Chapter 122: 2nd Attempt XXI

The clash of titans turned the cathedral hall into an apocalyptic wasteland.

Beaumont’s body burned with the desperate, molten surge of Core-Pulse Vitality. Amber energy roared through his veins like liquid fire, dulling the grinding agony in his shattered ribs while pushing his broken frame far beyond its natural limits. Sweat, blood and dust caked his face, but his hazel eyes blazed with unyielding defiance, he refused to fall.

With a guttural roar that shook the fractured flagstones, he thrust both hands downward, palms slamming into the responsive midnight stone. “Abyssal Fissure Crag!”

The floor erupted. A colossal chasm ripped open beneath Agatha’s floating form, jagged tectonic plates of midnight stone laced with glowing amber veins surging upward like the jaws of an ancient earth dragon. The plates slammed into her Ultimate Barrier with cataclysmic force. BOOM BOOM BOOM!

Each collision sent visible shockwaves rippling across the perfect violet sphere. The barrier held flawlessly, its surface shimmering like flawless amethyst under pressure, but the sheer kinetic momentum was undeniable. Agatha’s orb skidded backward through the air, her boots leaving faint glowing trails as the barrier absorbed and redirected the impossible force.

She had barely stabilized when Beaumont followed up without mercy. “Continental Shatter!”

The entire cathedral floor heaved. Massive slabs of stone, some the size of houses, tore free and hurled themselves at her in a continuously, rolling avalanche of earth and amber fury. The air howled with the grinding roar of continents colliding. Pillars that had somehow survived earlier barrages now splintered and toppled like felled ancient trees, crashing down in explosions of black debris.

Agatha’s expression hardened from predatory amusement into cold irritation. The casual tilt of her head vanished. “Enough of this farce,” she hissed, her voice cutting through the chaos like silk-wrapped steel.

She retaliated with ruthless efficiency. Violet sigils blazed across her forearms as she conjured a dozen massive lances, each one longer and thicker than before, crackling with condensed arcs of destructive energy. These were followed instantly by a swarm of searing violet fire bolts that streaked alongside them in a dense, overlapping grid pattern designed to leave no escape routes.

The projectiles screamed downward like a meteor storm.

Beaumont twisted his body with explosive speed, Vanguard’s Kinetic Override flooding his muscles with unnatural power. He slid under the first three lances, the violet tips whistling inches above his head, their heat singeing his hair. The ground behind him erupted in violet fireballs as they detonated. But the grid was mercilessly tight. The fourth lance and its accompanying fire bolt caught him dead-center.

CRACK!

The impact was apocalyptic. His layered defenses, the Iron-Vein armour and the Geo-Static Vault, flared brilliantly, absorbing the magical essence of the spells. The violet energy tried to burn through him but was neutralized into harmless sparks against the dense metallic ore and pressurized earth dome. Yet raw kinetic force could not be so easily denied. The blow lifted him off his feet and blasted him backward. His boots carved deep, smoking trenches into the fractured stone as he skidded across the hall for nearly thirty meters, the shockwave rattling his teeth and sending fresh spikes of pain through his broken ribs.

He didn’t have a millisecond to breathe.

Agatha raised both hands, eyes glowing with lethal focus. Another volley of lances and fire bolts tore through the air at bullet-like speeds, a relentless purple barrage that filled the space between them with death.

Beaumont scrambled, rolling and leaping. The stacked defensive spells weighing him down made true agility difficult. A lance clipped his left shoulder, shattering two of his orbiting Tectonic Aegis shields in a violent spray of rock fragments and amber sparks. The force spun him mid-air. A fire bolt slammed into his chest, hammering the Lithic Bastion shell. Pain exploded behind his eyes as he was sent flying again, crashing hard onto his back. The impact drove the air from his lungs in a bloody cough.

If this keeps up, Beaumont realized, spitting thick saliva mixed with blood as he forced himself back to his feet, she’s just going to escalate her power. My defenses are tanking the magic, but the impact pressure is grinding my frame to dust. In the long run, my guard will drop bit by bit until I’m dead.

He made the choice in an instant. Pure tanking was a slow death sentence. He surrendered brute durability for raw, adaptive speed.

Beaumont stopped resisting the earth and instead merged with it.

The unique, warm floorboards of the fifth floor, responsive midnight stone infused with magic answered his will instantly. He willed the stone beneath his boots to flow like liquid, transforming into a high-speed conveyor of rippling earth. He shot across the battlefield at blinding velocities, a streak of amber light weaving through the chaos. A fresh barrage of lances detonated right behind his heels, violet explosions blooming like deadly flowers in his wake. He slid, banked sharply, and reversed direction in an eyeblink, the stone itself carrying him like a surfer riding a molten wave.

Agatha’s eyes narrowed. She adjusted her aim with terrifying precision, but Beaumont was no longer a stationary target.

Determined to seize the momentum, he counterattacked while moving. “Cataclysmic Earth-Storm!”

