and the one fighting the Dragon Lady, that beating Phei and wounding him were completely different appalling and impossible accomplishments as far as this battle lasted.

Brutal strength worked.

It worked spectacularly even.

A fist could crush through his guard and send shock rippling through his entire skeleton. A knee from the humanoid monster once folded him around the joint and launched him high enough that he collided with the ceiling before falling through a rain of dislodged crystal. The larger beast struck him with one enormous forearm of its forelimb and sent him spinning across almost a kilometer of open cavern, his body skipping over the ice with each impact throwing another plume of frozen debris into the air.

His skin survived, yes, the rest of him suffered accordingly but the Dragon Regeneration began eating the damage away right next instant.

Bruises faded like stains being washed from beneath his flesh. Swelling retreated; the muscles torn within his indestructible skin pulled themself closed and his internal bleeding slowed and vanished while bones settled back into place.

Phei would dodge the next attack.

True Void Steps swallowed him if enough hollow space remained, True Void Sense warned him away from another, his sword redirected the third, by the time the fourth finally struck, most of the previous damage had already disappeared.

The humanoid beast had began looking at him with a hatred so pure Phei almost admired it.

"Yeah," Phei muttered after surviving another blow, "I’d hate me too."