Chapter 1410: Golden Colossus Vs a Seraphim!

His manifested form as like that of the Blood Fiend form he’d used to assume in the frozen hell but this was even bigger thanks to the endless abundance of the World Essence!

It rose above the sea until the armor surrounding him became colossus, each step of its expansion sending waves racing outward for kilometers. Golden plates were thicker than fortress walls; they folded across his limbs while luminous channels of World Essence flowed between them. His uncovered white hair lengthened with the manifestation, streaming behind him in vast pale waterfall currents while the Soul Realm’s own golden light gathered around his figure.

Within moments, Phei stood over Marcus’s ocean like an ancient celestial conqueror armored in the very substance from which the realm drew its sanctity.

He flexed one hand.

The movement alone compressed the surrounding Essence hard enough to produce a thunderous concussion, and a circular depression thousands of meters wide appeared across the sea beneath his fist before slowly filling again.

Phei looked at his armored fingers and smiled.

"So this is what happens when creation leaves its toys lying around."

How he could command another man’s World Essence so easily was a question for later.

Marcus’s Soul Realm had a considerably more immediate opinion.

"INSOLENCE!"

The word erupted from everywhere at once.

It did not merely travel through the golden sky as sound but the entire Soul Realm pronounced it. The ocean beneath Phei thundered with the syllables, the distant horizon shook and the upper reaches split beneath pressure so violent that immense golden fissures raced across the heavens.

The golden-sea itself exploded.

The tranquil World Essence rose with such violence that the first eruption swallowed the horizon completely. A wall of gold climbed upward by kilometers, then tens of kilometers, its crest vanished into luminous storms while the entire ocean beneath it twisted into a maelstrom vast enough to make continents disappear inside a single turning current.

Golden essence hurricanes formed within the ascending flood. Lightning made entirely from World Essence tore through them. Vast currents collided hard enough to produce expanding rings of force that distorted the Soul Realm from horizon to horizon.

Something screamed from inside the catastrophe.

SCREEEEEEECCCCHHHH!!!

A gigantic bird tore through the crest of the rising sea and rose above the golden sea until its shadow swallowed an impossible stretch of Marcus’s Soul Realm.

Its immense body had been created entirely from World Essence. Gold blazed through every vein of its enormous wings, and each feather carried such condensed brilliance that the creature seemed less like a living bird and more like something shaped from the very ocean beneath it. Its wings stretched across kilometers of luminous sky before they beat once.

The Soul Realm shook.

The golden sea sank beneath the force of its wake.

Vast sections of World Essence sea flattened so violently that the surface became smooth for a heartbeat before the displaced Essence erupted along the distant edges. Storms formed beneath the creature’s wings; they swept across the horizon and tore long scars through the golden mist.

A crown of radiant feathers swept backward from its skull, while its eyes burned with the concentrated brilliance of a sun seen through liquid gold.

Upon its back stood Marcus.

Or rather, something much closer to what Marcus Heavenchild would be once awakening!

Six magnificent wings spread behind him.

White-gold radiance flowed through every feather, and their combined span cast great shadows over the sea despite the light pouring from his body. Golden armor covered him from throat to foot, fitted so perfectly around his manifested form that it seemed born with him rather than summoned.

He held a long spear between both hands, and thin currents from the sea climbed the weapon before disappearing into the blade.

The spear brightened.

Space around its point began to crack.

Phei looked upward.

This was not the helpless body lying unconscious beneath an ancient tree in the Endless Forest:

The Angel Progenitor!

The ancient Soul looked down upon Phei from the back of its colossal bird; the terror Marcus had shown outside had disappeared. Here, within the depth of his own Soul Realm, surrounded by an ocean of World Essence that had answered him since the awakening of his buried existence, his arrogance had returned with enough force to almost deserve respect.

Almost.

Marcus thrust the spear and the golden sea answered him; the horizon rose.

Hundreds of kilometers of World Essence heaved upward until the entire ocean seemed to stand. A wall of gold climbed behind Marcus and the enormous bird, higher and higher, until the sea itself became a moving heaven of liquid radiance. Its weight rolled forward with the thrust of his spear, and the pressure that followed crushed the golden mist ahead of it.

The bird folded its wings—

It plunged down.

Marcus came with it.

The spear gathered the force of the rising sea into its point, and every instant brought more of that immeasurable ocean behind the attack. In that every short time of an insane the Soul Realm bent beneath the converging power. Golden clouds tore apart around Marcus. The surface below sank before he even reached it.

Phei watched him descend.

Then he raised his enormous golden arm; his gauntlet swept across the sky and Phei backhanded the world.

The strike met Marcus’s attack before the spear reached Phei!

Everything vanished into white-gold awash of light and immerse force.

The first impact produced no sound.

For one impossible heartbeat, the golden sea, the colossal bird, Marcus, the rising tsunami and even the distant horizon disappeared inside a brilliance so complete that the Soul Realm seemed to have been erased before a rupture shook heaven and sea together.

The tsunami stopped. Hundreds of kilometers of risen World Essence froze in place behind Marcus. The advancing wall stood impossibly still, its upper reaches curled over the horizon while great streams of gold hung in the air without falling.

Phei’s backhand completed its arc; the sea reversed.

The entire golden wall hurtled backward.

What had rushed toward Phei with the weight of an ocean now fled from him with even greater violence. The surface below tore open beneath the recoil. Vast sheets of World Essence rose from the sea, crossed the sky and shattered into radiant rain. Storms disappeared inside the returning tide.

The horizon itself seemed to retreat.

The colossal bird screamed in pain.

The pressure had struck its chest and folded both wings backward.

Thousands of blazing feathers ripped free; they scattered across the Soul Realm like pieces of a broken sun.

Marcus’s expression changed.

The backhand had not finished until Phei’s colossal gauntlet reached him.

Golden fingers crossed the remaining distance and struck Marcus directly across the face.

The speed was inescapable and couldn’t be dodged either.

The second impact exploded.

A circular shockwave tore through the sky and split the golden clouds apart for hundreds of kilometers. Marcus’s six wings snapped backward. The spear flew from his hands and disappeared somewhere inside the torrent of displaced World Essence. His armored body became a white-gold streak that crossed the Soul Realm so quickly the air around him warped into a luminous tunnel.

Marcus vanished beyond the visible horizon before the first impact finished echoing.

Phei brought both hands together into a single clap.

CLAAAAAPPPPP!!!

WHAAAAAAARRRMMMM!

The clap struck the Soul Realm like the meeting of two celestial mountains.

Pressure rushed outward. The remaining storms collapsed first. The golden essence thrown into the sky stopped its wild ascent, and the immense currents hanging over the sea trembled beneath Phei’s will.

He lowered both palms.

The sea followed.

World Essence crashed downward across the horizon.

Golden towers of water fell back into the ocean. Vast curtains of liquid radiance struck the surface and vanished beneath it. The hurricanes disappeared. Mist poured outward in enormous veils before the sea swallowed them again.

Within several breaths, the catastrophe settled.

The golden ocean returned to its long, slow rhythm.

Only the distant figure suspended high above it ruined the illusion that peace had ever existed.

Phei raised one finger.

The colossal bird stopped screaming.

Its blazing head turned.

Marcus stared.

Phei smiled:

"Oh, that’s embarrassing."