The air thickened violently. Hundreds of thousands of razor-sharp boulders, each one grinding and spinning with embedded molten amber cores, materialized in a howling vortex around him. The storm expanded outward in a roaring wall of destruction, hurtling toward Agatha’s position with apocalyptic force.

Agatha did not panic. She retaliated with cold, surgical calculation. Instead of wild barrages, she tracked the trajectories of his spells with predatory focus. Thin, piercing violet rays lanced out from her palms, each one striking a critical boulder mid-flight. Detonations rippled across the sky in a chain reaction. His Cataclysmic Earth-Storm was neutralized before it could fully close the distance, boulders exploding harmlessly into showers of harmless gravel and fading amber light.

To any outside observer, Beaumont appeared to dominate the fight, aggressively pushing the pace, forcing the elegant sorceress onto the defensive as he blurred across the ruined hall on his living earth conveyor. But he knew the bitter truth. He hadn’t made a single dent on Agatha. She still floated gracefully within her pristine Ultimate Barrier, untouched, her violet eyes tracking his every desperate maneuver with growing impatience.

It’s time to change the map, Beaumont thought grimly.

He dropped to one knee in the center of the devastation, abandoning all mobility. Every ounce of his remaining mana poured directly into the foundation of the fifth floor. The dungeon stone responded with a deep, ominous groan that vibrated through the entire level. Cracks spiderwebbed outward at terrifying speed. The vast floor began to buckle and warp violently beneath them.

Agatha’s eyes widened a fraction. She felt the structural integrity of the stone beneath her barrier begin to fail. The realization of his suicidal plan hit her instantly.

Beaumont stood completely still, hands pressed to the fracturing ground, channeling the world-ending spell with single-minded focus. He casually tanked the incoming lances that Agatha hurled in response, letting his Subterranean Citadel and Iron-Vein armour absorb the bruising impacts. Massive chunks of the gothic ceiling began to rain down like fallen giants, smashing into the floor and kicking up clouds of black dust. The entire fifth floor groaned like a dying beast, tilting and crumbling into the abyss below.

Realizing the immediate danger, Agatha abandoned her ranged assault entirely. She tucked her arms tight against her body and dashed forward with terrifying supersonic velocity. She became a violet streak of lightning, cutting through the falling debris with effortless grace, closing the distance to Beaumont at breakneck speed.

Five meters!

Three meters!

Beaumont sensed her coming, the overwhelming pressure of her mana like a storm front. Just before she could reach him, he clapped his hands together and roared one of his ultimate defensive spell's:

“Ironwood Citadel!”

The crumbling floor exploded outward in a perfect ring. Massive petrified tree trunks, encrusted with heavy iron ore and reinforced by his amber mana, burst upward in a thunderous surge. They intertwined instantly, thick as ancient redwoods, creating a thick, impenetrable dome of armored nature that sealed him away from the outside world in a matter of heartbeats. The dome slammed shut with a resounding, earth-shaking THUD.

Inside, it was pitch black. The deafening roars of the collapsing floor were muffled to a distant thunder. Beaumont kept his hands pressed firmly to the living roots, continuing to channel the demolishing spell that would drag the entire level into oblivion. His breathing was ragged, pain flaring with every pulse of his core, but he held on.

Then his earth senses caught a bizarre anomaly.

There was no other human presence inside the dome, only him. But a few inches from his boot, a strange object sat unnaturally on the dirt floor. He focused a thread of mana on it, probing.

It was a voodoo doll. Crude, eerily detailed, stitched fabric mimicking a human form.

Before his brain could fully process the impossibility of a voodoo doll appearing inside his sealed, impenetrable bunker, a sickening violet light erupted from the fabric.

Agatha materialized directly out of the doll in a swirl of violet energy, emerging inches from his face.

Beaumont’s heart slammed against his ribs. Shock paralyzed him for a critical fraction of a second. She was right there, close enough that he could smell the faint ozone and floral scent of her magic.

He desperately tried to activate his magic to sink himself back into the ground, but he was too slow.

Agatha’s lips curved into a cold, predatory smile that held no warmth. She placed her bare palm firmly against his bruised torso, fingers splayed over his Iron-Vein armor.

“Scarlet Light,” she whispered, almost tenderly.

A blinding, pure white light bloomed from her palm, illuminating the cramped interior of the Ironwood Citadel for a single, terrifying second. The light was so intense it burned afterimages into Beaumont’s retinas.

Then the Calamity-level explosion erupted.

The raw, focused energy detonated from inside the dome, pulverizing the Ironwood Citadel from within. Petrified trunks and iron ore shattered outward in a cataclysmic burst. The reinforced structure that had seemed unbreakable disintegrated instantly, wooden and metallic fragments turning into deadly shrapnel that ripped through the collapsing floor.

A succession of powerful, violent earthquakes followed, ripping through what remained of the fifth floor. Massive shockwaves and deafening soundwaves blasted outward, shattering the last standing pillars and tearing the gothic ceiling to pieces. The entire floor gave way completely, crumbling into a chaotic abyss of falling stone and darkness below.

A thick, suffocating cloud of dust and black smoke swallowed everything in sight, leaving nothing but an echoing, destructive silence.