Chapter 181: Growth Under Pressure V

Growth Under Pressure V

Mary and Keir reduced their sizes to become smaller targets for the now shrunken Behemoth. After all, while being massive had its advantages, it meant little if your opponent was too fast for you to hit.

That, and it would have allowed the Behemoth to hit them far easier. Which, with how it was currently moving, the Spirit and Dragon knew they did NOT want to happen.

Being a Wind Elemental Spirit, Mary prided herself in her speed. She was easily the fastest person in the group discounting Xavier and Mia. This wasn’t just because of her wind magic, but also due to her Core Concept, Freedom.

It’s passive effect made reality had a looser hold on her, and usual things like gravity, friction, wind resistance, and even distance held less of an effect on her unless she allowed them to. So that, coupled with her status as a Wind Elemental Spirit, made her speed dreadful.

And yet despite that, it was all she could do to not get her upper body pulverized by the Behemoth.

Even with her speed, the thing only registered as a dark blur to her senses, and each time she evaded a strike, it was by a hair’s breadth. The sheer pressure behind the strike causing her physical form to wobble.

From the moment the Behemoth shrunk, she and Keir had been playing a deadly game of cat and mouse with the undead mythical beast. None of them were slouches, and their durability was nothing to scoff at, Keir especially with his scales, but even he didn’t dare risk taking an attack from those dreadful fists.

And dreadful their were.

Already, the Behemoth at full size was capable of reducing mountains to dust just by walking and shaking this entire landmass with a swing from its arm, even though most of the force had been concentrated on the point of impact, causing sheer physical erasure.

Now that it had shrunken down, all that force had compacted into a terrifying mass, so much so that space and light visibly bent around it due to the weight. The sheer power behind its strikes had risen several orders of magnitude, and all that force was compacted into a tiny area. So it wasn’t really surprising that each time it struck out, space would literally shatter along the path of its attack before blasting open at the apex.

The only reason Keir hadn’t been hit yet despite being slower than Mary was because Mary was the one drawing most of its attention. And the reason Mary managed to avoid getting hit was for two reasons.

One, she was naturally attuned to all the wind in the vicinity, so she could track the Behemoth’s movements through this and not have to rely on her eyes. Two, when Xander taught her martial arts, he also taught her the art of predictive combat.

Not that she couldn’t do something similar before. After all, all high level combatants had to be good at predicting the moves of an equal or stronger opponent when fighting. However, Xander’s raw martial prowess dwarfed everyone in the group. Add in the fact that Myriad Paths gave him a whole different perspective on predicting enemy movements, it wasn’t odd that Mary’s own predictive combat had reached a new level.

Which was great, because she’d lost count of how many times her head was almost blown off her body.

Another issue was the Behemoth’s durability. Even when at full size, it shrugged off Keir’s black flames and survived conceptual chaos that was Mary’s Liberation. So now that it had shrunken and compacted all that mass into this small form, damaging it... was not an easy task.

So the Behemoth was faster than them, stronger physically, and exponentially more durable. It was smaller, yet it felt more like a calamity now than it did when it was dwarfing mountains.

But despite all of that...

’It’s fine.’ Mary and Keir did not panic. It was a bit hard to believe it was fine due to the current situation, but they weren’t simply evading.

They were analyzing.

And it wasn’t long before a fact became clear.

Despite it’s power, the Behemoth’s strikes were... simple. Straightforward.

Keir was the first one to clock this, because in his inherited knowledge, even though Behemoths were more physical fighters than magical, they utilized that physicality in ways that didn’t lose out to high level conceptual magic. But this one simply moved and struck out, aiming at vital areas. It moved like a wild animal running on instinct rather than a true Behemoth. No, even less than that, because the instincts of Behemoths made them terrifying combatants. This was even worse than that.

The reason for this was simple, undead creatures, as established previously, were a shadow of their alive selves. And the stronger a creature was before it died, the harder it was to bring out the power it had had when it was still alive.

This is also why the three mythical creatures Xander and Co fought could still use a semblance of their abilities, weakened or not. Like the Tyrian Gazer and its higher dimensional existence, or the Tetrarach and it’s multifaceted combat style.

While they were strong, they were still within the realm "Manageable" while alive. So resurrecting them with more of their strength would have been easier.

