Chapter 518: Molded For War

The sky above broke open as the tip of a gigantic pyramid began to peek through. Caldus’s body was flickering in my grip, one moment he was a man made of fire, and the next he was human.

My Anima was rushing out of me in a flood because containing the Sovereign was one of the most costly exercises I had ever done; it was similar to holding the seals while the Pale Matron bashed against it.

The Scripts I wrote were burning away but I kept adding more, while pouring a part of my Anima into the spell I had burning through his chest. Heaven’s Tribunal was a spell that attacked the soul using the power of not just my will but also the heavens of Terra.

Sovereign Caldus had destroyed his body enough that I understood that trying to destroy the body of a Sovereign was useless, they were just shells worn by them, their true center was the soul, and I had to keep him here long enough to injure him, maybe even kill him.

As he tried to escape from me, his fists were pounding on my face and chest, and the power behind them was astonishing as shockwaves were resounding from the blows, but it was as if he was lightly brushing my face with cotton for all the effect it had on me.

The Sovereign was being stunned by the attack on his body and soul, and I could feel a rising pressure inside of him, but I kept pouring a stupid amount of lightning into his body to scatter that building power, but there was more and more of these spots of surging power inside his body that I knew it would be impossible to hold him for long at this rate.

A loud crack echoed from the heavens and Sovereign Caldus struggled to look into the sky, and his red eyes went wide with shock and desperation.

"No," he whispered. "No, no, no..."

The power surges inside his body increased from hundreds to thousands in a fraction of a second and I lost my grasp on his body, and in that instant, he exploded. His body detonated in a wave of white-gold flame that tore through my grip, shattering my spells and the Scripts.

The blast threw me back a hundred metres, and I tumbled through the weightless city, slamming through multiple debris before I caught myself on the air.

I had lost the Sovereign and I was sure that he would not allow me to come this close again. Not that it would matter... this entire world was breaking to pieces.

If the presence of the Moon Fox had shattered the laws of gravity in this place, then the presence of the Caeliths... yes Caeliths. There were dozens of massive points of the pyramid sticking out of the sky and I was sure that behind them were hundreds, maybe thousands, even tens of thousands!

These nascent dimensions in my soul were windows to the true core of the concepts I held. And being the warden of one Caelith meant that I was linked to all of them.

For a moment I was frozen in place in sheer awe, as the tips of the massive pyramids were shattering the sky and slowly descending.

’There is no need to search for the core any longer, Elric, I underestimated the weight of what you hold in your soul... this Grimoire is at its final moments.’

I shuddered, the voice of Hollow pushing me from the spectacle of the sky being torn apart. A sea of fire rose from the shattering city and headed towards the falling Caeliths, looking closer I saw that it was the Spirits of the Unconsumed numbering in the millions.

Clearly what the Sovereign had used against me was a small fraction of his power, but against an existential crisis like this one, he went all out. The wave of flames slammed against the descending Caeliths, sending a crack that made even my ears ring for a short while, and for a moment they were able to hold back these Celestial structures, but more came from behind and the spirits began to shatter to nothing.

’What happens now... to the shards.’

’They shall be devoured by us, this would only benefit you in the long run, and this would inevitably cripple the Sovereign.’

’He brought me to this place, everything that has happened from this point is on his head.’

"BURN HIM. Rule of the Hearth. Rule of the Seventh Flame... BURN HIM!"

My distraction was cut short by the roar of Sovereign Caldus who had appeared in the sky. He no longer had his unflappable appearance, now he was like a fiery beast in the shape of a man.

Rings of flames surrounded the Sovereign and with a roar he descended upon me. Even now, the Sovereign was clear headed enough to know the true threat was me.

A Sovereign was the most powerful force in this age, and for the entire world, they were seen as gods, they were our gods, and when your god charges at you to kill you, you could either give up and allow it to happen, or you could beat them to death with their own fucking limbs.

My body exploded into lightning and I began casting... Sovereign Caldus, you shall be the first.

Loom of Lightning came off both my hands at once, thousands of threads, each one was a hundredth of the diameter of a spider’s thread.

I wove them through the dust, and the broken city, knowing that it would not stop the Sovereign but it was just to buy time.

The dozens of rings of fire surrounding him were spinning at a different speed, each one carrying a different law of fire, and I noticed that his Grimoire was no longer by his side, most likely it was trying to delay the destruction of this place for as long as possible.

He burned through hundreds of threads without being slowed down by much, but the trap was not the threads but the gigantic Scripts that I had inlaid inside them that came into effect when they were torn open.

This Script was just Slow, and more than ten thousand of them were unleashed at once, and the Sovereign was held in the sky for a single moment, and that was enough time for me to raise my hand and bring Heaven’s Tribunal down on him.

The judgement fell out of the sky and slammed into him with a force that would shatter mountains, the shockwave went out in a ring that cracked the shattered grounds of the city for nine miles.

And as he fell towards the ground faster than he was descending, I did not wait for him.

Lightning Form carried me toward him as I wrapped my body in a dense web of golden lightning.

∞

The first exchange lasted less than a fraction of a second.

At the moment we were about to collide, he sent one of the rings spinning towards me, and I caught it with my forearm, the Armor law absorbing the impact, the Stillness law slowing the fire. The shockwave shattered the floating stones around us, as the heat would have turned a mountain to glass.

The ring slowed down and I drove my lightning covered fist into his chest, but the Sovereign had vanished, but this was not teleportation, just pure speed, one of the rings around him should be accelerating his actions.

He appeared behind me, his hand closing on my shoulder, and another ring appeared around my body and began to close, but my domain pushed back, while I furiously rotated my domain to block any easy point of access for the Sovereign.

Darkness suddenly poured out of my mouth and covered the ring, shattering it to pieces as I twisted, my elbow catching the surprised Sovereign across the jaw. The impact sent him tumbling through the air, and when he looked up I was already there... grinning like a fox.

He may be a Sovereign, but I have been molded for war.