Adult Behemoth’s were a whole different matter entirely, and Keir was pretty sure he was the only one there that understood just how nerfed the Behemoth was. Going off by his memories, he doubted the thing they were fighting wasn’t even using a fraction of the skills and abilities it was known to have while alive. It simply moved at them like an unstoppable object, and even that was a pale imitation of what it could truly do.

The thought enraged him to no end, but he also knew that if it could draw out even a little bit more power, he and Mary wouldn’t have even known how they died.

Hence, he did what he could do, and that was putting it to rest. Permanently.

The world buzzed as Keir used Draconic Tongue, but this time, he applied his Core Concept rather than simply commanding the world by itself.

"Your Movements Are Invalid"

Reality seemed to come to a screeching halt around the Behemoth, and for the first time, the thing stalled. Not completely stopped, but its blur like movements became more visible.

Mary was already moving.

She arrived in front of it and struck out dozens of times in an instant, her fists coated in the same rotating cones of wind that let her incapacitate her sister.

They struck the boney body of the Behemoth and, predictably, did nothing. However, wherever her fists struck its body, a green rune was left behind.

The Behemoth didn’t just stand idly and countered. But with its movements now inhibited, Mary was able to dodge with relatively more ease. Not a whole lot, but enough where she could actually fight back.

Despite being partially transformed, she held her Kung-Fu stance, feet always bouncing and ready to move as she struck out blow after blow. From palm strikes to claw strikes and normal punches.

None harmed the bones of the creature, but the runes they left behind were increasing at an alarming rate.

Keir wasn’t idle either.

After all, Invalidation wasn’t limited to his Dragon’s Breath or Draconic Tongue. He could also use it as free form magic, which he was doing a lot of, now.

Sometimes, he’d invalidate a punch the Behemoth threw. Making it so that the action of hitting never happened. Same for if it tried to make a retreat or defend itself. He’d occasionally through in a decree with Draconic Tongue, too, saying things like...

"Your Defense Is Invalid"

Or

"Your Perception Is Invalid"

The mana cost of all this was, frankly, disgusting. But another innate advantage Dragons possessed was their equally obscene Mana pools. Plus the situation didn’t exactly let him be conservative.

The Behemoth was simply too strong to be affected by these things fully, even with how potent Draconic Tongue was, paired with Keir’s Core Concept. But they affected it just enough to give Mary more and more leeway.

And it didn’t take long before the thing she’d been gearing towards was ready.

Finishing her latest combo, she weaved a jab by the Behemoth and stepped back to create distance.

The Behemoth moved to follow, but another decree from Keir caused it to pause for just a fraction of a second.

More than enough time for Mary.

She slammed her palms together, and the runes lit up. Then, a large magic circle bloomed around the Behemoth with it at the center, and in the next moment, within the circle and around the Behemoth, a transparent green bubble appeared.

When that happened, Mary spoke with Authority.

| Shred |

The inside bubble was instantly blocked out by countless tiny rotating rings of wind. But these weren’t the same ones Mary faced when she fought her sister, oh no.

A single one of those held enough power to sweep up a continent if left alone uncontrolled.

And there were thousands inside the bubble.

A horrible grating sound that couldn’t even be explained in a way that did it justice sounded out as the hyper durable body of the Behemoth was assaulted brutally.

This assault lasted for several seconds, the speed of the rings grew faster and more destructive, and small bone fragments could be seen for a fraction before getting erased from existence.

And yet...

CRACK

A Crack appeared in the bubble, and a moment later, it shattered, the rings of wind dispersing, and the magic circle flickering before going off.

The Behemoth was... not in a good state.

Its previously umblemished skelton was now full of cracks and chips, especially its arms, where it had supposedly used to protect its face and chest.

But it was still standing.

Which is when it was engulfed by Keir’s full power Dragon’s Breath.

Because the dragon hadn’t been standing idly while Mary acted.

An empty scar in reality like the last one could be seen as the Behemoth’s body and existence was Invalidated. Because to reality, anything hit by that breath never existed to begin with.

The Behemoth was gone. Properly, now.

Keir exhaled the last bit of his breath before exhaling through his nose.

He looked at the spot, or where that had been a spot, anyway, for a moment, then he whispered in his heart.

’Rest properly.’

Mary gave him a glance, and he nodded, then they moved towards where the rest of the fighting was happening.